Work-Life Conflict and Social Inequality in Western Europe

Recent debates on time-use suggest that there is an inverse relationship between time poverty and income poverty (Aguiar and Hurst in Q J Econ C(3):969–1006, 2007), with Hammermesh and Lee (Rev Econ Stat 89(2):374–383, 2007) suggesting much time poverty is ‘yuppie kvetch’ or ‘complaining’. Gershuny (Soc Res Int Q Soc Sci 72(2):287–314, 2005) argues that busyness is the ‘badge of honour’: being busy is now a positive, privileged position and it is high status people who work long hours and feel busy. Is this also true of work-life conflict? This paper explores the relationship between work-life tension and social inequality, as measured by social class, drawing on evidence from the European Social Survey. To what extent is work-life conflict a problem of the (comparatively) rich and privileged professional/managerial classes, and is this true across European countries? The countries selected offer a range of institutional and policy configurations to maximise variation. Using regression modelling of an index of subjective work-life conflict, we find that in all the countries under study, work-life conflict is higher among professionals than non-professionals. Part of this is explained by the fact that professionals work longer hours and experience more work pressure than other social classes, though the effect remains even after accounting for these factors. While levels of work-life conflict vary across the countries studied, country variation in class differences is modest. We consider other explanations of why professionals report higher work-life conflict and the implications of our findings for debates on social inequality.     

Multidimensional Poverty in Nicaragua: Are Female-Headed Households Better Off?

The recognition of poverty as a multidimensional concept has led to the development of more adequate tools for its identification. By allowing for subgroup and regional decompositions, those instruments are useful to allocate public action where most needed. This paper applies the Alkire and Foster (2011a) Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) to study single-mother and biparental families in Nicaragua, modifying its original structure to match more closely with the country’s current structural problems. Using Nicaragua’s last Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2011/2012), our multidimensional poverty figures contrast with the government’s national poverty line estimates, suggesting that income poverty overestimates the number of poor people. Thus, our MPI can help as a complement for traditional consumption poverty and Basic Needs analysis; even extending the exploration by using other official household surveys. On the other hand, multidimensional poverty analysis found poverty dominance of male-headed families over single-mother and female-headed biparental families, which serves to contradict the notion of women being more vulnerable than men. Within the MPI, the most important contributor was the Living Standards dimension, composed by indicators directly related to housing conditions, and the second most deprived dimension was Education. A strong policy implication that arises from our findings is the reduction of the urban–rural poverty gap. Specifically, our findings exalt the need for governmental policies directed to reduce Nicaragua’s housing and educational deficits as a priority, particularly in rural areas.     

Welfare State Development,Individual Deprivations and Income Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis in Latin America and the Caribbean

Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized as a one-dimensional variable, but also taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty and two income inequality indicators are used as dependent variables. Three pooled time-series cross-section regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors models were carried out on 18 countries in the region around 2000, 2005 and 2010. This paper shows that the development of social-welfare programs and institutions seems to be an effective way of tackling individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty in the region. On the other hand, the WS development didn’t appear to be effective to reduce income inequality. The outcomes of welfare institutions appear to be the pivotal dimension to reduce income inequality and income deprivations in the region.     

Spatial and Temporal Trends in Multidimensional Poverty in the United States over the Last Decade

This paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of multidimensional poverty in the United States over the last decade. It provides estimates of multidimensional poverty over more than a decade, from 2008 to 2019, which covers the Great Recession and the recovery following the recession when major policy changes such as the Affordable Care Act were implemented. For the first time, spatial trends in estimates of multidimensional poverty are also provided. We measure annual poverty levels in 4 regions, 50 states and examine the relation between multidimensional poverty and neighborhood characteristics. We find that on average, 13 percent of the United States population was multidimensional poor. Poverty rates were high in the South and the West and among young adults, immigrants and Hispanics. Alternative indices of multidimensional poverty show consistent trends; multidimensional poverty in the United States rose between 2008 and 2010 and then gradually declined. However, more than a quarter of individuals with incomes above the poverty threshold remained multidimensional poor. This underscores the fact that income does not always capture deprivation experienced by individuals. Policies geared towards affordable housing, health insurance and higher education will help reduce multidimensional poverty in the United States.

     

Considering the Extremely Poor: Multidimensional Poverty Measurement for Germany

This paper applies the Alkire and Foster (J Public Econ 95:476–487, 2011) index of multidimensional poverty to German data. This is done with respect to the politically most important dimensions of poverty mentioned in the German Federal Government’s report on poverty and wealth. Additionally, a modification of the identification step of the Alkire–Foster index is proposed to guarantee that individuals, who are extremely poor in only few dimensions, are not omitted by the index.     

Exploring the Eligibility Criteria of the Child Support Grant and its Impact on Poverty

One of the most important policy objectives in the post-apartheid South African economy is to reduce poverty. Although economic growth and job creation are the preferred sources of alleviating poverty and inequality, social grant spending has contributed significantly to reduce poverty (Van der Berg et al. in Poverty trends since the transition: what we know. Stellenbosch Economic Working Papers: 19/09. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, 2009). Recently proposals were tabled by the Department of Social Development of South Africa (Fin24 in R3.3bn plan to extend child support grant to 21. http://www.fin24.com/Economy/R33bn-child-care-grant-extension-to-21-on-cards-20150316. Accessed August 7, 2015, 2015) to extend the age eligibility of the child support grant (CSG) to 21 years (at the time of writing children aged up to 18 years are eligible). This sparked an interest to investigate the impact on poverty of changes to the eligibility criteria of CSG, as well as its fiscal implications. Using person and household data from the 2010/2011 Income and Expenditure Survey, various simulations are performed to assess the impact on poverty rates and changes to social spending, given the following changes: (1) if all age-eligible children applied; (2) if all beneficiaries received the grant amount for the full 12-month duration; (3) if the age eligibility criterion is extended; and (4) if the monthly child grant income amount is revised upwards. We also examine how changes in the eligibility criteria affect the income distribution.     

Ability drain: size,impact, and comparison with brain drain under alternative immigration policies

Ability drain’s (AD) impact seems economically significant, with 30% of US Nobel laureates since 1906 being immigrants, and immigrants or their children founding 40% of Fortune 500 companies. Nonetheless, while brain drain (BD) and gain (BG) have been studied extensively, AD has not. I examine migration’s impact on ability (a), education (h), and productive human capital or “skill” s =s(a,?h), for source country residents and migrants under (a) the points system (PS) which accounts for h and (b) the “vetting” system (VS) which accounts for s (e.g., US H-1B program). The findings are as follows: (i) Migration reduces (raises) residents’ (migrants’) average ability, with an ambiguous (positive) impact on average education and skill, and net skill drain, SD, likelier than net BD; (ii) these effects increase with ability’s inequality or variance, are greater under VS than PS, and hurt source countries; (iii) the model and two empirical studies suggest average AD?≥?BD for educated US immigrants, with real income about twice the home country income; and (iv) SD holds for any BD and for a very small AD (7.4% of our estimate). Policy implications are provided.     

A Measure Whose Time has Come: Formalizing Time Poverty

Poverty remains a primary public policy issue, and a large literature has discussed the limitations of an income poverty measure. Using income as an indicator of poverty is a helpful simplification designed to capture ability to meet consumption needs. We argue that time is a basic economic resource allocated to create well-being along with income. Time is a scarce resource that individuals and households must allocate to produce goods, obtain services, and pursue rest and relaxation. Time poverty has been proposed as a complement to income poverty, yet it remains a relatively unknown measure in both policy and research spheres. The many ways time poverty is conceptualized and measured across studies has limited its adoption. To help familiarize readers with time poverty, we apply basic tenets of income poverty measurement to time. We conduct a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature discussing similarities, differences, and the pros and cons of different approaches to time poverty. In particular, inconsistent definition and categorization of necessary and discretionary time has been a barrier to the transparent application of time poverty in the literature, and we outline guidance on defining necessary and discretionary time for future studies. Finally, we outline future research directions for time poverty.     

Marginal Utility and Economic Development: Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Aspirations and Subjective Well-Being Among Chinese Employees

The post-1979 economic reforms have led to impressive economic growth in China both in terms of gross domestic product and individual income. Individual well-being, however, has not increased on par with the economy (Brockmann et al. in J Happiness Stud 10(4):387–405, 2009; Easterlin et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 109(25):9775–9780, 2012). In the current series of studies, traditional and multilevel regression models are applied to examine the relationship between income and employee well-being. Results suggest a curvilinear relationship between income and satisfaction (both with one’s job and one’s income), supporting a diminishing marginal utility effect. Additionally, confirming a central postulate of Goal Contents Theory (GCT), individuals who espoused the importance of income (an extrinsic motive) were less satisfied with income itself. Further examining the application of GCT in a Chinese context, results suggest individuals who value extrinsic motives (i.e., money, possessions, fame) exhibit lower levels of job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and feelings of accomplishment. Finally, there is a significant multilevel effect such that between-city levels of health have a significant positive relationship with life satisfaction. These results offer organizational and policy implications related to the interaction between economic prosperity and human development.     

The European 'Welfare Mix': Institutional Configuration and Distributive Outcome in Sweden and the European Union. A Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective

This paper explores the institutional configuration (the three welfare delivery systems: market, welfare state, family) and its distributional correlates (income inequality; poverty rates; inequality related to social cleavages such as social class, generation, gender, region and family). The analysis has a twofold perspective: comparative (comparing 14 EU member states) and longitudinal (comparing Sweden 1975--1995), using nations as statistical units. The European union appears to be divided in three distinct and homogeneous clusters: a Nordic cluster (Sweden, Denmark, Finland) exhibiting large social expenses, high labour market participation and weak family ties. Its distributional features are low income inequality, poverty rates and class inequality, but high levels of inequality between generations; a southern cluster (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal) characterised by lower welfare provisions, low employment, but strong traditional families. Its distributional features are high levels of income inequality, poverty and class inequality, but low levels of generational inequality; a central European cluster in intermediate position. UK joins the southern cluster with high levels of income inequality, poverty and class inequality.     

Personal Values as Mitigating Factors in the Link Between Income and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Using data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey, we examine the link between income, reference income and life satisfaction across Western Europe. We find that whilst there is a strong positive relationship between income and life satisfaction, reference or comparison income exerts a strong negative influence. Interestingly, our results confirm the importance of personal values and beliefs not only as predictors of subjective well-being, but also as mitigating factors in the relationship between income, reference income and life satisfaction. While our findings provide additional empirical support for the relative utility hypothesis, they are also consistent with Rojas’ (J Econ Psychol 28:1–14, 2007) Conceptual-Referent-Theory (CRT), which is based on the premise that the salience of income and comparison income depends on one’s intrinsic values and personal beliefs.

Improving Well-Being in Bhutan: A Pursuit of Happiness or Poverty Reduction?

Increasing happiness is a key priority for the Bhutanese government. This priority displaces more traditional (economic) objectives such as the pursuit of income growth and the reduction of income poverty. This paper examines the implications of this approach by examining whether there are common correlates of the four following measures of human well-being in Bhutan: income poverty; multidimensional poverty; perceived poverty; and happiness. Our findings suggest that whilst there is a degree of commonality, determinants of the different measures of well-being are distinct. Common factors include having a savings account, levels of literacy and household size. Further we show that higher levels of income poverty, multidimensional poverty and perceived poverty are found to be negatively associated with happiness. Importantly, our findings suggest that a focus on increasing happiness might come at the expense of improving other measures of wellbeing.     

Multi-Dimensional Deprivation in the U.S.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of multidimensional deprivation in the U.S. since the Great Recession, from 2008 to 2013. We estimate a Multidimensional Deprivation Index by compiling individual level data on several well-being dimensions from the American Community Survey. Our results indicate that the proportion of the population that is multidimensional deprived averages about 15 percent, which exceeds the prevalence of official income poverty. Lack of education, severe housing burden and lack of health insurance were some of the dimensions in which Americans were most deprived in. Though deprivation increased during the recession, it trended towards a decline between 2010 and 2013. Unlike the official and the supplemental poverty measure which did not show any decline, the deprivation index better reflects the economic recovery since the recession. Overall, the prevalence of deprivation was higher in the southern and the western states and among the Asian and the Hispanic population. Importantly, there was not much overlap between individuals who were income poor and those who were multidimensional deprived. In fact, almost 30 % of individuals with incomes slightly above the poverty threshold experienced multiple deprivations. Our analysis underscores the need to look beyond income based poverty statistics in order to fully realize the impact of the recession on individuals’ well-being.     

Measuring and Monitoring Poverty and Well-Being: A New Approach for the Synthesis of Multidimensionality

The aim of this paper is to introduce a new approach for the synthesis and analysis of multidimensional poverty and well-being indicators. Our general perspective is inspired by the theoretical foundations of the capability approach and sustainable human development paradigm. The new synthesis of indicators aims at monitoring outcomes of units of interest. Its defining features include: full sensitiveness, continuity, flexibility in substitution between dimensions, and the straightforward interpretation of the results. All these properties are obtained through a transparent and accountable process that is fully open to public scrutiny and reason (as suggested by Amartya Sen). The main contribution of this approach is that the degree of substitutability between dimensions can be directly linked to the general level of well-being of a person, which addresses the so-called “inescapable arbitrariness” issue discussed by Anand and Sen (Concepts of human development and poverty: a multidimensional perspective. Human Development Papers. UNDP, New York, 1997). The new synthesis proposed opens up new possibilities for different types of applications, including monitoring and evaluating development programmes.     

Gender and Multidimensional Poverty in South Africa: Applying the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

Recent work has shown that the gender gap in income poverty has widened in post-apartheid South Africa even though overall poverty levels have declined. One of the main criticisms of money-metric studies of gendered poverty differences is that income is only one dimension of poverty and that other measures of welfare may better reflect the relative well-being of women and female-headed households. This article presents a multidimensional approach to measuring the gender poverty gap in post-apartheid South Africa. Using data from the 2008 wave of the South African National Income Dynamic Study, the internationally comparable multidimensional poverty index (the MPI) is used to estimate gender differences in a number of different achievements. The findings suggest that the multidimensional gender poverty gap is similar to the poverty gap measured by the conventional money-metric approach at several national poverty lines. However, the MPI poverty differential between female- and male-headed households is slightly narrower than the income poverty gap between these two household types. In order to explore these findings further, the paper decomposes the components of multidimensional poverty by gender and for both female- and male-headed households. The paper concludes by considering how greater investments in health care delivery and in basic services, particularly in rural areas, may yield progress towards gender equality.     

Modeling Comprehensive Dispersion of the Administrative Villages and Its Association with Economic Poverty: A Case Study from Poverty-Stricken Mountainous County,China

Identifying the dispersion of the administrative villages is one of prerequisites for the rational allocation of sources and services during implementing “Entire-Village Advancement” poverty alleviation strategy of China. From the perspective of an administrative village scale, this paper develops a methodology serving the construction of a comprehensive dispersion evaluation model and the examination of the relationship between dispersion and economic poverty. Specially, we develops an village-level comprehensive dispersion evaluation model that is presented in two forms of Euclidean Dispersion Index (EDI) versus Dispersion Composite Index (DCI), using spatial statistical analysis to examine the comprehensive dispersion of the administrative village and its association with the Net Income of Village Residents (NIVR) under different geographic and socioeconomic conditions. The case study in Neixiang County of China shows that, DCI is more rational and objective than EDI for scoring details of the village’s dispersion, especially in the mountainous area; DCI has a more significant spatial autocorrelation and a more significantly negative relationship to NIVR than EDI; the negative correlation between DCI and NIVR is obviously stronger in mountainous area than that in the hill and plain area; The closer to the economic circle, the higher NIVR vs. the lower DCI. Which not only provides new perspective and way to deal with dispersion, but also helps guide policies for effective poverty interventions.     

Poverty Is Low Consumption and Low Wealth,Not Just Low Income

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved measure of financial poverty, based on household consumption and wealth as well as income. Data come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) Survey, which appears to be the first national socio-economic panel survey to provide longitudinal data on all three measures of household economic well-being. National measures of poverty in Australia and other Western countries are usually based only on low income. But this is conceptually incorrect; the measures lack validity. To be poor is to have a low material standard of living—involuntarily. So measures of poverty should also take account of household consumption and wealth. If a household has an adequate current level of consumption, it should not be classified as poor right now, even if its current income is low. Similarly, if it has substantial wealth (net worth), it should not be viewed as poor because it could draw down on wealth to boost current consumption. The invalidity of income-based measures has long been recognised in principle (Ringen 1987, The possibility of politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press). In practical terms, the problem is to combine measures of wealth and income, and especially consumption, in the same survey. In the 2005 HILDA Survey a battery of household expenditure items was included which, benchmarked against the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey for 2003–04, appeared to provide valid measurement of 53.4% of total household expenditure. These well measured items correlated 0.76 with total expenditure and, in combination with standard demographic variables, accounted for 78.3% of the variance in the total. This paper uses 2005–06 HILDA data to construct revised measures of financial poverty. The value of these measures for public policy and research purposes is illustrated. In particular, the new measures give much lower estimates of poverty than income-based measures. They can also be used to predict which households are at risk of future poverty.

Long and short term poverty: Is Germany a two-thirds society?

Social scientists and media commentators have expressed concern that Western countries are becoming two-thirds societies in which two-thirds enjoy the benefits of affluence, while one-third are locked into poverty or near-poverty. This paper, based on economic panel data, tests the two-thirds society hypothesis in the case of (West) Germany 1984–89. The main finding is that poverty (defined as receiving less than half of average household income) is mostly short term and that nothing like one-third are locked into poverty. On the other hand, far more people than had previously been thought are at risk of poverty. In 1984–89 only 3% were poor every year but about 25% were poor in at least one year. Germany appears to be a 75-15-10 society: 75% not poor, 15% occasionally poor but with generally adequate incomes, and 10% frequently poor or near-poor with incomes that may be considered inadequate. Analysis is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and relates to the 8,000 people who were interviewed each year from 1984 to 1989.     

关于中国贫困的动态多维度研究

文章利用中国健康与营养调查8个调查年度的数据,基于能力方法的视角,选用收入、教育和生活质量3个维度,对中国的贫困状况进行了动态多维度考察,结果发现:(1)相对于单一的收入贫困,多维贫困程度更为严重、波动性更大,贫困人口应对外部冲击的脆弱性明显,其中教育贫困尤其严重。(2)尽管农村与城市之间收入贫困趋于收敛,但近年来农村多维贫困对全国的贡献度高达80%以上,城乡间多维贫困差异有不断扩大的趋势。(3)指标等权重情形下的多维贫困随时间推移呈平稳快速下降态势,其中生活质量改善对多维贫困下降的贡献度最大。(4)就影响多维贫困的外在环境因素而言,东部地区的多维贫困下降明显快于其他地区,家庭中劳动力及户主的特征也对多维贫困产生显著影响。文章探讨了多维贫困的致因和消除多维贫困的政策选择。     

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.