城市最低生活保障兼有消费改善与劳动供给激励效应吗?

最低生活保障制度是我国社会保障体系中兜底性、基础性的制度安排,是保障民生、促进分配公平、维护经济安全和社会稳定的重要机制.本文通过对城市低保制度消费改善与劳动供给效应的综合评估发现,我国城市低保从整体上改善了受助家庭的消费状况,影响了受助家庭的消费结构,起到了提升经济福利的效果,但是对受助家庭的劳动供给激励效应还比较小...     

Trends in energy expenditures by black households

Summary This paper presents an analysis of the projected trends in direct energy expenditures among black and white households classified by location, age, and sex of the household head, and income. Estimates of changes in the distribution of energy expenditures among groups of Black and white households are compared for 1974 and 1985. On the average, black households have lower income, larger families, drive older cars, and live in older and less energy-efficient homes. The analysis pursued here is intended to show how these determinants of energy consumption are reflected in black/white comparisons of energy expenditures. The 1985 projections are based on the mid-term 1985 energy Projection Series A through F prepared by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for its 1977 Annual Report to Congress. The EIA energy Projection Series were based on differing assumptions with regard to: (1) growth rates of economic activity; (2) the probable levels of recoverable U.S. oil and gas resources; and (3) oil import prices. Then present energy policy was assumed to continue. This analysis utilizes a microsimulation approach to project household energy expenditures and other household energyrelated variables.     

中国开征碳税对价格、福利及公平影响的测度

本文利用投入产出和线性需求模型分析了碳税的价格影响、福利成本、以及再分配效应。征税导致占中低收入居民支出比重较大的基本消费品价格大幅上涨,如电热水气、房屋、公共交通、食品等;从等价性变化、补偿性变化的角度看,城镇居民的福利损失随收入降低而上升,而农村居民中中等收入家庭损失最大;Atkinson公平指数显示碳税前后贫富差距有所扩大。因此,碳税具有一定累退性。但是,碳税边际福利成本及其收入差距影响并不大,因此政府可以通过转移支付手段缓解其负面冲击。     

中国开征碳税对价格、福利及公平影响的测度

本文利用投入产出和线性需求模型分析了碳税的价格影响、福利成本以及再分配效应。征税导致占中低收入居民支出比重较大的基本消费品价格大幅上涨,如电热水气、房屋、公共交通、食品等;从等价性变化、补偿性变化的角度看,城镇居民的福利损失随收入降低而上升,而农村居民中中等收入家庭损失最大;Atkinson公平指数显示碳税前后贫富差距有所扩大。因此,碳税具有一定累退性。但是,碳税边际福利成本及其收入差距影响并不大,因此政府可以通过转移支付手段缓解其负面冲击。     

The effects of extended families and marital status on housing consumption by black female-headed households

This study examines factors affecting the housing consumption of households headed by black women. The investigation focuses particular attention on the extent to which marital status and household composition, especially extended family configurations, influence the quality of housing consumed. The specific measure of housing quality used in the study is crowdedness, proxied by the number of persons per room. Analysis of data taken from the 1980 U.S. Census Public Use Sample reveals that female-headed extended households experience crowding disproportionately in comparison to other female-headed households. Marital status, age and location also significantly affect housing consumption. Young black female household heads who are separated and live in the South are particularly likely to reside in crowded conditions. Improved labor market outcomes for household heads are found to be more effective in generating improvements in housing quality than increased transfer payments.     

Identifying the Link Between Food Security and Incarceration

Previous work has found that incarceration (defined as confinement in an adult correctional facility) has a variety of impacts on the incarcerated individual and their families including effects on employment and income, educational outcomes of children, and food insecurity (Wallace and Cox 2012 ). However, previous literature does not identify a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. From a policy perspective, identification of a causal link may aid in understanding why some affected families experience food insecurity, while similarly situated families do not. In this article, we utilize microlevel data from the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study to provide evidence of a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. This is an important dynamic to understand because the prevalence of incarceration in the United States is relatively high, especially among groups where food insecurity is more prevalent (e.g., Blacks), and the associated externalities can have substantial impacts on families that may reach well beyond traditional costs associated with incarceration. The complex relationship between food insecurity and incarceration is estimated within a causal inference approach. We find evidence that incarceration leads to roughly a 4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of food insecurity among households with children that have experienced a parental incarceration.     

Relative earnings of husbands and wives in urban China

This paper studies the relative contribution of Chinese husbands and wives to the family income in the process of economic transition. We find that the role of urban husbands as the main financial supporters of their families becomes relatively more important during economic transition. We argue that this trend may have reflected the restoration of the functions of household production and labor market in the process of economic transition. This restoration allows households to allocate time, effort and human capital investment for each household member and for each household and market activity in a more efficient way.     

Poverty in Edwardian Britain

This article introduces a newly discovered household budget data set for 1904. We use these data to estimate urban poverty among working families in the British Isles. Applying Bowley's poverty line, we estimate that at least 23 per cent of people in urban working households and 18 per cent of working households had income insufficient to meet minimum needs. This is well above Rowntree's estimate of primary poverty for York in 1899 and high in the range that Bowley found in northern towns in 1912–13. The skill gradient of poverty is steep; for instance, among labourers' households, the poverty rates are close to 50 per cent. Measures of the depth of poverty are relatively low in the data, suggesting that most poor male-headed working households were close to meeting Bowley's new standard.     

Spending,saving, or investing? Risk management in sixteenth‐century Dutch households1

In the past one of the main challenges to households was that of coping with adversity. War, plague, famine, and flood were a constant threat, and could reduce what little improvements families had made in productivity. Economic growth therefore required a means of absorbing external adversities. To see how well late medieval households coped with adversity, this investigation focuses on the households of a small town and its surroundings in early modern Holland. Our findings reveal that several severe external shocks around 1500 had little effect on the general level or distribution of wealth, which suggests that certain forms of insurance may have protected the population. The results show that households increasingly invested in capital markets rather than employing such techniques as scattered holdings and hoarding. This fact indicates that such investment played a vital role in a household's risk aversion strategy. The change from unproductive to more productive risk‐aversion strategies also provides some clues about progress with respect to insurance during Holland's financial revolution.     

What matters more for South African households’ debt repayment difficulties?

While the increased access to consumer credit has helped many families improve their welfare, the rising repayment burdens upon a background of chronically low saving rates have generated concerns that South African families are becoming ever more financially fragile and less able to meet their consumer debt repayment obligations. Using data from the Cape Area Panel Study, this article investigates whether consumer debt repayment problems are better explained by excessive spending which leaves households financially overstretched or by negative income shocks. The results indicate that households are significantly more likely to be delinquent on their financial obligations when they suffer negative events beyond their control rather than due to the size of the expenditure burden. This suggests that consumer repayment problems are likely to endure even when consumers borrow within their means. Thus, regulatory efforts to improve mechanisms for debt relief might be more meaningful than restrictions on lending.     

Tax Incidence in Vietnam*

This paper examines the incidence of taxation in Vietnam, using data from the Living Standards Survey of 1997–1998 and an input–output matrix for 1997. The tax system in 1998 was slightly progressive, taking the equivalent of 7.8percent of spending for households in the lowest, and 10.3percent from households in the highest expenditure quintile. The replacement of the turnover tax by a value‐added tax in January 1999 made the system marginally more progressive, and the falling importance of taxes on trade has had a negligible effect on the overall incidence of the tax system. The tax system is progressive overall because business income taxes fall mainly on better‐off households; and low‐income households rely heavily on home consumption, which is untaxed. Against this, agricultural taxes and fees are highly regressive. The recent phasing out of the agricultural land use tax is making the tax system more progressive; however, efforts since 2004 to limit price increases for motor fuels have effectively provided a relatively greater subsidy to rich than to poor households.     

The quantity–quality trade-off related to investment in healthy human capital: New evidence from the implementation of the “selective two-child policy” in China

Using data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), and employing the “selective two-child policy” as a quasi-natural experiment, this study provides empirical evidence of Becker’s quantity-quality tradeoff theory. We find that the selective two-child policy reduced households’ investment in health insurance for their first-child. The proportion of participated families and the amount invested in health insurance declined significantly among families in which one spouse was an only child. The reduction in investment in health insurance was more substantial when the first-child was a girl and when the first-child was younger. One likely mechanism was the wage penalty for motherhood. The relaxed birth policy led to a significant reduction in women’s income. As a result, households’ financial resources became more limited, and their budgets became tighter, leading to reductions in investments in the health of first-child.     

艾滋病对我国社会经济影响

基于对我国艾滋病流行较为严重的五个省份进行的问卷调查,对比分析了931户感染者家庭和995户非感染者家庭的相关数据。研究发现,艾滋病对感染者个人及其家庭造成了极大的影响,如导致家庭结构改变、就业机会减少、劳动收入下降、医疗支出明显增大;同时也引发一系列社会经济问题,如贫富差距加大、性别不平等加剧、贫困家庭儿童教育机会减少及社会歧视扩大。最后提出了缓解艾滋病造成影响的对策建议。     

Considerations for the definitions and classification of households and families and related variables for the 1990 round of censuses

Questions related to the definition and classification of households and families in the 1990 census round in the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) region are discussed. The author concludes that "the recommendations for the 1980 censuses of population and housing in the ECE region were largely adequate and should not be substantially revised other than a need to more precisely and concisely state the definition....While there is a demonstrated need to close some information gaps, such as through the provision of longitudinal family data using retrospective surveys, there is also a great need to more effectively use currently available cross-sectional data bases."     

Black women and the job training partnership act

Available data show that JTPA has provided some economically disadvantaged black women with employment and training services. Many black women who had suffered employment setbacks or entry problems during the recession that ended in 1982 need assistance in gaining access to the labor market. This is particularly true of young black women. At the same time, it is not clear from available evidence whether single black women who are supporting families alone and who are considered the core group of impoverishment in the black community have been-or, under the present configuration, can be-served adequately by JTPA.     

Inequality of opportunity and household education expenditures: Evidence from panel data in China

This paper offers one of the first pieces of empirical evidence on the impact of inequality of opportunity on household education investment by using the panel data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in three waves (2010, 2012 and 2014). Our result suggests that inequality of opportunity has a negative effect on household education expenditures. This result is robust to a series of robustness checks. Furthermore, for relatively disadvantaged households (household heads with less education, income, or rural hukou status), inequality of opportunity has a larger negative effect on their education expenditures. Policy suggestions to lower inequality of opportunity may include reducing labor market discrimination based on gender and hukou status, balancing education resources to create more equal educational opportunities, and offering children education subsidies in low-income families.     

Food poverty profile and decomposition applied to Ghana

A new procedure for deriving a food poverty line and estimating a decomposable poverty measure is applied to the 1974–1975 Ghana Household Budget Survey. A food poverty profile is constructed which estimates the relative contributions of regional and socioeconomic variables to overall food poverty. The incidence of food poverty is found to be more prevalent in: (1) rural areas and locations close to the Sahel; and (2) households with many members and illiterate, female, or self-employed heads. Comparisons of least-cost diets and observed diets incorporating tastes suggest that households exercise food preferences which have relatively high costs.     

Effects of community,family, and education on earnings of black and white men

Summary The primary purpose of this paper was to determine the effect of background on the education and earnings of black and white men.It was largely motivated by a desire to quantify the extent to which past discrimination against Blacks, resulting in lower achievement, inhibits the progress of individuals today in a somewhat more benign environment.It has demonstrated that both community and family background factors are important in determining the levels of education and earnings of black and white men.The community effects for Blacks operate largely through their moving into more integrated neighborhoods, so that many positive community externalities are apparently not available to families in predominantly black middle-class neighborhoods.While the effects of father’s education, city origin, and community income are comparable between Blacks and whites, white men’s education is more affected by number of siblings, family income, and age of 1968 head of household than is black men’s education.The relative sizes of the coefficients of these latter variables are consistent with steeper age-earnings profiles for older white men than older black men and higher prices paid for investing in children by black parents.     

Assets and African Americans: Attempting to Capitalize on Hopes for Children Through College Savings Accounts

Although some racial inequalities have lessened in the half-century since the passage of the first major civil rights legislation, the racial wealth gap remains and in recent years seems to be widening. Households with children are the least likely to be asset secure or have sufficient resources to enable investment in opportunities for mobility. Viewing inequality from this perspective indicates that what households are able to save and invest for the future might have a more lasting impact on the life chances of children than their current income and consumption. Summarizing data from the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment (SEED) Initiative, a quasi-experimental study that is part of a national demonstration of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) in the United States, this paper describes how African-American households engage with one important investment opportunity - college savings accounts for their pre-school children. Combining account monitoring, survey, interview and focus group data, we explore the reasons that many households chose not to open accounts or invest their own money. We offer suggestions for making asset development programs viable for low-income African-American families and their children.     

The Wealthy Hand-to-Mouth Households in South Korea

This study establishes the stylized facts on household balance sheets in South Korea and empirically investigates their macroeconomic implications based on the concept of ‘wealthy hand-to-mouth (HtM)’ households that hold little liquid wealth with owning large amount of illiquid assets. Using a household-level panel data for the period of 2000–2014, we find that (1) there are neither deleveraging of household debts nor a sharp decline in house price even during the financial crisis, (2) run-up in household debt in 2000s is led by high-income group, (3) regardless of net worth level, wealth is highly concentrated on illiquid assets such as housing and real estate, (4) the share of wealthy HtM households is very high compared to the cases of other advanced countries. We estimate the marginal propensity to consume out of a transitory shock and find that the consumption response of HtM households is larger compared to the non-credit-constrained group, posing a threat to macroeconomic stability. Using discrete choice models with fixed effects, we also find that a household that acquire more real estate assets is more likely to become wealthy HtM when its income is relatively lower or its indebtedness is relatively higher. We discuss the characteristics of HtM households and the role of macroprudential policy.