Women and poverty: Beyond earnings and welfare

Women’s poverty rates are higher than men’s, with single mothers having extremely high poverty rates. This article first briefly examines poverty measures and U.S. poverty rates among men and women. The author then describes and evaluates three categories of economic research on poverty: the lack or inadequacy of employment and earnings; family structure and welfare; and earnings capacities, care-giving responsibilities and employment. Finally the author assesses the policies to alleviate women’s poverty derived from these explanations.     

Mobility and the dynamics of poverty in Iran: Evidence from the 1992–1995 panel survey

In the last three decades, revolutionary Iran has experienced large shocks to its political and economic system with likely effects on poverty, inequality, and economic mobility. While poverty has declined, inequality has remained relatively high and stable over nearly four decades. In this paper, for the first time, we examine poverty and inequality in a dynamic context using a 4-year panel data, collected during 1992–1995. We show that short-term income mobility is relatively high, which helps mitigate persistent high inequality. We offer a range of estimates of transition probabilities, indicating that, for example, someone in the lowest (highest) quintile has between 25% and 50% chance of moving up (down) the income ladder. Focusing on the dynamics of poverty, we distinguish between short- and long-term poor and between chronic and transient poverty. Surprisingly, we find that chronic poverty is a more serious problem in urban than rural areas, while transient poverty is geographically more uniformly distributed. Finally, using Tobit and quantile regression, we examine the correlates of these two types of poverty. Both chronic and transient poverty are higher for households headed by women and by younger and less educated men. While minorities suffer more from transient poverty, they are less likely to be chronically poor. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy to alleviate chronic and transient poverty.     

Labor market flexibility and poverty dynamics

The past two decades have witnessed a rapid growth in flexible work arrangements that, in some instances, could expose workers to a higher poverty risk via limited job stability, few advancement opportunities, and low wages. Nowhere in the world has this increase in flexible work arrangements being more evident than in Spain, where about a third of the wage and salary workforce holds fixed-term contracts. Using Spanish panel data and maximum-likelihood binary models that account for state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity, we examine the poverty implications of past and present temporary employment. Our findings suggest that fixed-term contracts are linked to a greater poverty exposure among women and older men relative to open-ended contracts. Furthermore, this greater poverty exposure can last several years due to feedback effects operating via job instability or via the transition to work statuses characterized by higher poverty hazards. Finally, the adverse impact of temporary employment is linked to the short duration of some contracts, thus signaling the importance of work attachment.     

Poverty volatility and poverty in developing countries

This article examines the effect of poverty volatility on poverty in developing countries. Poverty volatility refers to the amplitude of the change in poverty rates over a given period of time. Variations in poverty rates can potentially arise from countries' vulnerability to a variety of shocks that induce greater macroeconomic volatility, including economic growth volatility. The empirical analysis shows that poverty volatility consistently induces a rise in poverty rates, and this positive poverty effect of poverty volatility increases as the degree of poverty volatility rises. Policies that help reduce poverty volatility (including by dampening economic growth volatility) would contribute to poverty reduction.     

京津冀协同背景下环京津贫困带减贫途径研究

环京津贫困带是我国非常典型的紧邻大都市的“集中连片特殊困难地区”,且由于贫困与生态问题耦合,多年来难以脱贫。推动环京津贫困带减贫,成为贯彻实施“京津冀协同发展”国家战略过程中需要解决的一个重要问题。本文从承担生态涵养和生态安全功能、大城市“回波效应”大于“扩散效应”、区域开放较晚等角度,分析环京津贫困带形成与存在的多重原因,并探讨通过区域协同发展解决大都市周边生态抑制型贫困区域贫困问题的模式与路径。     

Does corruption affect income inequality and poverty?

This paper provides evidence that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty. An increase of one standard deviation in corruption increases the Gini coefficient of income inequality by about 11 points and income growth of the poor by about 5 percentage points per year. These findings are robust to use of different instruments for corruption and other sensitivity analyses. The paper discusses several channels through which corruption may affect income inequality and poverty. An important implication of these findings is that policies that reduce corruption will most likely reduce income inequality and poverty as well. Received: March 2, 2000 / Accepted: September 20, 2001     

Distribution-sensitivity of rank-dependent poverty measures

We propose a criterion to rank poverty measures on the basis of distribution-sensitivity. The criterion compares reactions to ‘lossy’ transfers among the poor. We focus on the class of rank-dependent poverty measures and provide distribution-sensitivity rankings of the poverty gap ratio, the first and second Sen measures, the Thon measure, the Shorrocks measure, and the Thon, Kakwani and S-Gini classes of measures. Moreover, we discuss the relationship between the proposed criterion and two alternative distribution-sensitivity criteria based on the Arrow–Pratt theory of risk aversion. Finally, we provide an empirically tractable necessary and sufficient condition for unanimous poverty rankings by all continuous and replication invariant rank-dependent poverty measures that exhibit a predetermined minimum degree of distribution-sensitivity.     

Perceptions of poverty attributions in Europe: a multilevel mixture model approach

The perception of the causes of poverty has long been recognized as a very important factor in the broader study of this social phenomenon. This study covers 15 European Union countries and considers three types of poverty attributions: individualistic, societal, and fatalistic. The individualistic view perception believes the poor are responsible for their situation, the societal perspective blames society for poverty and the fatalistic view considers poverty to be the result of bad luck or fate. A multilevel mixture model with three clusters of countries and six clusters of individuals was identified. Despite the generalization of the social explanations of poverty at the individual or micro level, there are also groups that emphasize more individualistic explanations, blaming the poor for their condition. At the country or macro level, the most developed cluster believes in the individualistic and fatalistic causes of poverty, whereas the least developed clusters explain poverty based on the injustices of society. There is diversity in the way these countries perceive poverty.     

Spatial inequality and household poverty in Ghana

The study analyses district-level consumption inequality in Ghana, explores the relative contribution of within- and between-district inequalities to national inequality and examines the relationship between household poverty and inequality. The last three rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Survey are used. We observe that the contribution of within-district inequality to national inequality is higher than inequality between districts. Also, district-level consumption inequality shows a significant effect on household poverty, but with varying signs. We surmise that the variation in signs is as a result of the state of economic activity and factors that affect both poverty and inequality.     

Marketing and development out of poverty: introduction to the special issue

• Reducing poverty by meeting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is an interdisciplinary undertaking, in which Marketing Science logically plays a role. The papers in this special issue cover a range of methods, from traditional consumer research experiments (on images of poverty, donation behaviour) and sample surveys on the credibility of celebrity marketing, to observational studies of community values and customs (on micro-finance or agricultural enterprise). Consumers of aid appeals, celebrity lobbying and financial services—these methods reveal—are behaviourally complex. They are infused with contradictory, competing and complementary tendencies. Underlying those different tendencies however is a common but often overlooked thread. For poverty to be significantly reduced by 2015, attention needs to be paid not only to goals, that is to task but also towards understanding the human relationships in the poverty reduction market. Marketing practise and research can contribute to poverty reduction by helping build (1) perspective-sharing, (2) accommodation to local needs and (3) appreciation of socio-economic and socio-cultural behavioural systems.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bootstrap inference for inequality,mobility and poverty measurement

This paper proposes the use of the bootstrap for the most commonly applied procedures in inequality, mobility and poverty measurement. In addition to simple inequality index estimation the scenarios considered are inequality difference tests for correlated data, decompositions by sub-group or income source, decompositions of inequality changes, and mobility index and poverty index estimation. Besides showing the consistency of the bootstrap for these scenarios, the paper also develops simple ways to deal with longitudinal correlation and panel attrition or non-response. In principle, all the proposed procedures can be handled by the δ-method, but Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the simplest possible bootstrap procedure should be the preferred method in practice, as it achieves the same accuracy as the δ-method and takes into account the stochastic dependencies in the data without explicitly having to deal with its covariance structure. If a variance estimate is available, then the studentized version of the bootstrap may lead to an improvement in accuracy, but substantially so only for relatively small sample sizes. All results incorporate the possibility that different observations have different sampling weights.     

Does measurement invariance hold for the official Mexican multidimensional poverty measure? A state-level analysis 2012

One of the main goals in poverty measurement is making comparisons of prevalence and severity across geographical units. This is attained by merely disaggregating the index in question. The underlying assumption is that comparisons across units are tenable, inasmuch as the same indicators are utilised for constructing the index. Nonetheless, in practice, this assumption is very rarely tested. From the statistical perspective, measurement invariance (MI) must hold for comparisons to be valid, and violations thereof indicate that a given poverty index measures different things across different countries, states, counties, etc. Consequently, differentials in severity and prevalence cannot be attributed exclusively to the underlying construct (i.e. poverty) but to factors not considered in the measure. This article tests whether MI holds for two indexes: the Mexican official multidimensional measure (MPM) and an adjusted multidimensional measure (MPM-A) that uses less severe thresholds. The analysis is conducted using a novel method called the ‘alignment method’. It uses these two measures and the method as an illustration of why it is vital to introduce MI tests into poverty measurement. The results suggest that partial strong MI holds for the official measure and MI is violated when the thresholds are adjusted. Partial strong MI guarantees making valid comparisons across the 32 states. Should the official measure requires to be updated with other thresholds, it would be necessary to adjust the threshold or drop the indicator for water deprivation.     

Multivariate-based Granger causality between financial deepening and poverty: the case of Pakistan

This paper deals with the empirical investigation of causal relationship between financial deepening, economic growth and poverty reduction using quarter frequency data in case of Pakistan over the period of 1972–2011. We applied the autoregressive distributed lag model bounds testing approach by incorporating structural breaks stemming in the series. The order of integration of the variables is examined by applying structural break unit root test. Our empirical exercise indicated that the long run relationship between financial deepening, economic growth and poverty reduction exists in case of Pakistan. The causality analysis implied that causality results are sensitive with the use of proxy for poverty reduction.     

National culture and the revenue-expense matching

Prior studies on the link between country-level cultural aspects and firms' arbitrary accounting practices are scant, and they show mixed results. To gain more insight about the impact of national culture on earnings characteristics, we exploit the matching concept between revenues and expenses, which well reflects managerial estimation and discretion in earnings quality. Using a large sample of 57 countries over the period 1989–2012, we find that (1) the economic association between revenues and expenses becomes stronger in firms from collectivistic and high uncertainty-avoidant countries, (2) the impact of these dimensions of national culture on the matching is more salient for firms from countries characterized by a higher level of accrual accounting, a greater proportion of special-items, and limited openness, and (3) the cultural impact on matching is mainly driven by the correlation between revenue and discretionary expense (i.e., selling, general, and administrative expense). These findings are consistent with the view that national culture plays an informal governance role to influence firms' discretionary accounting choices.     

A new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement based on the capability approach

We propose a methodology based on the use of clustering techniques derived from data analysis and multi-attribute decision analysis methods aiming at purposeful multidimensional poverty measurement. Our contribution to methodological knowledge insists on the necessity to build “meaningful measurements” for policy making and policy implementation. Our standpoint underlines the necessity to consider the problem of poverty measurement as a decision problem and to tackle its measurement issue with that in mind. We also show that such an exercise can be useful to develop a better operational definition of poverty and to solve the aggregation issues.     

美国的内城贫困问题

在简要介绍美国"内城"的概念以及相关背景的基础上,对美国内城的人口经济社会特征进行分析,运用相关的分析视角和理论假设,就美国内城贫困引发的公共服务问题展开讨论,最后从内城贫困的肌理、歧视性政策、社会保障政策、社区建设、公共政策、社会公正等方面进行了思考.     

An economic efficiency analysis of deconcentrating poverty populations

This paper presents a comparative static analysis using a conceptual model of the social benefits and costs associated with alternative spatial distributions of the poor. This analysis demonstrates that the necessary and sufficient conditions for justifying deconcentration of the poor on the grounds of increasing net social benefits are much more stringent than is commonly believed, fundamentally involving particular sorts of non-linear relationships between neighborhood poverty rates and the propensity of neighboring individuals to engage in problem behaviors and to earn less. The paper then conducts a meta-analysis of the limited empirical evidence available. The weight of the evidence implies that net social benefits would be improved if neighborhoods with greater than about 15% poverty rates were replaced with (an appropriately larger number) of neighborhoods having less than 15% poverty rates. However, net social benefits would be smaller if neighborhoods with greater than about 40% poverty rates were replaced with (an appropriately larger number) of neighborhoods having between about 15–40% poverty rates.     

Impact of private forest ownership on deforestation and poverty

We analyzed the impact of private forest ownership on deforestation and poverty. Using multivariate cross-section models, we identified a statistically significant negative correlation between private forest ownership and deforestation and a statistically significant negative correlation between private forest ownership and poverty. Our study presents the importance of privatization in the forest sector and stimulation of private forestry to combat deforestation and poverty.     

Teen employment, poverty, and the minimum wage: Evidence from Canada

In May 2007, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation, which increased the Federal minimum hourly wage from $5.15 to $7.25, over a two year time period. This increase to the minimum wage was the first in nearly a decade and was approved with the objective of alleviating poverty among low-income households. However, a higher minimum wage may result in more unemployment and poverty. We exploit time-series variation in minimum wages set by Canadian provinces between 1981 and 2004. OLS and IV results suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum wage is significantly correlated with a 3%-5% drop in teen employment. Further, a 10% rise in the minimum wage is also significantly associated with a 4%-6% increase in the percentage of families living under Low Income Cut Offs (LICOs). Difference-in-difference estimates from the 1993, 1995, and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) support these findings as they suggest that income earned by teens constitutes a non-trivial portion of household income for families beneath Low Income Cut Offs. Therefore, a higher minimum wage may paradoxically result in a significant negative shock to household income among low-income families.     

Institutional quality and poverty measures in a cross-section of countries

We provide cross-country empirical evidence on the link between measures of institutional development and of poverty over the period 1960-1990. We find that the more efficient the institutions, the lower the degree, severity, and incidence of poverty. We provide both ordinary least squares and two-stages least squares estimates, and show that our results are robust for an overall measure of institutional development as well as for an index of risk of expropriation and quality of the bureaucracy.