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This paper studies educational aspirations and grade achievements of teenagers in India, using Structural Equation Modelling with data from the Young Lives Study. The analysis differentiates direct effects of relevant socio-economic and individual characteristics on educational output from indirect effects through aspirations. In this sample, some student characteristics – parents' education, mothers' caste and the student's gender – have no direct effect on educational output, but an indirect effect on educational aspirations going through abilities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and in particular girls, are at a disadvantage at age 12 because they have accumulated lower cognitive abilities. Abilities shape aspirations, which then impact educational output beyond the mere effect of abilities. Girls are at a double disadvantage: besides lower average skills at age 12, they developed lower aspirations than boys of the same characteristics. The economic situation of the household was neither directly nor indirectly related with students' achievements in school. These results help distinguish aspirations as drivers of behaviour from aspirations as correlates of other characteristics, and they have relevant policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the impact of neighborhood effects on individuals' socioeconomic integration in two peripheral shanty-towns and in three favelas located in Brazil. In the peripheral São João do Cabrito, the individuals' embeddedness in a homogeneously poor region fosters their social isolation; yet, in Fazenda Grande II/Jaguaripe I, the population's socioeconomic heterogeneity attenuates neighborhood effects. The individuals' functional integration vis-à-vis their wealthy surroundings declines toward the periphery of their neighborhood, their chances of integration being conditioned by the shared use of public space, and the surrounding gated communities' degree of spatial isolation. We discuss three mechanisms that explain neighborhood effects: changes in the support structures, the impact of crime, and territorial stigmatization. We conclude that individuals' chances of integration mainly depend on the spatial distribution of employment and urban services, rather than on their proximity to affluent neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much research examines the challenges facing labor empowerment efforts, less work considers the role marketing could play in the revitalization of labor movements. In this paper, we reframe the challenges faced by labor movements as marketing problems. We then draw from several theoretical perspectives to examine the barriers that affect public awareness of labor issues, and the public’s willingness to support policies and practices beneficial to workers. The paper concludes with a research agenda to guide scholars interested in this area of research, as well as nonprofits, government agencies, advocates, and social marketers looking to encourage public support for labor movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using microsimulations this paper analyzes the poverty and tax implications of replacing current transfers and subsidies by a budget-neutral (no change in the fiscal deficit) universal basic income program (UBI) in Brazil, Chile, India, Russia, and South Africa. We consider three UBI transfers with increasing levels of generosity and identify scenarios in which the poor are no worse off than in the baseline scenario of existing social transfers. We find that for poverty levels not to increase under a UBI reform, the level of spending must increase substantially with respect to the baseline. Accordingly, the required increase in tax burdens is high throughout. We find that the increase in the average tax rate that would be consistent with not hurting the poor is almost universally above 30%, limiting the feasibility of a UBI reform due to political resistance and efficiency costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of the 'residualisation' of social housing, in terms of residents' income, employment status and class relative to the rest of the population, is one of the best known trends of the housing system in the UK and in many other nations over the past half century. The idea of residualisation and the presumption of its inevitability have become widely accepted, and formed a negative frame for social housing policy. However Pearce and Vine (2014) have shown that in terms of income, the residualisation of social housing in England stopped in 1991. This paper confirms and extends that work using multiple published data sources. These show consistent evidence of convergence over the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s between social tenants and the English national averages in terms of not only income but also employment status and class. Potential explanations, including the restructuring of housing markets, demographic change, and changing labour markets, are briefly explored. Most recently, there some signs that deresidualisation itself may have stopped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional concentration of poverty and the resulting disparities in living conditions create conditions where educational inequalities are intensified. These adverse conditions could lead teachers to refuse to work in disadvantaged locations that are characterised by high incidences of poverty and low-performing students. In this paper, we estimate how poverty in the districts where the schools are situated influences the probability that teachers accept a job offer in Costa Rica. Working with data on contract offers acceptance or rejection is a methodological novelty that makes it possible to dissociate students' poverty from the poverty of the schools' location. The estimation of a three‐level hierarchical model allows us to deal with aggregation bias and unobserved heterogeneity. The results show evidence that district poverty is a key determinant of teachers' rejection of offers. Although the study uses data from Costa Rica, the results indicate more generally, how educational inequity can perpetuate poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing the gender gap in poverty remains a priority for South African policymakers. Using the 2018 General Households Survey (GHS), this paper examines gendered multidimensional poverty in post-apartheid South Africa. The analyses draw on Alkire-Foster multidimensional poverty methodology to present multidimensional poverty measures for men and women. The dimensions and indicators used in this paper are slightly adapted to reflect the socioeconomic realities and circumstances that are unique to South African households and individuals. The results show a persistence in multidimensional poverty among women, as the magnitudes of multidimensional poverty measures remain higher for women than for men. Further findings show that the economic activity and health dimensions contribute substantially to poverty among men and women. Notably, contributions of unemployment and the presence of chronic disease(s) indicators for gendered multidimensional poverty are more considerable for women than for men. In order to further reduce gendered poverty, this paper recommends strengthening a social policy review that strongly promotes more job creation, health-enhancing interventions and potent 'gender sensitive' ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare state transformation has resulted in the expansion of private associations and the increased role of religious charities. In the context of the austerity crisis, the paper addresses how Caritas volunteers in an impoverished urban area in southern Italy deal with the bureaucratisation of resource distribution in face of increasing demands of 'aid'. The categorisation of poverty by welfare agents and the moral evaluations that underlie volunteers' approach to 'the new poor' provide insights to the explanatory frameworks they articulate in order to make sense of their compensatory role in the face of scarcer welfare state provisions. The paper highlights the linkages of formal and informal circuits in charity initiatives in order to analyse the interplay between procedural and moral definitions of poverty. It shows how volunteers adjust to the transfer of the responsibility to care from welfare state to charity and finally how they make sense of social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a long period in the doldrums with austerity measures and consecutive bailouts, Greece still bears the scars of the recent financial adventure while strives to recover in a new economic environment. As one of the hardest-hit by the economic crisis Member states, Greece has seen its economic capacity reduced, the unemployment and poverty levels rising, and the living conditions for a significant part of the population and social groups deteriorating. Despite the plethora of analyses on the political and socio-economic perspectives, the evolution of social vulnerability remains a largely unexplored area that merits further investigation and analysis in a crisis-ridden country of the European South. The paper aims to study how social vulnerability has evolved in Greece from 2008 to 2017 using secondary data and descriptive statistics that focus on five key variables (disposable income, education, employment, gender, urban/rural environment) for a better understanding of the domestic social vulnerability dynamics in a period of stark contrasts. Overall, our findings demonstrate an increased risk of social exclusion and a widening of inequality and poverty rates during the stated period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global narratives underscore that economic growth can often coincide with reductions in poverty and inequality. However, the experiences of several countries over recent decades confirm that inequality can widen or narrow in response to policy choices and independent of economic growth. This paper analyses five country cases, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Peru and Tanzania. These countries are the most successful in reducing inequality and poverty while growing robustly for at least a decade since the early 2000 s. The paper assesses how good macroeconomic management, sectoral reform, the strengthening of safety nets, responses to external shocks, and initial conditions all chip away at inequality and support broad growth. Sustained and robust economic growth with strong poverty and inequality reductions are possible across very different contexts and policy choices. The comparative analysis also identifies common building blocks toward success and warns that hard-earned achievements can be easily overturned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new index of multidimensional poverty, called the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which has three interesting features. First, it encompasses three dimensions: decent work, education and access to drinking water and sanitation, which largely overlap with the list of ideal dimensions obtained by expanding the Constitutional Approach, although it does not include direct health measures. Second, it uses a distribution-sensitive measure that can also be decomposed into the three poverty components: incidence, intensity and inequality. Finally, the G-CSPI is an individual-based, rather than household-based index, although restricted to individuals 15–65 years of age. It is thus able to detect intra-household differences in poverty among members within that age-range. To have a full picture of multidimensional poverty at the country level, it should then be complemented by specific poverty measures for children and the elderly. Being centred on individuals and sensitive to inequality, the G-CSPI is coherent with the overarching principle of the 2030 Agenda "leaving no one behind". Using recent estimates of the G-CSPI for 104 countries, the empirical analysis reveals that the index is highly robust to different specifications, and that, as expected, fragile countries experience the largest levels of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century London was notorious for overcrowding, poor housing, and heavy air pollution. With a large proportion of its population living in conditions of poverty, diseases flourished as people were increasingly drawn to the industrialising centres of England in search of employment opportunities. Utilising historical documentary and skeletal evidence, this paper explores the impact of increasing urbanisation on non-adult (those aged 0–17 years) health, particularly in relation to exposure to a multitude of infectious diseases in circulation during this time. Focusing on the community of St Bride's Church, London, it highlights the greater susceptibility of infants and children to risk of severe morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases, particularly amongst the lower classes. When considered against the socio-political, cultural and economic milieu of nineteenth-century London, this reveals how the multi-faceted process of urbanisation exacerbated ill-health, increased susceptibility to deadly infectious pathogens, and ultimately further marginalised its poorest inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the high levels of poverty and inequality in South Africa remains a central policy concern. In this regard, this paper uses a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) microsimulation approach to revisit the effects of taxing water pollution on poverty and inequality at the level of a river basin. We combined the commodity and factor price changes from a regional environmental CGE model, after introducing the water pollution tax, with household survey data from the 2012 National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS) to explain the welfare impacts. The result shows that the tax policy will in general have adverse impacts in terms of welfare, poverty, and inequality. However, the tax policy coupled with a supply-side compensatory measure such as subsidising water pollution abatement has the potential to reduce regional poverty and inequality as well as improve the ecological status of the river. Our finding has policy implications for national and regional water resource managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major learning about the social and economic losses that an external shock to the system can cause. In this paper, we examine some sustainability issues focusing on three key focal points of sustainable development – economic growth, poverty and inequality in the context of climate change. We focus on the inter-relationship between economic growth, investment, labour force participation, energy consumption, poverty and inequality under alternative scenarios using the global framing of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). An econometric model is used for estimating the relationship between GDP and its determinants along with fitting a General Quadratic and/or Beta Lorenz curve using the World Bank's Povcal software for determining the relationship between income, poverty and inequality. Alternative GDP growth paths, redistribution assumptions and poverty lines are used for simulations which reveal the extent of sensitivity of the developmental targets to scenarios up to 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using empirical data from three different community service learning (CSL) courses offered at a South African university, in this paper we discuss the promises and pitfalls of this pedagogy for meaningful change within communities. The paper makes visible the challenging contradictions of CSL as a practice seeking to promote social change and CSL as a form of charity or paternalism. Drawing on in-depth qualitative data collected from interviews with lecturers, focus groups with students involved in CSL and interviews and focus groups with community members who participated in CSL, we examine the interface between poverty, inequality and privilege that occurs when universities and poor communities endeavour to partner. We argue that CSL ought to promote social change through fostering a sense of agency, empowerment, sustainability and capabilities formation amongst students and within communities. However, when CSL course design (and resultant implementation) does not sufficiently take account of the complex relations of power and privilege, particularly in the context of extreme poverty in communities, CSL practice risks undermining the social transformation that it seeks to foster. We draw on the work of Davis and Wells [2016. “Transformation without Paternalism.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. doi:10.1080/19452829.2016.1145198] to propose procedural principles for democratic CSL design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses headway made by governments in Brazil, India, China and South Africa in pursuing three goals: reducing income poverty; reaching the poorest of the poor and reducing inequality. Outcomes vary as we move up the ladder from the first and easiest of these challenges to the third and most daunting. Then the definition of poverty is broadened to include severe shortage of opportunities, liberties and capabilities. The paper discusses how the four countries performed in ameliorating several human development indicators and in enhancing poor people’s ‘political capacity’, the lack of which is an important dimension of their poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Measures of consumption and poverty are critical metrics of the wellbeing of individuals, their households, communities, and countries. Collecting data on consumption and poverty is challenging and costly, and therefore these measures are only infrequently available in survey data. In this paper, we demonstrate how information commonly available in household surveys can be used to impute consumption, even recovering the original variance, which is crucial for assessments of poverty and inequality. Our application adds consumption estimates to the publicly available Labor Market Panel Surveys for Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, which can act as a valuable resource for researchers interested in the intersection of inequality, poverty, and a host of labor market behaviors in the Middle East and North Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enduring nature of the problem of inequality in education suggests that new ways of understanding and ameliorating it are needed. Nonrepresentational ontology is yielding new insights in other fields but is yet to gain traction in education. The requisite ontological shift would attend to inequality as a specific material effect of practices of knowing, rather than a social, natural, or discursive reality requiring representation. In this paper, we investigate the potential of such a shift to advance our fundamental commitment to social change through equity and justice. Drawing mainly upon the work of Karen Barad, we offer a reconceptualistion of educational inequality as a doing, not a thing, which becomes meaningful as it is defined by the circumstances required to measure it. We re-examine data collected during a recently completed longitudinal study of schools in the northern-rustbelt-suburbs of Adelaide, specifically the phenomenon of teaching literacy in the classrooms of two teachers in one school in our completed study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of poverty and inequality in post-war Rwanda. Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world, and has recently become one of the most unequal. High levels of poverty and inequality have important implications not only in terms of evaluations of social welfare, but also for management of social tensions and the propensity for violent conflict in the future. This paper uses the first two available and nationally representative rounds of household surveys –EICV1 2000 and EICV2 2005 – to decompose and identify the major ‘sources' of poverty and inequality in the country. I find stark differences in vulnerability to poverty by region, gender and widow status of the head of household. I additionally find important changes in the ‘income generating functions' of Rwandan households, and that distribution of land and financial assets are increasingly important in determining the inter-household distribution of income. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among countries with comparable levels of income, India has one of the more progressive disability policy frameworks. However, people with disabilities in India are still subject to multiple disadvantages. This paper focuses on state-level variations in outcomes for people with disabilities to provide an explanation for the contrast between the liberal laws on paper and the challenges faced by people with disabilities in practice. Using average monthly per-capita expenditure as an indicator of economic well-being, instrumental-variable Wald estimator results indicate that households with members with disabilities have expenditures that are 14% lower compared with households with able members. This effect is most pronounced among families with male adults and children with disabilities, and in states that are relatively poor, relatively more urban, those that experience extremes in annual rainfall and temperature, and those that have low to medium levels of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding barriers to access to essential health services is critical for devising effective strategies to improve access and align such strategies with national health and development policy objectives. However, while considerable empirical evidence exists on correlates of HIV prevalence and populations at risk of contracting HIV, there is very little such evidence on access to antiretroviral therapy. This paper addresses this gap through a cross-sectional analysis of coverage of antiretroviral therapy and its correlates across 47 counties in Kenya. It considers health-sector and social factors, and applying instrumental variables to address error-in-variables and reverse-causality issues regarding HIV prevalence. Poverty was the most robust and — statistically and substantially — significant determinant of treatment coverage. The gap in treatment coverage between the poorest and richest counties amounted to about 40 percentage points and has not narrowed between 2012 and 2015. Health sector capacities independently played a role and exacerbated the poverty gap. For Kenya, the results suggest that policies on expanding treatment access need to be differentiated across counties to greatest effect and to align the HIV/AIDS response with national health and social policy objectives. Regarding global HIV/AIDS policies, the findings suggest a need to recognise “people left behind” owing to socio-economic and specifically poverty-related barriers to access to services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on income inequality in a panel of 16 African countries from 1980 to 2013. We controlled for both non-linear effects and heterogeneity by using a Pooled Mean Group estimator. There is robust evidence that the relationship is non-linear and we document a U-shaped effect of FDI on inequality. The results reveal that FDI increases equality of distribution of income in the countries examined. However, this effect diminishes with further increases in FDI. Policy implications emanating from this study suggest that although FDI may be growth enhancing, FDI-induced growth may not necessarily translate into a reduction in inequality. FDI has to be structured in such way that the resulting skill-biased employed is mitigated. To address inequality, policy implications from this study imply that FDI has to target both ends of the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact assessment (SIA) addresses the ‘people aspect’ of development-induced change by empowering communities with a voice in the environmental impact assessment process. Globally, poverty and inequality is growing. Countries with emerging economies are especially affected, and SIA conducted within this context necessitates mitigation of both the direct impacts of particular developments as well as the social legacies that entrench poverty and inequality. Social development is an approach that can be used to reduce poverty and inequality. This paper analyses the practice of SIA and its potential to contribute to social development outcomes in emerging economies. SIA, as practised in South Africa, was analysed from the theoretical framework of social development using an exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The findings indicate that weak implementation of mitigation, monitoring and management measures dilute the potential for SIA to achieve social development outcomes. Through minor evolution of SIA practice, the process can lay a firm foundation to facilitate social development outcomes, especially considering its potential contribution to poverty reduction through the social protection floor, skills development and job creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent education inequality is a complex problem in the United States, and, despite efforts to promote equity, education performance and attainment remain highly related to characteristics of students' families, schools, and neighborhoods. Systemic interventions are designed to address complex problems through the identification and purposeful incorporation of knowledge from the multiple systems implicated in a problem. Although systemic intervention approaches are not widely reported in education, they have yielded positive effects in health and human services and are worth investigating in the education context. In this paper we review policy and research evidence related to education inequality and provide an agenda for designing and evaluating systemic interventions to reduce education inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality has acquired a newfound prominence in the academic and political debate. While scholars working with the capability approach (CA) have succeeded in influencing the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, which is increasingly understood in multidimensional terms, recent scholarship on inequality focusses overwhelmingly oneconomicforms of inequality, and especially on inequalities in income and wealth. In this paper, we outline how the conceptual framework of the CA (focussing on ends rather than means, multidimensionality, and recognising the value of freedoms as well as attained functionings) has the potential to enrich the study of distributional inequality through offering a rationale for why inequality matters, exploring the association between different forms of inequality, and providing an analysis of power. But applying the CA in the context of advantage exacerbates some existing challenges to the approach (defining a capability list, and the non-observability of capabilities) and brings some fresh ones (especially insensitivity at the top of the distribution). We recommend a stronger and clearer distinction between concepts and measures. Capability inequality is a more appropriate and potentially revealing conceptual apparatus, but economic resources are likely to remain a crucial metric for understanding distributional inequality for the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing costs have long been recognised as a factor contributing to poverty, and poverty researchers have estimated poverty using income before and after deducting housing costs. This paper examines the treatment of housing in the literatures on poverty and housing and applies the before and after housing costs approach to examine the extent of both poverty and income inequality in Australia and how they have changed since the early 2000s, focusing on the role of housing costs in the periods before and after the global financial crisis (GFC). Account has been taken of changes in the income measure used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its household income surveys as these have been shown to have a marked impact on empirical estimates. The findings indicate that taking account of housing costs leads to greater increases in both poverty and inequality between 2003–2004 and 2007–2008 and to smaller reductions in both since the GFC in 2007–2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Debate on what should follow the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2015 onwards has mushroomed. A focus on “ending” poverty (however defined) is likely to form a central part of the future framework. This paper discusses MDG 1, income poverty. Our paper is a commentary written to contribute to the set of papers in this special issue. In this paper we argue that there are, alongside valid rationales, important critiques of the targets and indicators selected for the income poverty goal from both the human development and human rights perspectives. These should be taken into account more fully in the debate on what should follow MDG 1 on income poverty reduction (and the implicit hierarchy of placing income poverty as the “first-among-equals” goal). We review the institutional history of the MDG income target along with the critiques, and present data trends to date and projections with regard to income poverty, as well as discussions on the relationship between and relevance of nationally set versus internationally set poverty lines and their use in any post-2015 UN agreement. We argue for the importance of national ownership and the incorporation of context-specific measures of poverty, and that any new poverty goals should be designed with political mobilization as a consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic transition due to population aging is an emerging trend throughout the developing world, and it is especially acute in China, which has undergone demographic transition more rapidly than have most industrial economies. This paper quantifies the distributional effects in the context of demographic transition using an integrated recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model with top-down behavioral microsimulation. The results of the poverty and inequality index indicate that population aging has a negative impact on the reduction of poverty while its impact is positive with regard to equality. In addition, elderly rural households are experiencing the most serious poverty, and their inequality problems compared with other household groups and within-group inequality worsen with demographic transition. These findings not only advance the previous literature but also deserve particular attention from Chinese policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies the spatial patterns of urban poverty and their change over time using state-level NSS data on consumer expenditures for the 61st (2004-05), 66th (2009-10), and 68th (2011-12) rounds and a class of decomposable poverty measures (Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Index). Further, state-specific new urban poverty lines (Tendulkar Methodology) based on consumption expenditures for both food and nonfood items have been employed to measure the incidence of urban poverty in each of the twenty-nine states. The analysis reveals that while urban poverty has declined considerably over the study periods both at national and state levels, there are distinct spatial concentrations, reflecting the phenomenon of urbanization of poverty and large spatial differences in consumption expenditures. There is clearly a heavy concentration of urban poverty in central and north-eastern states of India, such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur. Only the relatively prosperous north and north-western states have low urban-poverty levels in all periods. In the regression results, access to housing and sanitation emerge as the most important variables in explaining urban poverty in India over all study periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews experience in advancing Human Development (HD) since 1970 by investigating behaviour among countries that made the largest improvement in HD and those that made the least improvement. The paper provides evidence on a range of indicators for the three best (and worst) performers among high, medium and low HD countries. It identifies alternative combinations of variables associated with success and failure. It then reviews performance on a range of other dimensions of Human Development, including political rights, gender empowerment, societal stability and environmental sustainability and shows these are only weakly associated with performance on the Human Development Index (HDI). To illuminate historical, political and institutional factors associated with success and failure, the performance of six countries (four successful and two weak performers) are briefly reviewed—Bangladesh, Chile, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the linkage between poverty and inequality in malnutrition through decomposition analysis using data from the National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3) conducted in 2005-2006. Association between inequality in malnutrition and income inequality and poverty is observed at the state level. Inequality is analysed using the concentration index, which is further decomposed to identify the factors associated with inequality in malnutrition. Poverty, in terms of the wealth index, has considerable impact on average rates of malnutrition, indicating a disproportional burden of malnutrition on the poor. At the macro-economic level, overall socio-economic inequality correlates moderately with the inequality in malnutrition. On decomposition, poverty alone explains more than half of the inequality in malnutrition, which justifies the poverty-nutrition inequality linkage. The paper highlights the influence of poverty in worsening malnutrition, leading to unequal nutritional outcomes among children in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at a particular type of anti-poverty aid and its implications for gender inequality. The development model underpinning the Mexican Oportunidades Programme, a 'flagship' in Latin America, focuses on the reduction of inter-generational poverty through transfers conditioned on 'co-responsibilities' fulfilled especially by mothers and aimed at strengthening the human capital of household members. Through a consultant-insider narrative on the tension between this policy model and the actual lives of beneficiaries, the paper scrutinizes the delivery of the Programme in the light of the capabilities approach. Some case studies are then examined within this framework, assessing the position of women in each case by reviewing the state of their capabilities and resources. This exercise reveals social relationships obscured by the Programme's representations and assumptions of gender roles within families, pointing to a significant failure to address women's own needs by development schemes aimed at poverty rather than at inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary versions of globalization assume that market deregulation is the precursor to democratic development and the growth of livable cities. This paper examines the specific case of Viet Nam to describe how the creation and construction of cities in the developing world may be laying the foundations for future social inequality. Using a futures-oriented method, the paper reviews the development of urban poverty in North America during a period of rapid urban transition as a heuristic device for understanding some of the potentially unobservable, yet festering problems with the trajectory of development in Viet Nam. The paper uses the examples of new urban social institutions, residential and economic segregation, and the creation of 'new towns' to highlight the importance of new forms of local governance, as well the declining relevance of national authorities. The paper ends with a brief discussion of four 'ideological cages' that are likely to become increasingly constrictive to urban analysts as Vietnamese cities develop. Las versiones contemporaneas de la globalizacion asumen que la desregulacion del mercado es el precursor al desarrollo democratico y al crecimiento de ciudades habitables. Este articulo examina el caso especifico de Viet Nam para describir como la creacion y construccion de ciudades en el mundo subdesarrollado pueden haber puesto las bases para las desigualdades sociales futuras. Mediante un metodo orientado a futuros, el articulo revisa el desarrollo de la pobreza urbana en Norteamerica durante un periodo de rapida transicion urbana, como un componente heuristico para entender algunos de los problemas potencialmente inobservables, no obstante supurantes, con la trayectoria del desarrollo en Viet Nam. El articulo usa los ejemplos de nuevas instituciones sociales, la segregacion economica y la creacion de 'nuevas ciudades', para destacar la importancia de nuevas formas de gobierno local, como tambien la trascendencia decadente de las autoridades nacionales. El articulo termina con una breve discusion de cuatro 'jaulas ideologicas' que muy probablemente estan por llegar a ser progresivamente constrictivas a los analistas urbanos, a medida que se desarrollan las ciudades vietnamitas. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the implications for poverty measurement of the observed fact that any individual's level of deprivation is a function not only of his own income, but of the general level of prosperity of the group to which he is affiliated. Individual deprivation functions are specialized to a form that reflects this 'group-affiliation' externality, and the resulting poverty measure is studied with respect to its properties, and its implications for poverty rankings. Mainstream approaches to measuring deprivation tend to neglect group-related externalities in favour of a certain thorough-going 'individualism'. This paper is a preliminary attempt at filling this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Knowledge of the aggregate effects of multiple socioeconomic vulnerabilities is important for shedding light on the determinants of growing health inequalities and inequities in maternal healthcare. Objective: This paper describes patterns of inequity in maternal healthcare utilization and analyzes associations between inequity and multiple socioeconomic vulnerabilities among women in Vietnam. Design: This is a repeated cross-sectional study using data from the Vietnam Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys 2000, 2006, and 2011. Two maternal healthcare indicators were selected: (1) skilled antenatal care and (2) skilled delivery care. Four types of socioeconomic vulnerabilities -- low education, ethnic minority, poverty, and rural location -- were assessed both as separate explanatory variables and as composite indicators (combinations of three and four vulnerabilities). Pairwise comparisons and adjusted odds ratios were used to assess socioeconomic inequities in maternal healthcare. Results: In all three surveys, there were increases across the survey years in both the proportions of women who received antenatal care by skilled staff (68.6% in 2000, 90.8% in 2006, and 93.7% in 2011) and the proportions of women who gave birth with assistance from skilled staff (69.9% in 2000, 87.7% in 2006, and 92.9% in 2011). The receipt of antenatal care by skilled staff and birth assistance from skilled health personnel were less common among vulnerable women, especially those with multiple vulnerabilities. Conclusions: Even thoughVietnam has improved its coverage of maternal healthcare on average, policies should target maternal healthcare utilization among women with multiple socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Both multisectoral social policies and health policies are needed to tackle multiple vulnerabilities more effectively by identifying those who are poor, less educated, live in rural areas, and belong to ethnic minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief history of feminist contributions to the analysis of gender, poverty, and inequality in the field of international development. It draws out the continuous threads running through these contributions over the years, as the focus has moved from micro-level analysis to a concern with macro-level forces. It concludes with a brief note on some of the confusions and conflations that continue to bedevil attempts to explore the relationship between gender, poverty, and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the majority of poor people now living in middle-income countries and the postmillennium development goals framework taking shape, the issue of inequality has gained prominence in many policy debates. Although detailed assessments of poverty and well-being are crucial for formulating adequate policies, all too often such assessments focus on average outcomes. In this paper we present an analysis of child well-being for Kazakhstan that moves beyond averages in two ways: first, it explicitly reports on the situations of different socioeconomic groups of children in society; second, it applies a method that is diversified by age group and thereby accounts for differences among children across stages of childhood. Kazakhstan illustrates the need for more nuanced and in-depth analyses, given the significant but far from universal economic growth within the country. We find that there are large discrepancies in child well-being outcomes between different regions and that high levels of economic output do not necessarily go hand in hand with improved outcomes in terms of poverty and well-being. We argue that child well-being studies need to be more in depth, thereby ensuring that levels of inequity across socioeconomic groups and between children in different age groups are given due consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that poverty and inequality trends can diverge. It then discusses inequality trends and shows that, despite measurement issues, there is consensus that inequality is very high and has been rising over much of the post-transition period. Due to rising inequality within all groups, and particularly the black population, and lower inequality between race groups, within-group inequality has become the dominant form of inequality. That does not, however, detract from the fact that inequality between groups is still very large. High income inequality largely stems from inequality in access to wage income, due more to wage inequality than to unemployment. A Gini coefficient for wage income amongst the employed of above 0.60 effectively sets a floor to overall income inequality. The high wage premium to educated workers derives from a combination of a skills shortage at the top end of the educational spectrum, driving up their wages, and a surfeit of poorly-educated workers competing for scarce unskilled jobs dampening unskilled wages; if the unemployed were to find jobs, it would be in this bottom part of the wage distribution, and consequently this would not much reduce wage inequality. A continuation of the historical pattern whereby only a small segment of the population obtained good schooling would leave the structures underlying the large wage premium unaltered. The time frame for substantial inequality reduction is thus necessarily a long one, while poverty reduction efforts should not wait for this to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Asian Development Bank's rural road development scheme in Laos is designed to increase the opportunity for rural communities to participate in neighbouring emerging markets.Yet, this improved infrastructural strategy may result in increased social disparities betweenregions and within communities. This paper addresses the possible impact on intra-communityinequality using endowment and network data from a southern Lao commune. The objective is to analyse the way in which the village hierarchical social structure impedes individuals' ability to access emerging markets. The social hierarchy hinders the benefits of improved roads and marketisation trickling down to the poorest. Disruption to the trickledown effect means that existing rural development and anti-poverty strategies tend to favour the wealthy and well connected, and further marginalise the poor in the community. Therefore, it is crucial to recognise the importance of the village social hierarchy and define its contribution to the persistence of povertyand reinforcement of inequalities of opportunities for the rural poor. Policies need to directlytarget those of lower stratification by addressing underlying reasons for intergenerational inequalities of opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social spending has become a major tool of targeting resources to South Africa's poor. The poor now get considerably more than their population share of social spending, but the underlying distribution of income is so skewed that overall post-fiscal inequality has not improved much. Concentration ratios and curves show considerable shifts in social spending incidence in the period 1995 to 2006. However, the efficiency of that spending is low, resulting in limited social outcomes and consequently also limited gains to the poor from better targeting. This paper therefore calls for the South African policy discussion to shift to why the ever-increasing fiscal inputs and improved targeting of those inputs have not produced the desired social outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A systematic procedure for the derivation of linearized variables for the estimation of sampling errors of complex nonlinear statistics involved in the analysis of poverty and income inequality is developed. The linearized variable extends the use of standard variance estimation formulae, developed for linear statistics such as sample aggregates, to nonlinear statistics. The context is that of cross-sectional samples of complex design and reasonably large size, as typically used in population-based surveys. Results of application of the procedure to a wide range of poverty and inequality measures are presented. A standardized software for the purpose has been developed and can be provided to interested users on request. Procedures are provided for the estimation of the design effect and its decomposition into the contribution of unequal sample weights and of other design complexities such as clustering and stratification. The consequence of treating a complex statistic as a simple ratio in estimating its sampling error is also quantified. The second theme of the paper is to compare the linearization approach with an alternative approach based on the concept of replication, namely the Jackknife repeated replication (JRR) method. The basis and application of the JRR method is described, the exposition paralleling that of the linearization method but in somewhat less detail. Based on data from an actual national survey, estimates of standard errors and design effects from the two methods are analysed and compared. The numerical results confirm that the two alternative approaches generally give very similar results, though notable differences can exist for certain statistics. Relative advantages and limitations of the approaches are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I offer thoughts and insights on young people, border spaces and revolutions. Following Anzaldua, I explore how different types of borders - the borderlands of the mind - have disrupted young people's lives, particularly the lives of indigenous youth. While global in context, my emphasis is upon Canada where the magnitude of Aboriginal poverty is astounding given that the nation is often ranked as one of the best places to live in the world. Yet, despite a dismal outlook, I point toward optimistic futures as young people use their revolutionary imaginations to overturn internal borders and work for positive change. I suggest that youth are playfully reworking borders to build bridges between communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico, analysis of indigenous welfare is usually done using municipalities or localities, not households, as the point of reference, and this almost never in a way that allows for direct comparison with the non-indigenous population. The 2008 edition of the National Household Survey of Income and Expenditure made possible, for the first time, the identification of the indigenous population. In this paper the official income poverty method is replicated for 2008, comparing the results for the indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Additionally, inequality measures are estimated, comparing the income distribution of ethnic subgroups and their respective contributions with total inequality. Measurements using income data for indigenous and non-indigenous populations show that members of the first group are poorer, and that poverty is stronger in the rural areas. Inequality measures show that there is, in general, less inequality in the indigenous population than in the non-indigenous population, although this ranking is reversed for the distribution of income amongst the poor. A decomposition of the Gini coefficient shows that the indigenous population contributes proportionately less to total inequality than does the non-indigenous population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of gender wage discrimination in household poverty rates in several European Union (EU) countries using the European Community Household Panel. In order to quantify the impact of discrimination on poverty, it proposes the construction of a counterfactual distribution of wages where discrimination against women has been removed. Using this new wage distribution, the study computes total household income and compares poverty rates in the absence of discrimination to those actually observed. The results show that, in general, discrimination against women plays a determinative role in the current levels of poverty in EU countries, although results by country show that this role differs in intensity and pattern. Further, the study finds that in EU countries the effect of discrimination on poverty risk dramatically increases for individuals in households that largely depend on working women' earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U-statistics form a general class of statistics that have certain important features in common. This class arises as a generalization of the sample mean and the sample variance, and typically members of the class are asymptotically normal with good consistency properties. The class encompasses some widely used income inequality and poverty measures, in particular the variance, the Gini index, the poverty rate, the average poverty gap ratios, the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index, and the Sen index and its modified form. This paper illustrates how these measures come together within the class of U-statistics, and thereby why U-statistics are useful in econometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great disparity exists in the United States between those at the economic top of society and those at the economic bottom. While the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is not a new phenomenon, the extent of the gap is now at previously unseen proportions. This paper examines the disparity, explores why and how it developed, and presents a new way to approach amelioration of the differences through the development of social empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even after ten years of democratic government, South Africa remains an unusually unequal society. Inequalities in the distribution of incomes both reflect and reproduce inequalities of opportunity. Yet curiously little research has been conducted on what South Africans think about inequality, and their views on distributive justice. The limited extant research suggests that most South Africans believe that their country is too unequal, that there is strong support for government action to reduce inequalities, and that class consciousness and racial identities are both widespread. This paper uses existing and new data to show that distributive justice perceptions and attitudes in South Africa are mutable: perceptions and attitudes change according to the precise question posed, have changed over time, and change in the face of counter-arguments. South Africans, like people in many other parts of the world, see some poor people as more deserving than others, with perceived desert reflecting recognised needs (e.g. the elderly), responsibilities (e.g. bread-winners) and behaviour (with respondents being hostile to support for chronic drinkers, for example). Some, but not most, South Africans also become less supportive of the government supporting the poor if taxes are to be increased. Overall, South Africans seem to recognise a wide range of deserving poor, and even richer elites are inclined toward generosity, but support for redistribution is far from unconditional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dualistic nature of the South African economy manifests itself to a large extent in the agricultural sector, where ownership and access to land was previously reserved and is still mainly controlled by white farmers. This has contributed to the huge disparities in the income levels of black and white agricultural households. In this paper two South African household surveys are used to analyse agricultural inequality using various decomposition techniques. It is found that inequalities within agriculture are higher and more pronounced along racial lines than inequalities among non-agricultural households. Agricultural inequalities also differ structurally from those in the rest of society and are explained largely by differences in the ownership of income-generating assets, and less so by racial wage inequalities. Furthermore, an analysis of agricultural poverty reveals extremely high poverty rates and meagre incomes among black subsistence and small-scale farmer households. These results have important implications for the type of transformation required in the South African agricultural sector, adding weight to the notion that commercialisation is crucial if agriculture is to contribute meaningfully to poverty reduction among the rural black community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a simple model based on political support approach, we show that poor and less egalitarian societies may impose a lower tax rate contrary to the prediction of the median voter approach. This is consistent with the available empirical findings. In the framework developed in this paper, the government can strategically design a weak governance system to promote informal activities for the poor. This constitutes an alternative redistributive strategy other than the standard tax-transfer policy. The government chooses the tax rate and the degree of governance simultaneously to maximize the average income of the poor in the informal sector of the economy, i.e. those who constitute the majority and help in winning the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]