Flood Risk Management: Exploring the Impacts of the Community Rating System Program on Poverty and Income Inequality

Flooding remains a major problem for the United States, causing numerous deaths and damaging countless properties. To reduce the impact of flooding on communities, the U.S. government established the Community Rating System (CRS) in 1990 to reduce flood damages by incentivizing communities to engage in flood risk management initiatives that surpass those required by the National Flood Insurance Program. In return, communities enjoy discounted flood insurance premiums. Despite the fact that the CRS raises concerns about the potential for unevenly distributed impacts across different income groups, no study has examined the equity implications of the CRS. This study thus investigates the possibility of unintended consequences of the CRS by answering the question: What is the effect of the CRS on poverty and income inequality? Understanding the impacts of the CRS on poverty and income inequality is useful in fully assessing the unintended consequences of the CRS. The study estimates four fixed‐effects regression models using a panel data set of neighborhood‐level observations from 1970 to 2010. The results indicate that median incomes are lower in CRS communities, but rise in floodplains. Also, the CRS attracts poor residents, but relocates them away from floodplains. Additionally, the CRS attracts top earners, including in floodplains. Finally, the CRS encourages income inequality, but discourages income inequality in floodplains. A better understanding of these unintended consequences of the CRS on poverty and income inequality can help to improve the design and performance of the CRS and, ultimately, increase community resilience to flood disasters.     

Caste and Distributive Justice: Can Social Policy Address Durable Inequalities?

This article examines the impact of social policy interventions on caste inequalities. The article accepts the proposition by Charles Tilly that durable inequalities are entrenched solutions while addressing organizational problems of society. The political economy approach to caste enables us to understand how the discriminatory practices around caste are durable. The article examines two types of social policies set up to deal with caste discrimination. The first type of policies are particularistic policies which directly address the concerns of the members of the depressed castes. The second type of policies are aimed at the general population, but from which a large number of depressed caste members benefit. The article concludes that both types of policies have only an ameliorative function rather than an emancipation role. It is argued here that ‘social policy’ in the context of durable inequality requires redefinition to include political interventions. The administrative view of social policy focuses heavily on the state, and in the context of durable inequality, the legitimacy of the state itself is in question. On the other hand, mobilization around politics addresses the organizational anomaly of the society, which is at the root of durable inequality.     

The Relationship Among Body Mass,Wealth, and Inequality Across the BMI Distribution: Evidence From Nineteenth-Century Prison Records

Nineteenth-century U.S. Black and White body mass indexes (BMIs) were distributed symmetrically; neither wasting nor obesity was common. BMI values were also greater for Blacks than for Whites. During industrialization in the nineteenth century in the United States, there was a negative relationship between BMIs and average state-level wealth and an inverse relationship between BMI and wealth inequality. After controlling for wealth and inequality, rural agricultural farmers had greater BMI values than their urban counterparts in other occupations.     

Race,Language, or Length of Residency? Explaining Unequal Uptake of Government Pensions in Canada

Canada’s old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for seniors. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. Our findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency, and visible minority status, disputing claims of “universal” OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong “immigrant effect,” with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS utilization. They also confirm that those not proficient in Canada’s official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of racialized minority status is found to be spurious; after controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racialized minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. We conclude with a brief discussion of the tradeoffs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada.     

Discretizing a compound distribution with application to categorical modelling

Many probability distributions can be represented as compound distributions. Consider some parameter vector as random. The compound distribution is the expected distribution of the variable of interest given the random parameters. Our idea is to define a partition of the domain of definition of the random parameters, so that we can represent the expected density of the variable of interest as a finite mixture of conditional densities. We then model the mixture probabilities of the conditional densities using information on population categories, thus modifying the original overall model. We thus obtain specific models for sub-populations that stem from the overall model. The distribution of a sub-population of interest is thus completely specified in terms of mixing probabilities. All characteristics of interest can be derived from this distribution and the comparison between sub-populations easily proceeds from the comparison of the mixing probabilities. A real example based on EU-SILC data is given. Then the methodology is investigated through simulation.     

The Politics of Regional Inequality in Ghana: State Elites,Donors and PRSPs

Through an analysis of Ghana's HIPC Fund which was established as part of the PRSP process, this article shows how aid‐financed efforts to reduce regional inequality in Ghana have failed. Dominant political elites agreed to policies reducing regional inequality in order to have access to aid funding but, once approved, these funds were allocated on quite different criteria in ways that marginalised the poorest. This analysis reinforces the growing recognition that developmental outcomes in most poor countries are shaped not so much by the design of ‘good’ policies per se, but more importantly by the power relationships within which policy‐implementing institutions are embedded. Aid donors seem unable to grasp this important lesson fully, and so their capacity to contribute to reducing regional inequality remains limited.     

Tests for exponentiality against NBUE alternatives: a Monte Carlo comparison

Testing of various classes of life distributions has been addressed in the literature for more than 45 years. In this paper, we consider the problem of testing exponentiality (which essentially implies no ageing) against positive ageing which is captured by the fairly large class of new better than used in expectation (NBUE) distributions. These tests of exponentiality against NBUE alternatives are discussed and compared. The empirical size of the tests is obtained by simulations. Power comparisons for different popular alternatives are done using Monte Carlo simulations. These comparisons are made for both small and large sample sizes. The paper concludes with a discussion in which suggestions are made regarding the choices of the test when a particular alternative is suspected.     

Does educational inequality predict exercise of users' choice? Survey evidence from domiciliary care services among elderly in Oslo,Norway

The traditional goal of equality in services remains at the heart of the Scandinavian welfare model; however, in recent decades, policymakers have also placed increased emphasis on user influence over services. Voice and choice are two channels to achieve this goal. The possibility to give feedback and voicing dissatisfaction to service providers (voice) is a well-established channel of service users' influence, however it is increasingly supplemented by user choice schemes (choice), where one can choose between different public and private service providers. We use the case of domiciliary care for the elderly to examine how the traditional goal of user equality is associated with the growing emphasis on user influence through voice and choice. The analyses are based on user surveys carried out by the municipality in the city of Oslo, which is arguably the only municipality in Norway where user choice plays a significant role in elderly care. Since the municipality subsidizes the private providers, individual economic resources should have less relevance. However, voicing dissatisfaction and choosing between different providers may anticipate cognitive resources that are not equally distributed among the users. The survey data indicate that there is an association between level of education and propensity to exploit all channels of user influence. Expanding user influence by introducing user choice thus confirms the differences between highly educated and less educated.     

Who Is Poorest? An Asset‐based Analysis of Multidimensional Wellbeing

Recent studies have endorsed asset‐based approaches as a strategy for attaining the Millennium Development Goals. This article discusses asset indices as a diagnostic tool for these policies, systematically breaking them down into separate dimensions of private household wealth and basic public‐goods access and discussing how shortfalls in public‐goods supply can be related to deprivations in basic human capabilities under the asset framework. It then illustrates how asset indices can be used for the targeting of public infrastructure investments and private asset‐accumulation policies, with the help of a detailed case study of deprivations in household wealth and public‐service supply in Madagascar.