Determining Semi-Normative Poverty Lines Using Social Survey Data

Debates about how to set minimum income standards for health and general well-being are very current in Britain. Family budget standards remain popular but the results can be criticized for being little more than abstractions. They are to an extent 'artificial' and this raises questions about their 'real adequacy'. Another way to operationalize adequacy of income, in a lived sense, is to consider the household income levels at which a specified, desirable, healthy standard of living is in fact achieved, indicated here by diet and nutrition. Data are taken from the United Kingdom's Expenditure and Food Survey; the sample has been restricted to an older population, and three years of data (2002–5) provided a combined sample of 4,300 households. The study findings and semi-normative poverty lines are critically discussed in relation to the national UK policy context as well as the international research literature on poverty measurement.     

社会工作者在我国城市反贫困中的使命和角色

社会工作的使命是“扶贫济弱、助人自助”,贫民和劳工是社会工作的两大传统服务对象。由于对致贫原因看法的不同,社会工作在反贫困中的助人活动主要分为两类:一是围绕改变贫困者个人而开展的助人活动,二是围绕改变贫困者周围的社会环境而开展的助人活动。这两类活动在不同的历史时期都发挥了重要作用。中国的城市贫困问题主要是社会结构变迁造成的,所以社会工作在城市反贫困中以推动社会政策制度和改变为主,同时也强调贫困者的自立。由此形成了社会工作在政策制定环节中的贫困者利益维护者,政策执行过程中需求的评估者;致力于提升贫困者能力的使能者;积极参与劳动力市场活动的倡导者和为贫困者解决实际困难的服务提供者等多重角色。     

产业发展、就业质量对易地扶贫搬迁政策满意度的影响机理——基于对凉山彝区易地扶贫搬迁户的田野调查

我国脱贫攻坚战在建党一百周年之际迎来了全面胜利。作为精准脱贫战略的重要构成,易地扶贫搬迁在“搬得出”目标完成之后,“稳得住”与“能致富”成为巩固拓展脱贫攻坚成果,促进脱贫地区内生可持续发展的重要目标。本文基于凉山彝区179户易地扶贫搬迁户的问卷调查和入户访谈,实证分析了产业发展、就业质量对易地扶贫搬迁政策满意度的作用机理。结果表明,产业帮扶、发展民族特色旅游、创造更多就业机会等措施对政策满意度形成正向拉力,家庭人口特征对政策的满意度有显著推力影响,而鼓励传统农业生产、发展民族手工业和改善社会保障等对政策满意度的影响效果并不明显。做好易地扶贫搬迁后续扶持,要以做强民族地区特色产业为支撑,以引导高质量就业和优化公共服务供给为路径,多渠道促进就业,强化社会管理,促进社会融入,真正实现物质、精神“双脱贫”。     

新中国成立 70 年来反贫困的历史、经验与启示

“摆脱贫困,实现共同富裕”是社会主义的本质要求,中国共产党对于农村贫困人口的关注作为一种初心贯穿着中国革命和社会建设的整个过程。 1949 年之后中国的扶贫治理可以分为“救济式扶贫阶段”“发展式扶贫阶段”“开发式扶贫阶段” “综合式扶贫阶段”以及“脱贫攻坚阶段”五个时期。而且随着阶段不同,国家所采取的扶贫治理措施与手段有着很大的差异。 扶贫治理 70 年,逐渐形成了国家主导下的扶贫治理体制,治理手段也越来越专业化与精细化。 中国扶贫领域的治理实践典型地呈现出共产党革命成功经验、中国传统治理资源和西方国家先进治理方法的“三江汇流”之势,同时中国的扶贫经验也为世界其他国家与地区的反贫困事业提供了中国智慧与中国方案。     

我国农业供应链金融减贫的研究评述及展望

采用文献计量和内容分析相结合的方法对我国农业供应链金融的研究现状进行分析总结。目前,我国农业供应链金融的研究主要集中在模式演进与创新、风险识别与防范和运行机制与效果评价三个方面。农业供应链金融的应用与实践,在农业供应链各利益主体之间建立起了有效的信贷联结机制,协调了各参与方的利益冲突,为精准扶贫提供了新的思路。未来农业供应链金融的研究应该注重政府作为参与方之一的角色、发挥减贫作用的模式和机制以及农户参与供应链金融业务的减贫效果,并且要关注金融科技对农业供应链金融的影响。     

Multi-scale assessment of the livestock sector for policy design in Zambia

While livestock constitute a strategic sector to reduce poverty and enhance growth in developing countries, decision makers often lack data reflecting the diversity of livestock functions and systems. We therefore mobilised the Livestock Sector Investment Policy Toolkit to assess the economic contributions of livestock in Zambia. Valuing their plural contributions by system, we found that mixed rainfed systems were the main contributors to added value, even if specialised intensive systems provided around 45% of meat and milk production. Demand-oriented policies promoting intensive systems would not have the same effects on economic growth as growth-oriented policies focusing on smallholder mixed farming.     

关于生态贫困问题的几点理论思考

认识生态贫困是讨论生态扶贫的逻辑前提。把握生态贫困应当确立人的维度和生态的维度。在人与自然的关系中，生态贫困表现为人与自然关系的“恶化”，是人的生态关系“恶化”而导致人的贫困。生态贫困是指人类因“生态”致因而无法从自然中获取必需的生存和发展资源陷于贫困状态中。它主要分为环境退化型、自然灾变型、能力脆弱型和行为后果型等四种生态贫困类型。生态扶贫要消除的是生态贫困。     

Old-age Pensions in Spain: Recent Reforms and Some of Their Consequences for the Risk of Poverty

The starting point of this study is based on the supposition that the successive reforms carried out on the Spanish system of old‐age pensions since the 1980s have altered both the intergenerational distribution of income and the risk of poverty for the elderly. The article will first outline how demographic factors and personal incomes affect the risk of poverty among the elderly. The second part focuses attention on the mediating role played by the social security system in the distribution of intergenerational income, and underlines how the adoption of a longitudinal viewpoint of the intergenerational positions helps us to understand the development of the risk of poverty among the elderly. The third part describes in brief the successive reforms that were carried out on the Spanish regime of retirement pensions. Finally, an analysis of the evolution of the personal incomes of the elderly and younger generations has been made, based on the data collected by the European Community Household Panel from 1994 to 2001. This analysis suggests that the reforms have increased the risk of poverty among the over‐60s owing to a combination of two factors. On the one hand, there has been an increasing tendency among the over‐60s to stop working completely, which has reduced job earnings especially for men aged between 60 and 70. Even more important has been the failure of public pensions to keep pace with the increase in the standard of living, though it is true that they have helped maintain the average purchasing power of the less well‐off old‐age pensioners.     

Small area estimation of poverty indicators

The authors propose to estimate nonlinear small area population parameters by using the empirical Bayes (best) method, based on a nested error model. They focus on poverty indicators as particular nonlinear parameters of interest, but the proposed methodology is applicable to general nonlinear parameters. They use a parametric bootstrap method to estimate the mean squared error of the empirical best estimators. They also study small sample properties of these estimators by model‐based and design‐based simulation studies. Results show large reductions in mean squared error relative to direct area‐specific estimators and other estimators obtained by “simulated” censuses. The authors also apply the proposed method to estimate poverty incidences and poverty gaps in Spanish provinces by gender with mean squared errors estimated by the mentioned parametric bootstrap method. For the Spanish data, results show a significant reduction in coefficient of variation of the proposed empirical best estimators over direct estimators for practically all domains. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 38: 369–385; 2010 © 2010 Statistical Society of Canada     

The Historical Development of Family Budget Standards in Britain,from the 17th Century to the Present

This article reviews the British tradition of research into household budget standards and describes a rich history of theoretical and methodological innovation in the social sciences. The origins of this enterprise lie in hypothetical family budget calculations made by political arithmeticians investigating living standards in the 1600s. Systematic budget inquiries emerge in England in the 1790s and by the end of the 19th century, normative standards are applied to determine lines of poverty across sections of British society. The first ‘scientific’ study to do this was conducted in England in 1912, local budget surveys flourish here until after the Second World War; by which time poverty researchers were abandoning them, turning instead to the data which was becoming available from national government surveys of family income and expenditure. Towards the close of the century, however, we see researchers trying to escape some of the circularity posed by family spending, which is, after all, constrained by household income. New and competing methods for determining household budget standards emerge before a groundbreaking inquiry attempts to establish a consensus in the field of minimum income standards research.