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This study examines the effects of educational attainment and household income on wealth accumulation in Vietnam using various Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) in 2008, 2018 and 2020. We use the threshold regression to separate households into different groups depending on their assets. We find that owning a university degree is optimal to maximize wealth accumulation for households in 2008. However, post-graduate qualifications are needed for wealth accumulation in 2018 and 2020. For those household heads without a university degree, owning advanced training certificates provides the best opportunity to accumulate household wealth in all three surveys. Besides, our empirical results confirm that household income played no role in wealth accommodation in 2008. Interestingly, household income positively contributes to wealth accumulation for households with assets above the threshold of VND 634.40 m in 2020. However, the effect is negative for households with assets below the threshold of VND 440.25 m in 2018. We also find that households with widowed or divorced household heads are associated with lower wealth accumulation. Another interesting finding is that living in urban areas reduces wealth accumulation for households whose assets are below VND 440.25 m in 2018. These findings largely remain unchanged when Lewbel's (Lewbel, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 30:67–80, 2012) instrument variable estimator is used to ensure the robustness of the empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "traditional view" on the historical decline of child labour has emphasised the role of the approval of effective child labour (minimum working age) laws. Since then, the importance of alternative key driving factors such as schooling, demography, household income or technology has been highlighted. While historically leading countries such as England and industrial labour have been studied, peripheral Europe and a full participation rate also including agriculture and services have received limited research attention. The contribution of this paper is to provide a first empirical explanation for the child labour decline observed in a European peripheral country like Portugal using long historical yearly data. For doing so, we use long series of Portugal's child labour participation rate and several candidate explanatory factors. We implement cointegration techniques to relate child labour with its main drivers. We find that not only factors related to the "traditional view" were important for the Portuguese case. In fact, a mixture of legislation, schooling, demography, income, and technological factors seem to have contributed to the sustainable fall of Portugal's child labour. Hence, explanations for observed child labour decline seem to differ by country and context, introducing a more nuanced view of the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a novel approach to retirement risk and its measurement. We define retirement risk as a shortfall of financial resources to meet the needs of a retiree's household, which is different from the inability to maintain a standard of living in retirement. Taking a subjective approach to risk, we operationalise it using the Leyden approach to estimate the minimum satisfactory income for a retiree household and compare it to the pension value. Using a logistic regression model, we estimate the effect of pension value and household and reference person characteristics. The retirement risk level strongly depends on the pension value, household composition, and the reference person's education attainment level, which also moderates the impact of the pension. This paper contributes to the literature by proposing a subjective retirement risk measurement method and offering a methodological tool that can be used with similar data from other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent works suggest that the increasing income inequalities decreased the middle class size and threatened life satisfaction (LS). However, no such studies link LS with middle-income class problems. The present study aims to fill this gap and characterize LS across the middle-income class in Poland. The main novelties are the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) to measure LS of the middle-income class in Poland and the methodological approach based on classification-regression trees (CART) to identify the determinants of LS. The analysis is conducted on the new database obtained from the survey of members of the middle-income class in Poland divided into three subgroups: the lower-middle-income class, the mid-income middle class, and the higher-middle-income class. For comparison, the low-income and high-income classes were also considered. Based on the SWLS results, relatively low diversity in middle-income class LS was identified. However, the inter-class comparison revealed that LS increased with belonging to a higher income class. The CART results support the primary importance of economic conditions such as, for instance, wealth and the level of savings in determining the middle-income class LS and show that their effect depends on their characteristics like professional status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of economic growth is visualised as the well-being of citizens or human well-being (HWB). However, it has been a great challenge to measure HWB. Though there are known reasons for considering GDP and its growth as a measure of overall development and progress of nations, yet mostly it is being used as a gospel indicator to compare nations and design appropriate policies. This paper is an effort to develop a comprehensive adjusted GDP to measure HWB through secondary data for thirty years (1990–91 to 2019–20) in India. We make thirty-five adjustments to net national income (NNI) to compute the adjusted national income (ANI) index based on the system analysis approach. The empirical findings show that the gap between NNI and ANI has been growing over time, and the ANI index shows an increasing trend. Through the analysis it is suggested that economic growth should be focused only if it improves HWB (full or partial). The paper attempts to make intervention into policy shift for improving HWB vis-à-vis happiness of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the potential of a common unemployment insurance scheme for the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU-UI) to improve income protection of atypical workers, namely those in part-time and temporary contracts. Our approach relies on simulating entitlements to national unemployment insurance and the EMU-UI to assess their effects on the household disposable income of atypical workers in the event of unemployment. Our results show that the introduction of an EMU-UI would reduce coverage gaps and increase net replacement rates, especially for atypical workers, and would protect a large share of the workforce against the risk of poverty. Extending eligibility for the EMU-UI to the self-employed would further improve income protection, reducing their risk of falling into poverty in the event of unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When transforming from a traditional rural economy to a rapid marketization period, it is essential to consider the relationship between multiple shocks and household income in poor rural areas of China. Using two waves of a rural household surveys from six poor counties in China between 2015 and 2018, we examine the effect of multiple shocks on households' income and explore the heterogeneity of different shocks and households based on income. The multiple linear regression and quantile regression results demonstrate that multiple shocks negatively affect farm household income, and the range of impact is widening. Specifically, natural disaster shocks reduce the income of low-income households more, and unnatural disaster shocks reduce the income of middle–low-income farm households more. We conclude that illness within the family and lack of working household members are the primary shocks currently suffered by different types of farm households. In contrast to previous research, this study identifies middle–low-income farm households as most in need of attention and reveals that unnatural disaster shocks in poor rural areas of China are most in need of governance during recovery transitions. The findings enrich the existing theoretical system and provide policymakers with practical insights regarding differentiated and preemptive risk governance approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeownership rates are declining in many countries and the potential impact on financial wellbeing is largely unknown. Additionally, the potential impact may be expected to be larger for women than men, as women tend to value homeownership more than men. Finally, financial literacy may play a role on financial wellbeing via a positive effect onto housing tenure (i.e., renter, mortgagor, outright homeowner). On the basis of a community sample of older Australians (N = 2608), we tested a model with housing tenure as a predictor of financial wellbeing, controlling for the effects of wealth, income, age, and marital status. Housing tenure yielded a significant, positive, unique effect onto financial wellbeing. We failed to find evidence that the effect of housing tenure on financial wellbeing was larger for women than men. Finally, financial literacy was associated positively with financial wellbeing; and, the effect was entirely mediated positively by housing tenure, wealth and income. We conclude that outright homeownership may accord approximately 10% greater financial wellbeing than renting (and ≈ 6% greater than mortgaged) in Australian seniors. Furthermore, higher levels of financial literacy may play a unique role in facilitating better housing tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National parochialism has attracted academic attention as its negative consequences have become increasingly apparent in the globalizing world. To empirically approach this issue, previous studies measured national parochialism employing experimental methods. The present study introduces a new approach using self-reported survey data. The advantages of using self-reported survey data lie in the access to a greater number of observations in a wider variety of countries with rich socioeconomic and demographic background information. Specifically, we use questions asking the respondents about the closeness to one's country and the closeness to the world in the World Values Survey and European Values Survey and define their difference as national parochialism. Using this measure, we assess its validity and investigate the sources of the individual variations. Our main results and contributions are as follows. First, our measure of national parochialism is compatible with the ones in experimental studies. Second, we confirm the findings in the previous studies that national parochialism correlates with sex, educational level, and political ideology, with some cross-country variations. Third, we add new findings to the literature that national parochialism correlates with native status, age, marital status, income class, employment status, as well as both mother's and father's native statuses and educational levels, with the tendency that people in the socially insecure position are more parochial. We also uncover that the COVID-19 pandemic raised the level of national parochialism. These results point to both the scope and limitation of policy intervention for managing parochialism at the population level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the geography of multi-dimensional poverty across French communes in 2017. We build an extended data set documenting 7 key dimensions of well-being (income, unemployment, housing, education, civic engagement, life expectancy and air quality) in about 35,000 communes. Life expectancy at commune-level is obtained from an original small-area estimation method combining commune and department-level data. We derive an index of multi-dimensional poverty to provide an unprecedented degree of granularity in the description of spatial inequality and poverty in France. The results show that joint deprivation in at least 5 dimensions of well-being is starkly concentrated among 316 communes, representing as much as 5.2 million inhabitants (7.7% of the French population). About 70% of these people are also in extreme poverty, which suggests that the concepts of multi-dimensional poverty and extreme income poverty significantly overlap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between misperceptions, income positions, and attitudes toward inequality at the supranational level of the EU. Conducting surveys in four EU member states (Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden), we confirm that Europeans misperceive their own income position in the EU. Once we account for these misperceptions, we find for all four countries that the lower their income rank, the more citizens assess EU income differences as unjust and are supportive of an EU minimum wage. When we inform a randomized subsample about their misperceived EU income position, those who learn that they are richer than they initially thought assess EU income differences as less unjust. The experiment unveils differences across countries: The general result is driven by respondents in Italy, Poland, and Sweden, whereas information on income misperceptions has opposing effects in Germany. This difference in the treatment reactions of the Germans is very robust and cannot be explained by their identification with the EU, trust in the EU, altruistic motives, political orientation, or socio-demographics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on microdata from the Chinese Social Survey (CSS2019) describing 6097 rural households, this paper uses the weighted average method to measure the level of internet use and describe common prosperity in terms of "comprehensive" prosperity (measured with per capita income level) and "universal" affluence (measured with income inequality). Subsequently, the ordinary least squares method is used to estimate the common prosperity effect of internet use. The research draws the following conclusions. (1) Internet use significantly raises the per capita income level of rural households, reduces income inequality between households, contributes to "comprehensive" prosperity and "universal" affluence, and realizes the goal of common prosperity. Furthermore, this paper uses two-stage least squares, limited information maximum likelihood, propensity score matching, replacement and combination of variables, simultaneous quantile regression, and exclusion of outliers to test the robustness of the baseline regression results, which remains robust after a series of tests. (2) Enhancing the use of the Internet can promote non-agricultural employment, cause a reallocation of labor time and income, and increase the proportion of non-agricultural work time and income, which in turn can affect the level of per capita income of rural households and the degree of income inequality between households, contributing overall to achieving the goal of common prosperity. Non-agricultural employment is a major mechanism by which internet use influences common prosperity. (3) The common prosperity effect of internet use in rural households is affected by the level of regional innovation development, the degree of digital economy development, and the natural geographical location, showing a clear heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the amount of excessive care work perceived among primary family caregivers of young children and aged family members in Korea and explores factors associated with the amount of their excessive care work. By using the 2018 Care Work and the Economy Project survey data collected from 1001 Korean primary family caregivers, this study estimates the amount of excessive care time of primary caregivers by calculating the difference in the actual and stated preferred amount of time for caregiving of children or aged family members and examines its determinants. Findings show primary child caregivers perform 20 h of excessive care per week while primary aged person caregivers perform 26.24 h of excessive care per week on average. Even if some excessive caregiving is redistributed from primary caregivers to their spouses, there remains an average of 14.36 h per week for childcare and 23.32 h per week for aged person care of excessive care time experienced by primary caregivers at the household level. Results of the generalized maximized entropy analyses show that for childcare, mothers who use longer hours of paid childcare service report a smaller amount of excessive care work. For aged person care, families with lower income, who live with the aged person, or with longer periods of caregiving report a larger amount of excessive care work at the household level. This study also highlights the role of attitudes towards gender roles, i.e., perceived fairness of care work within the household and the importance of government support for customized quality care services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mismatches between workers' actual and preferred hours of work are ubiquitous and have detrimental effects on well-being. Yet, the full heterogeneity of these effects and the characteristics of the most and least affected subpopulations remain largely unknown. This study collects survey data from 37 countries and estimates the full heterogeneity in the effects using a newly developed method—the sorted partial effect method. Based on the full heterogeneity, we employ classification analyses on the 10%-most and 10%-least affected groups and show that individuals most (vs. least) affected by overemployment are younger, while those most (vs. least) affected by underemployment are older. Age is the most influential factor that distinguishes the most and least affected workers when compared with other individual-level factors such as education level, household income, and the number of children. Country-level differences between the most and least affected groups imply that work hour mismatch is more tolerable for workers in relatively poorer countries than for workers in wealthier countries. These findings underscore age-tailored policy responses for alleviating the negative effects of work hour mismatch and provide insights for understanding the complex economic preferences across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Chinese people are increasingly experiencing overeducation in the labor market due to China's expansion of higher education. Migrant workers, disadvantaged in the labor market, are at an even higher risk of overeducation. This could trigger a series of social consequences. This study empirically analyzed the impacts of overeducation on social integration among highly educated migrant workers and examined the heterogeneity of these impacts across migrants with different socio-demographic characteristics, based on the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) 2017. Logit regression was used to estimate the likelihood of overeducation, and propensity score matching was employed to construct the comparable treatment and control groups. The results imply that overeducation has adverse effects on the social integration of migrant workers with higher education, and these effects vary across gender, educational level, and hukou status. The effects of overeducation on social integration are partly, yet slightly, mediated by personal income. Our results highlight the need for policymakers to address the overeducation migrant workers experience in the labor market, focusing on tackling the social consequences of migrant workers from an occupational perspective to improve their quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of continuing gains in female education and labour market participation and rising migration, we investigate whether women work in occupations which match their educational qualifications and whether migrant women face double penalty in being overqualified for their jobs. Using the data from the European Social Survey covering 2002–2020 with detailed information about occupation and educational attainment, we show that migrant women are significantly more likely to be overqualified in their jobs relative to native women. We explore the role of individual, institutional and workplace factors, as well as attitudes, to explain the overeducation of foreign-born women compared to native-born women. While parental education, workplace and destination country characteristics are all important factors in women's overqualification, they do not explain the immigrant women's disadvantage. The overqualification of migrant women is particularly notable amongst low and medium skill groups and in middle income households. These results inform the policy efforts to mitigate the skills waste of migrant women by documenting the gaps, identifying the target groups and suggesting potential channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, women are over-represented in precarious and insecure employment arrangements. Importantly, the high unpaid labour demands women experience over the life course compromise paid labour force participation for women. This study explores the way different trajectories of time spent in unpaid labour throughout women's prime working and child-rearing years (from baseline age of 25–35 yrs to 42–52 yrs) are associated with indicators of precarious employment and labour force detachment later in life. We applied group-based trajectory modelling to 17 waves (2002–2018) of data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to identify trajectories in unpaid labour. We then examined associations between these estimated trajectories and employment outcomes in wave 19 (2019). Our study shows that chronic exposure to high amounts of unpaid labour over prime working-age years (compared to lower exposure levels) increases women's probability of precarious employment and labour force detachment later in prime working life. This provides evidence that ongoing inequity in the division of unpaid labour has considerable long-term implications for gender inequality in the paid labour force, and underscores the importance of urgently addressing how men and women share and prioritise time across both paid and unpaid labour domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Globally, societies are ageing as life expectancy increases and fertility rates decline. Many studies exploring associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and health outcomes among the older population use conventional working-age measures of SEP (education, occupation, and income) or an area-based deprivation index. Methods: Microdata from the 2013 New Zealand Census was used to create a new measure of socioeconomic position specifically for the population aged ≥65 years (SEP65), using information about housing tenure, wealth, and receiving government benefits. We dichotomised variables representing income, assets, and housing tenure to apportion 489,264 older people in our analytic sample into low, medium and high levels of SEP. A multivariable logistic regression was used to investigate the relationship between smoking and SEP65, controlling for age, sex, ethnicity and area-level deprivation. Results: We report inequities between European, Māori and Pacific populations, which increase with age. We found an inverse relationship between the odds of smoking and levels of SEP65. Moreover, we further validated the SEP65 measure against the New Zealand Index of Deprivation (NZDep2013). At the third SPINE20 summit 2022 which took place in Bali, Indonesia, in August 2022, 17 associations endorsed its recommendations. Conclusion: Using an age-specific measure of SEP for the older population will aid policymakers in the appropriate allocation of resources according to need more effectively than working-age indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond the concerns associated with marginalised groups' underrepresentation, we posited that socio-demographic aspects and associated stigma provoke gendered social exclusion among older adults. Although these linkages have been frequently acknowledged, concrete evidence remains complicated. In a sample of 384 older adults from various administrative zones of the Lahore metropolitan, we examined that gendered social exclusion is typically connected with socio-demographic stereotypes. Statistics revealed that 72.3% of older adults reported social exclusion. Homemakers and non-workers were more prone to experience social exclusion than employed respondents. Findings further discovered that the social exclusion rates were more significant among older women (93.1%) than older men (47.5%). Among older women, those involved in some employment, having a personal income, living in higher-income households and joint families with their children or peers, and having access to a private car were less possibly socially excluded. The substantial gender aspect of social exclusion appears to be provoked by a gender-based socio-cultural context, limiting older women's participation in daily socio-economic pursuits. Finally, possible consequences of increased social exclusion among older women and strategies to cater to this emerging issue are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding households' resilience-building strategies is vital for the domains of humanitarian assistance, economic development, and poverty reduction, especially in the places where are vulnerable to shocks. In this study, we offer the first trial that takes into account the correlation between households' risk attitude and their resilience-building strategies, namely savings as an absorptive capacity and income diversification as an adaptive capacity. We examine the effects of these resilience strategies on reducing the impacts of shocks and poverty. We use a panel data of 1227 identical households for Vietnam in two waves of the Thailand–Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel project to investigate the above issues. We address the endogenous problems of households' risk attitude, savings, and income diversification. Our results show that more risk-averse households tend to save more and diversify their income portfolios. These precautionary strategies to build up their resilience capacity help prevent them from reducing consumption caused by shocks and from falling into poverty in absolute, relative, and multidimensional measures. We suggest that rural development policies in developing countries should focus on facilitating more income generation and employment opportunities. Furthermore, the development of rural education and infrastructure for information and communication technology should be taken into account of designing poverty reduction programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long had difficulties when dealing with cross-time and cross-boundary issues in the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). This case study for Belgium is the very first that tackles these complexities by calculating two ISEW-variants with distinct time and boundary perspectives that are based on Fisherian or Hicksian income. Experiential welfare looks at what is currently experienced within domestic borders, whereas the benefits and costs of present activities also include the welfare impacts shifted in time and space. The former construct only registers present ecological costs within borders and does not include capital changes, while the latter includes capital changes and ecological cost-shifting. As we find substantial ecological cost-shifting, we suggest to move forward with the latter concept. Next, the paper introduces a number of advances to the ISEW-methodology. These include the introduction of a sufficiency threshold for consumption expenditures when accounting for the diminishing marginal utility of income, the adoption of a consumption footprint view for the emissions embodied in trade with an additional focus on the climate impacts of aviation and shipping and the inclusion of the shadow economy. Finally, we propose to look beyond the aggregate ISEW and adopt a disaggregated approach to evaluate economic performance in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment is a major risk factor of poverty and employment is regarded key to overcoming it. The present study examines how the income poverty risk of unemployed individuals changes in the short and medium term, when they take up work, and whether the effects differ according to the type of employment. The focus is on permanent and fixed-term job contracts, as the political promotion of fixed-term employment has often been framed as an effort to reduce long-term unemployment and poverty. Drawing on longitudinal data from the German panel study 'Labour Market and Social Security' (PASS) 2010–18, we apply a first difference estimator with asymmetric effects to examine the effect of starting a job out of unemployment on income poverty risks in the subsequent four years. Strikingly, starting in a fixed-term and permanent contract have similarly strong and lasting poverty-reducing effects in the short and medium term. Thus, with regard to risks of income poverty, starting a permanent job does not appear more beneficial than starting a fixed-term job for unemployed persons. We discuss the reasons for this finding and also explore how the poverty-reducing effects of transitions from unemployment to fixed-term versus permanent employment vary by household type, occupation, working time and firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on survey data from CSS2017, this article examines the impact of Internet use on environmental pollution perception. The study found that after controlling for a range of demographic, psychological and provincial-level objective variables, three dimensions of Internet use variables have different effects on environmental pollution perception: The respondents' use vs. non-use of the Internet, information-oriented Internet use and commerce-oriented Internet use are significantly positively correlated with their perception of environmental pollution, while socially oriented Internet use, the belief that the Internet is more comprehensive than traditional media and the belief that the Internet can more truthfully reflect public opinion are significantly negatively correlated with their environmental pollution perception. The results of 2SLS and IV Probit estimation confirm that the Internet usage could effectively increase individuals' perception of environmental pollution. Further analysis found that personal annual income plays a moderating role between use/non-use of the Internet and environmental pollution perception and between information-oriented Internet use and environmental pollution perception. The above research findings have important policy implications. Governments should strengthen environmental governance, use the platform of the Internet to strengthen government-public communication, and take into account demographic, psychological and regional objective factors when adopting environmental governance policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits the Poisson-based framework to derive optimal thresholds of relative deprivation in the Australian context. Poverty measurement in developed countries mainly relies upon household income to capture those who are poor from the rest of the population. However, there is a growing recognition that the non-monetary indicators of relative deprivation can significantly improve the identification of those living in poverty. Relative deprivation is typically operationalised as not being able to afford and obtain a list of items that are considered essential in a given society. The key advantage of using such non-monetary indicators relates to its ability to directly capture the manifestations of poverty and assess people's living standards. Yet, one salient issue is the selection of a meaningful threshold from which the deprived and the non-deprived can be separated. Following on Babones et al. (Babones et al. Social Indicators Research 126:711–726, 2016), this study replicates the Poisson method to specify an appropriate threshold value (k)—the number of missing essential items—that defines a person or household as deprived in Australia. Based on data from the 2018 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, thresholds of k ≥ 4 for non-possession (merely lacking items), k ≥ 3 for derived deprivation (lacking and not being able to afford items), and k ≥ 3 for inferred deprivation (lacking and regarding items as essential) are suggested, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity remains prevalent in the United States, affecting millions of households. Research has confirmed that low income and limited assets are risk factors for food insecurity, but how income and assets are associated with food insecurity has not been fully explored in light of the fact that food insecurity endures or worsens over time for some people but not others. Using 2015, 2017, and 2019 waves of the panel study of income dynamics, this study (1) investigated the heterogeneity of food insecurity trajectories using Growth Mixture Modeling; (2) performed a multinomial logistic regression to examine how income and assets are associated with the relative risk of facing a more severe food insecurity trajectory; and (3) compared the coefficient of income with the coefficient of assets. Results of this study showed that both higher income and more assets are associated with a lower probability of facing food insecurity that worsens rather than improves with time. This study also observed that the association strength was stronger for income than for assets. These results offer insights for policies aimed at creating efficient financial support strategies (e.g., income assistance, asset building) that reduce recipients' risk of experiencing long-term food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of regional cultural diversity of working cities on the income of rural workers. Using a nationally representative micro-dataset in China, and adopting dialect diversity at the city level as the indicator of regional cultural diversity, we find that regional cultural diversity has a highly significant hump-shaped effect on rural workers' incomes from the wage employment and self-employment, reflecting a trade-off between the beneficial and the detrimental effects of regional cultural diversity on rural workers' incomes. The results remain robust to the inclusion of a set of covariates, alternative estimation technique, alternative measure of regional cultural diversity, and a placebo test. We also find that the detrimental effect of diversity is weaker for high-educated rural workers, and the impact of regional cultural diversity remains stable in the short term. To address potential endogeneity, we employ an instrumental variable approach by using the river length of cities to instrument the dialect diversity, and the instrumented results confirm the conclusions. In addition, we provide empirical evidence that the cost and benefit of regional cultural diversity on the income of rural workers can be attributed to reduced social capital and increased creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied the development, profile, and income mobility among individuals in in-work poverty in Sweden over a period of 30 years using data covering the entire population on a yearly basis from 1987 to 2016. By introducing a more solid work requirement that stretches over more time than the frequently used 'seven-month rule', we make sure that the in-work poor person in our study is mainly working. Our results show that the profile has changed: in 1987, the typical in-work poor person was a native-born single woman, but in 2016, they were a married man born outside of Sweden. When modelling income mobility over two 5-year periods, our results show that changes in household composition explain both upward and downward mobility and that it has become harder to change income position. Interpreting the results on a structural level, two conclusions can be drawn. As in-work poverty is no longer female-dominated, the Swedish policy for gender equality has been successful. As it is now closely connected with immigration status, the integration of immigrants into the labour market must improve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an established positive link among income, health, and social capabilities among older adults, the relationship mechanisms of these factors are understudied. Using the WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health data and a capabilities approach, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of income (measured by total household income) and health (measured by physical and cognitive functioning) on the social capabilities of older adults (aged 55 or older) in China and the possible mediating role of social engagement in this relationship. Findings from the study show that both income and health showed consistent and positive effects on social capabilities of older adults in China, and the effects varied between rural and urban older adults. The mediation analysis results show that social engagement accounted for a substantial proportion of the effects of income and health on social capabilities, but income and health still had strong, positive direct effects of their own. In particular, social engagement was found to play important mediating roles in the associations between physical and cognitive functioning and the social capabilities of freedom of expression (9.46%) and the sense of safety (36.33%) among rural older adults. Findings from this study highlight the need for more social policies and services to enhance older adults' social engagement, income, and health conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the associations of a country's macroeconomic and social policy indicators and diverse household characteristics with joint-income-wealth-poverty (JIWP) among households with members aged 50 years and over in 18 European countries and Israel. A multidimensional approach was used to integrate income and wealth by defining four groups of households: twice-poor, economically vulnerable (poor only by wealth), protected poor (poor only by income), and non-poor. JIWP was examined for two wealth concepts—the 'net-worth' and the 'liquid-wealth'. Using the sixth wave of the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement (SHARE), we employed multilevel multinomial models to study JIWP across countries. JIWP varied widely across countries, with both country's features and household characteristics shaping the picture of poverty. GDP per capita was negatively associated with JIWP. Total (gross) social expenditure and public social expenditure per capita were negatively associated with risk of JIWP. Greater minimum guaranteed income among working age households and higher replacement rate of pensions among elderly households were also negatively associated with JIWP. Higher public expenditure on health and better quality of the healthcare system decreased the risk of JIWP, but heavier reliance on private financing of the healthcare increased it. Implications for research and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new evidence on how intergenerational income inequality evolves during the period 2005–2019. Using the Continuous Sample of Working Histories (CSWH), which includes administrative data about working lives and personal characteristics of Spanish workers, we shed light on the effect of the Great Recession on income inequality between cohorts in Spain. As a proxy of income, we employ monthly earnings data, provided by the CSWH. From a life course approach, we use two age-period-cohort (APC) models which allow us to separately identify three components: cohort, age and period effects. First, we examine relative earnings which will reveal whether there are income differences between generations. Second, we measure how absolute earnings have developed over time. Our results suggest that some generations are more disadvantaged in terms of income by their year of birth than others. Likewise, the evidence points out that the economic context experienced by a generation in their transition to the labour market is a key factor in the development of their income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a characterization of a new class of ordinal poverty measures that are defined by means of the aggregate generalized poverty gap. To be precise, we propose to use the sum of the differences between the transformed fixed poverty line and the transformed level of income of each person below the line as our measure. If the transformation is strictly concave, the resulting measure is strictly inequality averse with respect to the incomes of the poor. In analogy to some existing results on inequality measurement, we show that the only relative (scale-invariant) members of our class are based on strictly concave power functions or the natural logarithm. Moreover, we show that our measures allow for a useful decomposition that is akin to those examined in some earlier contributions. In an empirical analysis, we compare the logarithmic variant of our index to two well-established alternative orderings. Unlike numerous indices that appear in the earlier literature, ours do not explicitly depend on the number of poor or on the total population size, thereby ruling out any direct influence of the head-count ratio on poverty comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines between-country differences in why education promotes trust using data from 29 countries (and 146 regions) participating in the OECD's Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). Results indicate that education is strongly associated with trust and that individuals' literacy, income, and occupational prestige are important mediators of this association. Contrary to previous studies we do not find that country level or regional level birthplace diversity is associated with average levels of trust. However, education gradients in trust and the extent to which these are due to social stratification or cognitive mechanisms vary both at the country and regional level depending on birthplace diversity. Multilevel mediation-moderation analyses reveal that in countries and regions with greater birthplace diversity there is a greater polarization in levels of trust between individuals with different educational qualifications. This polarization is primarily due to cognitive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding child-related costs is crucial given their impact on fertility and labour supply decisions. We explore the subjective cost of young children in Europe by analysing the effect of child births on parents' self-reported ability to make ends meet, and link it to changes in objective economic well-being such as income, benefits, and employment. The study is based on EU-SILC longitudinal data for 30 European countries from 2004 to 2019, enabling comparisons between country groups of different welfare regimes. Results show that newborns decrease subjective economic well-being in all regions, yet with economies of scale for the number of children. Mediation analyses reveal that the substantial labour income losses of mothers (indirect costs) explain only a small part of subjective child costs. In the first year after birth, these losses are mostly compensated for via public transfers or increased labour income of fathers, except in regions where women take extensive parental leave. This suggests that the initial drop in subjective economic well-being after childbirth is caused by increased expenses due to the birth of a child (direct costs) and other drivers such as stress that are reflected in the self-reported indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health is considered as one of the critical inputs in the production function. This study is an endeavour to identify and quantify the impact of climate change measured by temperature, rainfall, and air pollution on the human healthcare expenditures for 15 countries over 2000Q1–2017Q4. Moreover, the impact of income measured by real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and its squares, inflation, and population ageing on healthcare expenditures are also examined in the study. The empirical findings indicate that temperature and air pollution have a long-run and significantly positive relationship with healthcare costs, however, rainfall exhibits a negative relationship with the healthcare expenditures. Furthermore, all the three estimated equations exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship between income and healthcare expenditures. The findings also show that the other two regressors, inflation and population aging, have significantly increased the cost of human health. The findings suggest that policy-makers need to focus on sustainable development, which should not be at the expense of future generations. Furthermore, improving the human health facilities needs to be a top priority. Meanwhile, health incentives and insurance should be publicised to reduce health spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, gambling harm has been considered a significant public health concern due to its increasing socioeconomic costs. Although the adverse effects of gambling have attracted research interest, evidence of its effect on financial stress remains largely anecdotal. This study empirically examines the link between individual problem gambling severity and financial stress using panel data from the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey. After addressing endogeneity, we find that problem gambling severity is positively associated with self-reported financial stress. Thus, problem gambling severity tends to increase financial stress. This finding is robust to alternative measures of financial stress and gambling behaviour—whether gambling is measured using the problem gambling severity index, gambling risk statuses, number of gambling activities, or gambling expenditure. The positive effect of gambling on financial stress is largely driven by gambling activities involving scratch cards and poker machines. Although males exhibit higher levels of problem gambling severity, females are more financially stressed than males. Our findings also suggest that gambling widens the gender gap in financial stress. Further analysis reveals that financial resilience mediates the gambling-financial stress relationship. This implies that promoting policies that enhance financial resilience can help to insulate individuals against the effects of gambling on financial stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty years after reunification, East and West Germany are still characterized by a considerable difference in satisfaction with democracy (SWD). This paper proposes and tests a model which assumes SWD to be shaped by the interests (economic and cultural) and moral values individuals demand to see fostered by the democratic system. Empirical application of the model reveals substantial differences between the East and West German SWD function in that the satisfaction of economic interests is much more important in the East than the West whereas the opposite applies to moral concerns. Demands on redistribution and immigration policies—conceptualized as proximate drivers of SWD—also shape SWD differently in the East and the West, in addition to being shaped by interests and morals in different ways. East–West differences in the relationship between economic demands and SWD are more important than differences in the levels of demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between intergenerational mobility and inequality is widely explored but yet to reach conclusive results. The convention is to provide descriptive analysis with data of several developed countries, termed as the Great Gatsby Curve (GGC). This paper constructs a panel data containing a wide range of modern societies to replicate and extend the GGC with alternative measures. Through investigations, this study confirms that inequality skews the intergenerational upward mobility. Ceteris paribus, every one percent increase in inequality measured by top 10% income share will decrease the upward mobility by about 5 percent on average. On the other hand, every one percent increase in the bottom 50% income share contributes to 12 percent increase in the upward mobility. In comparison, it implies that it is not only the degree but also the structure of the inequality, that matters for the intergenerational mobility. The increase in the income share held by the bottom earners prompts the overall upward mobility with much greater and more meaningful magnitude. Besides, economic development benefits to the overall upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using tax data from the Swiss canton of Lucerne, we study how measures of economic inequality change if they account for income and wealth rather than income alone. Joint income-wealth, the sum of labor income and annuitized wealth, serves as a measure of combined inequality of income and wealth. Inequality measured using joint income-wealth is higher than measured using income alone. We refine existing annuitization techniques by introducing heterogeneous returns. The joint distribution of labor income and annuitized wealth displays strong tail dependence at the top and a negative association for negative annuitized wealth. A decomposition shows that the underlying marginal distributions of labor income and annuitized wealth account for most of joint income-wealth inequality, whereas their association matters only in the tails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many mainstream schools of economics argue that work is a burden, while nonmainstream schools argue that this might not be entirely true. This paper aims to reconcile this difference by suggesting that individuals will balance income and leisure only after the fixed expense for their current living standard is met. Three applications show that the above explanation can reconcile different historical perspectives, explain various discrepancies about labor supply between neoclassical theory predictions and empirical findings, and reconcile the different interpretations about lottery winners' labor supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the monetary and living standards approaches to poverty using Australian data for the period 2006–2017. The aim is to highlight the conceptual and empirical strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches and identify the similarities and differences that emerge when both are applied to examine what happened over the period and to a limited degree, why. The acknowledged limitations of estimating poverty rates by comparing household income with a poverty line have to a degree been addressed by developments in deprivation research that have generated estimates that are more directly related to living standards, more democratic and more credible. But this approach also has limitations, so its growing popularity need not signify the end of poverty line studies. This paper compares the two approaches, with specific attention paid to ensuring that the estimates are internally consistent over time and comparable at a point in time. Both show a consistent pattern of modest improvement in social disadvantage over the period examined, but they reveal different aspects of change. The monetary approach highlights the role of housing costs in driving changes in poverty, while the more nuanced explanation generated by estimates of deprivation provides detailed insights. The results suggest that each has a positive role to play in better understanding the nature of poverty and identifying the factors driving change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticism on the use of the income/expenditure poverty line to estimate the number of the poor in Indonesia leads to questioning the use of the multidimensional poverty line (MPL) measurement. While current research on the defining variables, dimensions, and indicators to develop the MPL measurement in Indonesia was not based on direct views of the poor and the non-poor household heads, we complement this research gap by examining it based on direct views of the poor and the non-poor household heads. Methods used to collect the empirical data were conducted in four stages. The first stage was by organizing a Focus Group Discussion with twenty-five participants. The second stage was by conducting a pilot for the main survey on thirty poor and non-poor household heads. The third stage was by distributing the main survey questionnaire to 274 non-poor and 315 poor household head respondents in six representative locations in Indonesia. The fourth stage was by taking in-depth interviews with 8–12 key informants in each survey location. These data were further analysed by employing the qualitative technique. The results confirmed that the poor and the non-poor household head respondents, and the interviewees under the survey viewed the MPL measurement as a comprehensive and better poverty measurement. However, dimensions and indicators that were viewed to be important in developing the MPL measurement were mostly in the groups of three variables. These three variables were capability, empowerment, and opportunity. These three variables should be no hierarchy of importance in developing the MPL measurement as well as in formulating policy and programs to eradicate the incidence of poverty in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses age-specific differences in income trends in nine European countries. Based on data from National Accounts and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, we quantify age-specific changes in income between 2008 and 2017 and decompose these changes into employment, wages, and public transfer components. Results show that income of the younger age groups stagnated or declined in most countries since 2008, while income of the older population increased. The decomposition analysis indicates that the main drivers of the diverging trends are higher employment among the older population and a strong increase in public pensions, especially for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little evidence exists to determine whether individual variations in objective income versus subjective social status would more strongly predict cognitive outcomes in adulthood. In the present study, we contrast the predictive validity of objective income against subjective social status on cognitive outcomes using two large-scale, general public samples. In Study 1, we cross-sectionally examined a sample of Singaporean adults (N = 848; 379 males; Mage = 37.19) to determine whether income or subjective social status would predict reasoning ability. In Study 2, we examined a sample of American adults (N = 1476; 694 males; Mage = 53.70) across approximately ten years using latent variable cross-lagged panel modelling to determine whether income or subjective social status would predict long-term episodic memory and executive function after accounting for baselines. Age, gender, education, employment status, and household size were controlled for. Results indicated that objective income predicted all cognitive outcomes in both studies, whereas subjective social status did not. Additionally in Study 2, reverse-causal pathways in which cognitive functioning was specified as a predictor of later income were not supported. Overall, the results suggest replicable, unidirectional links between objective income and multiple indices of cognitive functioning that were not found for subjective social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that older people are more satisfied with their finances than younger individuals, even when they have a low income. We examine to what extent this can be observed when studying the risk of subjective economic hardship among the adult population in 28 European countries. Our study describes the association between age and the risk of subjective economic hardship and how the association varies by level of income. Additionally, we examine the role of assets and debt in explaining the association. The data come from the 2020 EU-SILC survey and its ad-hoc module on over-indebtedness, consumption, and wealth. We estimate logistic regression models that control for country-level variation. We show that there is substantial variation across Europe regarding how the likelihood of experiencing subjective economic hardship varies by age. The income position of different age groups explains, to a large extent, the different age patterns for hardship across countries. When controlling for country-level variation and level of income, older people are less likely than younger age groups to experience subjective economic hardship. We find indications that older people have a lower risk of subjective economic hardship especially in the lower bottom of the income distribution. Older people’s lower risk seems to be largely explained by their more frequent ability to use savings to maintain their standard of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the debate about the introduction of an official absolute poverty line is growing in the EU, at the moment Italy is the only EU country providing an official measure of absolute poverty. Absolute poverty is estimated in Italy with reference to household consumption using the Household Budget Survey (HBS), but it can be estimated also relying on incomes. Focusing on the Italian experience, this article contributes to the literature and to the national and European policy debate about poverty measurement in three ways. First, a detailed review of the methodology adopted in Italy to compute absolute poverty is presented. Second, the article investigates what changes when absolute poverty is assessed relying on income (using EU-SILC data) instead than on consumption (using HBS). Third, a comparison between income-based absolute poverty and the two main indicators of poverty and social exclusion used at the EU level—at risk of poverty rate, AROP, and severe material deprivation index, SMD—is shown. Main findings are: (1) the level and the characteristics of the poor change when absolute poverty is measured with reference to income rather than to consumption; (2) the incidence of income-based absolute poverty has risen more steeply than the incidence of the AROP since the upsurge of the economic crisis in 2008; (3) a very low correlation at the individual level between the income-based absolute poverty status and the SMD status emerges, thus strongly questioning the idea of using SMD as a proxy of absolute poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether intra-European migration pays off in terms of income and subjective well-being (SWB) for migrants aged 50 + who are now growing old abroad and in what way their SWB is associated with their relative income position. Using panel data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe allows us to go beyond the classical comparison with the native reference group and draw on information about respondents who stayed in the place of origin ('stayers'). Our findings indicate that migration does pay off in later life. Compared to similar stayers, migrants have higher income and higher SWB levels. Furthermore, we find that older migrants' SWB is positively associated with their relative income position for those with an income above the income of both stayers in the origin and natives in the destination country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is thought to buffer the negative effects of low income on health and thereby flatten the social gradient. Child development research on social capital has suggested that social networks of adults and children in a neighborhood may play a protective role in children's outcomes. Yet little is known about how this relationship applies to diverse developmental outcomes in early childhood. This study examines whether the presence of role model adults and the willingness of neighbors to help keep children safe moderates the relationship between neighborhood income and five developmental outcomes for children in kindergarten: (1) physical health and well-being, (2) social competence, (3) emotional maturity, (4) language and cognitive development, and (5) communication and general knowledge. We linked neighborhood-level data on child development from two Canadian provinces, British Columbia (BC, n = 100) and Ontario (n = 482), to neighborhood-level data on social capital from the Ontario Kindergarten Parent Survey, and the BC Social Capital Study; and income data from the 2006 Canadian Census. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the main and interaction effects of social capital and income in relation to child development outcomes. In Ontario, higher levels of social capital were associated with better child outcomes on all five developmental domains. Similar trends were observed in BC. Higher levels of social capital flattened the income gradient in language and cognitive development in both provinces, and social competence in Ontario. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heterogeneous economic results of divorce have received limited attention. The current study analyzes such consequences from an intersectionality perspective, where heterogeneity is expressed not only in gender groups, but also in the locations of women and men on the earnings distribution scale. We also examine whether remarriage and welfare support have differing effects on income across these groups. The study uses a unique dataset in Israel that merges administrative data from the tax authorities (employment income and pensions) with the National Insurance Institute database (socio-demographic information and allowances). Applying two-level ("mixed") panel models combined with quantile regressions, we investigate the post-divorce income of women and men by tertile, as well as in the top percentile of each gender group. Results show that the most vulnerable group among men is low income, while the most immune group of men is very high income. For women, however, differences between classes are small; across the board, women's post-divorce income decreases by at least a third. Thus, while the effect of divorce on men's income depends upon their earnings level, its effect on women's income is negative even in the top percentile. Remarriage has a differential effect on income based on location on the income distribution scale only for men. The welfare policy effect on income is gendered: regardless of earnings group, allowances are negatively related to income for women and positively related for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty and socioeconomic status (SES) are conventionally measured through indicators of income, wealth, education and/or occupation, but for some populations such as people who use drugs (PWUD), these measures may not sufficiently capture material well-being. This paper examines the validity of material security, measured through a modified Family Resource Scale (FRS), as an alternative measure of poverty, comparing this to other measures in the context of exposure to violence among PWUD using multivariable generalized estimating equations. Three factors were detected within the FRS using exploratory factor analysis although confirmatory factor analysis did not confirm multifactorial structure. In contrast to other SES measures that had no or positive relationships with exposure to violence, higher FRS scores were associated with lower odds of exposure to violence in final analyses. The FRS thus adds an important perspective to the measurement of poverty, with potential relevance to other populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic connotation of poverty concerns mainly the level of household's spending and income as privileged indicators. Sometimes, data sources have several lack of information, but such information is available in other data sources related to the same statistical units, or to other households. In order to identify records relating to the same or similar units belonging to two data archives, some methodologies (record linkage in the first case, statistical matching in the latter) are used for integrating data. In this study we illustrate a model of data integration between two surveys conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and Survey on Household Expenses). The construction of an integrated database starting from those two surveys is useful for studying consumer behaviours in relation to specific groups of goods, analysing decisions related to household savings, examining economic and social inequalities, such as studying the impact of public policies through simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]