On the contribution of sectoral natural population growth to the aggregate poverty change

This note extends the Ravallion and Huppi (World Bank Econ Rev 5(1):57–82, 1991) aggregate poverty change decomposition to account for the distinct contribution of migration and differential natural population growth between sectors to the aggregate poverty change. We apply our decomposition to three Least Developing countries. We find that accounting for sectoral difference in natural population growth has a considerable impact on national poverty change. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno     

Assimilation effects on poverty among immigrants in Norway

This paper discusses the question of whether or not the high incidence of poverty among immigrants in Norway persists even after immigrants have been in the country for a long period, i.e. after they have had the opportunity to integrate and adapt their skills to the expectations in their new home. While similar to traditional studies of wage assimilation, a study of assimilation in relation to poverty propensity nevertheless measures something different than labor market assimilation, and this represents the main innovation of this study. Analysis of assimilation with respect to poverty focuses on welfare for the lower end of the income distribution and for all individuals, regardless of their relationship with the labor market. It can therefore be seen to better reflect the degree to which immigrants as a whole are able to achieve at least the minimum necessary to participate in the life of their new home and avoid difficulties later on.

Spatial inequality and poverty among American children

National-level statistics often mask extreme spatial differentiation in child poverty. Using county-level data from the 1990 US decennial census summary tape file, we show that child poverty is distributed unevenly over geographic space. Child poverty is concentrated in counties in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the southern black belt. Child poverty rates are strongly influenced by the local industrial composition (e.g., agriculture and manufacturing), but the effects are largely indirect, operating primarily through reduced employment opportunities among adult workers. High county unemployment and underemployment rates contribute directly to children's economic deprivation, as well as indirectly by undermining the formation and stability of two-parent families. Our results highlight existing spatial differentiation and inequality in children's economic well-being, and provide a point of departure for additional research on the geography of child poverty.     

Individual and institutional determinants of multidimensional poverty: A European comparison

In this article we evaluate to what extent between-country differences in the probability of being ‘multidimensional’ poor can be explained by a range of ‘domain-specific’ indicators of welfare regime arrangements. To this end, a so-called micro-macro model is estimated, testing the ‘independent’ effect of institutions, as opposed to alternative explanations such as between-country differences in population composition and economic affluence. Although we conclude that institutional arrangements do influence the risk of multidimensional poverty in the expected direction, we also find that bringing the ‘economy’ back into the analyses has a non-trivial impact. Our results point at several avenues for further discussion and research. First, although the more elaborate welfare regimes generally do a better job in preventing poverty, the level of transfers is not always ‘proportional’ to the general standard of living in these countries. Second, we only find partial confirmation for the often cited ‘negative’ impact of labour market flexibility and the related equality-jobs trade-off. While stricter employment regulations do reduce the poverty risk (be it only after controlling for economic affluence), flexibility in terms of the availability of fixed-term labour seems to be preferable to unemployment, even if at the individual level, labour market flexibility increases the likelihood of being poor quite severely.

Family policies,employment and poverty among partnered and single mothers

The risk of poverty for single mothers ranges from less than 2% in Sweden to more than 35% in the United States; less extreme cross-national variations also exist for partnered mothers. We explore which family policies are most effective at directly reducing poverty among families with children, and whether these policies indirectly reduce poverty through supporting mothers’ employment. We combine microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study with the Work-Family Policy Indicators dataset, and use multilevel logistic regressions to examine the associations between policy and poverty, controlling for individual-level factors. We find significant effects of family allowances, generous parental leaves and childcare provisions, with more powerful effects for single mothers. We further show that parental leave and childcare operate through boosting mothers’ employment, illustrating that work-family policies are useful for reducing poverty by enhancing mother's employment.     

Reexamining the moving to opportunity study and its contribution to changing the distribution of poverty and ethnic concentration

For the past decade and a half a concerted effort has been undertaken to determine whether policy interventions in residential location can solve the problems of inner-city poverty and racial concentration. Studies based on data from the Gautreaux litigation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-sponsored Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program have provided an overall optimistic interpretation of the possibilities of improving inner-city lives via mobility vouchers and counseling. A reanalysis of the data from the MTO program, focusing specifically on African American households, suggests greater caution in the interpretation of the findings from either Gautreaux or the MTO program. No statistically significant difference exists between the percentage of poor or the percentage of African Americans in the current neighborhoods between MTO and Section 8 experimental groups. In some cases, there is no statistically significant difference between those who move with a voucher and those who move without any assistance at all. Although there is some evidence that MTO programs have brought specific gains for individual families, claims for the MTO program as a whole need to be treated with a great deal more caution than they have been to date.     

The dimensions of poverty

The nature of ‘poverty’ is examined in relation to a model of causes affecting the welfare of a community. It is suggested that one can operationally distinguish four major dimensions of poverty, namely economic, social, political and legal poverty; and that one might in addition be able to characterise three further aspects, namely psychological, ideological and conceptual poverty. It is proposed that at least the first four aspects should be distinguished and explicitly named, thereby specifically characterising these different dimensions of ‘poverty’; and that this would serve a useful purpose in clarifying the nature of the problems faced by the community considered.     

广东城镇贫困阶层的社会组成分析及扶贫政策建议

城镇贫困问题是继农村贫困问题之后又一个必须重点关注的焦点.本文利用2005年广东城镇居民住户常规性抽样调查数据,对当前广东城镇贫困阶层的社会构成进行分析.并在此基础上,针对广东的现实状况,提出一些近期政府需要完善和调整的扶贫助困的政策措施建议.     

One-year rates of public shelter utilization by race/ethnicity,age, sex and poverty status for New York City (1990 and 1995) and Philadelphia (1995)

This study calculates public homeless shelter utilization rates by sex, race/ethnicity and age status for New York City (1990 and 1995) and Philadelphia (fiscal year 1995) to determine the relative risk for shelter use among different demographic groups in these cities. The resulting shelter utilization rates reveal large disparities among age groups and across racial/ethnic groups, as well as showing different trends in shelter utilization among the two cities. Among the results reported, the rate of shelter utilization declined by 11% in New York City over this period, while the overall utilization rate in Philadelphia has increased to where it is 40% higher than that of New York City. Children under age 5, at a rate of 0.0248, have the highest shelter utilization rate among the age groups studied and the overall rate for blacks is 2.3 times that of the overall population. And while shelter utilization rates among single men have decreased by 30% in New York City, a similar decrease has not occurred among women of early childbearing ages or among young children. Finally, policy implications related to these findings are discussed.     

The dynamics of child poverty in Sweden

This paper studies the dynamics of child poverty in Sweden. We find that one out of every five children is disposable income poor at least once during childhood, while only 2% are chronically poor. Children in Sweden are protected economically from many serious events such as parental sickness and death. Family dissolution and parental unemployment do push some children into poverty. However, these poverty spells are mostly temporary. Single mothers, for example, are overrepresented among the poor but not among the chronically poor. Children with immigrant parents are strongly overrepresented among the chronically poor.     

中国西部城市贫困问题研究--以甘肃省为例

城市贫困已成为我国现今城市发展中的一个突出问题。本文在对贫困相关概念界定的基础上,通过对我国西部地区城市贫困现状的分析,揭示出其产生和扩大的深刻原因并由此提出一系列可供选择的政策建议。     

The long-term effect of childhood poverty

This paper uses variation among siblings to identify the consequences of childhood poverty on both labour and marriage market outcomes. In the labour market, individuals who experienced childhood poverty are found to have lower earnings and lower labour market attachment and to have worse jobs both vertically in terms of low-paying industries and horizontally in terms of job positions. In the marriage market, childhood poverty is found to have negative consequences for the probability of marriage, cohabitation, and having children around the age of 30. The effect sizes are found to exhibit an inverse u-shape in the age of the child, peaking during adolescence. Results on educational choices suggest that the mechanisms behind these results can be that childhood poverty affects the skill formation, networks, and decision making of the child.     

Evaluating the pin money hypothesis: the relationship between women's labour market activity,family income and poverty in Britain

In this paper we evaluate the hypothesis that the over-representation of women amongst the low paid is of little importance because women‘s earnings account for only a small proportion of total family income. Data from the General Household Survey (GHS), together with attitudinal evidence from three cross-sectional data sources, indicate that women‘s earnings are in fact an important and growing component of family income. The majority of the growth in the share of women‘s earnings occurs as a result of changing family labour structures; women‘s earnings are playing an increasingly important role in keeping their families out of poverty. JEL classification: J16; J31. Received April 9, 1996/Accepted August 22, 1996     

The changing contribution of smoking to educational inequality in female mortality

The negative association between education and mortality is well established in international research. The harmful effect of smoking on health is well known. However, the contribution of smoking to educational inequality in mortality varies across studies, and in some studies, the contribution is negligible. This paper demonstrates the use of an analytical approach to provide one explanation for this phenomenon. Analysing nationally representative survey data for two cohorts of Australian women born in 1920–1928 and 1945–1951 respectively, we found that in the 1994–2006 period, the less educated are subject to higher mortality by 38–50 %. In the total sample, the smoking contribution to excess mortality due to lower education is negligible. However, when the cohorts are analysed independently, the smoking contribution ranges from ?13 % among those born in 1920–1928 to +23 % among those born in 1945–1951. The smoking contribution is only seen in the cohort-specific analysis because smoking is more prevalent among tertiary degree holders in the earlier cohort but more prevalent among less educated women in the later cohort. The disaggregated analytical approach taken here deserves further attention in research on inequality.     

Measuring the extent, depth, and severity of food insecurity: an application to American Indians in the USA

Within the extensive food insecurity literature, little work has been done regarding (a) the depth and severity of food insecurity and (b) the food insecurity of American Indians. This paper addresses both these topics with data from the 2001 to 2004 Core Food Security Module of the Current Population Survey. To measure food insecurity, three axiomatically derived measures of food insecurity are used. As expected, given the worse economic conditions facing American Indians, their food insecurity levels are generally higher than non-American Indians. However, the magnitude and significance of these differences differ depending on the choice of food insecurity measure.

The potential of child care tax credits to reduce poverty and welfare recipiency

As more and more mothers of young children enter the work force, interest in government financing of child care grows. The chief government subsidy for child care is the child care credit in the federal Internal Revenue Code. This is a nonrefundable credit and therefore provides benefits only to those with incomes high enough to require them to pay income tax. Yet of the $ 5.5 billion spent by the federal government on child care in 1986, this program accounted for $ 3.5 billion.This paper simulates the effects of expanding the child care tax credit by (1) doubling the reimbursement rates of the current credit; (2) making the credit refundable; and (3) both making the credit refundable and increasing its value for all families with income below $ 32,000.Results suggest that these changes will have modest effects on the income and earnings of mothers, and on the poverty gap and welfare recipiency. Costs, however, differ substantially. Doubling the value of the credit is far more expensive than either making the credit refundable or making it both refundable and more generous at the bottom of the income distribution. Making the credit refundable may cost taxpayers very little by leading to increases in hours worked and concomitant reductions in welfare payments.     

市场转型、社会资本与城市居民的贫困缓解：以广州和兰州的贫困居民为例

使用广州和兰州的实证数据,在对贫困居民的社会资本测量的基础上,对贫困居民所拥有的各种资本包括社会资本、人力资本和传统体制资本与贫困居民的贫困缓解关系进行探讨。结果表明,个体的社会资本对居民的贫困缓解具有显著意义,但是人力资本、体制资本对个体生活机遇建构无显著意义。文后对市场转型论进行回应,并对城市贫困居民主要资本类型作用的制度环境进行了解释与讨论。     

The fertility contribution of Mexican immigration to the United States

Crucial to the long-term contribution of immigration to a receiving country's population is the extent to which the immigrants reproduce themselves in subsequent, native-born generations. Using conventional projection methodologies, this fertility contribution may be poorly estimated primarily because of problems in projecting the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing. We propose an alternative method that obviates the need to project the number of immigrants by using the full sending-country birth cohort as the risk group to project their receiving-country childbearing. This "sending-country birth cohort" method is found to perform dramatically better than conventional methods when projecting to 1999 from base years both before and after the large increase in inflows of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the late 1980s. Projecting forward from 1999, we estimate a cumulative contribution of Mexican immigrant fertility from the 1980s to 2040 of 36 million births, including 25% to 50% more births after 1995 than are projected using conventional methods.     

The determinants of paternity establishment and child support award rates among unmarried women

This paper examines the relationships between several child support policies, paternity establishment, and child support award rates among never-married women. We use several state policies and practices in place throughout the 1980s to examine their effectiveness at increasing paternity establishment rates and at increasing the proportion of unmarried women who have child support awards. We also examine the direct relationship between paternity establishment rates and child support award rates. We estimate these relationships using a variety of specifications, using cross-state variation in child support enforcement to identify the effects of policies. To date, child support remains largely the province of state family law, and, although policies have changed dramatically in response to two decades of federal mandates, state laws and practices still vary.