Energy consumption of urban households in China

We estimate China urban household energy demand as part of a complete system of consumption demand so that it can be used in economy-wide models. This allows us to derive cross-price elasticities unlike studies which focus on one type of energy. We implement a two-stage approach and explicitly account for electricity, domestic fuels and transportation demand in the first stage and gasoline, coal, LPG and gas demand in the second stage. We find income inelastic demand for electricity and home energy, but the elasticity is higher than estimates in the rich countries. Demand for total transportation is income elastic. The price elasticity for electricity is estimated to be −0.5 and in the range of other estimates for China, and similar to long-run elasticities estimated for the U.S.     

Estimating flexible consumption functions for urban and rural households in China

There are few comprehensive studies of household consumption in China that covers all commodities due to data restrictions. This prevents the calculation of inequality indices based on consumption. This lack of coverage also makes analysis of policies that affect consumption difficult; economy-wide models used for analysis often have to employ simple consumption forms with unit income elasticities. We estimate a translog demand system distinguished by demographic characteristics, giving price and income elasticities that should be useful for policy analysis. We estimate separate functions for urban and rural households using household expenditure data and detailed commodity prices (1995–2006). This allows future analysis of social welfare and inequality based on consumption to supplement existing studies based on income. To illustrate an application of the model, we project consumption composition based on projected prices, incomes and demographic changes – aging, education improvement and urbanization.     

Taxation and the urban poor in developing countries

Empirical evidence indicated that the poor, and particularly the urban poor, in developing countries pay a substantial part of their income as taxes. This paper examines critically the procedures employed in measuring the incidence of taxation in LDCs, with a particular emphasis on evidence concerning the tax burdens of the urban poor, and presents a summary of some empirical work in this area. It then provides a review and analysis of fiscal policies which at the margin can assist in improving the position of the urban poor by reducing the regressivity, and increasing the progressivity, of existing or potential revenue instruments, including public service prices, and by improving the fiscal position of the poor through expenditure programmes.     

城市贫困人群的医疗救助问题研究

随着城市居民最低生活保障制度的实施和不断完善,城市贫困人群的生活得到了一定程度的改善。但是,在现有体制下,贫困人群的医疗问题日益凸显出来,他们在医疗方面实际上处于一种双重缺失状态,如果不解决好这个问题,有可能会影响到整个社会保障制度的完善和社会的稳定。     

Are poor able to access the informal credit market? Evidence from rural households in China

The poor are often excluded from formal credit markets, but few empirical studies in literature have investigated whether the poor are constrained in the informal credit market. This paper uses recent micro data of rural China to answer this question. An instrumental variable model is estimated to account for potential endogeneity issues. Results show that poorer households have lower probability of entering the informal credit market. Further examination shows that the poor are limited by social network and that they have no financial means to invest in their social capital to expand their social network. Our findings shed light on potential solutions of reducing poverty in rural areas.     

The end of destitution: evidence from urban British working households 1904-37

We estimate the reduction, almost to elimination, of absolute poverty among working households in urban Britain between 1904 and 1937. We exploit two recently-digitized data sets. The paper presents a statistical generalization, to working families in the whole of urban Britain, of the poverty decline found in the town studies by, amongst other, Bowley and Rowntree. We offer corroborative evidence and perform a simulated decomposition of the poverty reduction into its proximate causes. The two most important causes were the rise, 1904–37, of about 30% in real wages on the one hand and the reduction of one-third in the number of people in the average household over the same period. Between them, these two changes imply a near doubling of the income per capita of an average household supported by a worker on the average wage. We conclude with a discussion of deeper causes.     

Measuring the poverty lines for urban households in China—an equivalence scale method

Laid-off employees in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) due to China's economic reform and the enterprise-restructuring plan created newly urban poverty, lending urgency to the task of constructing accurate measures of poverty thresholds. Along this line, a fundamental question is: given the widely used poverty threshold for an individual, how should that threshold vary across households with different demographic characteristics? Equivalence scales, which can be used to derive comparable poverty lines for households of different sizes and compositions and in different regions, are ideally suited for providing answers to this question. Accordingly, this paper uses the Urban Household Survey (UHS) data of China to estimate the equivalence scales for Chinese urban households. The results provide a quantitative reference to calculate the comparable poverty lines for households with different demographic compositions. A useful byproduct of this study is a specification of the demand system of China.     

Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam

This paper examines nearly 1000 poor to middling citizen households from the city of Amsterdam with a view to assessing their place in the larger wealth distribution of the city as preliminarily sketched in the work of Soltow, van Zanden, and others. It utilizes the probate inventories drawn up by the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage, which when coupled with the marriage, baptism, and burial records of the city archives, allow for the reconstruction of the household circumstances, material, financial, and demographic, of the families associated with the institution. These data yield detailed information about precisely the kind of people who were systematically excluded from the tax registers and financial records which form the basis for our current knowledge about inequality among historical populations. The lower portion of the wealth distribution is described and then linked via housing rental rates to a more complete distribution of the various social classes in the city. Finally, the determinants of inequality within the ranks of the poor are examined and financial assets of even very small amounts are found to be critical in shaping the socio-economic experience of the lower citizenry.     

The link between credit markets and self-employment choice among households in rural China

Our paper examines how credit markets operate through wealth to influence households’ entrepreneurial choices. Our results show that policy-led bank branch withdrawal in rural China has a significant negative impact on credit availability to rural households, though unexpectedly the effect is felt more strongly in informal than formal credit markets. Furthermore, we observe that self-employment is impeded by reductions in wealth associated with credit contraction. Policies which provide more and better formal financial services to rural households are predicted to increase the flow of credit, through both formal and informal channels, thereby supporting accumulation, diversification, and economic growth.     

The role of borrowing in crisis coping among ultra-poor households in rural Bangladesh

In this study, we show how decisions to borrow from different formal and informal sources are associated with different types of disasters. We estimate the associations between loans from different sources using monthly panel data from Northern Bangladesh. Households borrow from different sources to cope with disasters. The cost of loans, however, may vary by the source of funds. MFI loans, while low in terms of interest cost, usually require a savings deposit, loan or application fee, with a longer trip or waiting time. Hence, households resort to loans from informal sources to deal with crises. We estimate the impulse responses of loans from different sources, which clearly show a hump-shape centring for the months of disasters. Pre-emptive loans are associated only with partially anticipated shocks. Aggregate shocks also limit how much households can borrow from their local peers. Our findings rationalise the roles played by both informal and formal micro-loans in crisis coping in Bangladesh, where the market for microfinance is ubiquitous. The development of the emergency credit market and the introduction of insurance services in rural areas will require the non-price costs of such financial products to be lowered.     

Limited access to services for the urban poor in Windhoek,Namibia

The majority of the population living in the informal settlements of Windhoek, Namibia, have limited access to public municipal services. This paper integrates results from a sample of 97 randomly selected households, interviews with experts and community leaders and review of literature to describe and analyse the relationship between land tenure and municipal services in the informal settlements. Findings from our study show that formalised land tenure is a condition for households to access municipal services privately. However, 85% of the sample of the households in the informal settlements do not own land under current land tenure policy. Further, the need for communities ‘to own land’ seemed more immediate and pressing compared to water access, which is seen as a way to govern themselves towards raising funds for land acquisition. But lack of land ownership remains a constraint.     

Reforming the management framework of urban land use

Problems in land-use regulation in an emerging market environment are analyzed with special reference to the city of Tomsk. Changes in the system of land-use management and their impact on urban development are considered. The focus is on municipal real estate and land use, which, formally being in the competence of local governments, are becoming a major factor of economic development.     

央行《调查》显示:三成城镇家庭两套房 户均资产318万

近日,中国人民银行调查统计司城镇居民家庭资产负债调查课题组发布《2019年中国城镇居民家庭资产负债情况调查》(下称“《调查》”),调查的取样对象为全国30个省(自治区、直辖市)的3万余户城镇居民,该调查对全国城镇居民的资产、负债及相关问题进行了汇总和分析。“住房”是《调查》中最高频的词汇之一,“住房占家庭资产比近七成”“住房拥有率为96.0%”“刚需型房贷家庭债务风险突出”等调查结论也引发了网友热议。     

ICT use by households and firms in the EU: links and determinants from a multivariate perspective

The progress toward a digital economy in Europe involves boosting ICT use in various environments, such as households and firms. Studies available at the regional level in Europe focus on ICT use by households. This paper sheds light on the digital divide by exploring the differences in ICT use across European regions, investigating simultaneously not only ICT use by households but also by firms. Using canonical correlation analysis, we first explore the existence of regional patterns of ICT use in Europe. Second, we test the influence of regional characteristics to explain ICT use by households and firms. Our results identify a first pattern defined by the regions that combine high levels of both ICT uses. This pattern is explained primarily by the quality of the regional government, knowledge-intensive services and economic development variables. A divide between southern and northern, and western and eastern regions is detected. We also identify a second pattern that captures ICT use by firms (not related to the first), predominantly determined by educational variables and some economic factors. This pattern does not exhibit the geographical digital divide found in the first. The findings show that there are synergies and regional factors explaining the use of ICT both at home and at work at the regional level in Europe that should be considered when designing public policy geared toward encouraging ICT diffusion.     

The poverty of solidarity: the size and structure of informal income smoothing among worker households in Helsinki, 1928

Abstract

Informal income smoothing by households before the post-Second World War expansion in public welfare has gained attention in the history of poverty and social insurance. Little direct empirical evidence has been available. Finnish household budgets from 1928 with intra-year panel data on informal transactions enable analysis of the use of savings, loans and informal assistance to counter income variation by worker families in Helsinki. Income shares of transfers were small compared with labour-based methods of supplementing the earnings of the surveyed male breadwinner families. Within the year, however, the combined use of assistance, credit, and savings accounts compensated on average 36% of income fluctuations, while means such as added workers or taking in lodgers appeared ineffective on the short run. Informal assistance mattered for the poorest households, but provided inferior coverage compared with that attained through credit and savings by more affluent workers. Income inequality was therefore replicated as risk-management inequality.     

Community action by the urban poor: Democratic involvement,community self-help or a means of social control?

This is the first of two papers, in which we examine the nature and effectiveness of formal channels for encouraging community action and participation among low-income groups in Bogotá (Columbia), Mexico City (Mexico) and Valencia (Venezuela). We are concerned with the forms of community participation among the poor, how demands are channelled to the state, the formal organization of community links with the state, and the origins of community action programmes. Organizations to facilitate popular participation in barrio upgrading have existed since the late 1950s, most of which have been imposed from the top down. We argue that the poor have derived few benefits from these government-inspired organizations although they have sometimes given resources to local communities for the first time. The primary purpose behind these organizations is to legitimate the political system and to encourage compliance with urban policy. Greater power over decision-making has not increased among local groups.     

扶贫开发:城乡一体共繁荣

这是一个繁华的大都市,主城区商圈流光溢彩,高楼林立.这又是一个落后的大农村,直辖之初,有国家重点贫困县12个、省级贫困县8个,其中58个贫困乡、50%以上的村不通公路,20个乡不通电,282个乡不通电话,贫困人口人均纯收入仅539元.     

The use of longitudinal spatial analyses of informal settlements in urban development planning

Informal settlements are home to a substantial, and growing, proportion of the urban population of developing cities. In the majority of these countries, it is recognised that the only way of improving the quality of life of residents in these areas is through a process of in situ upgrading. However, the focus of this upgrading tends to be directed at the level of the individual settlement; rarely is the impact on the wider metropolitan area considered. This article addresses that wider perspective. It describes a longitudinal study of informal settlements in Cape Town over a five-year period. This study showed that informal settlements in the city will grow faster than new housing can be provided, thereby necessitating a radical shift in the current housing policy. The study then demonstrated that it is possible to determine discernible trends in the growth pattern of informal settlements, which will enable such settlements to be brought into the integrated development planning process for the city.     

Internet use and fertility behavior among reproductive-age women in China

Using longitudinal data from the 2014–2018 China Family Panel Studies, we investigate the impact of internet use (IU) on fertility among reproductive-age women. We find that IU reduces the number of children born, with more pronounced effects among those with a moderate level of education, those aged 16–19, rural residents, and those who are married. These results are robust to alternative IU measures and a series of estimation approaches that control for endogeneity. IU participation affects the number of children born through decreased marital satisfaction, changed attitudes toward traditional gender roles, a reduction in the importance placed on ancestral lines, deteriorated health and reduced fertility preferences.     

Competition for the use of public open space in low-income urban areas: the economic potential of urban gardening in Khayelitsha,Cape Town

Urban agriculture is a contested issue in the larger South African debate on urban poverty alleviation. This paper investigates the economic viability of urban agriculture and informs the debate on the optimal use of open space in Khayelitsha. It compares the economic performance of the Scaga community garden in the low-income township Khayelitsha, predicted in a 1998 study by Fermont et al., with empirical results of a similar study by Fleming in 2003. It concludes that urban agriculture in Khayelitsha is potentially economically viable, subject to certain conditions being satisfied. However, as a land use, urban agriculture competes with housing, ecological corridors, the stormwater management system and nature areas and reserves.