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.

     

Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture

Intimate relationships are foundational to farm viability. They affect how farmers share tasks, earn income, and access land, yet the role of sexuality and heteronormativity in agriculture remains understudied. Furthermore, queer people are largely ignored as potential farmers by the sustainable agriculture and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements. I document the lived experiences of queer farmers, an underresearched group, through participant observation and interviews with 30 sustainable farmers of various genders and sexualities in New England. I use a queer perspective to illuminate sexualized and heteronormative patterns in sustainable agriculture. Whereas the perception of rural heterosexism can discourage queer participation in agriculture, queer farmers faced less overt heterosexism than they expected. However, they did experience heterosexism particular to sustainable agriculture, and confronting it might jeopardize relationships important for economic and environmental sustainability and land access. Some farmers were attracted to sustainable agriculture for reasons specific to gender, sexuality, and anticapitalist values. I argue that sexuality and heteronormativity are embedded in farmer recruitment, retention, and land acquisition, which are critical for the transition to sustainable agriculture. I offer the sustainable agriculture movement a lens for envisioning alternatives for farm families, homes, and workplaces.     

Explaining Diversities in Age-Specific Life Expectancies and Values of Life Saving: A Numerical Analysis

To what extent can life protection account for observed diversities in age-specific life expectancies across individuals and over time? We provide answers via calibrated simulations of a life-cycle model where life’s end is stochastic, and age-specific mortality hazards are endogenous outcomes of life protection, set jointly with life insurance and annuities. Our model links mortality hazards and values of life saving (VLS) as “dual variables”, and offers new insights about the measurement of VLS. Life protection is estimated to account for non-trivial portions of observed levels and inequalities in life expectancies and empirical estimates of VLS by age and education, and over time.     

Sexist talk: Gender categories,participants’ orientations and irony

This paper uses a discursive social psychological approach to develop and extend what we know about the constitution of sexist talk. Using data from a variety of sources where the topic under discussion is gender and leisure, I examine actual instances of sexism in action. Specifically, I examine the ways in which participants use arguments about possible injury to justify women’s non–participation in certain sport and leisure activities. I identify three resources that participants use to sustain sexist accounts, and bolster their arguments against attack. A fourth resource problematises just what counts as sexist talk, and provides evidence for the ways in which participants themselves can exploit sexist arguments in an ironic fashion to expose and challenge sexist assumptions. I end by considering the implications of this approach for future work on sexist talk, and discursive work on the relationship between gender and language more generally.     

Newcomb's many problems

Newcomb's paradox rests on two arguments one appealing to the principle of maximizing expected utility and one appealing to dominance in order to generate conflicting recommendations in certain kinds of choice situations. In my essay, I argue that the applications of the principle of maximizing expected utility and of the dominance principle are both fallacious and that the specification of the decision problem is too indeterminate to render a verdict between the two options considered. I also show that if Nozick's case for invoking the dominance principle is taken seriously, it leads to contradictions.