基于显著性检测和超像素分割的本色织物疵点检测系统

基于中国家庭追踪调查2014—2018年数据,从收入不平等视角考察了数字普惠金融对城乡居民相对贫困的影响及机制。研究发现,数字普惠金融指数每增加1%,居民发生相对贫困的概率降低32%,数字普惠金融有效缓解了个体的相对剥夺状况,原因在于数字普惠金融发展提高了家庭风险管理能力、缓解了融资约束、并促使家庭社会资本拓展。研究也发现,数字普惠金融对贫困的缓解效应也存在城乡群体和年龄群体的差异。因此,让数字赋能扶贫,是治理相对贫困的有效途径。     

中国城镇居民收入分配演变趋势考察——基于不平等和两极分化的分析

控制收入分配差距、调整收入分配格局是构建和谐社会的一个主要目标。根据城镇居民收入分配数据,在对收入分配极化测度和估算方法进行介绍的基础上,从收入流动性角度分析了中国城镇居民收入分配的演变趋势。结果表明,1995-2008年间我国城镇居民收入分配的两极分化指数不断扩大,但是,由于这一过程中低收入群体所占收入比例下降,中、高收入群体所占收入比例上升,收入分配并未表现出明显的两极分化趋势。然而,不断扩大的两极分化指数仍表明,政府不仅需要关注如何提高居民收入水平,还需防范居民收入差距的拉大。     

我国中东部地区经济发展差距的实证研究

本文对我国中东部地区经济发展差距的原因进行实证研究。首先选取泰尔系数作为衡量中东部地区经济差异的测度指标,计算了1978-2009年我国中东部地区经济发展差距的具体数据,并通过折线图,呈现了改革开放32年来我国中东部地区经济发展差距的变化趋势。其次,为研究中东部经济发展差距的深层次原因,本文选择了财政分权制度,市场化进程,对外开放程度这三项政策变量作为经济指标与中东部经济发展差距进行相关性分析。最后,根据实证研究结果,针对中部地区的发展现状和所面临的具体问题,重点提出了三项促进中部崛起的战略思考和建议,具有积极的现实意义。     

Judgment of distributional inequality in networks

Why is income inequality perceived and judged differently across a society? Following the social comparison theory, one reasonable explanation suggests that individuals are exposed to different local reference groups in social networks. We design a vignette experiment to study how income distributions are judged by individuals structured in networks. The experiment shows that perceptions of distributional inequality are high when network ties are unequally distributed across individuals, suggesting that network inequality contributes to distributional inequality. Beyond the network effect, inequality judgment is found to be driven by a mix of self-interest and other-regarding preference: people are in favor of group-beneficial income distributions wherein they rank high, but not extremely high, in the group. It shows that people care about not only their relative affluence, but also where others stand in the distribution.     

Improving the measurement of child welfare in the context of intra-household inequality

This study aims to illustrate how to improve the evaluation of child economic well-being and child poverty using the collective approach. International organisations such as the World Bank, OECD and UNICEF have made important efforts in recent years to produce reliable data and to measure poverty according to the most relevant items of household consumption baskets. However, when measuring poverty, it is common practice to assume either that resources are distributed equally within the household or that there are fixed equivalence scales (for example, a child can be counted as 0.5 adults). The methodology based on collective models of consumption overcomes this rigidity by allowing inequality within each household to be taken into account. The method assumes that each household devotes a fraction of resources to children, which can be estimated using the observed expenditure on child-exclusive goods. An example of how child poverty measures can be inaccurately estimated is illustrated through the case of young children in Albania.     

The Impact of Intersecting Dimensions of Inequality and Identity on the Racial Status of Eastern African Immigrants1

In this article, we examine how immigrants from eastern Africa to the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area understand and navigate the U.S. color line and its implications for nonwhites. Although these immigrants are subject to constraints based on their racial status as black, they mobilize other intersecting aspects of their identities to manipulate racial classifications in the hopes of attaining upward mobility in the United States, even when doing so creates other social costs for them. Eastern African immigrants draw on their ethnicity and, among Muslim immigrants, their religion to differentiate themselves from African Americans, who occupy the lowest position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. In challenging their categorization as racially black and seeking to move up the racial hierarchy, Eastern African immigrants refine the color line to distinguish between African‐American blacks and non‐African‐American blacks.     

Mapping the literature on child marriage: A critical engagement

U.S. “child marriage”—marriage including at least one person under the age of 18—is legal and practiced in 44 states. In this article, I map the existing literature on child marriage and offer insights on how child marriage can expand our sociological understandings of marriage, gender inequality, and youth sexualities. Social scientists have almost exclusively focused on child marriage in the Global South at the expense of understanding child marriage in the Global North, which I argue reinforces racist and xenophobic narratives that cast child marriage as a non-Western social problem. The research on U.S. child marriage that does exist focuses on the consequences, rather than the causes, of child marriage, which may shift focus away from a structural understanding of how intersecting inequalities shape girls' likelihood of getting married as minors. I position a sociology of U.S. child marriage at the intersection of sociological understandings of marriage and gender inequality and critical research on youth sexualities. I conclude by calling for intersectional research on U.S. child marriage that builds on these literatures, examining how girls' sexualities are racialized, gendered, and classed within the institution of marriage.     

Piketty comes to South Africa

One of the most valuable features of Capital and Ideology is its concern to take history seriously and consider how the emergence of different political and economic regimes relate to discourses about fairness and justice across time. This paper pushes this agenda further by acknowledging that the experience of a few developed nations should not be taken as the template for the generalized study of inequality dynamics across time and space. In this paper, we interrogate Piketty's analysis and policy proposals against specificities that are central to understanding the production and reproduction of inequalities within South Africa. We reflect on the South African case, the structure of inequality and its changes since 1994. We review a battery of policy interventions that have been implemented to address inequality in the last 25 years. We emphasize that the long shadow cast by centuries of colonialism and various forms of apartheid strongly affirm Piketty's emphasis on understanding history. But this is both affirmation and critique given the foundational, imbedded impact that this specific legacy has had on post‐apartheid society and its policies. Piketty is aware that the levels of inequality in South Africa are so high that this is “unknown territory.” We map out some of this territory to reveal how these extreme initial wealth and racial inequities inform the reproduction of inequalities in all dimensions and undermine well intentioned policies. We claim that understanding extractive histories, imbedded wealth inequalities, and complex social and political institutions allows us to understand and confront some of the reasons why even in light of progressive policies, many of which are in line with the proposals from Piketty, government interventions have thus far failed to reduce inequality.