Multidimensional Analysis of Water Poverty and Subjective Well-Being: A Case Study on Local Household Variation in Faisalabad,Pakistan

Water poverty is difficult to evaluate because it is multidimensional. It is determined not only by the availability of water sources but also whether communities have adequate access to clean, uncontaminated water. It is also dependent on the resource needs of those using the water. Under the premise that water scarcity is multidimensional, we use a Water Poverty Index approach using Principal Component Analysis to develop an index at the household level in 10 villages in one large farming community to examine each household’s subjective view of well being as a result of water poverty. This paper reviews how water resources endowments and depletion because of indiscriminate disposal of untreated industrial wastewater, household sewage and climate change are posing serious threats to water poverty at the household level in developing agrarian economies like Pakistan. We report from our results that both the perceived level of pollution and the proximity to clean and polluted water sources matter significantly for subjective well-being in rural households of Pakistan. The villages closer to polluted water sources are unhappier while the villages, which have better access to fresh water, have relatively higher subjective well-being. A strong implementation of environmental protection measures and regional strategies are suggested to alleviate water poverty and increase subjective well-being in local communities.     

贫困地区劳动力迁移、农户收入与贫困的缓解——基于新疆农户面板数据的实证分析

本文基于新疆30个贫困县、3000个农户、2008-2010年的微观面板数据,在控制了家庭规模、劳动力数量等家庭特征变量和粮食播种面积等村庄特征变量的前提下．运用固定效应法与工具变量法分别考察了劳动力迁移规模、迁移方式与迁移区位对家庭收入的影响．并进一步分析了劳动力迁移对贫困的缓解效应。回归结果表明：劳动力迁移规模虽然对农户农业收入有负向影响．但显著提高了农户人均收入与利他性收入：自发性迁移与政府组织性迁移方式均能显著提高农户收入,且自发性迁移的作用更强;省内县外迁移对农户收入的提高最为显著,其次为县内乡外迁移．省外迁移不影响农户收入：劳动力迁移规模提高了中等收入农户的收入水平。但对贫困户的贫困无缓解效应．也不影响富裕户的收入水平。     

Space,Context, and Human Capital: A Micro–Macro Perspective on the Social Environment and Financial Literacy in Later Life

Despite a large body of literature documenting the association between individual characteristics and financial literacy, our understanding of the impact of macro-environmental conditions on individual financial literacy remains limited, particularly in later life. Drawing from a micro–macro perspective on the social environment and individual processes, we examined the extent to which three state-level contextual characteristics were associated with individual financial literacy: tertiary educational attainment, poverty prevalence, and Internet penetration. We utilized data from the Understanding America Study for adults aged 50 years or older to assess financial literacy and data from the American Community Survey to evaluate contextual conditions. Cross-sectional multilevel regression models were used to examine the hypothesized effects. We found that state-level poverty prevalence was negatively associated with individual financial literacy, while state-level Internet penetration was positively associated with individual financial literacy, over and above individual characteristics known to impact financial literacy. No association was found between state-level educational attainment and individual financial literacy after controlling for respondents’ own education. Findings suggest that the social environment may condition older adults’ financial literacy through exposure to opportunities that promote knowledge acquisition. Interventions to enhance older adults’ financial literacy may benefit from targeted approaches that take into account the environmental characteristics of their locations of residence.

     

Child labour in the Era of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: A case study of Tanzania

Exploitation of child labour is an endemic problem in sub-Saharan Africa. The situation is increasingly worsening due to increasing poverty and HIV/AIDS. We carried out a study to understand how the AIDS epidemic facilitates the presence of child labour in Iringa Rural District in Tanzania. The findings revealed that children opt for early participation in the labour force due to the ever-increasing poverty existing at their household level. There is a correlation between poverty and HIV/AIDS in general, and particularly between HIV/AIDS and the poor socio-economic condition of orphans. Current interventions to stop child labour do not yield good results because of low level of awareness on child labour issues at village levels. The government and its partners, such as ILO, should improve the coordination between the district and the communities (villages) in order to make sure that communities at the village level are reached and assisted. Furthermore, reducing rural poverty is imperative if child labour is to be eliminated.     

Household and Contextual Indicators of Poverty in Tunisia: A Multilevel Analysis

Using micro data from the 2010 National Survey on Households’ Budget, Consumption and Standard of Living, this study aims to investigate main factors contributing to poverty distribution, one of the most severe socioeconomic problems in Tunisia. To this end, we use a multilevel Logit model and a multilevel mixed linear model to simultaneously analyze the micro-level (household) and macro-level (governorate) factors that might affect the household poverty status. Household size, household composition, occupation, education levels, the gender of the household head and the number of earner by household variables were assessed at the micro-level. Unemployment rate, poverty rate, industrial and agriculture parts and the migration are included to control the effect of contextual effects. Our findings showed that the likelihood of household being poor is positively and significantly related to household size, more children and lower education level. Extreme poverty is more likely to occur in rural than urban areas. Macro-level analyses indicated that greater neighbourhood unemployment rate was associated with higher odds of poverty, while greater industrial agglomeration and migration balance were associated with reduced odds of poverty.     

Measuring Child Poverty in South Africa: Sensitivity to the Choice of Equivalence Scale and an Updated Profile

This paper offers evidence on the sensitivity of child poverty in South Africa to changes in the adult equivalence scale (AES) and updates the child poverty profile based on the Income and Expenditure Survey 2005/06. Setting the poverty line at the 40th percentile of households calculated with different AESs the scope and composition of child poverty are found to be relatively insensitive to the scale used. The rankings of children of different ages, girls versus boys, racial groupings and children living in rural versus urban areas are unaffected by choice of AES, although some provincial rankings on the poverty headcount measure are. The proportions of children and households ‘correctly’ identified as poor for the full range of scales is extremely high. These findings support the argument that it may be appropriate for profiling poverty in South Africa to use a poverty line based on a per capita welfare measure. For the construction of the child poverty profile, per capita income is used as the welfare indicator with the poverty line set at the 40th percentile of household. The profile suggests that poverty amongst children is more extensive than amongst the population or adults even after the massive injection of transfers into households with poor children through the child support grant. The child poverty headcount, depth and severity are all highest amongst children age 0–4 and lowest amongst those aged 15–17, who are not yet beneficiaries of the grants. They are also highest amongst African and Coloured children. Large variations across provinces remain. The analysis underlines the importance of prioritising children in the fight against poverty, particularly in their earliest years.     

Is Health of the Aging Improved by Conditional Cash Transfer Programs? Evidence From Mexico

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs link public transfers to human capital investment in the hopes of alleviating current poverty and reducing its intergenerational transmission. Whereas nearly all studies of their effects have focused on youth, CCT programs may also have an impact on aging adults by increasing household resources or inducing changes in allocations of time of household members, which may be of substantial interest, particularly given the rapid aging of most populations. This article contributes to this underresearched area by examining health and work impacts on the aging for the best-known and most influential of these programs, the Mexican PROGRESA/Oportunidades program. For a number of health indicators, the program appears to significantly improve health, with larger effects for recipients with a greater time receiving benefits from the program. Most of these health effects are concentrated on women.     

Layoffs and Urban Poverty in the State-Owned Enterprise Communities in Shaanxi Province,China

This paper applies a mixed methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to examine urban poverty in China’s state-owned enterprise communities where laid-off workers concentrate. A sequential explanatory model using interviews, Participatory Poverty Assessments and a community household survey on textile and military industries in Shaanxi Province of north-western China shows that low-income households suffered multidimensional disadvantages. Qualitative techniques have helped to reveal the hidden aspects of poverty while statistical tools have captured holistic information on the communities. These approaches together (Q-squared) consider both the outsiders’ and insiders’ views on the laid-off poor and benefit the making of effective anti-poverty policies.     

Differences Between Household Income from Surveys and Registers and How These Affect the Poverty Headcount: Evidence from the Austrian SILC

We take advantage of the fact that for the Austrian SILC 2008–2011, two data sources are available in parallel for the same households: register-based and survey-based income data. Thus, we aim to explain which households tend to under- or over-report their household income by estimating multinomial logit and OLS models with covariates referring to the interview situation, employment status and socio-demographic household characteristics. Furthermore, we analyze source-specific differences in the distribution of household income and how these differences affect aggregate poverty indicators based on household income. The analysis reveals an increase in the cross-sectional poverty rates for 2008–2011 and the longitudinal poverty rate if register data rather than survey data are used. These changes in the poverty rate are mainly driven by differences in employment income rather than sampling weights and other income components. Regression results show a pattern of mean-reverting errors when comparing household income between the two data sources. Furthermore, differences between data sources for both under-reporting and over-reporting slightly decrease with the number of panel waves in which a household participated. Among the other variables analyzed that are related to the interview situation (mode, proxy, interview month), only the number of proxy interviews was (weakly) positively correlated with the difference between data sources, although this outcome was not robust over different model specifications.     

Multidimensionl Poverty and The Role of Social Capital in Poverty Alleviation Among Ethnic Groups in Rural Vietnam: A Multilevel Analysis

This paper empirically examines the disparities over time across six dimensions of poverty (monetary, education, health, housing, basic services, and durable assets) between ethnic minority and majority households in rural Vietnam. Using the five-wave panel data of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) 2008–2016, we observe improvements in most non-monetary dimensions of poverty for both ethnic groups, while the monetary dimension shows the highest degrees of deprivation and the lowest rate of decrease during the studied period. Health is the only dimension in which ethnic minority households are not only better off than those of majority households during the studied period, but also report improvement. We further explore the role of social capital in ethnic minorities and non-minorities at household and community levels in multiple dimensions of poverty by employing multilevel models. Our study reports the significant effects social capital have at the community level on reducing poverty in the monetary, education, housing, and basic services dimensions for ethnic minorities, while social capital at the household level shows significant effects on monetary, basic services, and durable assets. These findings indicate that policy makers ought to consider the role of social capital when designing poverty alleviation strategies for the country.

     

Effect of Financial Inclusion on Poverty and Vulnerability to Poverty: Evidence Using a Multidimensional Measure of Financial Inclusion

This study examines the effect of financial inclusion on poverty and vulnerability to poverty of Ghanaian households. Using data extracted from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey in 2016/17, a multiple correspondence analysis is employed to generate a financial inclusion index, and three-stage feasible least squares is used to estimate households’ vulnerability to poverty. Endogeneity associated with financial inclusion is resolved using distance to the nearest bank as an instrument in an instrumental variables probit technique. Results showed that while 23.4% of Ghanaians are considered poor, about 51% are vulnerable to poverty. We found that an increase in financial inclusion has two effects on household poverty. First, it is associated with a decline in a household’s likelihood of being poor by 27%. Second, it prevents a household’s exposure to future poverty by 28%. Female-headed households have a greater chance of experiencing a larger reduction in poverty and vulnerability to poverty through enhanced financial inclusion than do male-headed households. Furthermore, financial inclusion reduces poverty and vulnerability to poverty more in rural than in urban areas. Governments are encouraged to design or enhance policies that provide an enabling environment for the private sector to innovate and expand financial services to more distant places. Government investment in, and regulation of, the mobile money industry will be a necessary step to enhancing financial inclusion in developing countries.

     

Targeting,Universalism, and Single-Mother Poverty: A Multilevel Analysis Across 18 Affluent Democracies

We examine the influence of individual characteristics and targeted and universal social policy on single-mother poverty with a multilevel analysis across 18 affluent Western democracies. Although single mothers are disproportionately poor in all countries, there is even more cross-national variation in single-mother poverty than in poverty among the overall population. By far, the United States has the highest rate of poverty among single mothers among affluent democracies. The analyses show that single-mother poverty is a function of the household’s employment, education, and age composition, and the presence of other adults in the household. Beyond individual characteristics, social policy exerts substantial influence on single-mother poverty. We find that two measures of universal social policy significantly reduce single-mother poverty. However, one measure of targeted social policy does not have significant effects, and another measure is significantly negative only when controlling for universal social policy. Moreover, the effects of universal social policy are larger. Additional analyses show that universal social policy does not have counterproductive consequences in terms of family structure or employment, while the results are less clear for targeted social policy. Although debates often focus on altering the behavior or characteristics of single mothers, welfare universalism could be an even more effective anti-poverty strategy.     

Poverty Lines Based on Fuzzy Sets Theory and its Application to Malaysian Data

Defining the poverty line has been acknowledged as being highly variable by the majority of published literature. Despite long discussions and successes, poverty line has a number of problems due to its arbitrary nature. This paper proposes three measurements of poverty lines using membership functions based on fuzzy set theory. The three membership functions, namely exponential, trapezoidal and quadratic sigmoid together with their calculation steps are discussed. Average monthly household incomes of Malaysians are used to illustrate the proposed poverty line. Three new sets of poverty lines were derived for 3 years as numerical application to the proposed membership functions. The numerical results show the flexibility of poverty lines resulted from the composition of the proposed functions. It suggests that the official poverty line for Malaysians is too low thus creating an underestimation of the extent of poverty in Malaysia.     

Children Among the Poor

This article investigates a number of issues that clarify the premises underlying the assignment of children into poverty. Conventional definitions indicate much larger poverty rates among children than among adults. Three possible theoretical reasons for this greater representation of children among the poor are explored. It is shown that the most direct mechanism--poorer parents having more children--is of little importance. Instead, the greater incidence of poverty among children is the result of (1) a labor supply effect of children's reducing family income as mothers work less and (2) the assumption of greater household "needs" when children are present. The research presented here also demonstrates that long-term permanent poverty rates among children are much lower than the conventional yearly measures.     

How to Reduce the Impact of Equivalence Scales on Poverty Measurement: Evidence from Turkey

The main aim of the paper is to contribute to the poverty measurement literature by demonstrating a method to reduce the impact of equivalence scales in poverty measurement. This is accomplished by choosing the most appropriate reference household type. The results showed that one adult household is certainly not suitable for being the reference household type. When one adult household is set as the reference, in the range of no equivalence scale and per capita equivalence scale, poverty head count ratio changes from 1 to 48 %, showing the huge effect of the equivalence scale choice. Also the analyses at household size level showed that one adult household type is not convenient to be the reference household type. On the other hand, no clear distinction could be made between central household types, but the importance of choosing a household type close to the center was demonstrated for Turkish data.     

城市社区中老年人口死亡态度影响因素研究

死亡态度直接影响个体的生命和生活质量。本文利用在成都市城市社区进行的抽样调查数据,对影响城市社区中老年人口死亡态度的个人和家庭因素进行了分析。分析结果表明:性别、身体健康状况、家庭经济状况、家庭谈论死亡情况是影响城市社区中老年人口死亡态度的因素。研究发现可为城市社区中老年人口死亡教育的实施、保障和促进该群体的生命和生活质量提供有益的参考。     

Social Structure and Child Poverty

Child poverty, as a critical indicator of the QOL, is intricately related to the social structure of the community. This hypothesis is explored for the 159 counties of Georgia for the year 2000. The influence of demographic, economic, family and health factors upon child poverty are explored through models of total, black and white child poverty. Factor analyses of factors uncovered by the models identify the social-structural features of counties in relation to child poverty. Counties considered “Deprived/rural” harbor child poverty, while counties described as “Business/money” and “Progressive/urban” bear a negative relationship to child poverty. Positively associated with child poverty are residential stability, unemployment, low educational achievement, youth and age dependency, single-parent female household heads with children, grandparent child care, and health disability of child, elders and of working-age persons. Structural factors militating against child poverty are persons with greater education, higher population density, out migration, larger married population, higher retail sales, larger middle class families, higher weekly wages, and other structural features of the county.     

Household Trajectories in Rural Ethiopia: What Can a Mixed Method Approach Tell Us About the Impact of Poverty on Children?

The paper explores the dynamics of child and household poverty in rural Ethiopia using three rounds of household survey and qualitative data collected by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of child poverty. It uses a mixed-method taxonomy of poverty to classify children and their households into four groups, analyse their movements in and out of poverty, and explore the underlying factors. The final section of the paper uses qualitative case studies to explore child welfare dynamics in more detail, looking at the interplay between the progress or decline of households and that of children within those households. It concludes that while the percentage of poor households within this sample reduced from 50 to 20 % between rounds 1 and 3 (2002–2009), these changes were not always beneficial to children and did not reach nearly 1 in 10 households classified as ultra-poor. A deepened understanding of those changes, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, is deemed crucial in post-2015 millennium development goal discussions.     

Poverty Among Elderly in India

Using consumption expenditure data of the National Sample Survey 2004?C2005, this paper estimates the size of elderly poor and tests the hypotheses that elderly households are not economically better-off compared to non-elderly households in India. Poverty estimates are derived under three scenarios??by applying the official cut-off point of the poverty line to household consumption expenditure (unadjusted), consumption expenditure adjusted to household size and consumption expenditure adjusted to household composition. Results show that an estimated 18?million elderly in India are living below the poverty line. On adjusting the consumption expenditure to household size and composition, there are no significant differences in the incidence of poverty among elderly and non-elderly households in India. This is in contrast to the notion that elderly households are better off than non-elderly households in India. Based on the findings, we suggest that the age dimension should be integrated into social policies for evidence based planning.     

The problems of eligibility and endogenous confounders when assessing the mortality impact of a nationwide disease-prevention programme: the case of insecticide-treated nets in Togo

Evaluation of the mortality impact of nationwide disease-prevention efforts is complicated by potential endogeneity: programme recipients may have unobserved characteristics that simultaneously make them both more likely to become recipients and more likely to survive as a result of other health practices. This population-based study assesses the mortality impact of a nationwide programme that distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to mothers of children aged 9-59 months in Togo. By comparing mortality rates before and after the programme according to households' eligibility status, we demonstrate that a one-time programme that restricts eligibility to households with a surviving child excludes some households with a high risk of child mortality. We then apply simultaneous estimation models to untangle the mortality impact of ITNs from the effects of unobserved confounders and show that among eligible households, living in a household with ITNs significantly reduces mortality for children aged 20-59 months, even after controlling for endogeneity.