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Data for low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) are used to investigate the effect of the demographic transition on economic growth at sub-national level. We introduce a detailed classification of demographic window phases, determine how these phases are distributed among and within LMICs, and analyze the relationship between the demographic window of opportunity (DWO) and economic growth for 1921 urban and rural areas of sub-national regions within 91 LMICs. Many areas in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have entered the window, but most of Sub-Saharan Africa is still in the traditional or pre-window phase. Our analyses reveal higher growth rates in areas passing through the DWO. Positive growth effects are particularly strong in rural and more educated regions and in countries with lower levels of corruption. Policy measures aimed at effectively using the DW for achieving growth should combine investments in education and rural development with better governance., Social Indicators Research, 161 (1), ISSN:0303-8300, ISSN:1573-0921

Food security and its determinants are being targeted at various levels, i.e., individual, household, national, and regional levels. Our study contributes by two ways. First, it explores the role of political risk indicators along with other important factors in the food security of 35 Asian countries. Second, spatial effects are also considered while determining the factors affecting food security at the regional level. Spatial panel models are estimated using panel data of 35 countries ranging from 2000 to 2018. The significance of spatial effects is established by employing various diagnostic tests, and hence, direct effects and spatial effects are estimated using Spatial Durbin Model to analyze the phenomenon. Empirical results of the study show that rising political risk indicators as well as environmental degradation adversely affect the food security of the country. These adverse effects expand spatially to neighboring countries of the given affected country. Hence, the goal of food security urges UNO to devise an effective strategy to decrease the political risk, improve institutional quality, settle external and internal conflicts, and create religious and ethnic harmony in the affected countries of Asia. These efforts may focus on food security, health, education, and economic development at the regional level. Moreover, clean and sustainable environment must be part of all efforts to achieve food security at the global level. Spatial effects of environmental degradation indicate that the countries which are polluting the environment are adversely affecting food security at the regional level. Positive direct effects and negative spatial effects of trade openness point out the zero-sum game of the countries and hence, food insecure countries might be careful while adopting trade openness policy. Besides, strategies to control high population growth in Asia and economic growth are suggested to achieve food security in Asia. The results are useful for academia, policymakers, and international donor agencies alike.

The Great Recession (GR) of 2007–2009 marked the most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and its consequences dramatically changed almost every aspect of social life. This research introduces the Great Recession Index (GRI), a place-based composite measure that captures the multidimensional nature of the GR. The GRI can be used to examine macro-level outcomes and is especially well-suited for examining the spatial variation and longterm effects of the GR. The GRI is adaptable to a variety of geospatial units of analysis, and in this article, we develop measures for countries, U.S. states, and U.S. metropolitan areas. Then, using the state-based GRI, we provide a research application to demonstrate the utility of the GRI for explaining state-level income inequality in the post-Recession period. The results show that the initial shock of the GR decreased the income share of upper-class households, but the aftershock of the Recession increased their income share, resulting in increased income inequality in the U.S. since the Recession. This paper concludes by considering the feasibility of using similar measures for evaluating the effects of catastrophic events such as wars, civil unrest, climate change, natural disasters, or pestilence on societal outcomes.

Poverty has remained one of the key challenges facing humanity, especially in developing countries. In a bid to deepen our understanding of poverty, numerous attempts have been made in the literature to examine the determinants of poverty with several variables introduced in the estimation process. However, the role of fossil fuel subsidies has not been adequately examined in the literature. Recently, fossil fuel subsidies have risen in developing countries and one of the justifications of such an increase is that it leads to poverty reduction. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors affecting both income and health poverty with a special focus on the role of fossil fuel subsidies in 30 developing countries. Using a generalized method of moments technique, it is shown that an increase in fossil fuel subsidies generates more income poverty and health poverty. Qualitatively, the same results are obtained using the common correlated effects mean group approach, the augmented mean group method and a recently introduced causality test. The results further indicate that increases in real GDP per capita, financial development, human capital development, real remittances per capita, globalisation and institutional quality reduce both income poverty and health poverty. The implications of these empirical results are analysed in the paper.

Democracy is generally associated with governmental accountability, better public policy choices and public health. However, there is limited evidence about how political regime transition impacts public health. We use two samples of the states around the world to trace the impact of regime transition on public health: the first sample comprises 29 post-communist states, along with 20 consolidated democracies, for the period of 1970–2014; the second sample is a subsample of the same 29 post-communist states but only for the period of transition, 1990–2014. We find that the post-communist states experienced some decline in life expectancy in the first few years of transition (1990–1995). Yet, with a steady increase in the measure of democracy from 1995 onwards, life expectancy significantly improved and infant mortality decreased. Therefore, in the long run, democratization has had a positive impact on both the life expectancy and infant mortality of citizens of the post-communist states., Anastassia Obydenkova thanks the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) and Fung Global Fund, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, for supporting her research.

We study the non-monetary costs of terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany between 2010 and 2017. Using four waves of the European Social Survey, we find that individual well-being is significantly reduced in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. We explore possible mechanisms, finding that terrorist attacks are negatively correlated with generalized trust, institutional trust, satisfaction with democracy and satisfaction with the government. Terrorist attacks are also found to be positively correlated with negative attitudes towards migrants and perceived discrimination. Contrary to expectations, the negative relationship between terrorism and well-being is less strong for Muslim immigrants. We interpret this finding as an indication that immigrants benefit more than natives from the institutional reaction following terrorist attacks.

We investigate whether greater economic insecurity increases distrust in government and fosters authoritarian politics. Using the 2016 American National Election Studies dataset, we build on the literature regarding “egotropic" and “sociotropic" economic concerns to distinguish between “micro" insecurity (perceived insecurity regarding the individual’s own personal economic well-being), and “macro" insecurity (negative expectations concerning the macro economy). Our results suggest micro insecurity is not significantly correlated with attitudinal differences, but macro-level insecurity is associated with increased levels of political distrust, accompanied by greater authoritarianism. Greater macro-level insecurity is also associated with more negative feelings toward “out-groups" (e.g. Muslims, the LGBTQ+ community, feminists, immigrants) and was a key predictor in reduced affinity for Hillary Clinton and the rise in support for Donald Trump. Results are robust to controls for political affiliation and aggregate macroeconomic indicators, suggesting that rising levels of income inequality and weakening social safety nets increase political polarization and encourage xenophobia, racism, and homophobia.

Qualifying the official minimum of “Two no worries and three guarantees” (certainty of food and clothing, guarantees of compulsory education, basic medical care, and housing) is essential to evaluate the targeted poverty alleviation program since 2013 in China. Using the poverty monitoring dataset and the multidimensional poverty indicator system, the uneven dynamics and regional disparity of multidimensional poverty and its driving factors in poverty-stricken areas in China during 2014–2018 are explored in this paper. The incidence rate of multidimensional poverty was reduced by 61.72%, and the poverty reduction rate within the six dimensions ranged from 52.29 to 76.36%. Multidimensional poverty and its six dimensions displayed narrowing regional disparity. Impoverished and moderately poor areas shrank, whereas low-poverty areas expanded. All 22 provinces have become low-poverty areas in 2018. The contribution of each dimension to multidimensional poverty varies for different types at different stages. Income and expenditure contribute the most to poverty status, followed by transportation, housing conditions, education, communication, and medical care and health. The contribution of each indicator among different dimensions varied with different trends from 2014 to2018. This paper helps incorporate the official minimums of “Two no worries and three guarantees” into a more operational evaluation system to promote sustainable policies for governments at all levels by 2020 and beyond, as well as provide valuable references for poverty alleviation in other developing countries worldwide.

With the air quality ranking of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment as a case, this paper examines whether the public ranking could stimulate the ranked cities to improve performance. The results show that the horizontal ranking, i.e., the relative position among the cities, significantly stimulates the cities to improve air quality. The stimulating effect is significant for all the three type of cities, i.e., cities with good, medium and poor air quality, and is the strongest for the cities with good air quality. However, the stimulating effect for air quality improvement is not enough to alter the air quality comparison among the cities. Compared to other cities, if a city is ranked relatively low in the last year, the air quality in the current year is still relatively poor. The inertia is particularly significant for the cities with poor air quality. The vertical ranking, i.e., if the rank of a city progresses or retrogresses, does not affect the air quality and air quality change of the city. Overall, public ranking is argued to stimulate performance improvement by seducing the competition among local governments, although the actual effect is still subject to the perception of local governments and their capacity to respond to the ranking.

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes.

The paper uses the Shapley method to decompose poverty changes by income source and growth-distribution-cost according to the history of China’s poverty elimination policies in the last forty years. The analysis shows that economic growth contributed to most of the reduction in all periods. Increasing inequality has adverse effects on poverty elimination in that it makes people vulnerable to poverty, which bodes ill for future poverty alleviation. Wages explain most of poverty change for both the urban and rural areas in recent years and are the main reason for increasing inequality in rural areas. Agricultural income played a significant role in reducing rural poverty and inequality in early periods when China experienced many agricultural reforms. In the future, pro-poor growth, reducing inequality and building a relatively integrated urban–rural poverty alleviation system will be most important jobs for China’s poverty reduction.

One of the most challenging gender gaps in the Global South remains in the economic sphere. This paper examines how public institutions affect the gender gap in economic participation and opportunities in 74 developing and emerging countries during the period 2006–2016. We find that the public institutional environment is closely related to the economic gender gap. Specifically, the protection of property rights and guaranteeing security seem to be two key factors associated to lower economic gender inequality. Nevertheless, public institutions do not matter equally throughout economically backward countries. Whereas in emerging countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, a broad variety of institutional aspects, including undue influence on judicial and government decisions, are closely related to the economic gender gap, in low-income developing countries, such as Sub-Saharan countries, the problems of ethics and corruption stand out as a particularly remarkable element against economic gender equality. Some significant policy implications are derived from our findings regarding the potential of public institution reforms to reduce the economic gender gap.

Due to the lack of good-quality data, there has been no sound research about the economic welfare of the Romani in the countries where they live. Drawing on a comprehensive survey conducted on the economic welfare of the Romani people in Turkey, we employed multidimensional poverty measures to capture the structural side of the poverty of the Romani in Turkey, in a comparative manner with the non-Romani majority. The paper also decomposes the determinants of the multidimensional poverty. This helps us to identify the structural, personal characteristics and discrimination components of the poverty. This simultaneously allows us to comprehend the endowment and discrimination effects of different income layers of both groups.

This study investigates the existence of convergence in public-expenditures and its nine different sub-categories to reveal regional disparities in Turkey. To this end, we employ a club convergence analysis proposed by Phillips and Sul (in Econometrica 75(6):1771–1855, 2007) for 81 provinces of Turkey over the period between 2004 and 2018. The findings show that (i) except for social and environmental protection expenditures, total public expenditures and its seven sub-categories have multiple equilibria; (ii) there are major disparities across regions, especially between the eastern and western regions; (iii) spendings on education, health, and economic affairs expenditures might pose serious challenges for long-term development; (iv) expenditures on defense and economic affairs are the most important components of multiple equilibria found in total public expenditures. The existence of club convergence and the distribution of provinces across clubs propose some important policies which might help policymakers to reduce regional disparities amongst provinces.

This paper provides new evidence on the preference for environmental quality among youth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Our paper aims to provide insights into the relationship between youth outlooks and characteristics and environmental awareness. We use a unique and nationally representative micro-level dataset extracted from the SAHWA Youth Survey (Barcelona Centre for International Studies (CIDOB), Barcelona, 2016) conducted in five major MENA countries: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. The empirical investigation utilizes the ordered probit model to accommodate the ordinal nature of the dependent variable that measures environmental awareness. Our findings indicate that the preference for a better environmental quality increases with individual income, by being female, and with the lack of confidence in government. Moreover, identity factors such as gender equality, the unimportance of traditions and perceiving oneself as a national citizen have a positive effect on environmental awareness. These findings signal a number of potential policy implications. First, they point to the importance of economic growth and modernization in the region as a way of increasing environmental awareness in the future. Second, they reveal a genuine demand for the provision of public goods in the presence of weak governmental actions with respect to environmental quality. Third, the fact that females demand more environmental quality than males allows us to forecast a general increase in such awareness as females across the region participate more in the economy, society and politics leading to what we can call ‘female environmental stewardship’.

Devising multi-pronged strategies for those highly prone to food insecurity in the future remains a challenge for food policymakers. This set of food-insecure households faces different kinds of shocks (economic, political, environmental, pandemic, personal, etc.), which render them vulnerable to food insecurity. This study identifies those who are vulnerable to food insecurity, and will be useful for policymakers to resolve food insecurity related challenges in crisis or no crisis periods on an ex-ante basis. This paper decomposes the total welfare loss resulting from vulnerability to food insecurity into components due to ‘food poverty’ (expected consumption of the current food secure falling below the food poverty line), and risk (variability of food consumption over time). The last term can be further decomposed into the aggregate (region or community-specific), and idiosyncratic (household or individual-specific) risks. The paper identifies the key determinants of the different components of vulnerability to food insecurity based on household consumption expenditure surveys conducted in rural India in 2004–05, 2009–10, and 2011–12. Expected utility-based measures, and pseudo-panel regression techniques were used to identify risk-prone households. The key findings are: idiosyncratic risk is the largest driver (a loss in the utility of almost 51%) as compared to the poverty and covariate shocks; states with poor Public Distribution System (PDS) performance are more susceptible, a rise in the price of staple food items increases the chances of food insecurity, gendered disparity persists over time, forward social and religious groups are more vulnerable, and finally a higher level of urbanization increases the exposure and sensitivity to shocks (like the spread of contagious diseases), disrupts the supply of food commodities from rural markets, loss in income, and increase in rural vulnerability to food insecurity. Our key policy suggestion is a mix of cash versus in-kind transfers to resolve rural food insecurity related issues, tend towards resiliency, and simultaneously tackle the triple burden of malnutrition and SDG-2 related goals.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, it could be argued that it is the young who have been hardest hit in their living conditions. This paper offers a comprehensive description of youth living conditions and how they evolved during the recession period. To do so, we develop a synthetic index combining the indicators proposed by experts in the dimensions of Education and Training, Employment and Entrepreneurship, and Social Inclusion, through a multi-criteria approach based on the double reference point method. This technique enriches the debate by shifting the focus to acceptable and desirable thresholds for each indicator and by overcoming limitations inherent in previous youth indexes that allow for total compensation between the indicators, whilst ignoring potential imbalances. Results show that, in a context of convergence in policy instruments across countries during the Great Recession, there was an improvement in education performance, whereas cross-country divergences in terms of youth labour market prospects and social inclusion increased. This evolution has led to a more complex picture which is characterized by greater polarization in the spatial distribution of youth living conditions, with two noticeable poles: north-central Europe as opposed to the south and east of Europe. Differences in institutional configurations in the fields of education and training, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation and welfare provision together with macroeconomic trends, particularly levels of demand for youth labour and fiscal resources, have played an important role in shaping European youth living conditions.

0000-0002-4624-9413 WOS:000604522400013 Economic inequality and poverty have been extensively analyzed in monetary terms. However, other aspects of poverty, such as education, health, environment and standards of living are important factors, essential for human well-being and capabilities. Using a host of non-monetary aspects of poverty, this paper sheds light on the geographical distribution of multidimensional poverty in Turkey. Results from survey data highlight that the regional distribution non-monetary dimensions of poverty is conspicuously different than that of relative monetary poverty in Turkey. Unlike the relative monetary poverty rate, multidimensional poverty measurement reflects the regional underdevelopment problem of Turkey. On the contrary, once monetary poverty is considered in absolute terms, multidimensional and absolute monetary poverty have a similar geographical pattern. Moreover, the decomposition analyses point out that females, old disabled and socially excluded individuals suffer the most from multidimensional poverty. Our combined results show that the isolated eastern regions realize the highest poverty and deprivation at each decomposition level. Economic Research Forum (ERF) under theme "Non-Monetary Dimensions of Inequality and Poverty Among the Youth in the MENA Region" [2019-09] Earlier versions of the manuscript is presented at the ERF Workshop on Non-Monetary Dimensions of Inequality and Poverty Among Youth in the ERF Region, Cairo (2019), 20th National Economic Congress of Turkish Economic Association, Adana (2019). Authors would like to thank to participants and particularly to Valerie Berenger, Asaf Savas Akat, Seyfettin Gursel, Serdar Sayan and Fatma Dogruel for constructive comments and suggestions. This work is supported by the Economic Research Forum (ERF) under Grant No. 2019-09 of the theme "Non-Monetary Dimensions of Inequality and Poverty Among the Youth in the MENA Region". The content and the recommendations of this research do not necessarily reflect the views of the ERF.

Why have some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean developed more comprehensive welfare systems than others? Do political and economic factors help us signal the (un) favourable paths taken by countries with different degrees of welfare state development in the XXI century? This paper addresses limitations of previous comparative research to continue (re) searching the conditions of welfare state development. A composite multidimensional welfare state development index (WeSDI) is constructed for 18 countries between 2000–2015. The four dimensions are the magnitude of social expenditure, the scope of coverage of welfare programmes, quality of the coverage of welfare programmes and outcomes of welfare institutions. The WeSDI uses goalposts (i.e. natural zeros and aspirational targets) to normalise individual indices and avoid the “relativity problems” of results. We use crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to test how necessary and/or sufficient eight political and economic conditions are (alone or in combination) to foster multidimensional welfare state development in the region. The causal conditions are openness to external shocks, debt obligations, revenue-collection capabilities, labour movement strength, strength of the left, policy legacies of welfare institutions, size of the outsider population and quality of democracy. The paper confirms the relevance of democratic strength, and revenue-collection capabilities as sufficient conditions of the highest levels of welfare state development in the (post) neoliberal era. In addition to labour movement strength, these same economic and political factors are relevant to understand the conditions behind very low levels of welfare state development.

This paper examines multidimensional poverty in Brazil in 2000 and 2010, based on the microdata of the Demographic Censuses. Our analysis is disaggregated into five classes of municipalities according to their degree of urbanisation and remoteness, highlighting wide rural–urban inequalities in the levels and dynamics of poverty. We compare estimates of traditional monetary poverty with multidimensional poverty measures based on two methods: (i) the Alkire-Foster counting identification approach; and (ii) the Permanyer two-stage poverty identification approach. The two-stage approach introduces the concepts of complementarity/substitutability within and across poverty dimensions, which enables a more precise identification of the population targeted by anti-poverty policies. All methods highlight substantial progress in poverty alleviation. In absolute terms, the reduction in the incidence of multidimensional poverty was significantly larger in the initially poorest areas—rural and intermediate municipalities, as well as those in the North and North–East regions. Important advances were made in standard of living, especially in the access to electricity, durable consumer goods and private bathroom in the households in rural and intermediate municipalities. However, remote municipalities remain relatively poorer from any perspective, facing more difficulties in reducing monetary poverty.

The main objective of this paper is to disentangle the poverty-growth-inequality triangle for Asia, its sub-regions and individual economies by constructing poverty and inequality profiles, decomposing poverty changes and modelling inequality. Due to a shortage of unit record data, analytical techniques are developed for estimating the poverty headcount ratio and regional inequality with minimum data requirements. Analytical results confirm significant reductions in poverty across the board due to fast growth, although the benign effect of growth on poverty was offset by worsening distributions in many economies. Furthermore, the poverty-reducing effect of growth has been diminishing over time and converging to 0 for many countries. Also, the cost of rising inequality in Asia was found to be surprisingly large in terms of missed poverty reduction. Looking ahead, Asia is expected to eradicate abject poverty soon but likely to continue facing high inequality, particularly income gaps between economies.

Poverty is no longer a problem of income alone. Healthy poverty and capacity poverty have become key factors affecting the poverty reduction effectiveness. Based on “double cut-offs” multidimensional poverty identification method of Alkire and Foster (J Public Econ 95(7–8): 476–487, 2011), this paper proposes a “triple cut-offs” identification method of multidimensional poverty reduction effectiveness, and construct the chronic multidimensional poverty reduction index combined with chronic thinking of Foster (in: Addison T, Hulme D, Kanbur R (eds) Poverty dynamics: interdisciplinary perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 59–76, 2009). And this index can comprehensively and systematically measure the China’s multidimensional poverty reduction effectiveness in terms of both poverty alleviation and poverty returning. In this paper, we find that China's chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation index is greater than the country’s chronic poverty returning index, and the chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation/returning index in rural and western regions is greater than that in its cities and other regions in China. The chronic poverty alleviation of per capita net income and medical insurance have contributed a lot to the overall chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation of China’s rural residents, while poverty returning caused by health and housing difficulties has contributed a lot (48.14%) to the chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation of the country’s urban residents. These findings can provide more targeted guidance for poverty governance.

Data from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs show that more than 75% of the country’s poor live in rural areas. Therefore, to achieve the goal of poverty alleviation by 2020, the problem of rural poverty requires urgent attention. Based on the entropy method, we herein assess the level of poverty vulnerability in each province in China to guide the direction of future poverty alleviation efforts. In addition, based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index method and the grey relational analysis method, we studied the effects and contributions of rural poverty incidence, rural agricultural outcomes per capita, the proportion of agricultural outcomes, gross domestic product per capita, and total population on rural poverty. We found that, when it comes to natural resources, human resources, physical assets, financial assets, and social resources, the most vulnerable areas are concentrated in western China. We suggest the government pay close attention to the interests of individuals in this region to balance economic development, distribute the benefits of economic development to the rural poor, and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas.

This paper contributes to the debate on the Sustainable Development Goals progress by evaluating the MDGs achievements in South Asia and the policy and institutional challenges deriving from such experience. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indicators of poverty, health, education and gender parity outcomes, we offer three sets of findings. First, comparative evidence shows that, while South Asia has converged with richer regions, there is still significant variation in gender equality, universal primary education, and income poverty achievements across countries. Second, projections based on past trends on where SDGs are expected to be by 2030 reveal that there is a long way to go, where emblematic targets as income poverty eradication may not be met in the populous South Asian countries. Finally, considering the expanded set of development targets in the SDGs and the growth slowdown in South Asia, we argue that further progress would simultaneously require increased public spending on health and education and reforms improving state capacity. A simulation exercise confirms that such a combination of interventions would deliver significant benefits in the region, particularly in areas that are critical to progress on the goals of ‘No Poverty’, ‘Quality Education’, ‘Gender Equality’, and ‘Inclusive Growth’.

To explain a so-called “happiness gap” between citizens of Eastern Europe and comparable individuals from other regions, researchers have pointed at low governance quality, and corruption in particular, as a possible cause. However, this explanation seems incompatible with the “broken windows” paradigm, which posit that in high-corruption environment, victims of corruption tend to report a lower psychological cost of victimisation. Our paper contributes to the literature by explicitly tackling this potential contradiction. Our results nuance our understanding of the role of corruption on people’s life satisfaction in Eastern Europe by investigating the extent to which the subjective cost of corruption depends on its pervasiveness. We demonstrate: (1) large individual cost associated with different measures of corruption, (2) a small reduction in these costs for some measures of corruption as it becomes more pervasive and (3) large inequalities in the cost of corruption depending on education and income. Overall, we conclude that, for the population as a whole, there is limited evidence of corruption being a social norm in Eastern Europe, in the sense that pervasiveness does not reduce individual cost.

This study examines how social protection policies and programmes can help in poverty and inequality reduction in Africa. The study covers 38 African countries and engages the fixed and random effects models utilising data sourced from the World Development Indicators, Gini Index and Country Policy Institutional Assessment for the period 2000–2017. A remarkable finding, among other things, from the study is that a 1% increase in the provision of social protection will decrease poverty and inequality by 58% and 26%, respectively. The results imply that the provision of social protection contributes to poverty and inequality reduction in Africa. Therefore, the study recommends that the efficient provision of social protection should be implemented through in-kind and in-cash supports, among others, in order to reduce the level of poverty and inequality in Africa. Although, social protection appears to be an essential strategy for reducing, to a more considerable extent, poverty and, to a relatively lesser extent, inequality in Africa, there are also regional variations. Thus, the study submits that the type (s) of social protection policies may need to differ from one region to the other.

Present study explores the association between agricultural land inequality and human development by investigating the mediating role of poverty and income inequality. For this purpose, agriculture land inequality, poverty, income inequality and Human Development Index have been calculated for districts of Punjab (Pakistan) by utilizing the panel data from different waves of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey conducted during the period of 2003–2014. By employing panel Ordinary Least Square, Fixed and Random Effects approach, we have found that agricultural land inequality is negatively associated with human development. Moreover, estimates of panel Two Stage Least Square and Generalized Method of Moments confirm the mediating role of poverty and income inequality in the relationship between agricultural land inequality and human development. Agricultural land inequality is detrimental for human development by generating poverty and income inequality. Redistribution of agricultural land through different strategies like agricultural land reforms can be useful to reduce poverty and income inequality and to bring improvements in human development particularly in developing countries like Pakistan.

The economic crisis has undoubtedly impacted welfare states through the austerity policies prioritised to purportedly lead economies back to a growth path. In this paper, we assess the effects of the crisis in those welfare states, focusing on income benefits and analysing cases of welfare state change before the crisis via gross replacement rates available through the OECD tax/benefits database. We begin with a literature review on impacts of the crisis on welfare states, then focus on our hypothesis that retrenchment trends were already in motion before the crisis. From our point of view, this is relevant to understanding the evolution of welfare states since 2001, particularly those effects attributable to the crisis (versus those that are not); this may also be of help in the prediction of future trends.

The income inequality hypothesis claims that in rich societies inequality causes a range of health and social problems (henceforth: social ills), e.g. because economic inequality induces feelings of status anxiety and corrodes social cohesion. This paper provides an encompassing test of the income inequality hypothesis by exploring levels and breeding conditions of social ills in 40 affluent countries worldwide, as well as pathways for a subsample of wealthy European countries. Our aggregate-level research is based on a revised and updated Index of Social Ills inspired by Wilkinson and Pickett’s book The Spirit Level, which we compile for both more countries (40) and more years (2000–2015) and combine with survey information about experienced quality-of-life as potential mediators. We get three major results: First, cross-sectionally income inequality is indeed strongly and consistently related to social ills, but so is economic prosperity. Second, while longitudinally changes in inequality do not result in changing levels of social ills, rising prosperity effectively reduces the amount of social ills, at least in Europe. Finally, whereas the cross-sectional analysis indicates that aspects of social cohesion most consistently mediate between economic conditions and social ills, the longitudinal mediation analyses could not ultimately clarify through which pathway rising prosperity reduces social ills. Overall we conclude that the income inequality hypothesis is, at best, too narrow to fully understand health and social problems in rich countries.

This paper analyses the trend and changes in Sri Lanka’s multidimensional poverty before the ethnic war in 2007, the transition through 2009 and after the war in 2012/13. Using multiple correspondence and stochastic dominance analyses, the change in multidimensional poverty for various groups over time is considered using provincial and sectoral decompositions. Evidence shows that multidimensional poverty has declined since 2007. This is seen for war-affected and non-affected provinces as well as all ethnic groups. In particular, the after-war decline was caused by considerable improvements in the rural sector and some improvement in the urban sector but little change in the estate sector. Quantile regression analysis revealed that the war-affected Northern and Eastern provinces, and the ethnic minority of Tamils are still worse off than their counterparts after the war. To reduce multidimensional poverty, a targeted policy of priming up the peace dividend efforts comprising infrastructural development and improving employment opportunities within a coherent policy framework in the war-affected provinces should be undertaken. To address regional imbalance, improving living conditions and incomes in the estate sector in particular cannot be neglected and a public–private partnership could be effective in addressing multidimensional poverty.

Non-institutionalised anti-immigrant activity is a growing problem in many parts of the world, including Africa, and sometimes this activity can turn violent. Strengthening and reinvigorating associational life can seem like a panacea for this particular problem. Despite the theoretical expectations of the neo-Tocquevillian approach, however, the empirical evidence for a statistical relationship between associational involvement and tolerance is contested. In this article, the author looks at the relationship between participation in voluntary associations and engagement in a range of different xenophobic activities in South Africa. In the last twenty years, there have been a series of anti-immigrant incidents in that country. Nationally representative public opinion data from the 2017 round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (N= 3098) was used for this study. The author shows that the frequency of associational involvement has a positive effect on public participation in a range of anti-immigrant behaviours. These empirical results contribute to our understanding of the ‘dark side’ of social capital and challenge existing assumptions about the formation of societal tolerance in an African setting. The outcomes of this study provoke some serious questions about how we can build more tolerant societies and have significant implications for anti-xenophobia interventions.

Latin American societies show lower levels of political trust when compared to other regions of the world. The lack of trust in institutions can led to ineffective management of public affairs, social crises, lack of transparency, economic problems and even difficulties in countering pandemics. The objective of this work is to build an index (LADI) that provides a measure of the level of perceived distrust in the institutions of the different Latin American countries and its variations over the period from 2008 to 2018. The data used for this analysis are of a subjective nature and come from the series of surveys provided by Latinobarómetro. To develop the analysis, we have used a quantitative approach of a partially non-compensatory aggregative type, known as Adjusted Mazziotta and Pareto Index. The results show a generalized increase of distrust in the years 2017 and 2018 for several Latin American countries. On the other hand, in countries where the rule of law is more consolidated, a best perception of the functioning of democracy emerges.

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic puts countries and their governments in an unprecedented situation. Strong countermeasures have been implemented in most places, but how much do people trust their governments in handling this crisis? Using data from a worldwide survey, conducted between March 20th and April 22nd, 2020, with more than 100,000 participants, we study people’s perceptions of government reactions in 57 countries. We find that media freedom reduces government trust directly as well as indirectly via a more negative assessment of government reactions as either insufficient or too strict. Higher level of education is associated with higher government trust and lower tendency to judge government reactions as too extreme. We also find different predictors of perceived insufficient reactions vs. too-extreme reactions. In particular, number of COVID-19 deaths significantly predicts perceived insufficient reactions but is not related to perceived too-extreme reactions. Further survey evidence suggests that conspiracy theory believers tend to perceive government countermeasures as too strict.

Innovations of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have influenced human life through time-saving, diffusion of knowledge, easy communication, and networks, access to information and automation with artificial intelligence. They not only increase productivity, cut-down hardship, improve transparency and governance, build social capital and empower individuals but also raise risks of cyber threats and insecurity of private life, displace labours, encourage sedentary life-style and digitally divide individuals in the society etc. These together do not seem to have unambiguous impacted on the aggregate wellbeing and progress (WPI) of a nation, and thus this paper empirically examined their resultant relationship at the aggregate level. An index of WPI has been prepared to account for the aggregate level of satisfaction derived from six sources, namely economic, human, progress, cultural, environmental wellbeing and happiness. Similarly, an index of ICT exposure has been constructed by combining access to mobile, internet and telephone connections, and internet security. Using a panel database for 67 countries representing all subcontinents during 2000–2014, we find that ICT exposure positively improves the aggregate level of WPI. The net impact is marginally lower in less-developed and developing countries (e.g., Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) than the rest (e.g., Europe and North America).

This study stabs to probe the impact of financial development, urbanization, trade openness, political institutions, and energy consumption on the ecological footprints (EF), within the framework of EKC, of 110 countries congregated by income levels, over the time span of 1996–2016. The final outcome of cross-sectionally weighted Panel EGLS and multi-step A-B GMM evidently reinforced the existence of EKC hypothesis in case of EF both in developed and less-developed countries. This study finds the destructive environmental impact of composition effect and energy consumption while political institutions, trade openness, and urbanization have constructive environmental effect. Financial development reduces the human demand on nature only in less-developed countries. The ultimate consequences of this study are equipped with several policy recommendations for the concerned authorities.

For all its benefits, mainly through contributing to economic growth, tourism can cause certain negative externalities, increased crime incidence being one of them. More crime leads to immediate costs to residents, tourists and the host country, but can also imperil the destination’s image and fend off tourists in the future. We study the impact of tourism on crime in Croatia by estimating the elasticity of property crime with respect to tourist arrivals on monthly panel data at the county level over the period 1998–2016. We find robust evidence that tourism increases property crime. The elasticity varies spatially and by type of property crime, being higher in coastal than in continental counties, and higher for theft than for larceny. The estimates are used for counter-factual calculations which show that, had tourism been the only factor affecting property crime, the number of crimes would have evolved over 2006–2016 to a much higher level than it actually has. The elasticities are large enough that, absent sufficiently strong countervailing factors, even a moderately paced tourism growth can bring a sizeable increase in property crime over a decade. From the policy perspective, it is important to understand the countervailing factors and to consider the costs of tourism-induced crime in social cost- benefit assessments of tourism growth.

Studies on the causes of income differences between the rich and the poor have received an extensive attention in the inequality empirics. While ethnic diversity has also been identified as one of the fundamental causes of income inequality, the role of institutions as a mediating factor in the ethnicity-inequality nexus has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. To this end, this study complements the existing literature by investigating the extent to which institutional framework corrects the noisy influence originating from the nexus between “ethnic diversity” and inequality in 26 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1996–2015. The empirical evidence is based on pooled OLS, fixed effects and system GMM estimators. The main findings reveal that the mediating influences of institutional settings are defective, thus making it extremely difficult to modulate the noisy impacts of ethno-linguistic and religious heterogeneity on inequality. In addition, the negative influences orchestrated by ethno-linguistic and religious diversities on inequality fail to attenuate the impact of income disparity even when interacted with institutions. On the policy front, institutional reforms tailored toward economic, political and institutional governances should be targeted.

Weather is an integral part of our life and weather shocks can have severe implications on welfare. Given evidence that points to climate change resulting in altered patterns of weather parameters and given that the Philippines is one of the most vulnerable countries to climatic shifts, this paper aims to contribute to poverty studies in the country by analyzing the poverty-rainfall shock nexus. The paper finds that rainfall shocks affect wages and income, which in turn, affect chronic total and chronic food poverty. Some policy directions are provided.

The great recession has severely harmed the living conditions of many citizens in South European democracies. This article explores to what extent the deterioration of personal circumstances due to the economic crisis is related to the erosion of political trust. Previous accounts have provided scarce evidence of this sort of egotropic effects. Instead, they have underlined the role of sociotropic evaluations of the economic and political performance of institutions. However, these factors could be suspicious of endogeneity and third-variable bias. This article uses a survey fielded in the Spanish region of Catalonia that contains a novel battery of items to measure how the crisis has personally affected respondents. Latent class analysis is applied to that battery and propensity score matching is employed to estimate the causal effect of being personally affected by the crisis vis-a-vis not being affected. Results indicate that personal hardship reduces trust in institutions in turbulent economic times. Furthermore, the study of the Catalan circumstances sheds light on how attribution of blame works in a multilevel structure of governance during times of crisis. Personal economic hardship happens to decrease trust on national institutions and the EU but not on regional institutions, controlling for the ethno-national composition of the population of that region.

Are countries at a low level of socio-economic development catching up with developed countries over time or rather falling further behind? Existing work on the subject is not conclusive, partially due to methodological differences. The aim of the paper is to carry out a broader analysis with longer time series and a more diverse set of indicators. The study divides countries of the world into 21 developed “benchmark” countries and 156 developing countries. The distance between the benchmark and developing countries is measured using the “time lags” method, applied here to nine indicators covering topics such as the economy, health, education and the environment. The study further utilizes a probabilistic approach to extrapolate missing historical data for developing countries, so that the analysis can cover a full century starting in 1920 and ending with short-term projections to year 2020. The study finds that a majority of developing countries, and the population-weighted developing world as a whole, has reduced its lag in most indicators between 1920 and 2020. Progress was unevenly distributed, with East Asian and European countries converging the most with the benchmark, while most African countries have diverged along with some American ones. Catch-up in education attainment and life expectancy has been more successful than in infant survival rate, GDP per capita or technology adoption. The findings are put in context of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, showing how the time lag method could improve setting targets for some of the goals. Further, time lags are used to analyze the current demographic, economic and political situation of developing countries, identifying opportunities and risks for future catch-up with developed countries. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11205-020-02488-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In order to investigate the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) finding of increasing trend in income poverty in China since 2000, this paper studies income and multidimensional poverty in China between 2000 and 2011 using China Health and Nutrition Survey data. It is observed the ADB proposed approach, adjusted for vulnerability, demonstrates an upward trend in income poverty. Income poverty is decreasing, however, for the World Bank’s poverty cut-offs ($1.25 or $1.90). To measure multidimensional poverty, along with income (with ADB’s adjusted Asian poverty line and World Bank’s poverty lines), other indicators such as health, education and living standards are considered in this paper. The evident disparities and diversities in rural and urban multidimensional poverty are further examined. Per capita net income, highest level of education and flush toilet are found to be major contributors to both rural and urban poverty. The rural–urban disparity in terms of mild and moderate poverty appears to have decreased in the period before 2009, however, there have been increases since then, and the gap in terms of severe poverty remained quite high in this decade. We find that food insecurity does not play a major role in the rural–urban disparity in poverty. In the recent period, health insurance has become more prominent in explaining urban destitution, while the rural population is found to be more vulnerable to income fluctuations. Our results also show long-term poverty to be highly influenced by health. Our findings raise questions about the adequacies in the provision of health insurance and the quality of education, particularly in rural China.

Focusing on different facades of financial well-being such as wealth accumulation and retirement planning, various determinants of financial well-being have been unearthed, and financial literacy has emerged as a crucial factor that increases financial well-being. Hence, financial literacy has been an important policy instrument to increase the financial well-being of individuals, particularly given that it is relatively easy to implement. This paper is an attempt to pave the way for such policies in a group of middle income countries, namely Mexico, Lebanon, Uruguay, Colombia and Turkey. After establishing financial literacy levels, we identify the least financially literate groups in each country to facilitate targeting of public policy. We find that women, younger adults and individuals who cannot read or write in the official language of their country of residence have lower financial literacy scores. In line with the previous findings in the literature on the developed countries, our results indicate that financial literacy increases with education. We also show that it is not only the years of education, but also the quality. In Mexico and Turkey, there are large regional differences that must be addressed. We also find that differences in financial literacy across countries persist even when differences in structural characteristics are taken into account. A partial explanation may be provided by differences in financial inclusion.

The millennium development goals (MDGs) were designed to realign national priorities towards human development of which healthcare is the foundation. An extension of the MDGs, the sustainable development goals (SDGs), has more recently been introduced and has become the core focus for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) regardless of her performance vis-a-vis the MDGs. A transition into accomplishing the SDGs without identifying the efficiency and determinants of the shortfall in achieving the MDGs is a flawed approach. This paper seeks to estimate the efficiency of healthcare systems in SSA based on health focused MDGs. We estimate the technical efficiency and total factor productivity of these systems, and rank the annual performance of SSA’s healthcare systems from 2010 to 2015 using a robust data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Regression analysis is applied to the determinants of healthcare system efficiency. The DEA results show healthcare systems in SSA to be inefficient, with only three countries; Botswana in 2015, Rwanda in 2014 and 2015, and Tanzania in 2015; identified as efficient over the evaluated period. Failure to achieve technological advancements is the identified leading cause of a decrease in productivity. Scale inefficiency is determined to be the primary cause of technical inefficiency. The study also shows that governance measures, i.e., the rule of law and government efficacy, impact healthcare system efficiency more than public expenditure on health, indicating that the volume of resources invested in healthcare systems is not as important as the efficient management of the said resources in SSA countries.

Energy poverty has emerged in recent times as a crucial aspect of poverty, afflicting the developing world in general and Nigeria in particular. Drawing from some of the recent literature on energy poverty measurement, this study measures and discusses the incidence and determinants of extreme energy poverty in Nigeria based on a robust multidimensional energy poverty index that covers five major dimensions and six indicators of deprivation in basic energy services. The study uses the 2010 Harmonised Nigeria Living Standard Survey—obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics, Abuja, Nigeria—for its analysis. The results of the study show, among other things, that over a fifth of the Nigerian population are afflicted by extreme energy poverty and the phenomenon is more pronounced in the rural areas than in the urban areas as well as in Northern Nigeria than in Southern Nigeria. The results also indicate that the determinants of extreme energy poverty include region of residence, household composition as well as age, gender and educational level of household head. The Nigerian government should take urgent and adequate steps to eradicate extreme energy poverty in the country in order to pave the way for rapid and sustainable development in the country.

The prospects for the next Generation - whether young people, regardless of their backgrounds, have equal chances of social success - pose a momentous problem for modern societies. Inequality of opportunity, often reflected by social immobility, is a threat to the egalitarian promise and the stability of your society. This work argues that social capital transmission plays an important role for the chances of social success in Western societies. For the example of Germany, it is reasoned that weak social capital environments deepen existing disadvantages. Even though all levels of education are easily accessible and affordable, Germany has one of the lowest levels of educational mobility among the industrialized countries of the world. Problems appear to be systematic, since the decision regarding entry into higher secondary education is made at early age and is left, in most cases, with the parents, who rely on their own educational trajectory. Outside of the school environment, differences in social capital inheritance explain educational immobility. With the use of the German Socio-Economic Panel survey from 1984 to 2014, various analyses about the relation between social capital and educational success are performed. Social capital, which is helpful for educational and social success, clearly depends on the educational family background. This indirect link has been disregarded in past contributions. Alternative forms of schooling, such as comprehensive and all-day education, as well as a delay of the decision regarding entry into higher education, could help improving unequal social capital inheritance.

Institutions play a vital role for smooth and sustained functioning of economies as well as to excel the living standard of economic agents but there is no consensus upon factors explaining the institutional quality. This study is an attempt of how ethnic diversity, income inequality and public spending are encompassed to affect the institutional quality, illustrated by the example of a developing country, Pakistan, applying ARDL approach covering time span of 1984–2015. It is found that ethnic diversity and income inequality are associated with deterioration of institutions and public spending is likely to improve them. Ethnic diversity has to be managed endogenously to avoid its adverse effects on institutions while there is dire need to squeeze the widening gap between rich and poor. The findings of the study reveal that public spending needs to be contribute more at present for building the institutional quality.

In spite of green revolution and rapid economic growth, India’s vast population still suffers from hunger and poverty, especially in the rural areas. Moreover, drought adversely affects India’s economy by declining agricultural production and purchasing power. It also escalates rural unemployment which ultimately affects household food security. Our study investigated the food security of drought prone rural households in a broader context by linking the dimensions of food security with dimensions of climate change vulnerability. We used the primary data of 157 drought prone rural households of Odisha state in India for analysis. This study employed polychoric principal component analysis to construct an aggregate food security index. An ordered probit model was used to estimate the determinants of food security. The FSI showed that three-fourth of the respondents were facing food security issues with varying degrees. The estimates of ordered probit model indicated that joint family, education, migration and health insurance are key variables that determine food security, whereas drought adversely affected food security of rural households. Overarching strategies are required to effectively address food security issues in the wake of increased drought risk. This study provides an insight for policy makers in India and in similar south Asian countries who must consider food security in the light of drought.

Human development index (HDI) integrating greenness and fairness indicators is an important reference for global governance. This paper used the geometric method to measure the primary HD index (CHDI1), HDI integrating greenness indicators (CHDI2), HDI integrating fairness indicators (CHDI3) and HDI integrating greenness and fairness indicators (CHDI4) of 57 countries from 1990 to 2014. The results show that four CHDI of 57 countries were all increased, but the development levels were unbalanced among countries. Some emerging industrialized countries, such as China, have made great achievements in development, but the basic pattern has not changed. The average CHDI1 of 57 countries was 0.58 in 2014, and this index decreased by 23.3, 20.3 and 39.34%, respectively, after corrected by greenness, fairness and both indicators. China’s CHDI1 rapidly increased from 1990 to 2014, which accounted for 84.7% of the mean value of 57 countries in 2014, and its rank moved up 12 places among 57 countries. However, this index decreased by 19.2, 42.25 and 53.3%, respectively, after before-mentioned three corrections. In order to improve the quality and efficiency of HD, China should not only promote the growth of material wealth and the improvement of social services, but also promote ecological civilization and pay more attention to social fairness.

Empirical evidence regarding the relationship between social capital and health in China is relatively limited. This study aims to examine the impact of different types of social capital, including bonding, bridging and linking capitals, on physical, mental and general health of Chinese residents. 2985 cases from the Chinese General Social Survey 2010 were selected and hierarchical linear model analysis was performed. We found that at the individual level, bonding and bridging social capitals were positively associated with mental health in rural, urban and global China, but with general health in urban and global China only; linking social capital, which was measured by political participation and political efficacy in China for the first time, had significant positive impact on mental health in rural, urban and global China. At the county level, bonding social capital could only improve physical and general health in rural and global China, while bridging social capital would damage mental health in urban and global China. Furthermore, bridging social capital showed a passive cross-level interaction effect on physical health in urban and global China, and general health in global China. Our results also suggest that in order to exert positive impacts of social capital on health, efforts should be made to cultivate specific social capital in specific place and to promote equal distribution of related resources countrywide.