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The paper examines the role of education in reducing gender differentials in the Kenyan labor market. Using 2015/16 Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey, we estimate the logit and multinomial logit model. The paper employs instrumental variable technique to correct for potential endogeneity that arises when analyzing education and labor market outcomes. The results from both models show that being a woman reduces the chances of entering the labor market. We find that education yields positive effects in the labor market. On average, the difference between the marginal effect of education on employment probability between men and women is two percentage points, with the effect being higher for women. In the multinomial logit model, educated women are more likely to be employed in both the public sector and the informal sector, while in the private sector they are less likely to be employed. The implication of these findings is that policies should target education as a tool that can reduce gender differential in the labor market. This should be coupled with affirmative action that gives priority to women and minimizes preference for men in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of consumption practices in Venice in the long eighteenth century through the combined use of post‐mortem inventories and household budgets. Although Italy experienced a period of relative decline between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our findings suggest that Venetian households enjoyed a rich and vibrant material culture that was fully comparable with those of the most advanced European urban economies. However, although new products, practices, and fashions were adopted by Venetian society, the architecture of consumption did not undergo sudden and extreme changes; rather, consumption was gradually refined, following the path that it had begun during the Renaissance. We therefore argue that the Venetian economy did not experience a consumer revolution but, instead, consumer evolution. Moreover, this study shows that sophisticated consumption practices were not exclusive to the more dynamic economies of the continent but were widespread even in those regions that were victims of the Little Divergence. We thus suggest that the relationship between consumption development and economic development was not necessarily causal and that the diffusion of new consumption practices throughout society was a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite for economic take‐off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes why child film star series produced by major French production companies (Pathé, Gaumont, Eclectic, and Éclair) in the early 1900s (Bébé, Bout‐de‐Zan, Willy, and the Maria Fromet series) were received with such interest by global audiences. This period, prior to World War I, was a brief era when French cinema held significant hegemony worldwide, before Hollywood's dominance began. There are ideas suggesting that child film stars emerged with American cinema. Contrary to this, however, French producers competed fiercely in the 10 years following 1906, producing series featuring child film stars. Substantial budgets were allocated for the marketing of these series, ultimately gaining a considerable fan base not only in Europe but also in America. When examining these film stars from the early 20th century within their historical context, they emerge as the first international child stars with international fame and financial success, unlike child musicians, vaudeville artists, and theater actors from the 18th and 19th centuries. Inspired by the field analysis of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this article aims to establish a connection between the struggles within the field and the symbolic needs of the audience as reflected in the content of child star films. The films were viewed at the Eye Film Museum archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the problems created by the high volume of subsidies and their significant share in government budgets, as well as, the failure to achieve the governmental goals in the field of subsidies, reform of the subsidies payment system has constantly been a concern of various governments. The welfare of society, especially the low‐income groups, has always been the focus of governments. To this end, subsidies are paid, particularly for basic goods, with the aim of decreasing prices and increasing purchasing power. However, since such payments are not targeted, a major part of subsidies will be granted to the upper classes and high‐income deciles. Therefore, targeting subsidies and paying attention to prioritizing costs in the household basket regarding subsidies payment will be an undeniable necessity. Currently, Iran faces fundamental problems in equitable management and distribution of subsidies, and the distribution of subsidies is extremely unfair. Given the importance of this issue and in order to provide a solution to reform the subsidy structure of Iran, present paper tries to examine the share of consuming expenditures in Iranian households using econometric methods and thus establish as a basis for ranking the costs. Accordingly, as a policy on targeting subsidies, we also aim to provide policymakers with better ways to implement policies. In general, the results indicate that targeting the subsidies in the household sector is different due to the different share of costs in the household budget and implementing the same approach to policy of targeting the subsidies is not appropriate for all households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces empirical best predictors of small area bivariate parameters, like ratios of sums or sums of ratios, by assuming that the target unit‐level vector follows a bivariate nested error regression model. The corresponding means squared errors are estimated by parametric bootstrap. Several simulation experiments empirically study the behavior of the introduced statistical methodology. An application to real data from the Spanish household budget survey gives estimators of ratios of food household expenditures by provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present the Modern Money Theory approach to government finance. In short, a national government that chooses its own money of account, imposes a tax in that money of account, and issues currency in that money of account cannot face a financial constraint. It can make all payments as they come due. It cannot be forced into insolvency. While this was well‐understood in the early post‐war period, it was gradually "forgotten" as the neoclassical theory of the household budget constraint was applied to government finance. Matters were made worse by the development of "generational accounting" that calculated hundreds of trillions of dollars of government red ink through eternity due to what neoconservatives label "entitlements" (largely, Medicare and Social Security). As austerity measures were increasingly adopted at the national level, fiscal responsibility was shifted to state and local governments through "devolution." A "stakeholder" approach to government finance helped fuel white flight to suburbs and produced "doughnut holes" in the cities. To reverse these trends, we need to redevelop our understanding of the fiscal space open to the currency issuer—expanding its responsibility not only for national social spending but also for helping to fund state and local government spending. This is no longer just an academic debate, given the challenges posed by climate change, growing inequality, secular stagnation, and the rise of Trumpism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revives the debate in the literature about the relationship between house prices and consumption by exploring conflicting results in the UK. Campbell and Cocco () find that old owners benefit most from a house price increase and young renters least, confirming the so-called wealth hypothesis. In contrast, Attanasio et al. () find that house prices have the same impact on consumption across age groups. We rule out several potential explanations related to data construction, and provide evidence that the functional form can reconcile the conflicting results in the two papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya is prone to severe droughts due to infrequent, unpredictable and irregular annual precipitation in many parts of the country. Of all 47 Kenyan counties, 23 are classified as arid and semi‐arid (ASAL), constituting approximately 88% of the country's land mass. Like in many developing countries, droughts in Kenya are well known to affect provision of food. They also have the potential to affect infrastructure services. Kenya has an infrastructure deficit, meaning that a large portion of the infrastructure has not been significantly developed, being exposed to major risks emanating from natural disasters. When droughts occur, infrastructure is exposed to further risks of structural damage and deterioration, leading to increased maintenance costs. In addition, users must travel longer distances and spend more time in order to have access to infrastructure services. This paper discusses how droughts affect users of infrastructure services. The survey is based on a primary study carried out in 1370 households across 27 counties of Kenya. It also relies on secondary data, including from the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey (KIHBS) for 2015/16, reflecting access to basic infrastructure services across the surveyed 27 counties. The research findings illustrate that droughts reduce access to infrastructure services such as energy, water provision, housing and communications, thus requiring climate‐sensitive policy interventions. The study concludes that building resilient infrastructure to respond to and mitigate the effects of drought is critical. It also emphasizes the importance of cooperation among different stakeholders in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of migration on the food expenditure and household food security status of migrant-sending households using data from eastern Indonesia. We find that migration significantly increases food expenditure and overall household expenditure. Combining the food frequency and food consumption module of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (East), this paper shows that having at least one migrant in the family increases the composite index of Food Consumption Score, as well as the family's food security. Evaluation of food diversity also shows that migration increases expenditure on six out of ten food groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy literature on postsocialist Europe tends to frame smallholders' practices of food self‐provisioning and sharing as driven by necessity and proposes land consolidation to increase productivity and efficiency. However, these practices generate nonfinancial benefits, which need to be accounted for. In this paper, I test the socio‐economic relevance of these practices in the Republic of Moldova, the country with the highest density of farming households in Europe and whose government has embraced the rural modernization agenda to integrate into the EU economic space. I carry out quantitative estimates using the household budget survey and complement the results with qualitative insights from an original smallholder survey. I find that food self‐provisioning and sharing are positively related to subjective well‐being and that there is an "intergenerational pact," with home‐grown food flowing from late‐adulthood smallholders to urban‐based young families and the vulnerable elderly. A counterfactual analysis shows that poverty and inequality would be higher in the absence of donated food, especially in urban areas. The preservation of smallholder farming through widespread access to land could thus help fight poverty and provide social benefits vis‐à‐vis land consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we measure the size of the shadow economy in North Cyprus by using micro-econometric approaches and then calculate its implications on national accounts and fiscal balances. There is a relatively new strand of literature that focuses on comparing income-expenditure patterns of households to calculate the degree of underreporting of income levels by self-employed and privately employed individuals, as compared with public servants. We use the 2008 Household Budget Survey of North Cyprus and analyze the differences in food consumption patterns among three kinds of employees: self-employed, privately employed, and public. We found that self-employed and privately employed individuals underreport their income levels by 20 percent and 13 percent, respectively, compared with publicly employed individuals. This has important implications for the aggregate economy in North Cyprus, where we estimate that the shadow economy created by underreporting is as much as 8.6 percent of GNP and 11.1 percent of total tax revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a particular methodology to render budget data more comparable over highly diverse regions. More specifically, a set of regional poverty lines will be derived and employed as deflators to correct household expenditures for spatial differences in prices and needs. The quality of these deflators depends on the extent to which the underlying poverty lines adhere to the principles of consistency and specificity. Central to reconciling both principles in practice is our pursuit for austerity in setting poverty thresholds as well as the view that differences in social norms mainly reflect differences in social inclusion needs. The particularity of the proposed method compared to standard practice lies in the combination of: (i) the pronounced subdivision in socio-economic strata; (ii) the use of a differential calorie threshold per sector; (iii) the introduction of protein intake; (iv) the derivation of a minimal house rent; and (v) the use of an austere non-food/non-housing allowance. The impact of this method is illustrated using a budget survey of the Democratic Republic of Congo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the development of household consumption expenditures from a longer perspective. Currently, there are available data for more than forty years and it means that lots of information about changes in structure and main tendencies can be studied. Since the emphasis is put on the comparable time series, it was necessary to prepare transformation of original data into national accounts. Historical figures on private consumption were published in line with the Material Product System that is not fully comparable with the System of National Accounts. Data on private consumption reflecting only material part of consumption had to be transformed into household consumption expenditures covering both expenditures for material and non-material products. The process of transformation of original data reflecting socialist statistical system is briefly described, as well as main differences. Key points of transformation are illustrated on selected years. Finally, original data are compared with reconstructed ones and differences are explained. The analysis provides useful information about main changes in consumption expenditures by CZ-COICOP. Finally, some often discussed issues like the relative increase of expenditures connected with housing, decrease of the share of foodstuff etc. can be proven now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the main objective of politicians, other economic variables are variously affected by the environmental taxes, policies, and limitations like a price on pollution, clean electricity, the cap on emissions, methane emissions, and nature‐based solutions. The objective of the environmental solutions is to decrease pollutant emissions and energy consumption while reducing labor costs and taxes as the incentives for creating new occupations. An overall equilibrium model was considered in the present study as a nonlinear equations system, which was calibrated for the reference year of 2018 utilizing Canada's economy's data table. The effects of utilizing these environmental policies considered by Canada in COP26 are examined. In all scenarios, minimum, maximum, and optimum values for reducing pollutant emissions are calculated under these policies. According to the simulation results, welfare is reduced by the price of pollution policy. Moreover, the actual consumed budget of the household is reduced by 8%. However, such indices will be incremented by 2% in the nature‐based policy. In all scenarios, the gross domestic product is decreased. However, in the methane emission policy, this reduction is 1.05% in the lowest state. In all scenarios, the consumer price index will be incremented by 3.8%–9.8%. It is concluded that the clean electricity policy is an appropriate policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time adhering to international commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the Household Expenditure Survey and Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to document facts about consumption and income inequality among households in Australia, emphasising the role of the rents imputed to home owners for conclusions about inequality. Consistent with other developed economies, consumption inequality in Australia is lower on average than income inequality. Both have increased since the early 1990s, with income inequality increasing by more. We decompose the trend in income inequality into four components: (i) changes in observed household characteristics; (ii) changes in the returns to unobserved skills; (iii) changes in the size of persistent income shocks; and (iv) changes in the size of transitory income shocks. We find that changes in the size of persistent and transitory income shocks, rather than changes in observed household characteristics, explain most of this trend. Since the middle of the 2000s, the source of income inequality has shifted from transitory to persistent factors, which is consistent with the rise in consumption inequality over the corresponding period. We find that accounting for imputed rents lowers estimates of the level of inequality in Australia, but has a negligible effect on the trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a vision for improving household financial surveys by integrating responses from questionnaires more completely with financial statements and combining them with payments data from diaries. Integrated household financial accounts-balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows-are used to assess the degree of integration in leading U.S. household surveys, focusing on inconsistencies in measures of the change in cash. Diaries of consumer payment choice can improve dynamic integration. Using payments data, we construct a statement of liquidity flows: a detailed analysis of currency, checking accounts, prepaid cards, credit cards, and other payment instruments, consistent with conventional cash flow measures and the other financial accounts. ( JEL D12, D14, E41, E42) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: Expanding access to education is a desirable policy. Tanzania implemented Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 2001 and expanded secondary education in 2006. However, evidence that UPE delivers benefits in educational attainment or earnings is scarce. We investigate if the enhanced access to education (EAE) in the 2000s benefitted the youth able to complete more schooling, those aged 15–25 in 2018. Purpose: There is evidence that expansion of primary education in Tanzania in the 1970s increased the incomes of the individuals who benefitted. We compare households headed by youth aged 15–25 and by adults (aged over 35) in 2001 and 2018 to identify benefits of EAE. Methods and approach: Household welfare is measured as consumption per adult equivalent relative to the national poverty line using Household Budget Survey data for 2001 and 2018. We examine whether welfare differences comparing youth‐headed and adult‐headed households in 2001 and 2018 are attributable to differences in educational attainment of youth due to EAE using regression analysis and decomposition methods. Findings The increase in youth educational attainment by 2018 is a significant factor explaining the increase in welfare of youth‐headed households between 2001 and 2018. If the youth in 2001 had the same education endowment as their 2018 counterparts, their relative welfare would have been about a quarter higher. If adults had the same level of educational attainment as the youth, their welfare would have been about a third higher in 2018. Policy implications: Expanding access to education via EAE had a positive effect on the welfare of youth, represented by those who were heads of households, in Tanzania due to increased years of schooling, providing support for implementing policies that improve access to schooling. Benefits are greatest for younger youth, aged 19–24 in 2018. Returns to schooling declined, suggesting that growth in demand for skilled labour did not match the supply of educated entrants to the labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We show five points regarding the middle class in developing East and Southern Africa: (1) 55 per cent of the region's middle class-37 per cent of the 'non-vulnerable' middle class-is rural; (2) 61-83 per cent of the middle class's food is purchased; (3) processed food occupies 70-80 per cent of the class's food expenditure, with similar shares in urban and rural areas; (4) perishable products account for 44-55 per cent of the class's expenditure. Policy attention to processing and to food products 'beyond-grains' thus needs to be 'mainstreamed'; and (5) the import share of food expenditure does not rise with income in urban areas. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study departs from the previous literature on purchasing power parity ( PPP) by proposing a demand system based methodology for calculating the PPP that takes account of consumer preferences and allows for the substitution effect of price changes. The methodology is used to calculate the PPP between the Indian Rupee and the Vietnamese Dong. The study allows for regional variation in preferences and price changes both inside the country and between countries. It proposes and applies a methodology for constructing prices from unit values after adjusting them for quality and demographic effects. The adjusted unit values are used as prices in the demand estimations, and the demand parameter estimates are used to calculate both spatial prices within each country and the PPP between the two countries within a consistent framework. The study illustrates the usefulness of preference consistent methods to calculate the PPP by applying the PPPs to compare living standards between India and Vietnam. The significance of the results follows from the fact that the levels of living comparisons are quite sensitive to the PPP used in converting the Rupee expenditure into Vietnamese Dong. The present results on food PPPs question the relevance of the PPPs from the ICP project in cross-country welfare comparisons especially in a period of high food inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. data reveal three facts: (1) the share of goods in total expenditure declines at a constant rate over time, (2) the price of goods relative to services declines at a constant rate over time, and (3) poor households spend a larger fraction of their budget on goods than do rich households. I provide a macroeconomic model with non-Gorman preferences that rationalizes these facts, along with the aggregate Kaldor facts. The model is parsimonious and admits an analytical solution. Its functional form allows a decomposition of U.S. structural change into an income and substitution effect. Estimates from micro data show each of these effects to be of roughly equal importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can social capital effectively cushion households against adverse income shocks, especially in the absence of formal insurance mechanisms in developing countries? And what if such shocks are due international finance and thus universal and systemic in nature? We analyse whether participation in formal and informal community activities (our measure of social capital) helped households in Indonesia mitigating the impact of the 1998 financial crisis. We use the 1997 and 2000 rounds of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) to capture the impact of the crisis on household welfare and assess the potency of social capital as a safety net. In contrast to previous studies, our empirical results do not lend support to this hypothesis. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD)—coupled by an IV strategy for extrapolation, we find community participation not to be statistically significant in explaining changes in household expenditure. The large magnitude and universal nature of the shock might explain why social capital did not help households. However, we find some suggestive evidence that households who participated in such activities are more likely to have received financial assistance from the local community without necessarily being the neediest ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual funding schemes are increasingly implemented to organize public welfare services and can be considered as a prime example of the marketization of social care. Clients receive a budget and can "shop" on the welfare market. Current knowledge about the impact of individual funding schemes on choice opportunities for people with an intellectual disability is inconclusive. We conducted a vignette experiment in the context of the Flemish (Belgian) individual funding scheme for people with a disability, using 610 close relatives of people with an intellectual disability as subjects. The respondents were presented with hypothetical situations in which they had to express their intention to change current care provision into care via personal assistance. We find that dissatisfaction with services and having a supportive network increases the intention to change care. Professional support from the incumbent provider does not have a significant impact. We conclude that the promise of choice, as assumed with marketized public services, is likely to be fulfilled only under particular conditions. This entails risks in terms of equal opportunities for clients receiving public services in the context of welfare markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present evidence on evolving dietary patterns in Nigeria using six rounds of household consumption data from the Nigerian General Household Survey panel between 2011 and 2016. First, following conventional definitions in the literature, we show that Nigeria has not shown any aggregate increase in consumption of highly processed foods over this period, contrary to patterns observed elsewhere in the region. In fact, consumption of highly processed foods at home has declined, while food consumed away from home, often assumed to be highly processed, has risen substantially. We then show that estimates of food expenditure elasticities of different food types are highly sensitive to different estimation approaches and raise concerns about some frequently used methods in the literature. In the absence of credible exogenous variation, we argue for the importance of panel methods and household fixed effects to control for time invariant factors likely to confound cross‐sectional estimates. Finally, we examine semiparametric Engel curves for different food groups and find that apparent curvature in the relationships between food budget shares and overall food expenditure levels in the raw data become nearly linear when removing variation explained by time‐invariant household factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hungarian national food consumption survey on adults (including adolescents and elderly) was conducted between 2018‐2020 according to the EFSA EU MENU methodology.Valid data was collected from a total of 1585 participants(overall response rate 67%)528 adolescents aged from 10 to 17 years old (response rate 68% among female and 75% among male population), 529 adults aged from 18 to 64 years old (response rate 64% among female and 61% among male population) and 528 elderly aged from 65 to 74 years old (response rate 62% among female and 73% among male population). The sampling frame for the survey was the nationally representative sample of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office used for the implementation of Household Budget Survey in Hungary. Survey participants wererandomly selected by usinga stratified sampling method. Participants were asked to provide information on their food consumption for two non‐consecutive days, with at least 10 days interval. To collect the information, computer assisted telephone and personal recall interviews were carried out. Recall interviews were complemented with questionnaires. Fieldwork was executed by contracted dietitians, by using dietary software which was updated according to the methodology. National protocols and relating training materials were prepared to assist the interviewer's work. Prior to the nationwide data collection, a pilot study was implemented to test the feasibility of the documents and the dietary software. The Hungarian survey extended to all regions of the country, covered four seasons and all days of the week. Dietary pattern of the whole year was represented, including the periodically consumed foods as well, paying attention to the seasonal fruits, vegetables and holiday seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study aims to compare the performances of logistic regression and random forest classifiers in a balanced oversampling procedure for the prediction of households that will face catastrophic out‐of‐pocket (OOP) health expenditure. Data were derived from the nationally representative household budget survey collected by the Turkish Statistical Institute for the year 2012. A total of 9,987 households returned valid surveys. The data set was highly imbalanced, and the percentage of households facing catastrophic OOP health expenditure was 0.14. Balanced oversampling was performed, and 30 artificial data sets were generated with sizes of 5% and 98% of the original data size. The balanced oversampled data set provided accurate predictions, and random forest exhibited superior performance in identifying households facing catastrophic OOP health expenditure (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, AUC = 0.8765; classification accuracy, CA = 0.7936; sensitivity = 0.7765; specificity = 0.8552; F1 = 0.7797). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines the effect of welfare payments provided to women on intra‐household decision‐making, female autonomy, and perceptions of responsibility for housework, by exploiting the case of Mexico's Progresa conditional cash transfer program. Background: Although past scholarship has extensively studied the relationship between wives' labor market earnings and household dynamics, fewer studies have analyzed the causal impact of women's welfare payments on these outcomes. These resources have become increasingly important as policy initiatives, especially in developing countries, have focused on implementing targeted programs promoting women's economic empowerment. Method: A sample of married and cohabiting couples participating in Progresa was constructed using the National Survey of Household Characteristics (N = 9,751 unions). Random assignment to the program allowed to estimate the causal effects of Progresa payments after 1.5 years, controlling for unobserved factors. Results: Progresa cash transfers had a positive effect on attitudinal measures of housework and female autonomy, while they did not change household decision‐making. Progresa payments did not generate a gender backlash response among treated families—such as pushing women further into unpaid labor, as some critics expected. Conclusion: In the short‐run, Progresa cash transfers improved women's position in the household. These findings are consistent with both resource‐based and time constraints perspectives. Implications: This study illustrates how can we exploit field experiments to answer sociological questions concerning the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the emergence and persistence of wicked problems, the ways in which they can be addressed, the roles of the public sector in facing them, as well as the implications for accounting scholarship. This article thus sheds light on how the absence of "one right solution" (Rittel & Webber, [11]) makes the methods implemented to manage wicked problems an easy target when political agendas and policies change. These studies underline the significance of contextual analysis of accounting innovations and practices in policies to address wicked issues, but more research of this type is required. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines, through the case of Personal Budgets in England, the role of accounting in transforming the subjectivities of social workers through a Foucauldian lens. The findings show how accounting can reshape the subjectivities of social workers serving as intermediaries responsible for the frontline implementation of neoliberal reforms. It does so through an empirical demonstration on how accounting harnesses an individual's autonomy and responsibility to nurture "productive" relationships between citizens and the state. Furthermore, the findings also highlight the vulnerability of social workers' subjectivities from the installation of an accounting infrastructure with multiple capabilities. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how neoliberal policies transform subjectivities in social work and adds to the literature on accounting's biopolitical role in the reconstitution of such subjectivities. It also addresses the relative neglect of studies examining the role of accounting in neoliberal transformations of social work that, despite its significance for an ageing society and its attendant consequences for public finances, receives far less attention than healthcare reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence about the effectiveness of anti‐smoking legislation on smoking behavior is mixed. We provide new estimates for Italy using unexplored data drawn from the Household Budget Survey. We show that the smoking ban introduced in 2005 has a significant effect on smoking incidence. According to our baseline specification, the ban reduces household‐based smoking prevalence by 1.3 percentage points. Results are robust to the various empirical strategies proposed in the literature, even accounting for seasonality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seventy percent of Americans identify as middle class, but one in three middle‐income households do not earn enough to support their family at the most basic level, and four in five do not earn enough to afford a sustainable budget. This incongruity explains the increasing frustration of many workers. Yet official government measures do not capture this reality, and as a result, policy makers continue to create economic policies that perpetuate the structural mismatch between wages and costs. This Viewpoint essay addresses these shortcomings. After reviewing alternatives to the federal poverty level, it argues that the most realistic and accurate floor to the middle class is the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) Household Survival Budget. The essay then turns to policies that help realign wages and cost of living and presents initiatives that are being implemented in states across the country. Four policy areas would enable more workers to support their families and fulfill the promise of being middle class in America: meaningful work with stable and sufficient wages, upskilling and digital retooling, fiscal cushion for periods of financial instability, and affordable credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of a mass, agri‐industrial diet after the Second World War was crucial for the culmination of the nutritional transition that western countries had been involved in since the second half of the nineteenth century—but why did the industrial diet triumph? This article takes the massification of dairy consumption in Spain 1965–90 as a study case. Using a newly constructed database and qualitative material within an evolutionary socio‐economic framework, the article reaches two conclusions. First, the massification of dairy consumption was linked to most households' transition to a softer budget constraint, which was driven mainly by increasing household incomes (and only secondarily by consumer price reductions caused by food industrialization). Second, the reason why the softening of the budget constraint played such a major role was that it was joined by a substantial increase in consumer trust in dairy products, which in turn resulted from industrial standardization. The article is in line with recent work that underlines the dietary change brought about by food industrialization, but questions whether the latter's major contribution was of a quantitative, price‐related nature and suggests that more attention should be paid to the qualitative, preferences‐related dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey has implemented health reforms for over a decade and has taken significant steps toward unifying health financing. This study investigated the financial burden associated with out‐of‐pocket (OOP) expenditures under universal health coverage, using national 2003–2015 household budget data from the Turkish Statistical Institute. Progress was evaluated using Kakwani–Suits indices and Lorenz concentration curves. The results indicate that overall, more than a decade after its unification, redistribution of wealth in the Turkish health financing system has benefitted the wealthy but not the poor. Both curve and index approaches (Kakwani index 2003 = −0.50; 2015 = −0.44) reveal an increasingly regressive pattern of OOP health expenditures. The effective use of fiscal space and good political leadership are essential for the successful continuation of reforms to combat poverty in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of affordable housing is often subjective and varies by household. Currently, there is limited research on how consumers define housing affordability in the United States. This study used an exploratory design to find themes associated with consumers' perceptions of affordable housing. The study analyzed qualitative responses to a question about housing affordability of 738 online survey respondents. Of the nine main themes which emerged, three themes were most commonly used to define housing affordability. The three themes were as follows: low financial strain, percent of income, and community‐level comparison. In addition, a relationship was found between two demographic factors (race and region of the country) and how a respondent defined housing affordability. Implications for housing and financial professionals are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use panel data on a complete inventory of household spending and assets to estimate the spending response to the sharp and largely unexpected declines in house values that occurred in the Great Recession. Our study complements the existing literature on this topic by relying exclusively on longitudinal micro data on both household wealth and expenditure. Our data span the period 2002–2012, allowing us to separate trends in spending from innovations in response to unexpected wealth changes. We find the marginal propensity to consume out of an unexpected housing wealth change to be 6 cents per dollar among older American households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the classic equivalence scale estimations based on micro‐econometric analysis, only the costs of market consumption are taken into account. We define the concept of full cost equivalence scales as integrating both monetary and the time use costs and measure it on matched French family budget and time use surveys. These data allow us to define full prices and to estimate equivalence scales conditional to possible substitution through prices. The results show higher full scales than the monetary for the preferred Independent of a Base specification. Relative to the cost of the second adult, the full child cost is also larger than the monetary for matching estimators and the Prais‐Houthakker model. It shows households' capacity to substitute domestic production to market activities. In consequence the measures of income inequality diminish considerably using full income and full equivalence scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A budget standard indicates how much a particular family living in a particular place at a particular time needs to achieve a particular standard of living. The budget includes every item that is needed to satisfy the family's individual and collective needs, priced in current retail outlets. The approach has strong intuitive appeal because it reflects how actual families do their budgeting and has been used to assess the adequacy of a wide variety of incomes and costs. This article presents new budget standards for a range of unemployed families derived from the estimates produced in the 1990s, revised to reflect new data, improved research methods and changed circumstances. The new estimates are deliberately conservative and indicate how much is needed to achieve the Minimum Income for Healthy Living standard developed by UK public health researchers. They indicate that the current level of Newstart Allowance – the main form of income support for the unemployed – is woefully inadequate. The methods used to derive the budgets have been chosen so that others can vary some of the key assumptions (e.g., about housing costs) to tailor the budgets to fit specific applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines differences in the amount of economic support or mutual benefit derived from extended family living arrangements by studying differences in monetary contributions to essential household expenditures across family units in extended family households. Using the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation, multivariate regression and selection models are estimated to assess racial differences in family contributions toward household expenses in extended family households. Extended family households have very unequal monetary contributions toward household rent and utilities, although Hispanics have less unequal monetary contributions when compared with other racial groups. Hispanic and Asian extended family households experience decreasing inequality in financial contributions as the income of each family increases, whereas no relationship between financial contributions and income is found for Whites or Blacks. This suggests a different cultural orientation to extended family living arrangements for Asians and Hispanics when compared with non‐Hispanic Whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official data, administered by National Statistic Institutes ( NSIs), play crucial role for being a major element of the governmental economic and social decision-making process. This strategic role raises a significant necessity for statistical authorities to adopt new data tools to shift the statistical quality of the published data to a higher level. Data mining ( DM) techniques and algorithms are promising tools to provide new ways to mine the crucial, complex, and voluminous official data to complement or substitute the traditional and lagged-behind tools that NSIs have been using. This study addresses this potential utilization of DM tools on official data with a specific problem in an important survey for official statistics: Household Budget Survey. Through this study, clustering techniques are employed to characterize the household types and association rule mining technique is used to mine consumption patterns for each differentiated type. It is aimed to integrate the proposed model into data preprocessing procedure of the NSI to be able to engage in the real time analyses and to contribute exactness and timeliness of the data. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2018, 8:e1227. doi: 10.1002/widm.1227 This article is categorized under: Algorithmic Development > Association Rules, Application Areas > Government and Public Sector, Application Areas > Industry Specific Applications [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate about intergenerational relations has become more prominent since the financial crisis of 2007-09, focusing particularly on the difficulties faced by young adults trying to enter the labour and housing markets, whilst often bearing high levels of debt incurred as students. This article reviews the nature of the 'intergenerational contract' at both the micro level of the family, and at the macro level between individuals and the state. We then present qualitative, empirical data on the relationship between parents and: (1) their student children; and (2) their graduate children who have returned home. We focus primarily on the financial support provided by parents to the two groups. We explore why support is given, and the nature of similarities and differences in terms of what is given. We find that virtually all parents who were able to support their young adult children financially did so, but to different degrees and with different amounts of tension and anxiety. We suggest that the increased importance of the intergenerational contract at the micro level is likely to contribute to intra- rather than intergenerational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the consumption patterns of older Australian households. Our special focus is on the impact of the presence of disabled household members on households' allocation of their consumption expenditure. The results reveal that for older Australian households, recreation, clothing, and other goods and services are luxury goods, while food and housing are found to be necessities. We find that families with disabled members have to spend more on necessities at the expense of more luxury goods, such as recreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To examine links between negative moods, stressors, and daily marital conflict, and to test whether participation in a family-strengthening program moderates those associations. Background Some family-strengthening interventions have shown positive effects on low-income married couples' relationships. Yet little is known about how these programs influence low-income families' daily functioning. Method Families randomly assigned to the program participated in 10 weeks of relationship education. Control group families received no services. Thirty months later, participants reported on the severity of marital conflicts over a 15-day period, as well as their moods and stressors. Results Dyadic models demonstrated that although moods like anger, anxiety, stress, and sadness were associated with more severe marital disagreements, associations were less strong for wives assigned to the program than to the control group. Although stress related to money was associated with more severe disagreements for husbands, associations were weaker for husbands assigned to the program than for those to the control group. Conclusion Family-strengthening interventions may be able to reduce the tendency for negative moods and stressors to manifest in more severe marital conflict. Implications Programs may benefit from explicitly addressing the moods and stressors that individual husbands and wives report experiencing in their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the rural global South, it is increasingly the case that the relationship between landholding status and household nutrition is intermediated by complex associations between intervening variables. These include changes to agricultural practices, the dynamics of how decisions about food are prioritised within household budgets, the gendering of household power relations, the breadth of non-farm livelihood portfolios, and the effect of landholding status on access to social welfare schemes. This article demonstrates this complexity using a mixed-methods assessment of livelihoods and nutritional status in two north Indian villages. The study finds that in these villages the role of land for household nutrition is expressed through significantly greater milk consumption by landholding households, but insignificant differences in the consumption of most other major food items. Landholding households' greater consumption of milk is hinged to an ability to grow fodder in between cropping cycles, and manage these activities via prevailing agricultural gender norms in which women and girls are charged with responsibilities for livestock husbandry. In the context where milk provides a crucial source of protein for the mainly vegetarian diets in these villages, landholder households' greater access to milk represents a vital aspect of the local patterning of food and nutrition security. This finding underscores how greater complexity and diversity in the rural social landscapes of the global South are creating increasingly intricate, locally distinctive configurations of food and nutrition (in)security. Such local nuance cannot be readily observed within research traditions that rely on large-scale national datasets. Mixed-methods geographical research in the tradition of livelihoods analysis gives important voice to these considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its significance in household welfare, little is known about the capacity of intrahousehold risk sharing arrangements to insure consumption against major health shocks. Using rich health data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey, this study finds no evidence of full insurance against adult morbidity in rural Indonesia. In particular, the results show sizable and significant effects of adult morbidity on food consumption. They imply that, despite the recent health sector reforms of Indonesia, the health insurance system is not effective in shielding agricultural households against some severe and long lasting health shocks. (O12,I15) Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT From 1940 to 1960 across 20 large U.S. cities, rental housing's price fell, renters' incomes rose, rent's share in household budgets fell, and, as expected, renters' real housing consumption increased. From 1970 to 2010, rental housing's price increased, renters' incomes decreased, but, unexpectedly, renters' real housing consumption increased. We find neither demographics nor housing supply factors account for the anomalous post-1970 increase in renters' housing consumption. We conclude that after 1970 there was a nationwide increase in renters' preferences for housing consumption. With incomes falling, renters increased housing consumption by decreasing consumption of other necessities including food, clothing, and transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether adjustment frictions help account for the patterns of household consumption expenditures observed in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, namely, that the variance of log durable expenditure is four times larger than that of log nondurable expenditure for annual data and this gap substantially widens for quarterly data. Estimating a structural model of household consumption with nondurable and durable goods with the simulated method of moments, I find that the fixed costs associated with durable adjustments are important in matching the cross-sectional moments. Using the estimated model, I also examine the response of nondurable and durable expenditures to income shocks. ( JEL D12, D91, E21) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the Great Recession, UK households reduced real food expenditure. We show that they were able to maintain the number of calories that they purchased, and the nutritional quality of these calories, by adjusting their shopping behaviour. We document the mechanisms that households used. We motivate our analysis with a model of shopping behaviour in which households adjust shopping effort and the characteristics of their shopping basket in response to economic shocks. We use detailed longitudinal data and focus on within-household changes in basket characteristics and proxies for shopping effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the implications of household-level adjustment costs for the dynamics of aggregate consumption. We show that an economy in which agents have 'consumption commitments' is approximately equivalent to a habit formation model in which the habit stock is a weighted average of past consumption if idiosyncratic risk is large relative to aggregate risk. Consumption commitments can thus explain the empirical regularity that consumption is excessively sensitive and excessively smooth, findings that are typically attributed to habit formation. Unlike habit formation and other theories, but consistent with empirical evidence, the consumption commitments model also predicts that excess sensitivity and smoothness vanish for large shocks. These results suggest that behavior previously attributed to habit formation may be better explained by adjustment costs. We develop additional testable predictions to further distinguish the commitment and habit models and show that the two models have different welfare implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This study examines changes in household food expenditures in the months directly around entry into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Methods Using monthly data on SNAP participation from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we estimate food-expenditures-to-food-needs ratio with an event-study specification. Results Upon entering the program, a substantially lower share of out-of-pocket spending accounts for SNAP households' food budgets. However, these expenditures are largely replaced with SNAP benefits, resulting in little changes in total food expenditures. We also identify the co-occurrence of household economic shocks at the point of SNAP entry. Conclusion SNAP entry is preceded by reduced rates of employment and marriage among heads of households, suggesting that household economic shocks may trigger SNAP entry. We find that SNAP benefits visibly appear to act as an important safety net for households who have recently entered the program, cushioning them from the extent of a negative shock in food expenditures that they might otherwise have faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]