COHABITATION AND THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILD POVERTY

We use 1990 U.S. Census of Population data to calculate what poverty rates would have been if cohabitors were treated in the same manner as married couples. We find that the official treatment of cohabiting partners as separate family units overstated the extent of poverty in 1989 among all children by about three percent. Only about 11 percent of the observed rise in child poverty between 1969 and 1989 would be eliminated if the Census Bureau made this change in its definition of the family. We estimate a logistic regression model of the likelihood that poor, cohabiting families with children would be reclassified as non-poor if the cohabitor's income were included in family income.     

CHILD POVERTY, INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN AND GENERATIONAL MOBILITY: THE SHORT AND LONG TERM WELLBEING OF CHILDREN IN URBAN CHINA AFTER THE ONE CHILD POLICY

China's One Child Policy (OCP), introduced in 1979, changed fundamentally the nature of both existing and anticipated marriage arrangements and influenced family formation decisions in many dimensions, especially with respect to the number of and investment in children. The policy coincided with the Economic Reforms of 1979 and the trend toward greater urbanization, all of which may have influenced the wellbeing of children. This paper examines the mobility status consequence of children in urban China since the introduction of the OCP and the economic reforms using data drawn from urban household surveys in China. The analysis first makes the comparison between child poverty in Canada, the United Kingdom and urban India, where it was found that both status and trends of child poverty are very different among the countries, with children not being over-represented in the poverty group in urban China. The extent to which the policies influenced investment in children is next examined by studying the way in which the relationship between the educational attainment of children and family characteristics changed within families formed prior to and after 1979. We found that the impact of household income and parental educational attainment increased significantly over time, with a positive gender effect where girls advanced more than boys. Applying new techniques for measuring mobility, we observe the reduction in intergenerational mobility. This phenomenon is found to be particularly prevalent in the lower income quantiles, reinforcing a dynastic notion of poverty.     

CALCULATING A PRICE INDEX FOR FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN: IMPLICATIONS FOR MEASURING TRENDS IN CHILD POVERTY RATES

This paper investigates the effects of varying consumption patterns for families with and without children on measured trends in child poverty. We first use data from consumer expenditure surveys to calculate price indices by family type. We next examine the effect of using these group-specific price indices on measured trends in child poverty. Although we find that, all else equal, children increase the cost of living, our calculations indicate that on average families with children experienced relatively lower inflation rates than families without children during the 1968 to 1987 period. While this result suggests that estimates of child poverty rates calculated using an average price index may have over-stated secular increases in child poverty, we find that child poverty rates calculated using a price index specific lo families with children are not substantively different from those calculated using an average index for all families.     

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.     

POVERTY IN EUROPE1

In this paper a definition of poverty in terms of welfare is given. A method is developed to derive poverty lines from an individual welfare function of income. The model is extended to analyse the effect of several socio-economic characteristics on the level of the poverty line. An empirical application of the method is given based on data from a survey in eight European countries in 1979. Differences in the poverty lines both between countries and between socio-economic groups within each country are considered. Finally the number of people below these poverty lines is estimated for all countries in the group.     

RECKONING INTER-GROUP POVERTY DIFFERENTIALS IN THE MEASUREMENT OF AGGREGATE POVERTY

Abstract.  It is plausible that the extent of measured aggregate poverty should depend upon the distribution of poverty across a population's subgroups. The aggregate measure of poverty would then lend itself to 'penal adjustment' to reflect the extent of inter-group disparity in the distribution of poverty. In the present paper, this approach to poverty measurement is examined by advancing a diagrammatic aid to analysis called the group poverty profile. The latter is a virtual transplantation, to the present context, of the notion of a deprivation profile that has been explored and analysed by Shorrocks (1996 ) in a different context.     

ASPECTS OF POVERTY IN MALAYSIA

This paper is concerned with the definition and measurement of poverty in Malaysia. A poverty line is estimated after considering both the absolute and relative approaches to the definition. Various indices of poverty are discussed, ranging from the simple "incidence of poverty" measure to others which take account of the "poverty gap". There is a derivation of a new index due to Sen, and alternative normalizations are suggested for it. Estimates of all these measures are presented for Malaysia. Finally, the simple "incidence of poverty" measure, which is decomposable, is adopted to construct a "profile" of the poor in Malaysia.     

ASPECTS OF POVERTY IN GREECE

Poverty in Greece is measured and decomposed using the primary consumption expenditure data of two Greek Household Expenditure Surveys (1974, 1981/82). Poverty is found to be associated with particular characteristics of the household or the household head. These characteristics are residence in rural areas, large household size, low educational level and old age of the household head. Poverty is also very high among members of households headed by farmers and retired persons. Both absolute and relative poverty declined substantially between 1974 and 1982. Changes in the structure of the population had a positive effect on poverty alleviation.     

POVERTY IN MEXICO DURING ADJUSTMENT

The paper analyzes the changes in poverty in Mexico during the 1980s adjustment program. We decompose poverty into its distribution and growth components, as well as by population subgroups, in order to illustrate the causes of the deterioration in the standard of living of the poorest of the poor. We suggest a transformation of the methodology by Datt and Ravallion (1992), to determine the likelihood of future compensation for those sectors of the population which suffered higher social costs derived from the contractionary policies. The importance of this exercise, is that it shows that contractionary measures may provoke deep structural transformations in an economy, which can make it more difficult to eradicate poverty in a reasonable time horizon.     

POVERTY AND ASSETS IN BELGIUM

This paper discusses how to take assets into account in the measurement of poverty. First asset holdings of current income-poor households are described. Second, the effects on the measured incidence of poverty of two methods to combine income and assets into a single index of economic resources are presented. Third, since the majority of income-poor households do not have assets of much value except for their home, I reconsider the matter of the treatment of housing costs in the measurement of poverty. A method where poverty thresholds are adjusted according to home tenure status is favored, and results of this method are shown. Data are used from the Belgian Socio-Economic Panel, wave 1992.     

CHILD LABOUR IN VIETNAM

Abstract.  The paper tests the explanatory power of a theoretical model of household decisions about child labour and school enrolment and analyses the determinants of child labour in Vietnam, a country that is experiencing a rapid transition toward a market economy. The theoretical framework, used as a benchmark, is in the spirit of the 'new household' economics and links household decisions about schooling and child labour to intergenerational altruism and to human capital investment. On this basis, we analyse the evolution and determinants of child labour using two household surveys (1993 and 1998) for Vietnam.     

INEQUALITY AND POVERTY IN JAPAN*

This paper presents a brief survey of inequality and poverty in Japan. It shows empirical evidence on the extent of both inequality in income distribution and of poverty rates; the paper discusses the cause of increases in both these variables, and the implication of such trends. The paper goes on to argue the difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcome and shows some related empirical evidence. Finally, the paper investigates the relationship between economic efficiency and equity, supposed to be in a trade‐off relationship, and presents my personal view of that relationship and policy recommendations.     

湘西武陵山贫困地区脱贫与发展

湘西武陵山贫困地区是国家重点扶持的18个集中连片贫困地区之一和少数民族聚居区,加快这一地区脱贫与发展,对缩小这一地区与全国的差距,保障国民经济可持续发展,实现国家的长治久安有重要意义.本文从分析这一地区贫困现状入手,研究了贫困的原因和面临的机遇与挑战,提出了加快脱贫与发展的规划设想与对策.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN CANADA

For estimates of the wealth distribution Canada depends on household surveys taken at 6–7 year intervals. The latest data from this source refer to household balance sheets in the spring of 1977. A comparison with 1970 shows that there is little change in the composition of wealth held by households but that inequality of the wealth distribution has been somewhat reduced. Wealth data by age of family head is presented in order to describe more fully the wealth distribution and composition in Canada.
Weaknesses in the data are discussed as well as the difficulties of making appropriate adjustments to the data at the micro record level. For policy evaluation and formulation purposes the lack of comprehensive estimates inclusive of pension wealth as well as the small sample size (12,700 usable records) have been perceived as greater obstacles to utilizing the data than the underestimate in aggregate assets and debts which affects more the higher than the middle and lower ranges of the wealth distribution.