Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor,c. 1670–1834

The consumer behaviour of the poor in the long eighteenth century has attracted more historical attention in recent years. Yet, we have little understanding of whether regional factors affected consumption or how the poor’s ownership of household goods was influenced by level of poverty and the life-cycle. By focusing on Kent and drawing comparisons to other counties, this article argues that the material lives of the poor were improving by the late eighteenth century, but finds that there were distinct regional differences as the poor acquired more and better goods in London and the Home Counties than in relatively remote areas. Moreover, by using pauper inventories and labourers’ probate inventories, the research finds that the poor were not a homogeneous group with similar levels of material wealth, but should be considered in terms of different subgroups which often led very different material lives to one another due to life-cycle-related problems including sickness and old age. Labourers’ probate inventories are found to represent a minority of the poor who were materially richer than most, whilst pauper inventories appear to represent a more typical subgroup of the poor that struggled to make do and owned most types of goods in smaller numbers.     

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.     

“每事务于宽厚”的汉章帝

“每事务于宽厚”的汉章帝曹金华汉章帝刘但，是东汉第三代继世令主，也是以＊宽厚长者”著称的封建帝王。在他统治时期，曾一反光武、明帝之“严切”政治，实行了“每事务于宽厚”①的政策。虽然其在位仅十三年，但这一政策却对东汉政权产生了重大而深远的影响。因此颇有...     

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.     

用Powell法求颗粒尺寸分布

本文用最优化理论中的Powell直接法求激光粒度仪中的颗粒尺寸分布。数值模拟及对标准颗粒的实测表明,该算法的计算精度高,能较好地解决粒度仪通常存在的计算结果随初始设定值变化的多值性问题。     

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。     

Who governs or how they govern: Testing the impact of democracy,ideology and globalization on the well being of the poor

This paper examines the effects of regime type, government ideology and economic globalization on poverty in low- and middle-income countries around the world. We use panel regression to estimate the effect of these explanatory variables on two different response variables: national poverty gap (104 countries from 1981 to 2005) and child mortality rate (132 countries from 1976 to 2005). We find consistent and significant results for the interactive effect of democracy and government ideology: strong leftist power under a democratic regime is associated with a reduction in both the poverty gap and the child mortality rate. Democracy, on its own, is associated with a lower child mortality rate, but has no effect on the poverty gap. Leftist power under a non-democratic regime is associated with an increase in both poverty measures. Trade reduces both measures of poverty. Foreign direct investment has a weak and positive effect on the poverty gap. From examining factors that influence the welfare of poor people in less developed countries, we conclude that who governs is as important as how they govern.     

Exact sample size determination in a weibull test plan when there is time censoring

Engineers who conduct reliability tests need to choose the sample size when designing a test plan. The model parameters and quantiles are the typical quantities of interest. The large-sample procedure relies on the property that the distribution of the t -like quantities is close to the standard normal in large samples. In this paper, we use a new procedure based on both simulation and asymptotic theory to determine the sample size for a test plan. Unlike the complete data case, the t -like quantities are not pivotal quantities in general when data are time censored. However we show that the distribution of the t -like quantities only depend on the expected proportion failing and obtain the distributions by simulation for both complete and time censoring case when data follow Weibull distribution. We find that the large-sample procedure usually underestimates the sample size even when it is said to be 200 or more. The sample size given by the proposed procedure insures the requested nominal accuracy and confidence of the estimation when the test plan results in complete or time censored data. Some useful figures displaying the required sample size for the new procedure are also presented.     

Constructing poverty in anti-welfare Singapore

In recent years, attention on the issue of poverty in Singapore has been increasingly placed in the spotlight. This study examines the various types of attitudes among Singaporeans and how they are formed, relating them to the broader institutional context of Singapore. A mixed method design is employed where clusters or groups of attitudes are derived through the use of cluster analysis. Subsequently, discourses of poverty and welfare attitudes are construed through qualitative interviews with the aid of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Quantitative findings point to three clusters of attitudes: ‘Conservatives’, ‘Liberals’, and ‘Sui Generis’. Qualitative findings, however, show that ‘Sui Generis’ ultimately align themselves closer to either ‘Conservatives’ or ‘Liberals’ in their discourses of welfare. In fact, respondents in all three clusters reproduce state discourses, albeit in varying ways. In essence, this study explicates poverty and welfare attitudes as a product of social identities premised on subjective notions that are shaped by state discourses of meritocracy, self-reliance and anti-welfarism. It is thus argued that current socio-political constructions of poverty ensue a paucity of major welfare reform in the near future of Singapore.