Income and consumption inequality in China: A comparative approach with India

We analyse income and expenditure distribution in China in a comparative perspective with India. These countries represent extreme cases in the relationship of inequality to both wellbeing indicators. Income is more highly concentrated than expenditure in India, especially at the top of the distribution. Both types of inequality are similar in China, although expenditure is more unequally distributed than income in urban areas. China has a much stronger correlation in individual ranks and levels between the two wellbeing distributions. As a result, expenditure inequality is higher in China than in India, but income inequality much lower. This results partially from differences in population composition, such as China being more urbanized and having smaller households, but mostly from differences in conditional income distributions, especially by attained education of the household head. We show that hybrid measures of wellbeing combining income and expenditure can be useful for such cross-country comparison.     

Analyse de la consommation des biens culturels au Togo

This paper analyses the determinants of consumption decision and household expenditure on cultural goods in Togo, based on survey data from the 2015 QUIBB Basic Well‐being Indicators. The determinants of consumption decision are empirically estimated from a probit model while the determinants of consumption expenditure on cultural goods are estimated from a Tobit model and the CLAD (Censored Lead Absolute Deviation) method. The results show that the decision to consume cultural goods is positively affected by the higher level of education and the place of residence but negatively affected by the size of the household. Likewise, households' consumption expenditure is significantly influenced by income, education level, place of residence, household size, and religion. However, estimation by the CLAD method shows that the magnitude of the effect of these factors differs from one quantile to another. Furthermore, our results highlight a U‐shaped relationship between cultural spending and income. Taking these factors into account can help revive the cultural sector in Togo.     

Concepts and Measures of Saving: Selected Issues for South Africa

South African household savings rates have been declining steadily over the last five decades, raising concerns that the population structurally under‐saves. Against the background of new saving‐enhancing policy initiatives, this paper asks to what extent the concern is founded, and whether the measurement of saving is really appropriate to guide economic policy. Comparing different macroeconomic concepts and measurements of saving, we show that the measure of saving in the national accounts (the residual between income and expenditure) understates the household savings rate compared to other measures. Specifically, an alternative measure from the balance sheets (the change in wealth) yields a significantly higher and non‐declining figure. While households have not been “putting aside” their incomes, they have nevertheless grown richer, driven largely by the appreciation of asset valuations. We also examine the impact of taking non‐financial saving and wealth into account, and conclude that household sector saving on the aggregate is significantly higher than the national accounts suggest. However, these adjusted measures are most relevant for the upper tail of the income and wealth distribution, raising important distributional concerns.     

The Impact of Self‐Perceived Relative Income on Life Satisfaction: Evidence from British Panel Data

This is the first article that uses panel data to investigate the impact of individuals' self‐perceived relative income on life satisfaction. Analyses show that the self‐perceived relative income has a significant impact on life satisfaction, but the impact is asymmetric. The decline in life satisfaction is much more significant due to perceiving a lower relative income in comparison to the rise in life satisfaction because of perceiving a higher relative income. Absolute income is only significantly and positively associated with life satisfaction in the pooled ordinary least squares estimations, but the association is never significantly different from zero when individual fixed effects are controlled. Household savings have a positive but small impact on life satisfaction. Among different financial‐related shocks, people's self‐perceived relative income varies the most due to changes in household net income, total savings, and employment status.     

Human capital investment in children: An empirical study of household child education expenditure in China, 2007 and 2011

Household education expenditure is an important component of human capital investment in children. In China, the rising child education expenditure and the subsequent financial burden on families have attracted much research and policy attention in the recent years. Using 2007 and 2011 data from the Urban Household Education Surveys, our empirical study provides new evidence on the education expenditure level, ratio of expenditure to household income, and inequality in this expenditure. We also elucidate changes in China's household education expenditure and explore factors associated with such changes. From the analysis, we obtain the following findings. First, education expenditure incurred outside the school significantly contributes to increasing household education expenditure. Second, compulsory education programs are effective in curbing in-school education expenditure; however, it does not prevent the rapidly increasing education investment outside school. Third, education expenditure disproportionally increases with family income. In other words, a larger share of the income earned by lower income families is spent on children's education, compared to higher income families.     

KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) 1993–98: A longitudinal household database for South African policy analysis

An important adjunct of apartheid has been the absence of credible and comprehensive data on which policies, such as poverty reduction strategies, can be grounded. The 1993 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) provided the first comprehensive household database for South Africa. Despite its usefulness, however, the one round PSLSD cannot provide answers to many questions important to policy researchers and practitioners, particularly questions about dynamic processes. The primary objective in this article is to introduce a new longitudinal household database, based on the PSLSD, which begins to fill this gap. Households surveyed by the PSLSD in KwaZulu-Natal province were re-surveyed in 1998 by the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Survey (KIDS). As a research endeavour, the KIDS project addresses one of the most vexing and important problems confronting contemporary South Africa: understanding the forces and mechanisms which contribute to the perpetuation of apartheid's legacy of poverty and inequality.     

Comparing alternative measures of household income: Evidence from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell's plain survey

Household income is widely used for economic and sociological analysis, yet little emphasis has been placed on the optimal way to gather household income data. The Khayelitsha/Mitchell's Plain Survey provides a unique opportunity to explore alternative ways of measuring household income. This study compares the estimates obtained from a household module with those obtained from detailed income data collected in the adult module of the survey. Estimates derived from individual income data tend to be higher and have greater variation than those obtained from the household module. This difference between income estimates has a material impact on the secondary analysis of income data. The Gini coefficient, a simple measure of income-inequality, is used in this study to illustrate how household income measured at the household level underestimates household income inequality.     

The Invisible Hand of Rain in Spending: Effect of Rainfall‐Driven Agricultural Income on Per Capita Expenditure in Ghana

This paper uses a nationally representative household pseudo‐panel dataset for Ghana, a rain‐fed agriculture economy, to investigate whether there is a positive relationship between rainfall‐driven agricultural income and household per capita expenditure. By using the Two Stage Least Squares Instrumental Variable (2SLS‐IV) estimator, it is found that a fall in rainfall‐driven agricultural income leads to a decrease in per capita expenditure. The results show that the gender and the locality of the household head matter in the response of per capita expenditures to rainfall‐driven agricultural income. Female‐headed and rural households are more vulnerable to rainfall‐driven agricultural income changes. The expenditure disaggregation indicates that female‐headed households significantly reduce per capita non‐food expenditure in times of rainfall‐induced agricultural income decrease whilst the response of male‐headed households focuses more on reducing per capita food and remittance expenditures.     

Re-estimating gender differences in income in South Africa: The implications of equivalence scales

Most studies of poverty and inequality in South Africa measure individual welfare by deflating total household resources, such as income, by household size. This per-capita method makes no adjustments for the different consumption needs of children or for household economies of scale. However, in addition to being more likely to live in households where average per-capita household income is lower compared with men, we show that women in South Africa also live in significantly larger households which include more children. These gendered differences in household composition are driven to a large degree by low rates of co-residency between men and women. We therefore investigate how adjusting household resources for the presence of children and economies of scale affects measures of the gender gap in income.     

Regional Income Inequality and Welfare in China: A Dominance Analysis

Inference-based dominance analysis is applied to micro data containing comprehensive measures of rural and urban incomes in seven major regions of China. Ordinal inequality rankings are estimated for Lorenz curves of household income, per capita household income and square root equivalences scale adjusted income. Regional inequality is shown to be sensitive to the treatment of household size. The lack of reliable regional cost of living measures leads us to propose that entire food expenditure share quantile distributions be used as indicators of differences in well-being within and across regions. The results indicate that statistical rankings of Lorenz dominance and food share dominance are very different indicators of regional disparities in income and welfare in China. One urban region is shown to have been in the unenviable position in 1988 of being at the bottom of the Lorenz dominance ranking and tied for last in terms of food share dominance.     

Firm agglomeration and local poverty reduction: evidence from an economy in transition

We examine the linkages between firm agglomeration and the welfare of households in Vietnam. We measured firm agglomeration by per capita firm output at the district level and household welfare by per capita income, expenditure, and poverty. We find that firm agglomeration helps households move from the informal sector to the formal sector. As a result, there is a positive effect of firm agglomeration on per capita income, per capita expenditure, and poverty reduction, albeit of a small and time‐decreasing magnitude. The effect of firm agglomeration on per capita expenditure tends to be higher for households with men, younger, and more educated heads than households with women, older, and less educated heads. Households in rural areas and those that do not have crop land are more likely to benefit from firm agglomeration than those living in urban areas and having crop land.     

Access to savings and household welfare evidence from a household survey in The Gambia

In this study, we provide evidence on the impact of access to formal savings on household well‐being in The Gambia. Specifically, we study how access to formal savings can impact household outcomes such as total spending, ownership of durable assets, health spending, and education spending. Using a representative household survey and kernel ridge regression method, we find that household access to formal savings has a positive and statistically significant impact on all outcomes except health spending. Furthermore, we find that the largest effect size of access to savings is on education spending. However, the impact estimates on education and food expenditure are not very robust to a mild presence of hidden bias. Overall, we find a robust impact for total spending and asset ownership. Hence, increasing household access to formal savings can improve household well‐being in The Gambia.     

Impacts of Road Access on Subjective Well‐being in Timor‐Leste

The impacts of access to roads on subjective well‐being at the household level are empirically examined using Timor‐Leste's nationally representative surveys. This paper examines not only the quantity, but also the quality of road infrastructure and, thus, extends existing studies that only consider the benefits of road accessibility. It is found that proximity to main roads may not necessarily result in improved welfare. Instead, ensuring all‐weather access to roads appears to be a more significant factor in raising household well‐being. Specifically, road accessibility during the rainy season reduces the probability of households reporting a ‘less than adequate’ (low satisfaction) response by 13–25 percent. This suggests that in Timor‐Leste, and likely in other developing economies under similar conditions, maintenance of existing roads is more essential to well‐being than building more roads.     

Welfare measures and the composition of the bottom decile: The example of gender and extreme poverty in South Africa

We examine the composition of the bottom decile in South Africa using three alternative measures of socio-economic status (SES): an asset index, household income per capita and household expenditure per capita. We show that the gender composition of the bottom decile is sensitive to the measure used. We discuss possible reasons for these discrepancies, highlighting gender differences in asset ownership and location. This has implications for the use of asset indices for identifying the poorest members of society.     

Poverty identification: practice and policy implications in Vietnam

To identify poor households, the government of Vietnam applies a combination of proxy means tests and quick collection of income data. This paper examines how well the government's poverty identification reaches the really poor in Vietnam. It is found that there is a large difference between the poverty rate for provinces and districts reported by the government and the rates estimated using expenditure and income data from independent household surveys. There is also a large difference between the poverty status of households identified by local authorities and the poverty status identified by income or expenditure data. More than 50 per cent of the poor households identified by local authorities are not poor in terms of income or expenditure measures. A better identification approach would be to use only proxy means tests and not income data collected using the simple questionnaire.     

Determinants of Well‐being and Poverty Changes in Cameroon: 2001–2007

Abstract: This paper identifies and decomposes sources that explain household economic well‐being in Cameroon. It uses the 2001 and 2007 Cameroon Household Consumption Surveys, synthetic variables constructed by the multiple correspondence analysis and econometric approaches that correct for potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity in a step‐wise manner and simultaneously. Sources of well‐being that explain poverty are then decomposed into growth and redistribution components. Variables that significantly explain household economic well‐being are education, health, household size, fraction of active household members, working in the formal sector and area of residence. Decomposition analysis shows that the growth components largely account for changes in deprivation in terms of each regressed‐income source. With the exception of the income source education, redistribution components slowed down progress in alleviating shortfall in other regressed‐income sources. These results have implications for public interventions that affect education and health for all, labour market participation and infrastructure development.     

典型相关分析在居民收入与支出间的应用

扩大内需和提高居民收入是政府宏观调控的目标,本文运用典型相关分析原理,构建了居民收入与支出间的关系及其影响因素,找出了影响居民收入与支出的主要因素,并将该模型应用于2009年农村居民收入与支出间关系的研究,证明劳动者报酬收入对食品和衣着支出有着显著影响。     

Food away from home in Beijing: Effects of wealth,time and “free” meals

Based on a modified Becker household consumption and production model and newly surveyed data set collected by the authors, this study investigated household expenditure on food away from home (FAFH) and its determinants in Beijing, China. A Box–Cox double-hurdle regression is estimated. The key findings suggest that household expenditure on dining out might be significantly underestimated when using the data most commonly used in food consumption research in China. Excluding hosted meals that are not paid for by individual consumers comprises nearly one half of the underestimation. Meanwhile, this exclusion could bias estimates of income effects on the demand for food away from home.     

中国消费环境对居民消费水平的影响

居民消费是消费环境的函数。文章所构建的消费环境包括了经济环境、社会环境和法律环境三个主要维度,基于1990-2008年的相关数据研究发现,经济环境中的收入和就业因素对于居民消费的即期影响效应统计显著,其中,就业对消费的影响远高于收入对消费的影响。社会环境和法律环境中的所有变量则并没有对居民的消费产生统计显著的影响。因此,中国在进入“十二五”期间之后,要稳健、全面推动中国的内需,亟需解决的问题是构建起更加健康有序的社会消费环境和法律环境,而不是仅着眼于对于居民消费有即期影响的收入和就业水平,虽然这是两个非常重要的因素。     

金融素养是否降低了家庭金融脆弱性?

金融素养对家庭金融脆弱性的影响具有不确定性,既可能通过增加家庭的资产和收入,降低家庭金融脆弱性;也可能通过增加家庭的负债与支出,提升家庭金融脆弱性。本文首先从金融知识、金融行为、金融态度三个维度测算金融素养,再基于"资不抵债"、"入不敷出"两个维度量化家庭金融脆弱性,最后构建实证模型,以CFPS（2014）为样本,量化分析金融素养对家庭金融脆弱性的影响。实证研究表明：金融素养的增加显著降低家庭金融脆弱性及"资不抵债"的概率;在金融素养的三个维度中,金融知识降低金融脆弱性、缓解资不抵债的作用更为显著。