Partial Identification of Economic Mobility: With an Application to the United States

Abstract

The economic mobility of individuals and households is of fundamental interest. While many measures of economic mobility exist, reliance on transition matrices remains pervasive due to simplicity and ease of interpretation. However, estimation of transition matrices is complicated by the well-acknowledged problem of measurement error in self-reported and even administrative data. Existing methods of addressing measurement error are complex, rely on numerous strong assumptions, and often require data from more than two periods. In this article, we investigate what can be learned about economic mobility as measured via transition matrices while formally accounting for measurement error in a reasonably transparent manner. To do so, we develop a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound transition probabilities under various assumptions on the measurement error and mobility processes. This approach is applied to panel data from the United States to explore short-run mobility before and after the Great Recession.     

Child Care “Packaging” Among TANF Recipients: Implications for Social Work

This article reports the results of a study that examined the ways in which current and recent TANF recipients assembled or “packaged” their child care arrangements among formal and informal providers. The findings are drawn from in-person, in-depth interviews with current and former welfare recipients. The study found that most of the respondents used multiple providers within the category of informal child care for reasons including availability, the use of a network of social acquaintances as a problem-solving resource, the need to accommodate irregular work hours, and personal trauma that contributed to a distrust of strangers in formal settings. The findings can affect the efficacy of practice with TANF recipients by contributing to social workers’ understanding of the context of decision-making regarding child care.     

Role of informal sector recycling in waste management in developing countries

Many thousands of people in developing country cities depend on recycling materials from waste for their livelihoods. With the focus of the Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction, and of waste strategies on improving recycling rates, one of the major challenges in solid waste management in developing countries is how best to work with this informal sector to improve their livelihoods, working conditions and efficiency in recycling.The general characteristics of informal recycling are reviewed, highlighting both positive and negative aspects. Despite the health and social problems associated with informal recycling, it provides significant economic benefits that need to be retained. Experience shows that it can be highly counterproductive to establish new formal waste recycling systems without taking into account informal systems that already exist. The preferred option is to integrate the informal sector into waste management planning, building on their practices and experience, while working to improve efficiency and the living and working conditions of those involved. Issues associated with integrating informal recycling into the formal waste management sector are discussed.     

农民合作社的反脆弱性及其贫困治理能力

农民合作社作为农村发展的重要经济载体,其反脆弱性在农村贫困治理领域具有不可忽视的作用。 在联结农民个体、聚拢闲散资源方面,农民合作社是重要抓手:一方面,通过把单个的农民集合起来,增加农民群体共同抵御社会风险的能力,提高农民群体面对市场经济带来的不确定性和不稳定性的抗逆力;另一方面,农民合作社发挥实体平台作用,将农村较为优良的资源聚集起来,发挥资源整合效应,提高农村优质资源的利用率,提高农产品的市场竞争力,降低农产品的市场交易成本,提高农产品的市场占有率。 文章剖析农民合作社社员在组织能力、管理能力、自我发展能力等方面的反脆弱性,探讨农民合作社在整合经济、社会以及文化等资源方面的反脆弱性发展,进而论述在农村反贫困战略中,农民合作社的贫困治理能力。 农民合作社的反脆弱性,为其参与贫困治理提供了可能性,其反脆弱性发展为农村贫困治理增加了可及性,农民合作社的贫困治理能力日趋提高。     

异质性视角下中国农村居民减贫效应研究——基于FGT贫困指数的分解新方法

在我国即将完成脱贫攻坚背景下,异质性在居民减贫并防返贫进程中逐渐起到关键作用。本文通过反事实分析法将收入分布变迁分解为均值、方差以及残差三种变化,进而将其引入贫困分解中,对我国农村及区域贫困进行分解。研究表明,引入收入分布变迁贫困分解结果具有稳健性,且农村居民收入增长效应与离散效应存在非对称性,提高收入已不足以弥补收入差距扩大带来的贫困加深效应,而异质效应和离散效应间存在对称性,居民异质性在减贫进程中逐渐起到关键作用。同时从区域视角看,东部区域异质效应减贫效果明显高于增长效应;中部区域增长效应和异质效应均具有显著减贫效果;而西南区域增长效应的减贫效果最显著。     

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Differential predictors of academic achievement: individual and familial factor interactions with community poverty

We present an analysis of the contexts within which adolescents graduate from high school and enroll in college. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that adolescents’ school engagement, maternal academic monitoring, and community poverty significantly interact to explain differences in high school graduation and college enrollment rates (n?=?7100). To examine this association, we performed weighted logistic regression analyses, controlling for gender, race, block level unemployment, and block level median income. Findings suggest that protective factors can help youth overcome the challenges associated with community poverty and achieve academically in low and medium levels of poverty, but that youth in high-poverty contexts may need more resources to reach higher levels of academic attainment.     

Understanding care for the poor in rural Russia

The issues surrounding care and care-provision have been key themes in social scientific research, yet the intersections between care and poverty, particularly in rural contexts, have not been sufficiently explored. This paper addresses this gap by studying care for the poor in rural Russia. It argues that isolated, disengaged and decontextualised caring interventions often ignore situated possibilities and traditions of care and overlook what matters to poor people. To overcome this problem, the paper uses 20 and 22 dwelling approach to prioritise a relational framework that focuses on care as concern, solicitude and possibilities for supportive action in the context of rural Russia. Using examples from fieldwork in two Russian villages, the paper stresses the constitutive role of non-representable practices of care which provide the ontological basis for recognising and understanding the worldviews and coping practices of the poor. It concludes with conceptual observations about alternative approaches to care, relations to others and responsibility for the rural poor.     

Older people and poverty in rural Britain: Material hardships,cultural denials and social inclusions

This paper explores the relations between older people, poverty and place in rural Britain. It develops previous work on rural poverty that has pointed both to the significance of older people within the rural poor population and to their denials of poverty. The paper also connects with recent discussions on the complexity of relations between poverty and social exclusion in later life, as well as key themes emerging from studies of older people in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Drawing on findings from a survey of 4000 households in rural Wales and interviews with older people in poverty in three rural places, the paper provides a detailed examination of the materialities and experiences of poverty among older people in rural places. In particular, it highlights how older poor groups construct their lives in complex terms with references made to both social inclusions and exclusions. The research also points to the significance of the socio-cultural contexts of place in shaping older people's understandings of poverty in rural areas.     

Endless Pressure: Life on a Low Income in Austere Times

Much has been written that details the decline in living standards following the ‘credit crunch’ in the UK. It remains that we understand to a lesser degree the lived reality of poverty through the Great Recession and into the era of austerity. This article draws on testimonies of 62 participants from low income households conducted in three different areas of the UK during 2012–13 to document the pressures that this period brought to bear on these households. According to these testimonies, the experience of poverty intensified in key respects: first, participants reported feeling, more than ever before, that they were ‘existing, rather than living’ due to the meagre budgets they were forced to live on; second, the precarious nature of work and social security contributed to a sense of insecurity that was all pervasive in our participants' lives; third, due to the pejorative political rhetoric and media coverage of poverty, our participants felt that their lives were placed under increased scrutiny which deleteriously impacted their wider relationships and sense of belonging. Our analysis demonstrates the profound consequences for those living on low incomes of the continued shift to residual forms of state welfare and the increased reliance on the ‘Big Society’ as a means to deal with the pressures identified in this article.