A Proposal to Compare Consistently the Inequality Among the Poor

A poverty index should be sensitive to the number of poor people, the extent of the shortfall of the poor, and the inequality among the poor. A difficulty arises when inequality among the poor needs to be assessed. The inequality may be analyzed in terms of either incomes or gaps. Depending on what side we focus on, the inequality level comparisons may be contradictory. This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the inequality component involved in the decompositions of well‐known poverty indices. The alternative indices we introduce measure equally the income and gap inequality among the poor. The comparisons in inequality as measured by these indices are then independent of the viewpoint. An empirical application illustrates the proposal.     

POVERTY, TNEQUALTTY, AND FAMTLY LIVING STANDARDS IMPACTS ACROSS SEVEN NATIONS: THE EFFECT OF NONCASH SUBSIDIES FOR HEALTH, EDUCATION AND HOUSING

The main aim of this paper has been to summarize the impact of noncash income–health and health education benefits, and imputed rent-on living standards, income distribution and poverty in seven nations at the beginning of the 1980s using the Luxembourg Income Study database. Our results do not give rise to a pattern of national differences in poverty rates or income inequality which are markedly different from that which emerges from previous LIS research based on cash income alone. While these results may be sensitive to the techniques used to measure and value noncash benefits in this paper, it appears that noncash income reinforces the redistributive impact or conventional (cash) tax-transfer mechanisms rather than acting to offset them in any major way.     

A NEW MULTIPLICATIVE DECOMPOSITION FOR THE FOSTER–GREER–THORBECKE POVERTY INDICES

This paper shows that Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty indices can be written as the product of components summarizing the incidence, intensity and inequality dimensions of poverty and provides an empirical illustration of the decomposition using Spanish household budget surveys data.     

Are tourism livelihoods sustainable? Tourism development and economic transformation on Komodo Island,Indonesia

Tourism development has often been regarded as an effective strategy for poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods. However, tourism often triggers transformations of traditional livelihoods and complete dependence on tourism-based income. Presenting the case of Komodo village on Komodo Island, Indonesia, this study provides an empirical evidence for such transformation. Based on qualitative methods, this article discusses the ways in which tourism development has led the local fishing community to give up their fishing to become fully dependent on selling souvenirs. Although currently, the souvenir business offers adequate return for local people, potential threats to this new livelihood, like a limited market, fierce competition, a short tourist season, and high dependence on cruise ship visits, are looming large. If tourism declines, local people will be left with no options to sustain their livelihood.     

Income inequality between one-earner and two-earner Households: Is it real or artificial

Summary Most welfare comparisons between countries or between household types are made on the basis of monetary income only. Taking into account the value of income in kind may change these comparisons considerably. In this paper we focus on one type of income, viz., home production. We estimate the monetary value of home production in Dutch one-earner and two-earner households. We find that if we account for this forgotten income component, income inequality between the groups of one-earner and two-earner households is almost reduced to nil. In most of the world the share of income in kind via non-market production may be assumed to be much higher than in a Western-type economy. Application of this analysis to less developed countries may be particularly revealing.He is now with SWOKA, Institute for Consumer Research.He is also a member of the Scientific Council for Government Policy, The Hague.     

Why do entrepreneurs open tech startups? A comparative study between Brazilian and foreign enterprises

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This research identifies and compares the reasons that lead entrepreneurs to open a startup in Brazil or abroad along six factors:...     

An axiomatic characterization of the Theil inequality ordering

We axiomatically characterize the Theil ordering of income inequality. In addition to the uncontroversial axioms of anonymity, homogeneity, replication invariance, strong directedness, and a standard continuity property, we appeal to both an independence and a decomposability axioms. These two axioms are ordinal implications of Theil decomposability, the central axiom in previous characterizations of the Theil index. To the best of our knowledge, the present is the first fully ordinal characterization of this index.     

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.     

THE MEASUREMENT OF INCOME SEGREGATION

We examine the problem of measuring the extent to which students with different income levels attend separate schools. Unless rich and poor attend the same schools in the same proportions, some segregation will exist. Since income is a continuous cardinal variable, however, the rich–poor dichotomy is necessarily arbitrary and renders any application of a binary segregation measure artificial. This article provides an axiomatic characterization of a measure of income segregation that takes into account the cardinal nature of income. This measure satisfies an empirically useful decomposition by subdistricts.     

External motivators for donation of money and/or goods

This research sought to identify and group the external motivators that encourage individuals in emerging countries to donate money and/or goods. Therefore, 46 external variables were identified in the literature that motivate an individual to donate. They were grouped by similarity into five external donation motivating factors (environmental and/or political motivation, the cause or circumstances of the donation, the organisation's characteristics, influence from third parties, and personal rewards) that resulted in a proposed donation model. This model was supported by semi‐structured interviews with 22 individuals who donate money and/or goods frequently. The results supported the existence of the five proposed factors in the model and three new variables were identified: a “lack of government support,” “service for the donor” and “donation tuition with low value.”