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Introduction: Out-of-pocket medical expenses are a crucial source of health care financing in a number of countries. With the ongoing population aging, health care costs are likely to increase. Therefore, disentangling the relationship between health care spending and monetary poverty is becoming increasingly important. Although there is extensive literature on the impoverishment effect of out-of-pocket medical payments, it lacks empirical studies on a causal relationship between catastrophic health expenditure and poverty. In our paper, we try to fill this gap. Methods: We estimate recursive bivariate probit models using Polish Household Budget Survey data covering years from 2010 to 2013 and from 2016 to 2018. The model controls for a wide range of factors and endogeneity between poverty and catastrophic health expenditure. Results: We show that the causal relationship between catastrophic health expenditure and relative poverty is significant and positive across different methodological approaches. We find no empirical evidence that a one-time incidence of catastrophic health expenditure creates a poverty trap. We also show that using a poverty measure which treats out-of-pocket medical payments and luxury consumption as perfect substitutes can lead to an underestimation of poverty among the elderly. Conclusion: Out-of-pocket medical payments should probably receive more attention from policymakers than the official statistics suggest. A current challenge is to correctly identify and appropriately support those who are most affected by catastrophic health expenditure. More prospectively, a complex modernization of the Polish public health system is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retailers have been using promotion as a differentiation strategy that influences consumers' expenditures and their shopping basket budgetary allocation. This study assessed the effect of retail promotions on total shopping basket expenditure and determined whether promotions provoke a reallocation of the shopping budget. The analysis was performed on a chain of supermarkets in Catalonia, Spain using a consumer scanner data set from Kantar Worldpanel for 2017. The methodological approach had two steps: prediction of the effect of promotion on household expenditures using an expenditure regression model and estimation of the promotion own- and cross-effect using the censored Exact Affine Stone Index. Promotion had a positive own-effect and mostly a negative asymmetric cross-effect, implying a small but significant budget reallocation. [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]

The objective of this paper is to assess the extent of financial literacy and the impact of access to and use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) on household financial decisions, such as savings, retirement planning, household budgeting, and engagement in financial markets. This study analyzes survey data collected from 409 households belonging to the low- and middle-income brackets across four cities in Pakistan. By employing probit model, it finds that a higher level of (advanced) financial literacy is associated with an increased likelihood of improved savings and household budgeting. However, the overall financial literacy score (basic plus advanced) is associated only with savings decision. Additionally, the results reveal that the ICTs adoption plays a role in influencing decisions related to financial market participation and savings. The results also show that financial literacy, along with ICTs, positively influences financial market participation and retirement decisions. Nevertheless, results suggest mixed impacts of financial literacy and ICTs on financial decisions which lends partial support to the study hypotheses. In conclusion, our results underscore the importance of financial literacy alongside ICT adoption to promote financial market participation and improve household financial management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Development Research is the property of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Adults with a learning disability who receive social care are legally entitled to a personal budget. Personal budgets were introduced to promote choice and control in support. Individual Service Funds were introduced as a flexible way that personal budgets can be managed by a provider while maintaining choice and control for the individual. Individual Service Funds have been shown to improve quality of life for individuals and efficiency in support. Despite this, only 20% of local authorities offer them to adults with a learning disability, demonstrating the need for resources to be developed to support their delivery. This protocol described a co-production study with key stakeholders to develop and refine Individual Service Fund resources. Our primary aim is to co-produce two actionable resources: to support development, delivery, consistency, and sustained provision of ISFs; and to support uptake and optimal use of ISFs by recipients. We also aim to user-test and evaluate these resources with three Local Authorities. The result of this study will be two resources that will support the uptake of Individual Service Funds for adults with a learning disability that will be freely available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New evidence is provided on the determinants of the carbon footprint (CF) at the household level, using the Spanish case as an example and data from the Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the E-MRIO database. The research presents two new contributions. On the one hand, the basis of analysis on what we call 'Excess per capita CF', that is, the part of CF that exceeds a threshold associated with a minimum per capita consumption of each product in a household, below which level it is difficult to expect reductions in consumption. Second, the use of a quantile regression (QR) approach for the estimation of the drivers of CF. Both issues imply important changes in the consideration of the influence of some drivers considered so far in the literature, related to which CF quantile the household is in. These differences between an ordinary least squares (OLS) and the QR are especially significant for variables such as income, household size, occupation, age, household composition, housing area and area of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Policy & Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study aims to analyze the trends in food price in Brazil with emphasis on the period of the Covid-19 pandemic (from March 2020 to March 2022). Data from the Brazilian Household Budget Survey and the National System of Consumer Price Indexes were used as input to create a novel data set containing monthly prices (R$/Kg) for the foods and beverages most consumed in the country between January 2018 and March 2022. All food items were divided according to the Nova food classification system. We estimated the mean price of each food group for each year of study and the entire period. The monthly price of each group was plotted to analyze changes from January 2018 to March 2022. Fractional polynomial models were used to synthesize price changes up to 2025. Results of the present study showed that in Brazil unprocessed or minimally processed foods and processed culinary ingredients were more affordable than processed and ultra-processed foods. However, trend analyses suggested the reversal of the pricing pattern. The anticipated changes in the prices of minimally processed food relative to ultra-processed food, initially forecasted for Brazil, seem to reflect the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy. These results are concerning as the increase in the price of healthy foods aggravates food and nutrition insecurity in Brazil. Additionally, this trend encourages the replacement of traditional meals for the consumption of unhealthy foods, increasing a health risk to the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his prominent Distinction, Bourdieu captured a homology between spaces of lifestyles and social positionings in 1960s France, in which he discerned a relationship between tastes of necessity and tastes of luxury, regarding numerous culturally-defined consumables, food included. Ever since, the relation between social actors' positionings, food consumption, and tastes has been explored in other European countries, but not yet in Italy. Against this background, from cultural-sociological and post-structuralist points of view, this study argues that to comprehend how food, invested with cultural and moral meanings, is being used to differentiate, it is necessary to map the homology between tastes and positions. It explores this relationship by using quantitative data from the Italian household budget survey, focusing on the expenditure on food. The study finds that regardless of previously recorded regional variations in foodways and cuisines, tastes of necessity and luxury can be identified. In the case of the former, consumed foods are predominantly associated with function, substantiality, cheapness, heaviness, and tradition, while in the case of the latter, it distances itself from necessity through foods that are exclusive, lighter, more expensive, fiddly to eat, exotic, and are consumed in all due form. Positioned relationally, such distinction through taste points towards a mechanism whereby ingesting said foods, social actors likewise embody the associated moral properties and participate in a constant struggle of worth. The article concludes with recommendations for the necessary further explorations of spaces of positionings and lifestyles in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender wage gap and the penalty of parenthood on wages are still major economic and sociological problems, especially in developing economies. This study aims to fill the void in the literature by analyzing the gender wage gap among couples and the role of parenthood across the unconditional wage distribution in the Turkish labor force. In accordance, 1198 families which include working-married-couples with and without children from the Turkish Household Budget Statistics survey data for 2018 are examined via unconditional quantile regression and decomposition methods. The findings provide insights into three problems of the labor force gender wage gap among couples, the role of parenthood on wages, and the variation of them across the wage distribution. The findings reveal a gender wage gap among couples and the gap is wider for the lower-paid employees. Lower-paid females face a wider motherhood wage penalty whereas fatherhood is mostly insignificant on the males' wages. However, interestingly, fatherhood becomes a significant wage penalty for the highest-paid males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing and transport are the two highest costs in household budgets and can significantly impact affordability and quality of life. These costs also impact decisions and require households to make a trade-off between the ease of accessing desired opportunities and the size of their home. Yet studies that have aimed to gain insights into the factors that influence housing and transport affordability to develop policy interventions rely on aggregate or incomplete measures of these associated household costs, potentially obfuscating the trends. This paper aims to enrich understanding of the relationship between housing and transport affordability using data collected from University of Alberta (Canada) students, faculty and staff. It relies on the reported monetary cost of household spending on housing and transport, and estimated travel time cost, as well as information on the transport mode and home location in an effort to confirm the relationship between housing and transport costs and identify policies that can lower generalized costs for households. Based on the analysis, we establish the importance of accounting for the travel time associated with different transport modes in quantifying the generalized cost burden of a household. We also confirm that housing and transport costs change in opposite directions with the increase in distance from the city core. Lastly, policy interventions that lower transport costs via improvements in transit service and land use are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household consumption expenditure is an important measure of economic activity as it reflects the spending behavior of households and their purchasing power. The measurement of household consumption expenditure is critical for analyzing economic growth, inflation, and overall economic performance. In order to create budgets and financial plans, it is necessary to know and understand the relationship between the size of households in terms of the number of members, the number of children, and their consumption needs. The aim of the research was to determine the statistical significance of the relationship between household size and consumer spending at the national (Slovak Republic) level and also to analyze the relationship between household size and spending on food as a significant component of consumer spending. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to examine the relationship between household size and consumer spending. Regression analysis with linear regression and fitting was used to determine the relationship between consumer spending and household size with different numbers of children. The results analyze the correlations and test the hypothesis of a significant difference in the types of consumption expenditure in relation to different household sizes (number of children). Results confirm significant differences in consumption expenditure between different household sizes, which confirms the importance of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences / Ekonomi ve Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi is the property of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)