The patterns and determinants of longevity in Russia's regions: Evidence from panel data

In this paper we examine whether regions of Russia have been converging or diverging in their longevity levels during the 1990s and evaluate the divergence effect of the 1998 financial crisis. We also estimate the impact of changes in poverty and public health spending on inter-temporal variations in longevity using regional-level panel data for 77 Russian regions from 1994 to 2000. Finally, we investigate the extent to which the gradual recovery in longevity observed after 1994 was derailed by the 1998 financial crisis and the public policy shifts required for regions to regain their Soviet-era levels of longevity. We find a significant negative effect of the 1998 crisis on longevity independently of the factors related directly to poverty and public health spending. In addition, a permanent negative shock to the incidence of poverty and the amount of publicly-provided health care in a region has enduring consequences on the population's health. Finally, the effect of increases in public health spending on longevity is related positively to the incidence of poverty. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 788–813.     

The "Inability to be Self-Reliant" as an Indicator of Poverty: Trends for the U.S., 1975–97

In this paper we present a new concept of poverty, Self-Reliant poverty, which is based on the ability of a family, using its own resources, to support a level of consumption in excess of needs. This concept closely parallels the "capability poverty" measure that has been proposed by Amartya Sen. We use this measure to examine the trend and composition of the Self-Reliant poor population from 1975 to 1997. We find that Self-Reliant poverty has increased more rapidly over this period than has official poverty. Families considered to be the most vulnerable—those headed by minorities, single women with children, and individuals with low levels of education—have the highest levels of Self-Reliant poverty. However, these groups have also experienced the smallest increases in poverty. Conversely, families largely thought to be economically secure—those headed by whites, married men with children, and highly educated individuals—have the lowest levels of Self-Reliant poverty, but have experienced the largest increases in poverty. We also find that the Self-Reliant poor is increasingly composed of vulnerable groups relative to the composition of the official poor. The labor market, demographic, and policy sources of the divergent trends in Self-Reliant and official poverty, and of the gender, race and family structure changes in poverty rates are explored.     

CHILD POVERTY IN CANADA

The evolution of measured poverty may reflect socio-economic developments, particular measurement choices or the effect (or lack of effect) of policy initiatives. We report a "case study" of child poverty in Canada between 1986 and 2000, a period when the elimination of child poverty was a stated policy goal, but reported child poverty rates did not change significantly. We find that the apparent persistence of child poverty in Canada is remarkably robust to measurement choices, and cannot easily be explained by socioeconomic developments.     

TIME LIMITS ON WELFARE RECEIPT

Among the changes in U.S. poverty policy coming about from the end of "welfare as we knew it" has been an imposition of time limits on the receipt of federal welfare funds. Yet little is known about the impact this restriction will have. This paper examines welfare dynamics under Aid to Families with Dependent Children to provide a sense of magnitude of the number of families that would have been at risk of exhausting their eligibility for federal funds in the past. In addition, simulation models are employed to assess whether these results are sensitive to changes in key variables, some of which are within the grasp of policy makers, others of which are not. (JEL 13, J1)     

包容性金融发展与农村居民贫困减缓——基于全要素生产率视角的分析

本文用DEA—Malmquist指数法测算了全要素生产率指数，结合2006—2016年中国内地省际面板数据，基于全要素生产率视角，运用中介效应模型实证分析了包容性金融发展对农村居民贫困的影响。实证结果表明：（1）包容性金融发展能够通过全要素生产率的中介效应发挥减贫作用。（2）进一步的研究发现，包容性金融服务渗透度的提升对贫困的影响最为显著；同时，包容性金融发展可通过技术进步和效率提升作用来推动全要素生产率增长，进一步作用于贫困。（3）稳健性检验表明，我国东部与中西部地区包容性金融发展水平差异较大，对全要素生产率的提升乃至农村减贫的贡献表现出较大不平衡性。本文的政策建议为：首先，应持续推进包容性金融发展，充分发挥全要素生产率的中介效应，以更快实现2020年全面脱贫目标；其次，要继续加强农村金融基础设施建设，以实现金融 服务均等性，充分发挥金融减贫的优势；最后，要合理配置金融资源，注重地区间发展的公平性，以实现经济社会均衡发展。     

Poverty decompositions with counterfactual income and inequality dynamics

Traditional poverty accounting decomposes changes in a country's poverty headcount ratio into changes in income and inequality. We argue that this approach is unsatisfactory from the perspective of policy analysis because it compares a country in two points of time without taking the country's initial situation, and hence its potential for poverty reduction, into account. We thus suggest comparing traditional poverty decompositions with a counterfactual situation. This counterfactual indicates what a country starting from its initial situation could be expected to achieve in terms of income, inequality, and, hence, poverty developments. We construct those counterfactuals by modeling income and inequality trends characterized by convergence and a “Kuznets” relationship between inequality and development. Parameters in those relationships are estimated using PovcalNet survey data from 144 countries and we construct our counterfactual poverty predictions for 71 developing countries. While there is overall a tight relationship between actual developments and counterfactuals, we identify several cases, where both deviate from each other and discuss the policy implications. We also check for commonalities in differently performing countries and find that those who fell particularly short of expectations often underwent political transition and state fragility.     

Fuel poverty in residential housing: providing financial support versus combatting substandard housing

Between 50 and 125 million Europeans are unable to afford the energy needed for adequate heating, cooking, light and use of appliances in the home. Tackling fuel poverty has thus become a public policy challenge. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of social energy subsidies and social housing to reduce fuel poverty. The literature reports that rising fuel prices, low incomes and energy-inefficient housing are the main causes of fuel poverty. Existing public policies focus mainly on price- and income-based measures to reduce fuel poverty, such as social energy subsidies. This type of policy is palliative as it does not permit to sustainably eradicate fuel poverty. Other policies aim to encourage renovation in order to improve energy efficiency. Those policies are curative as they sustainably reduce one cause of fuel poverty: energy inefficiency. In this article, we focus on another public policy to tackle fuel poverty: social housing. We believe that this policy could be preventive, as the literature reports the better energy efficiency of social housing. We use matching methods and find that living in social housing decreases fuel poverty by 5.4% to 9.1%. On the contrary, social energy subsidies have no effect on fuel poverty.     

Intermediaries,transport costs and interlinked transactions

Farmers in developing countries often encounter difficulties selling their products on local markets. Inadequate transport infrastructure in rural areas and large distances between areas of production and consumption mean that farmers find it costly to bring their produce to the market and this very often results in small net margins and poverty among farmers who are geographically isolated. Agriculture in developing countries is characterized by the presence of intermediaries that have a cost advantage over farmers. Because of their market power, these intermediaries are able to impose interlinked contracts and are free to choose the spatial pricing policy they use. In this paper, we develop a model of input–output interlinked contracts between an intermediary and geographically dispersed farmers. We establish when the intermediary uses either uniform or mill pricing policies, as opposed to spatial discriminatory pricing. For each pricing policy, we analyze what the welfare implications are in terms of an increase in farmers' income and a reduction in poverty in rural areas. We also establish how the choice of a spatial pricing policy impacts geographically isolated farmers and how it influences the participation by farmers.     

我国收入不平等、金融发展和消费需求波动的实证研究:1978～2001

本文考察了收入不平等与总消费需求变动之间的联系,在高收入地区,不平等程度越大似乎消费需求波动越大,而在低收入地区,收入不平等越大,消费需求波动反而较小。本文找到证据表明金融发展水平能有助于解释为什么收入分配在高收入和低收入地区中影响消费需求的短期波动是不同的,本文的政策含义是,加快低收入地区如中西部的经济和金融发展步伐,加大金融发展相机调整的力度。     

Zakat and Poverty Alleviation in Tunisia Using the Fuzzy Approach

Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam, which is compulsory to all the well-off Muslims, and it is given to the needy. It is used to fight poverty. This study examines Zakat’s impact on poverty in Tunisia. Using simulated data of individual well-being from Tunisian household survey in 2010, the potential importance of the Zakat to struggle with poverty is highlighted. Fuzzy Poverty Measurement is computed which shows that Zakat does reduce this measurement. The simulation results display a significant decrease of the poverty index of Tunisia’s seven regions, and poverty can be eradicated under cases West regions.

     

Profiling the Fuzzy Latent Structure of Multidimensional Poverty: Toward Valuable Insights for Poverty Policymakers

Abstract

Several multidimensional poverty indices have been proposed, and have been extensively studied in the literature. On the other hand, the need for aggregation of poverty indicators into one multidimensional index has been questioned. It has been argued even so that this aggregation can be misleading for political targeting strategies. Subsequently, some researchers have advocated that the use of the latent class analysis would address these issues. However, this setting does not allow to take into account the fuzzy nature of the latent poverty concept. The contribution here is to use the Grade-of-Membership (GoM) model to profile the fuzzy latent structure of multidimensional poverty, for a more realistic handling of this phenomenon. The application of the GoM methodology to multivariate poverty data for the Tunisian case reveals four most prevalent multidimensional poverty profiles. The results emphasize the role played by contextual effects. Indeed, the rural cluster is suffering more intense deprivation and groups in the central and coastal regions have a more comfortable status in comparison with the group of households residing in inland regions. A thorough analysis of these patterns is put forward in this research, giving valuable insights to policy makers.     

旅游减贫具有空间溢出效应吗?

针对现有文献缺乏旅游减贫多维效果及空间效应研究,本文基于多维贫困视角,运用2008—2017年中国30个省份的面板数据,构建了包含经济、教育、医疗、生活与环境五个维度的贫困减缓评价指标体系,并在地理距离矩阵和经济距离矩阵共同构成的综合嵌套矩阵的基础上,分别运用空间自相关检验、空间杜宾模型探究了各维度贫困减缓的空间分布特征及旅游发展对各维度贫困减缓的空间效应。主要结论有:(1)十年间,中国乡村旅游业发展水平呈现显著空间正向相关性,纳入空间效应的空间杜宾模型较好地揭示出区域间乡村旅游发展存在显著的空间溢出效应。(2)十年间,各维度的减贫效果亦呈现显著空间正向相关性,表明各维度减贫效果存在着空间集聚特征。(3)十年间,旅游发展对经济、生活、环境等维度的贫困均具有显著减缓作用,更重要的发现是旅游发展在这三个减贫维度上具有正向空间溢出效应。旅游发展对教育、医疗两个维度上贫困减缓的直接和间接效应均未通过显著性检验。(4)从空间异质性视角分析,旅游发展对经济减贫维度的空间溢出效应呈现出东部区域→中部区域→西部区域逐步递减规律;旅游发展对生活减贫维度和环境减贫维度的空间溢出效应均呈现出由东部区域→中部区域→西部区域逐渐增大特征。最后,论文就旅游减贫提出了相关政策建议。     

THE SIZE AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE POVERTY GAP IN CANADA: A MICRO ANALYSIS OF VARIATIONS AMONG DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS

Poverty is a much used term by politicians, economists, sociologists, the media and interest groups. Although there is some common consensus that the word poverty means some type of deprivation, there is a lack of comprehensive measures to quantify this term. Although deprivation can relate to a number of areas such as health and education, the focus in policy development has been aimed at economic deprivation or more specifically, income adequacy. Even in this perspective, the availability of comprehensive measures are limited. The United States is the only major industrial nation that has an official poverty line. Several unofficial poverty lines have been developed in Canada, but the poverty measures have not gone beyond head counts of people who fall below these lines. In an environment where the goal is to further progressive social development constrained by inadequate public resources, the emphasis has been on first directing scarce resources to those "most in need". To get a better perception of economic need, this paper provides a micro analysis of the size and distribution of the poverty gap so that meaningful comparisons can be made between demographic groups. The results of this analysis yield some interesting findings. For example, there are virtually no poor elderly couples and although there are a large number of poor single elderly, their income shortfalls are relatively small and are highly concentrated near the poverty line; the poverty rate among families with children is quite low but their incomes on average fall well below the poverty line and are widely dispersed; and single parents fare badly on all measures.     

西部地区市政基础设施建设融资特征

加强城市基础设施建设是促进西部地区城市化的重要保障。西部地区城市基础设施的发展水平与东部地区有着明显差距,在城市基础设施建设的资金来源方面也与东部地区有所不同。文章对1990年代中期以来西部地区市政基础建设的水平及其融资的结构特征进行了分析和比较,并在此基础上提出了政策建议。     

A SHAPLEY DECOMPOSITION OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHRONIC POVERTY IN ARGENTINA

This paper proposes a Shapley decomposition to analyse the evolution of chronic poverty in a multivariate setting using a chronic poverty measure proposed by Alkire and colleagues. The decomposition makes possible to assess a vast array of information to find the drivers of change in chronic poverty, and could be a valuable tool in the way public policy programmes focus resources. We present an empirical application of the changes in chronic poverty in Argentina during the period 2004–12 using the Permanent Household Survey. We found that households with older adults show great persistence of multidimensional chronic poverty in time while the employment indicators is found to be an important driver of the intensity of chronic poverty.     

环境资源视角下西藏农牧民反贫困研究

贫困是伴随着人类发展而产生的一种社会经济现象,普遍发生在世界上所有的国家地区或民族中.西藏是中国西部自然条件恶劣、人类生存难度大、少数民族人口比重最高、贫困现象最严重的地区之一.切实改善西藏生态环境,解决农牧民的贫困问题,不仅是经济社会问题,更是重大的政治问题.如若不能很好解决,会严重影响西藏人与自然、经济社会与生态环境的可持续发展.本文通过对西藏环境资源与农牧民贫困关系的研究,认为恶劣的环境条件是导致西藏农牧民贫困的重要原因,对如何在保护生态环境基础上将西藏丰富的资源优势转化为现实的经济优势,实现农牧民的脱贫致富提出对策和建议.     

Finding out the Routes to Escape Poverty: The Relevance of Demographic vs. Labor Market Events in Spain

The knowledge of which events are most effective in pushing households out of deprivation should help in designing poverty-alleviating social policy. Using longitudinal data for Spain, we analyze the nature of events pushing poor households out of poverty, adding an interesting decomposition of transitions: the occurrence of an event and the income change implied by it. We find that, similarly to other developed countries, the events that most help Spanish households in leaving poverty are related to changes in labor status of household members. However, non-labor income changes are significantly more important in Spain than elsewhere.     

Poland’s Poverty from the US Perspective

The major objective of this study is to provide a tangible metric that can be used to assess the state of Polish poverty. To do so, we compare certain characteristics of poverty in Poland and United States, with a focus on different societal groups affected by poverty in each country. Based on official, mostly income-based statistics measuring poverty in the United States and Poland, we find that a higher percentage of the overall population in the United States is poor than in Poland and, relative to median country-specific incomes, that poverty is deeper. Examining selected societal groups that typically experience a high incidence of poverty, we find more American children, elderly, and disabled are poor than in Poland. In conclusion, the breadth of poverty is wider in the United States than in Poland and, perhaps more importantly, poverty in America may also, in some important ways, be more intractable.     

ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF IMMIGRATION AND INCOME REDISTRIBUTION*

In this article, we analyze an economy in which agents vote over immigration policy and redistributive tax policy. We show that natives' preferences over immigration are influenced by the prospect that immigrants will be voting over future tax policy. We also show that changes in the degree of international capital mobility, the distribution of initial capital among natives, the wealth or poverty of the immigrant pool, and the future voting rights and entitlements of immigrants can have dramatic effects on equilibrium immigration and tax policies. Finally, we provide some empirical support for the model's predictions.     

The role of constitutions on poverty: A cross-national investigation

We construct and use a new historical data set on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 195 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty, measured as headcount income and health outcomes? Second, does the strength of constitutional language of the economic and social rights matter? Constitutional provisions can be framed either more weakly as directive principles or more strongly as enforceable law. Our results suggest three findings. First, we do not find an association between constitutional rights generally framed and poverty. Second, we do not find an association between economic and social rights framed as directive principles and poverty. Third, we do find a strong negative association between economic and social rights framed as enforceable law and poverty when we use legal origins as our IV. These results persist for indices of constitutional rights and also when we restrict the sample to non-OECD countries. The policy implication is that constitutional provisions framed as enforceable law provide effective meta-rules with incentives for policymakers to initiate, fund, monitor and enforce poverty reduction policies.