Assessing Water Poverty in China Using Holistic and Dynamic Principal Component Analysis

In 1988, James Coleman observed that “social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors-whether persons or corporate actors-within the structure.” If one looks at the state of social capital research, it is clear that this is truer than ever before. This paper seeks to help researchers overcome the major challenges of social capital research, namely, measuring a concept that is notoriously difficult for measurement and choosing among the exhaustive list of direct, casual and consequential measures. It does so by arguing for a typology of social capital that considers five major types of social capital and then reviewing a diverse selection of data available from national surveys. This provides a resource for scholars wishing to pursue large-scale social capital research. Additionally, it draws six lessons from this body of theory and measurement to improve the study of social capital.     

Temporal Analysis of Human Development Indicators: Principal Component Approach

In this study, we used the weighted principal component method on the human development indicators to measure and analyzethe progress of human development in the world. The main principal component was employed to quantify the temporal changes of the human development of several selected countries by the proposed Z-test. The trends of the human development in the period of market transition in two large countries, China and Russia, were discussed in terms of the impact of public health as well as economic development. The association of the main principal component obtained from our study and the human development index reported by the United Nations Development Programme was estimated by the Spearmans rank correlation coefficient.     

农村人口出生性别比失衡及其影响因素的空间异质性研究——基于地理加权回归模型的实证检验

本文运用地理信息系统的探索性空间数据分析方法,考察中国农村人口出生性别比的空间分布格局及其演变特点。在此基础上,运用地理空间效应的空间变系数的地理加权回归模型,考察经济发展、城镇化水平、文化因素、社会保障因素、生育政策等对人口出生性别比的影响,识别各因素对农村人口出生性别比影响的地区差异。研究结果显示:出生性别比在空间上具有集聚效应,表现为高-高和低-低类型,空间自相关结果表明采用传统最小二乘法估算将造成有偏估计;各个解释变量对出生性别比的影响在地区上存在空间差异;经济发展、文化因素与人口出生性别比之间具有倒"U"型关系,现阶段大部分农村地区经济发展水平已越过转折点,但文化程度尚未达到"阈值";当实际生育率高于政策生育率时,会出现计划生育政策实施越严格、出生性别比失衡越严重现象。     

Multidimensional Analysis of Water Poverty in MENA Region: An Empirical Comparison with Physical Indicators

It is not easy to determine whether water is really scarce in the physical sense or whether it is available, but people cannot get access to it, or use it better. This paper reviews selected physical water scarcity indicators, and criticisms made against them on several grounds. Under the premise that the water scarcity issue is inherently multidimensional, a composite Water Poverty Index has been developed, to complement the traditional physical water indicators. In this paper we propose some technical refinements based on principal component analysis, in order to improve the method of calculation of the index. Using the proposed methodology, the present paper assesses the applicability of the index for the MENA region, by comparing the situation of oil-rich and water-poor countries (Gulf States) with that of lower-income yet water-rich countries (Horn of Africa states).     

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.     

Identifying the Geographic Indicators of Poverty Using Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study from Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture,Guizhou, China

Social Indicators Research - Poverty is a major problem that has consistently impacted human development. The spatial characteristics of poverty are nonvolatile at the regional level and represent...     

Composite Indices of Development and Poverty: An Application to MDGs

The measurement of development or poverty as multidimensional phenomena is very difficult because there are several theoretical, methodological and empirical problems involved. The literature of composite indicators offers a wide variety of aggregation methods, all with their pros and cons. In this paper, we propose a new, alternative composite index denoted as MPI (Mazziotta-Pareto Index) which, starting from a linear aggregation, introduces penalties for the countries or geographical areas with ‘unbalanced’ values of the indicators. As an example of application of the MPI, we consider a set of indicators in order to measure the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and we present a comparison between HDI (Human Development Index) methodology, HPI (Human Poverty Index) methodology and MPI.     

Dynamics of Multidimensional Poverty and Uni-dimensional Income Poverty: An Evidence of Stability Analysis from China

Social Indicators Research - In this paper, we construct an illustrative multidimensional poverty index for China and compare it with income poverty using the panel data from multiple waves of the...     

Poverty Among The Elderly: An Application of a Collective Consumption Model in Brazil

Social Indicators Research - The growth of the elderly population and changes in household composition raise important questions regarding the level of well-being of the elderly in developing...     

The Impact of Adaptive Preferences on Subjective Indicators: An Analysis of Poverty Indicators

Subjective indicators are often criticized since they are thought to be particularly affected by the phenomenon of adaptive preferences and social comparison. For social policy purposes, processes of downward adaptation in disadvantaged individuals are of particular importance, i.e., it is supposed that such people compare themselves with others who are in the same precarious situation or even worse off and, as a result, lower their expectations and adapt their aspirations and preferences to their material and financial constraints. Based on the 2006–2010 waves of the Swiss Household Panel study, this contribution examines whether, and to what degree, indicators of material deprivation, subjective poverty and subjective well-being are affected by such downward adaptations. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that the bias caused by adaptation processes varies considerably among different measures and that, although subjective indicators are indeed often affected by this phenomenon, there are also robust measures, notably Townsend’s deprivation measure, Halleröd’s proportional deprivation index and the subjective well-being measure of general life satisfaction.     

An Assessment of Vulnerability to Poverty in Punjab,Pakistan: Subjective Choices of Poverty Indicators

In general, the happiness literature has paid little attention to the relationship between physical appearance and well-being. In this paper, we examine the link between weight, height and well-being for three distinct samples in China given that attractiveness effects likely vary greatly across sociocultural contexts. As China has recently undergone rapid economic transformation in the urban areas, this empirical exercise is particularly interesting because it can highlight how changing social norms have affected the relationship between physical appearance and subjective well-being. For the rural and migrant samples, we find that for both men and women, big and tall individuals have higher levels of well-being. This is consistent with the notion that the strong are better off when more labor intensive work is the norm. For the urban sample and for urban males in particular, no well-being penalty is found for being obese, unlike previous results based on Western samples. It is very likely that the unique Chinese cultural practice of network building banquets and feasting is behind this finding.     

Poverty,Inequality and Deprivation in South Africa: An Analysis of the 1993 SALDRU Survey

This paper analyses poverty and inequality in South Africa based on data from a comprehensive multi-purpose household survey undertaken in 1993 to provide baseline statistics on poverty and its determinants to the new government. The paper shows that South Africa has among the highest levels of income inequality in the world and compares poorly in most social indicators to countries with similar income levels. Much of the poverty in the country is a direct result of apartheid policies that denied equal access to education, employment, services, and resources to the black population of the country. As a result, poverty has a very strong racial dimension with poverty concentrated among the African population. In addition, poverty is much higher in rural areas, and particularly high in the former homelands. Poverty among female-headed households and among children is also higher than average. Moreover, poverty is closely related to poor education and lack of employment. The poor suffer from lack of access to education, quality health care, basic infrastructure, transport, are heavily indebted, have little access to productive resources, and are heavily dependent on remittances and social transfers, particularly social pensions and disability grants. The paper uses an income-based definition of poverty for most of the analysis. In addition, it develops a broad-based index of deprivation including income, employment, wealth, access to services, health, education, and perceptions of satisfaction as its components. While on average the two indicators correspond fairly closely, the income poverty measure misses a considerable number of people who are severely deprived in many of the non-income measures of well-being. This group of severely deprived not identified by the income poverty measure consists predominantly of Africans living in rural areas, concentrated particularly in the province of KwaZulu/Natal.     

An Economic Wellbeing Index for the Spanish Provinces: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

 This article presents the estimation of a synthetic economic wellbeing index using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a multidimensional technique that has its origins in efficiency analysis, but its usage within the social indicators context is particularly appropriate. It allows the researcher to take advantage of the inherent flexibility of DEA when assigning weights to the factors. The model itself carries out the aggregation and weighting of 8 partial indicators, which attempt to describe the four components of economic wellbeing suggested by Osberg (Royal Commision on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1985)), in order to assess the economic wellbeing of the 50 Spanish provinces. By using the index obtained in the analysis a “ranking” of the provinces is obtained. This ranking proves to be relatively similar to the one that corresponds to per capita income, although there are significant differences.     

经济增长、收入分配与减贫进程间的动态联系——来自中国农村的经验分析

文章以贫困的收入增长偏弹性和贫困的收入分配偏弹性的性质为基础,构建了一个分析经济增长、收入分配和减贫进程之间关系的统一框架。文章着重探讨了在经济发展的不同时期,收入水平和收入不平等的初始值对经济增长的减贫能力,以及收入不平等的贫困效应的影响,并以中国农村为例,来实证检验它们之间的定性、定量关系及政策含义。     

Spatial Analysis of the Relationship Between a Life Quality Index,HDI and Poverty in the Province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires,Argentina

The study of Quality of Life, Poverty and Human Development shares several elements. Nonetheless, while poverty is a measure of “lack” based on a set of basic need variables (unsatisfied basic needs—UBN), human development index (HDI) is derived from the notion of human capabilities. Quality of Life, however, is a measure of achievement. Our goal is to analyze the degree of spatial correspondence between a life quality index (LQI) and the other indices by using bivariate spatial autocorrelation with its global and local values. The comparison of these three indicators at a municipal level in the province of Buenos Aires and in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (the Federal Capital of Argentina) reveals a medium spatial correspondence which leaves room for discussion about the scope and limitations of the indicators. HDI and UBN have a similar spatial configuration while the LQI yields a more fragmented distribution associated to the complexity of its variables, dimension and weights.     

Estimating Housing Quality for Poverty and Development Policy Analysis: CWIQ in Ghana

Inadequate data on housing characteristics and lack of consensusregarding appropriate measures of housing quality characteristicsretard developments to meet housing needs of people in lessdeveloped countries. A constructed housing quality index is developed and Cronbach's alpha and factor analysis are employedeo evaluate its measurement properties. With data from the CoreWelfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ) survey of 1997, theconstructed housing quality index identifies key factors relatedto housing quality in Ghana. Access to quality of life amenities contributes significant information and policy value to traditionalphysical attributes in modeling a housing quality index.     

The Resource-Infrastructure-Environment Index for Measuring Progress: An Application to Australia, Mexico and the US

The resource-infrastructure-environment (RIE) index was proposed as an alternative measure of progress which was then employed to: (1) compare the aggregate (single summary) index findings between Australia (mid-industrialised nation), Mexico (emerging economy), and the US (highly industrialised nation); and (2) compare the RIE index against the gross domestic product (GDP), human development index (HDI) and genuine savings (GS) measure. This paper builds on the previous work by assessing the seven themes and 21 dimensions which comprise the RIE index for the three aforementioned nations, as well as the associated policy implications. The results identified Australia’s strength in the human resource and infrastructure themes. For Mexico, strong contributions came from the natural and generated resource themes as well as the physical environment theme, while the US performed strongly in the infrastructure themes. The comparative results of the US and Mexico illustrated that it is possible to achieve high levels of progress without an excessive reliance on high levels of production and income.     

浅析三峡库区移民过渡期的贫困问题

库区移民存在着历史性贫困。在搬迁后一段时间又面临着经济、文化、精神等新的贫困。贫困问题严重制约着移民的搬迁安置 ,从而影响国家的移民大业和库区经济的长远建设。经济上的补偿与扶持、区域文化的异地构建、精神心态的素质培育、文化教育手段的运用等都不失为库区移民过渡期贫困的解决良策。     

Child Poverty Measurement in the UK: Assessing Support for the Downgrading of Income-Based Poverty Measures

Social Indicators Research - In 2016 the UK’s Conservative Government radically changed the official approach to child poverty measurement, scrapping targets for income poverty and material...     

Human Development Index Based on ELECTRE TRI-C Multicriteria Method: An Application in the City of Recife

The Human Development Index (HDI) is an indicator that measures individuals’ welfare through three dimensions: health, education and income. Since its conception, the HDI has been a focus of attention for various segments of society such as politicians, professionals in the media, policy makers, academics and ordinary citizens. The index, however, has received several criticisms over the years, the compensatory effect between the dimensions being the main one. In this context, this paper puts forward an alternative approach for calculating the Municipal Human Development Index, thereby mitigating some criticisms of the index and supporting public decision making. For this purpose, the ELECTRE TRI-C multicriteria method was used, in order to attenuate the compensatory effect, to reduce calculation problems and to allow comparison year by year. An application was conducted in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, in order to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach. As a result, a more adequate classification of the regions in four levels of human development was obtained.