富裕社会中贫困的消除：加尔布雷思的探究及启示

贫困表现为人的基本需要得不到满足，“富裕社会”中的贫困表现为私人生产、物质生产的过剩和公共生产、精神生产的不足。加尔布雷思认为，美国“富裕社会”中贫困的原因是不平衡的“二元经济体系”，只要实行“新社会主义”，实现“计划体系”和“市场体系”的平衡，就能解决“富裕”背后的贫困问题。由于这一设想是以不改变资本主义的经济基础为前提的，所以，只能是一种治标不治本的改良。只有扬弃经济学的“传统智慧”，建构以促进“每个人的自由发展”为目标的“全面生产”经济学，才能从根本上消除“富裕社会”中的贫困问题。     

"指标困局":农村贫困治理的实践与反思

在国家的扶贫实践中，地方政府的行为策略是影响扶贫绩效的关键变量。通过对精准扶贫政策实践的调研发现，中央政府不断升级的治理手段为重构央地关系创造了条件，地方政府对国家扶贫理念转型认知的偏差以及在形成路径依赖之后的策略行为不仅容易产生对总体局势的误判，还为后期的政策困局埋下了伏笔。在此背景下，地方扶贫工作遭遇“指标困局”，即地方政府很难实事求是去识别贫困户，只能在既有的指标约束下进行精准识别，扶贫工作陷入了反复识别，却仍难实现精准的怪圈。     

Beyond Piketty: A new perspective on poverty and inequality in India

The socio-economic literature has focused much on how overall inequality in income distribution (frequently measured by the Gini coefficient) undermines the “trickle down” effect. In other words, the higher the inequality in the income distribution, the lower is the growth elasticity of poverty. However, with the publication of Piketty’s magnum opus (2014), and a subsequent study by Chancel and Piketty (2017) of evolution of income inequality in India since 1922, the focus has shifted to the income disparity between the richest 1% (or 0.01%) and the bottom 50%. Their central argument is that the rapid growth of income at the top end of millionaires and billionaires is a by-product of growth. The present study extends this argument by linking it to poverty indices in India. Based on the India Human Development Survey 2005–12 – a nationwide panel survey-we examine the links between poverty and income inequality, especially in the upper tail relative to the bottom 50%, state affluence (measured in per capita income) and their interaction or their joint effect. Another feature of our research is that we analyse their effects on the FGT class of poverty indices. The results are similar in as much as direction of association is concerned but the elasticities vary with the poverty index. The growth elasticities are negative and significant for all poverty indices. In all three cases, the disparity between the income share of the top 1% and share of the bottom 50% is associated with greater poverty. These elasticities are much higher than the (absolute) income elasticities except in the case of the poverty gap. The largest increase occurs in the poverty gap squared – a 1% greater income disparity is associated with a 1.24% higher value of this index. Thus the consequences of even a small increase in the income disparity are alarming for the poorest.     

Middle School Children's Perceptions on Welfare and Poverty: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study

This study was undertaken to determine how middle school children assess the effects of welfare reform on their daily lives. The study consisted of thirty interviews with children and their mothers recruited from a middle school in a large, metropolitan area. From the children's perspective, multiple jobs and evening/night hours interfered with the child-parent relationship. Other consequences included grades going down and not getting to school on time. All the children stated that mothers should work, but most children felt mothers should only work when their children are in school. Welfare and poverty were issues about which children were teased at school.     

Japan's “New Homeless”

Since the mid-1990s, homelessness has become a major issue of public discussion in Japan, and is often viewed as a new social problem facing Japanese society. The issue of homelessness contrasts images of the absence of poverty and homelessness in postwar Japan, often explained based on the unique features of Japanese-style employment and welfare, containing poverty and unemployment. This paper contrasts these views with a perspective on the continuity of poverty, and homelessness in postwar Japan. Specifically, I discuss the characteristics of homelessness in Tokyo, how they relate to the structure of the economy and employment practices, and how the problems of today's homeless are accommodated in the welfare system. I argue that the homeless cast light on patterns of loss of employment, housing, and means of subsistence, characteristic to Japan's economy and welfare system, and contribute to a new understanding of the dynamics of poverty in contemporary Japan.     

浅析新时期我国人口较少民族的扶贫开发对策

改革开放以来,我国人口较少民族在各方面得到了巨大的发展,然而,由于粗放式发展、自然环境、历史等方面的原因,我国人口较少民族少数地区仍至今存在着不同程度的贫困问题,影响了小康社会的全面实现。本文即围绕我国人口较少民族的部分特殊性,以科学发展观为指导,探讨在新的历史时期我国人口较少民族的扶贫开发对策。     

Inference for the measurement of poverty in the presence of a stochastic weighting variable

Empirical applications of poverty measurement often have to deal with a stochastic weighting variable such as household size. Within the framework of a bivariate distribution function defined over income and weight, I derive the limiting distributions of the decomposable poverty measures and of the ordinates of stochastic dominance curves. The poverty line is allowed to depend on the income distribution. It is shown how the results can be used to test hypotheses concerning changes in poverty. The inference procedures are briefly illustrated using Belgian data. An erratum to this article can be found at     

当代中国农村扶贫开发的历史经验

当代中国农村扶贫开发的历史经验主要是:一、制定符合国情的贫困标准,明确扶贫开发的具体帮扶对象;二、坚持开发式扶贫,把解决贫困问题与对贫困地区进行全面开发结合起来;三、坚持政府主导,广泛动员和组织全社会力量参与扶贫开发;四、积极开展与国际社会在扶贫开发领域中的交流与合作;五、高度重视和充分发挥科技教育在扶贫开发中的重要作用。     

The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty

Many authors have insisted on the necessity of defining poverty as a multidimensional concept rather than relying on income or consumption expenditures per capita. Yet, not much has actually been done to include the various dimensions of deprivation into the practical definition and measurement of poverty. Existing attempts along that direction consist of aggregating various attributes into a single index through some arbitrary function and defining a poverty line and associated poverty measures on the basis of that index. This is merely redefining more generally the concept of poverty, which then essentially remains a one dimensional concept. The present paper suggests that an alternative way to take into account the multi-dimensionality of poverty is to specify a poverty line for each dimension of poverty and to consider that a person is poor if he/she falls below at least one of these various lines. The paper then explores how to combine these various poverty lines and associated one-dimensional gaps into multidimensional poverty measures. An application of these measures to the rural population in Brazil is also given with poverty defined on income and education.     

关于贫困问题的社会保障学分析

贫困问题由来已久,它与社会保障的产生和发展有着十分密切的关系.运用社会保障学这一在经济学、政治学、社会学等多学科基础上发展起来的、独立的、交叉的、处于应用层次的社会科学来分析贫困问题,为理解"贫困"的概念与成因提供了一种新的视角,同时可以借助社会保障学来分析社会保障在缓解、预防贫困方面的重大作用以及社会保障与"贫困陷阱"的关系.通过对这些问题的理解与分析,有助于认识社会保障在应对贫困问题方面的积极作用及可能产生的消极作用,为我国最大程度地发挥社会保障的缓解及预防贫困的作用,同时避免"贫困陷阱"提供一些启示.