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Introduction: Associations between structural inequalities and health are well established. However, there is limited work examining this link in relation to mental health, or that centres public perspectives. This study explores people's experience and sense‐making of inequality in their daily lives, with particular consideration of impacts on mental health. Methods: We conducted a peer research study. Participants had to live in one of two London Boroughs and have an interest in inequalities and mental health. Using social media, newsletters, local organisations and our peer researchers' contacts, we recruited 30 participants who took photos representing their experience of inequality and discussed them during semi‐structured interviews. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Three themes were identified in this study: (1) inequalities are unjust, multilayered and intertwined with mental health. Accounts demonstrated a deep understanding of inequalities and their link to mental health outcomes, describing inequalities as 'suffering' and 'not good for anyone'. Financial, housing, immigration and healthcare problems exacerbated poor mental health, with racism, gender‐based violence and job loss also contributing factors for both poor mental health and experiences of inequality; (2) inequalities exclude and have far‐reaching mental health consequences, impacting personal sense of belonging and perceived societal value and (3) moving forwards—addressing long‐standing inequality and poor public mental health necessitated coping and resilience strategies that are often unacknowledged and undervalued by support systems. Conclusion: Lived experience expertise was central in this study, creating an innovative methodological approach. To improve public mental health, we must address the everyday, painful structural inequalities experienced by many as commonplace and unfair. New policies and strategies must be found that involve communities, redistributing resources and power, building on a collective knowledge base, to coproduce actions combatting inequalities and improving population mental health. Patient or Public Contribution: This study was peer‐led, designed and carried out by researchers who had experiences of poor mental health. Six authors of the paper worked as peer researchers on this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between low‐income single mothers and their adolescent and early adult children utilizing qualitative interview and focus group data with youth from three Canadian cities. The research explored youth provisioning roles in these families. Provisioning, a concept widely understood in the global south, refers to labour used to sustain low‐income families and includes emotional labour, care work, trade and exchange and paid labour. Findings from this study identified strong expressions of positive attachment and close relationships between youth and their family members. The paper queries whether positive attachment may be built through roles where youth see themselves as integral parts of a family team and where their contributions are acknowledged. These findings invite us to explore and perhaps challenge the oft‐reported correlations between living in a low‐income, lone mother‐led family and poor childhood outcomes and poor attachment. Can these outcomes be mediated and can the provisioning roles youth undertake possibly be such mediators? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) serves as a credible mechanism to simultaneously address food security, climate change, and agricultural productivity. Despite the widespread adoption of CSA approaches across West Africa, many countries have still not been able to resolve the problems of food insecurity and rural poverty. This systematic review evaluates published evidence on the types of CSA practices, the determinants and benefits of adoption, and the barriers confronting the adoption of CSA practices across West Africa, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses statement checklist. Articles published in English from January 2010 to March 2023 investigating the benefits of and barriers to the adoption of CSA practices in West Africa were retrieved from ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. The methodological quality of studies was assessed using Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools for use in systematic reviews. The themes emerging from the articles were extracted, and a summary was provided to illustrate each theme. After applying the eligibility criteria, 12 articles were included in the final review. The studies reviewed revealed that farmers used more knowledge‐, water‐, carbon‐, and nitrogen‐smart practices, compared to weather‐ and energy‐smart practices. Across the reviewed papers, factors such as the education level of farmers, age, gender, household size, membership of a social group, agricultural extension services, and access to credit/financial resources influenced CSA adoption. The reviewed studies identified that farmers who used CSA practices reported benefits such as improved soil fertility, higher yield, improved household income, climate resilience (such as overcoming the effects of drought and extreme temperatures), and food security. Some farmers adopted CSA practices to reduce the effect of droughts and high temperatures on their crops, and thus increase their resilience to climate variability and change. However, farmers' adoption is confronted with challenges related to the technicality of some CSA practices, high cost of labor for CSA implementation, lack of credit and government support, limited access to weather and climate information, limited information about CSA options, high illiteracy level of smallholder farmers, and incompatibility of some practices with farmers' crop of interest. Our findings show that most CSA practices in the studies we reviewed are not well targeted to meet farmers' crop of interest, and that governments should provide more practical training to enhance farmers' understanding of CSA practices, especially those related to weather‐ and energy‐smart initiatives. There should also be more robust financial and institutional support to improve the adoption and usage of CSA practices at all levels. Additionally, socio‐cultural factors such as values, customs, and beliefs should be properly integrated into CSA plans as they influence the adoption of CSA practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to establish Maximum Sustainable Employment (MSE) as a new guiding light, or beacon, for wild fisheries governance. This new social beacon complements the directives provided by the prevailing beacons: Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) and Maximum Economic Yield (MEY). The argument is that context matters: in countries where poverty levels are high and alternative employment is scarce, fisheries governors cannot limit themselves to a sectoral perspective. Instead, they must include the remunerative employment and 'decent work' that wild fisheries offer society in their strategic deliberations. This perspective is especially relevant for countries in the Global South, but it also has a bearing on the Global North. After discussing the history of scientific fisheries management and the relevance of employment in fisheries, the paper considers the arguments made against MSE. It concludes with a reflection on the balancing of the three beacons in line with prevailing circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Obstetric fistula develops from obstructed labor and is a devastating condition with significant consequences across several domains of a woman's life. This study presents a narrative review of the evidence on the economic consequences of obstetric fistula. Methods: Three databases were searched, and search results were limited to English language papers published after 2003. Search results were reviewed for relevance based on title and abstract followed by full text review using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Bibliographies of papers were also scanned to identify relevant papers for inclusion. Data were extracted under three categories (defined a priori): the economic consequences of having the condition, the economic consequences of seeking care, and the macroeconomic impacts. Results: The search returned 517 unique papers, 49 of which were included after screening. Main findings identified from the studies include women losing their jobs, becoming dependent on others, and losing financial support when relationships are lost. Seeking care was economically costly for families or unaffordable entirely. There were no studies describing the impact of fistula on national economies. Conclusion: Economic consequences of obstetric fistula are multifaceted, pervasive, and are intertwined with the physical and psychosocial consequences of the condition. Understanding these consequences can help tailor existing fistula programs to better address the impacts of the condition. Further research to address the dearth of literature describing the macroeconomic impact of obstetric fistula will be critical to enhance the visibility of this condition on the health agendas of countries. Synopsis: Women experiencing obstetric fistula lose income, become financially dependent on others, and face economic barriers and hardships when seeking care for the condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that there is a 'missing middle' between policies to ameliorate poverty of those in need and the experience of poverty. Drawing on interviews with respondent poor(er) households in Brunei's 'water village' of Kampong Ayer and with officials and local leaders, the paper details a complex and well‐funded system of support for those in need. It then shows how this impressive architecture of welfare does not always meet the needs of those it seeks to support. Through rendering poverty technical, policies implicitly ascribe persistent destitution as arising from the failure of the poor to take advantage of the opportunities made available to them. The paper suggests that this gap could be bridged by giving non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), social enterprises and informal businesses a greater role in the delivery of support. Kampong Ayer's experience has its parallels in other places and situations: the tendency to bureaucratize poverty and its amelioration; the desire to simplify poverty but complicate programmes for poverty eradication; and the expectation that the onus for adaptation should be on—and with—the poor. When the poor fail to adapt and to respond in the manner desired, they are blamed for their enduring poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular, fiscal austerity measures have been extensively implemented across the world in the last decade as a policy prescription to address the impacts of economic shocks. Consequently, the implementation of austerity has engendered a vast body of austerity impact assessment literature in the Global North, in particular. Although austerity measures have been equally implemented (and longer) in Global South contexts, the same level of intellectual curiosity has not been dedicated to understanding the human and social costs of austerity in the Global South. To help fill this gap, this paper examines the implications of fiscal austerity for the delivery of two complementary programmes linked to Ghana's conditional cash transfer (CCT) — the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme. The paper adopts a qualitative design where semi‐structured interviews are conducted with (a) two LEAP officers, (b) two headteachers and (c) 35 LEAP beneficiaries in northern Ghana. The findings show that within the current context of fiscal austerity, mainly mediated through the government's commitment to "cut expenditures to the bone", the two complementary services have been unfunded and thus do not exist in practice. The non‐existence of complementary services has dire consequences for children's education as well as undermines Ghana's poverty reduction attempts through the implementation of the LEAP programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing scholarship indicates that subjective and objective poverty hardly overlap. This study contributes to our understanding of what different types of poverty mean by analysing the drivers of subjective poverty in Ukraine, whereby in 2018 71.8% of people self‐identified as poor despite the relative material deprivation measures estimating poverty to be around 30%. To understand the drivers of subjective poverty, the paper draws on 50 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews across low‐ and high‐income individuals, of which 38 self‐identified as poor. Data suggests that the self‐perception of being poor is driven by Ukraine's relative deprivation to other European countries, fears about the future due to vulnerability to shocks, and the perception of purposeful exclusion by the economic elite. In exploring these findings, the paper contributes to the works of literature on social status, social exclusion, relative deprivation, and populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a set of measurable goals and targets agreed to by all United Nations (UN) member countries in 2001 or thereafter to achieve substantial socio‐economic improvement for all developing countries by 2015. The MDGs were defined by some as an 'international super‐norm' that made the eradication of extreme poverty a global policy and responsibility. In this article, we examine the broader historical and discursive context that facilitated this institutional emergence and draw on Rorty and Braithwaite to suggest that the MDGs can be considered an 'institution of hope.' The paper contextualises the political economy of despair that prevailed in the 1990s before outlining Rorty's critique of neo‐liberalism and post‐developmentalism and explaining the political value of hope as a collective motivating emotion. The paper then examines critiques of the MDGs before concluding that the MDGs performed a valuable function in reinvigorating global concern over poverty eradication, even if, in retrospect, the MDGs themselves remained only what Rorty referred to as a 'plausible narrative of progress.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a history of critique, concentrated discussion and improved assessment processes, neglect continues to be a major challenge for child protection services. This paper draws on findings from a government‐commissioned analysis of 'serious case reviews' (SCRs) in England, arising from incidents of serious child abuse in 2017–2019. There were 235 cases, for which 166 final reports were available. Alongside a quantitative analysis of the whole cohort, we undertook an in‐depth qualitative analysis of 12 cases involving neglect. A key challenge in responding to neglect in its different forms is that it can be so widespread amongst families that practitioners no longer notice its severity or chronicity – it becomes normalised. In this paper we explore two dimensions of the 'paradox of neglect' where it seems to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. The first is that neglect is so closely bound up with the prevalence of poverty that little action is taken to address it. The second is that the overwhelming nature of neglect can blind practitioners to other forms of maltreatment that may also be present within a family. Practitioners, now more than ever, need to recognise the dimensions of this paradox to protect children from neglect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean government initiated a multi‐tiered benefits system for older people, but the relative poverty rate of the older population remains the highest among developed economies. This paper employed the Shapley decomposition and four efficiency criteria to evaluate the anti‐poverty efficacy and efficiency of major public transfer benefits with the Korea Welfare Panel Study 2006–2018. The results present that the Korean public pension exerted the greatest efficacy among the programmes. The efficacy of the Basic Pension, operating as a means‐tested benefit, significantly increased when implemented in 2008 and expanded in 2014. In terms of efficiency, the contributory public pension supported only 40% of older adults in poverty. However, the generous coverage of the Basic Pension since 2008 might have led to more than half of recipients not experiencing absolute poverty. Therefore, this paper concludes with suggestions for more financial support targeting the economically vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we perform estimates of vulnerability to multidimensional poverty for 17 Latin American countries at three points of time: 2005/2006, 2012, and 2017. We use a Multidimensional Bayesian Network Classifier model to estimate the conditional probability of being multidimensionally poor and then we use these probabilities and the standard downside semi‐deviation as the risk parameter to identify the vulnerable households. Despite significant reductions over the study period, in 2017 approximately 150 million people—excluding Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela for which we do not have recent data—remained vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. We also observe that vulnerability to poverty is reduced at a much slower rate than poverty itself, revealing that achievements in SDG1 can be quite fragile. We perform a decomposition and find that as poverty decreases, risk‐induced vulnerability becomes relatively more important than poverty‐induced vulnerability. However, the poor‐vulnerable still constitute the core vulnerability group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that living in a high‐poverty area often leads to lower levels of well‐being for residents. While these deleterious effects of place‐based poverty are well‐documented, the conceptual mechanisms linking poverty of place to negative outcomes remain debated, and the our understanding of the spatial patterning of poverty remains underdeveloped. In this paper, we problematize simple conceptualizations of the negative impacts of poverty exposure by illustrating the dynamic patterns poverty displays across cities on a daily basis. The vast majority of prior research on poverty of place has relied upon data anchored to place of residence. Thus, poverty rates broadly reflect poverty as it exists at night. This bias toward nighttime statistics leaves us with an incomplete understanding of spatial inequalities because daytime poverty rates can differ markedly from nighttime poverty rates due to work‐related commuting patterns. Here, we use novel data from the Census Transportation Planning Products to fully illustrate diurnal patterns in poverty at the census tract level in metropolitan America. Through a combination of descriptive, spatial, and statistical analyses, we show that the majority of census tracts experience changes in poverty throughout the day. Through a series of regression models, we also show that diurnal patterns in poverty are unevenly distributed along the lines of suburbanization, race, economic status, age composition, and industrial structure. Overall, our findings provide analytic insights into properly documenting poverty across space, while further problematizing lingering culture of poverty frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—one of America's largest antipoverty programs—has reached the poorest. We compute a novel measure of the floor of income, an estimated income level of the poorest individuals in society. We measure the floor with and without SNAP benefits included in family income using 29 years of Current Population Survey (CPS) data. We correct for underreporting of SNAP participation and benefits for a subset of years and examine alternative data to assess the robustness of our findings. The analysis reveals a long‐term decline in the income floor, whereas adding SNAP to income and correcting for underreporting has reversed this decline and lifted the income floor by more than 75% on average between 2011 and 2016. The declining floor and the remarkable increase in income for the poorest Americans from SNAP are not revealed by poverty headcounts, which focus on changes at the poverty threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty was already a main problem in Afghanistan even before, but it has exacerbated due to the pandemic. However, the actual impact of the pandemic on households had not been investigated. This study provides such analysis using data obtained from a strictly random survey of 1060 households in the capital of Balkh, the fourth most populated province in Afghanistan. Using headcount ratio and poverty gap measures and both income and expenditure approaches, the results show that an additional 12% of households fell below the poverty line, from an already high of 75% before the pandemic. The poverty gap index rises to 34%, but the computed Gini coefficient indicates no significant change in inequality. Poor governance and corruption in Afghanistan are major impediments to address the issue of poverty. This paper suggests several measures which can be implemented to have effective policies and governance to alleviate poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports the results of registered conceptual replications of the indirect effect of institutional trust in the relationship between precarity and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs (CB). The original study of Adam‐Troian et al. (2023; British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(S1), 136‐159) indicated that subjective appraisals of economic hardship are associated with lower trust in governments and institutions, which in turn is associated with stronger endorsement of CB. Our Studies 1 to 3 report a series of replications using Slovak panel data. Study 4 reports a replication of the mediation model using data from the European Social Survey Round 10 collected in 17 countries. To provide a quantitative synthesis of these and previous results, we conducted mini meta‐analysis (N = 50,340). Although the strength of the observed relationships differed across the studies to some degree, the original patterns of relations remained robust, supporting the original model. The study corroborates the view that to curb the spread of CB, it is necessary to address structural issues, such as growing financial insecurity, socioeconomic inequalities, and the deficit of institutional trust. Finally, we discuss the role of cultural and political settings in conditioning the mechanisms through which precarity enhances the endorsement of CB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the situation of water scarcity and security in Mexico, with a focus on the drinking water supply issue in rural communities and the challenges posed by assessment methodologies. We conducted a comprehensive literature review to update the available information on the water crisis in Mexico and its impact on rural communities in the country, as well as the methodologies employed to assess water security and the methodological challenges associated with them. Among the most noteworthy findings is the persistent challenge in evaluating water scarcity and its implications for communities, due to the lack of consensus on the most precise methodology. Nevertheless, current methodological approaches suggest the integration of physical models with pertinent social, economic, and political data. The literature broadly agrees on the severity of the water scarcity crisis and the clear link between rural poverty and inadequate access to drinking water. Water scarcity is both a contributing factor to and a consequence of poverty, stemming from a complex interplay of socioeconomic pressures, inadequate institutional responses, and deficient water management. The paper concludes that water scarcity involves intricate interactions among various factors, encompassing physical water scarcity, pollution, and the impacts of climate change on the water cycle, and most critically, the complexities inherent in water management and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, the integration of well‐informed policies, effective management practices, and collaborative efforts is crucial for ensuring a prosperous and sustainable future. Effective water management can effectively mitigate the challenges of water scarcity and alleviate poverty. This article is categorized under:Engineering Water > Water, Health, and SanitationHuman Water > Rights to WaterScience of Water > Water and Environmental Change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality early care and education (ECE) presents an unparalleled opportunity to avert disadvantage and promote children's development. Mealtimes are essential daily routines, yet are often overlooked in research on ECE quality. This paper crystallises a composite case study of ECE mealtimes in highly disadvantaged communities by combining Departing Radically in Academic Writing (DRAW) methodology with parent surveys, scorings of educator‐child interactions (inCLASS), and field notes. Poverty is perpetuated in these centres: children do not have enough food, and educator‐dictated feeding practices restrict children's opportunities to exercise their agency and learn. Systemic policy action is needed to address poverty in ECE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital financial inclusion has become an important way to reduce poverty and prevent poverty return; however, few studies examine the relationship between digital financial inclusion measurement with poverty return governance. Based on data from the 2017 China Household Financial Survey, we construct a digital financial inclusion indicator for micro‐households, and explore its impact on the risk of households returning to poverty and its mechanisms. Our findings suggest that digital financial inclusion can reduce the risk of Chinese families returning to poverty, and that it has heterogeneous effects on families and regions with different characteristics. The main function is to improve household income level by promoting entrepreneurship and employment, and to improve risk resistance by enhancing household financial market participation and household asset allocation. Further analysis shows that digital financial inclusion has structural effects, nonlinear effects, and substitution effects with private lending in poverty governance. This paper has implications for understanding and improving the poverty governance effectiveness of digital financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported that 7.1 million households in the United States (5.4%) were unbanked and lacked a checking or savings account). Using three leading household surveys, this paper documents how the interaction between bank access and poverty has evolved over time. We present a historical time series of unbanked rates, showing high‐unbanked rates for those in poverty even with increases in financial access over time. In the 1980s, 49.6% of households in poverty were unbanked while 22.8% were unbanked in 2019. Unbanked rates were even higher for Black and Hispanic households that were in poverty. In the 1980s, these groups had unbanked rates of 73.6% and 66.5% which declined to 38.4% and 31.8% in 2019, respectively. To explain differences in banking rates by race, we use binary Kitagawa‐Oaxaca‐Blinder decompositions. Socio‐demographic characteristics explain less than half the difference in unbanked rates for Blacks and around half for Hispanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland has experienced rapid – if volatile – growth over the last three decades. While this performance looks less impressive when considered over a longer horizon and is better seen as belated convergence making up for lost time in the first 50 years of independence, this paper highlights an aspect of the Irish experience that does stand out as quite remarkable: how broad‐based and inclusive growth in household disposable income was. Drawing on over three decades of harmonised household survey data, we first show that income inequality fell substantially over this period, the product of disposable income growth that was stronger at the bottom than the middle or top of the distribution. We then tentatively suggest some important factors that might have contributed towards the patterns of growth experienced – including tax and transfer reforms, a rise in two‐earner couples and a fall in the average size of households – before concluding with some directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies aimed at redistributing to the most vulnerable individuals must consider inequality within households as much as between households. In that spirit, many cash transfers are targeted at women rather than men. Tax legislations can also contain specific gender provisions that treat men and women differently. Whether these policies operate some intrahousehold redistribution, or are defeated by the household agency problem, is an open question. This paper provides new insights by adapting models of intrahousehold allocation to account for women's and men's net‐of‐tax earnings and targeted benefits as determinants of the household resource sharing function. We suggest applications using household expenditure data for Argentina and South Africa. Net‐of‐tax earnings and benefits commanded by women are often positively related to their and their children's resources. We provide counterfactual simulations to illustrate how women's financial power – and its sources – may modify their consumption share and thus their individual poverty status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly three decades since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, federal cash assistance to families in poverty in the United States has entered political discourse once more with the Biden Administration's introduction of the American Families Plan. At the heart of this discussion are theories of change that derive from the family and developmental sciences. As a result, scientists in these fields have a duty to understand the history of the last reform and the consequences it has since had for children in poverty. In this paper, I review the history of perspectives toward government social assistance programs, as well as extant research demonstrating the mechanisms through which maternal employment and federal cash assistance impact child wellbeing. Lastly, I propose a conceptual framework for understanding the influence of family‐based social assistance programs and parenting on child wellbeing to guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exploits the discontinuity around a welfare index of eligibility to assess the impact of Peru's social pension program Pension 65 on nutrition‐related health outcomes among elderly poor individuals. Overall, we find evidence of how a relatively inexpensive program can produce improvements in anemia and nutrition‐related mortality risk markers. The effects appear to be driven by plausible underlying mechanisms, including via improved nutritional quality as well as greater food expenditures and healthcare utilization. These positive effects are only modestly countered by tentative signs of an increased obesity risk among women in the short term (<2 years), but not beyond this term. As the program evolves further, policymakers need to confront the challenge of continuing to ensure the health benefits in terms of reducing nutritional deficits while avoiding potential undesirable side effects in terms of over‐nutrition in Peru. The findings may serve to highlight the wider benefits of similar pension policies for the poor also in other middle income countries, well beyond the immediate economic welfare effects that the policies have primarily been designed for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since joining the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has increased its meat production and exports and become more dependent on imported feedstuffs such as genetically engineered (GE) corn. Mexico recently banned the use of GE corn in corn‐based foods and called for a gradual substitution away from the use of GE corn for other uses (e.g., feed). This paper considers how a complete ban on GE corn might affect Mexican households using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the impact over the medium run (5 years). Results indicate that Mexico decreases corn imports by 76.9% and increases corn production by 65.6%—an increase that would require 3.3 million hectares more land for corn. The policy leads to a 24.8% increase in Mexico's corn price and up to a 6% increase in the prices of other agricultural products. But Mexico might have difficulty shifting land to corn; as such, we consider an alternative scenario that restricts land movements. We find that impacts are further exacerbated in this scenario—for example, corn prices triple. Our final contribution is to pair these results with a compensating variation calculation based on the almost ideal demand system. We find that Mexican households would need to spend, on average, between 6.7 and 13.9% more on food, depending on the scenario, to compensate for the resulting price escalations. Ultimately, our results show that a move toward greater food sovereignty in Mexico is ultimately borne by consumers via higher food prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK social security system performs an important role as a creditor and debt collector for many benefit claimants, with more affected by deductions than formal welfare conditionality or sanctions. Deductions, then, are central to understanding low‐income life in the UK. With that in mind, this paper draws on a mixed‐methods project to explore the policy rationale, administration and effects of benefit deductions at a particular moment of crisis. Through new analysis of statistical releases, I evidence increasing indebtedness and an Inverse Care Law, whereby UK social security performs worst for those who need it most. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the height of the cost‐of‐living crisis, I also evidence how deductions affect the lives and trajectories of low‐income claimants over time. The analysis offered details how deductions weaponize debt, often in ways that financialise benefit claimants and their entitlements that prove counter‐productive to the stated policy objectives of deductions: worsening the poverty‐debt trap and pushing people (further) away from the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on the development of the long‐term relative poverty rate in Europe. We use European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data (EU‐SILC) for 26 European countries between 2009 and 2018. In addition to describing the development of long‐term poverty, we also analyse the drivers of poverty on the country level via fixed effects panel regression analysis. We are particularly interested in how economic growth, employment rates, social expenditure, and short‐term poverty rates are related to long‐term poverty. Overall, the results show that long‐term poverty has increased in 13 out of 26 countries, but was unchanged or decreased in 13 countries. Gross domestic product growth is not related to the development of long‐term poverty. However, we find that male employment and social welfare expenditure reduce poverty rates. Furthermore, short‐term poverty is negatively associated with long‐term poverty. Hence, short‐term poverty and long‐term poverty rather substitute than complement each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines spatial heterogeneity in the impacts of the early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic on urban household incomes in Ethiopia and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Combining new panel household surveys with spatial data, the fixed‐effects regression analysis for Ethiopia finds that households in large and densely populated towns were more likely to lose their labour incomes in the early phase of the pandemic and afterwards than other households. Disadvantaged groups, such as females, low‐skilled, self‐employed and poor, particularly suffered in those towns. In Kinshasa, labour income‐mobility elasticities are higher among workers—particularly female and low‐skilled workers—who live in areas that are located farther from the city core area. The between‐ and within‐city evidence from two Sub‐Saharan African countries points to the spatial heterogeneity of COVID‐19 impacts, implying the critical role of mobility and accessibility in urban agglomerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to assess the accelerating role of digital technology in fighting poverty through financial inclusion in the countries of West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). Based on a sample of the adult population from the World Bank's Findex database, we estimate a recursive bivariate probit model that addresses endogeneity. The findings show that the regular usage of mobile money as well as the purpose of mobile money usage including saving, borrowing, remittance and their combinations increase diversely and significantly the probability of short‐term poverty alleviation in WAEMU. In addition, the change in poverty status can be indirectly due to certain driving factors of mobile money usage including mainly the ownership of mobile phones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effects of a social fund that meets the needs of the poor in Northeast Brazil, the Fundos Estaduais de Combate e Erradicação da Pobreza (FECEP). The program could have improved infant health by reducing poverty and improving access to health care, sanitation, food, and housing. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach robust to heterogeneous treatment effects, we confirm that the program has effectively reduced poverty in treated areas. Furthermore, we document that this poverty reduction is associated with a significant decline in infant mortality. These findings provide consistent evidence that targeted public investments can improve living conditions in vulnerable regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose and analyze a coupled disease‐economic model to study the impact of poverty on cholera outbreaks. We consider the stock of capital per effective units of labor, reflecting the effect of the stock of capital on cholera outbreak and transmission. The system has positive bounded solutions. We show that the disease‐free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable whenever R01≤1$$ {\mathcal{R}}_{01}\le 1 $$, while when R01>1$$ {\mathcal{R}}_{01}>1 $$, the disease‐free equilibrium is unstable. The sensitivity analysis of the model has been performed in order to determine the impact of related parameters on outbreak severity. We further study various cases for the investment rate upon critical value of the investment in order to describe the effect of poverty on the infected individuals over time. The results we obtained show that increasing of the stock of capital per effective units of labor and the implementation of strategies combining awareness programs and therapeutic treatments will reduce the proportion of the infected population. To verify our analytical results, the numerical simulations on the model are performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been suggested that poor Australians were a forgotten cohort during the long period of post‐World War Two prosperity. Yet the peak non‐government welfare body, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), aimed from its establishment in 1956 to publicise concerns about poverty, and stimulate policy responses to relieve the disadvantage of those living in poverty. Using a range of primary sources including ACOSS annual reports, policy statements, committee meeting minutes and newsletters, this paper examines the key manifestations of ACOSS advocacy for low‐income Australians including research reports, budget submissions and public forums. It is argued that ACOSS gradually shifted from a welfarist approach based on lifting the incomes of specific vulnerable groups in isolation to a social justice approach that linked poverty to wider societal inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined relationships between area‐level deprivation, local authorities' social care expenditure and the rates of children entering care proceedings in England using a novel data linkage of de‐identified records provided by the Children and Family Court Advisory Service (Cafcass). Using structural equation modelling, the authors found strong positive relationships between socioeconomic area deprivation and high rates of children undergoing care proceedings in England between 2015 and 2019. Preventative social care expenditure is associated with lower child rates when adjusting for deprivation. Our findings suggest that deprived and underfunded local authorities respond to an increased need by prioritizing care arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low fertility levels observed in Mexico in recent years have been accompanied by high levels of poverty. The paper analyzes the effect of multidimensional poverty on the observed levels of fertility at the municipal level, that is, the relationship between the spatial dispersion of fertility and the observed levels of poverty. The analysis is based on the application of two hierarchical Bayesian models, the first one representing a spatial field that adjusts the behaviour of the total fertility rate and a second one that adds the effect of the poverty covariate to the spatial field. The results show that an increase in municipal poverty levels would cause a significant increase in fertility rates, which is evidenced by the formation of spatial clusters where high levels of fertility and poverty are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a review of global health literature, emphasizing the evolution in health terminology in recent decades and noteworthy research areas of global health. This review identifies global inequality and disease‐related stigma as key social determinants of health and central problems improving health outcomes. Within global health, there is a growing discourse surrounding health disparities, particularly among the world's most disadvantaged populations. Additionally, the field notes an increase in global health nonprofits, international governmental organizations (IGOs), and regulatory bodies. As such, this paper examines the scope of empirical global health research with consideration of inequality and stigma as well as the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in health outcomes for the developing world. The review also discusses the role of IGOs and global health regulatory bodies in shaping development and health outcomes. A broad review of literature finds that although chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are currently the largest cause of poor health in the world's most impoverished nations, these are largely untargeted by NGO efforts, which may exacerbate the state of global inequality. However, the impact that NGOs could have on ameliorating the effects of NCDs remains understudied and is a promising direction for future scholarly efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the main task of electricity development in other countries of the world is to expand the production of electricity or to improve the way it is generated, the problems faced by sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) countries are more immediate and urgent ‐ here less than half of the population has access to electricity. This study aims to examine whether aid projects can alleviate energy poverty. Since the assisted power facilities will affect neighbouring countries across borders, this study constructs a dynamic spatial Durbin model to take spatial spillover effects into account. The results of the spatial correlation test indicate that the spatial distribution of aid projects is random, which is an important finding that evenly distributed aid policies lead to disorderly aid. Further analysis shows that the mismatch effect of aid resources hinders the development of electricity in recipient countries. Urbanisation and technical assistance are the key factors to accelerate the development of electric power and improve the benefit of assistance. This paper suggests that aid policies should be implemented on a long‐term and stable basis, with a focus on those recipient countries that are highly urbanised to take advantage of their unique advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of public programmes aiming to cover the entire population in China on elderly poverty in both rural and urban China. Using the three rounds of panel data based on the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study in 2011–2015, we examine whether public pension programmes reduced elderly poverty, comprehensively defined to cover both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty indices of the households and individuals. To utilise the longitudinal nature of the data, we apply the robust fixed‐effects (FE) model with propensity score matching (PSM) and the FE quantile model with PSM taking into account the unobservable individual characteristics. Our results show that public pension programmes reduced poverty in monetary and non‐monetary terms in rural areas, while the effect on labour market is not significant. The panel quantile regression results suggest that the programmes decreased inequality in both monetary and non‐monetary dimensions. However, poverty‐reducing and inequality‐reducing effects are not observed in urban areas. Our results provide strong evidence to underscore the success of the Chinese public pension programme in reducing poverty and inequality in both rural and urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the relationship between ethics committees and children involved in qualitative educational research in Chile. In light of a central and recurring challenge (protection versus participation) and its implications, we reflect on informed consent as an instrument that embodies the power of ethics committees within the research process. We inform this reflection with extracts of visual ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2017 in a marginalised school in Santiago, Chile, with children aged from 8 to 13. We draw on the principles of the Belmont Report (respect, beneficence, justice) to contrast procedural with situated ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews 26 reports into deaths and serious abuse of children in families who were subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule. Our analysis illustrates vulnerabilities caused by exclusionary policies, exacerbating social deprivation and isolation experienced by the children and families and making it more difficult for professionals to respond in ways which safeguarded children's welfare. Drawing upon a social model for protecting children that requires recognition of the social determinants of harm and the economic, social and cultural barriers faced by families, we examine the experiences of children and families with NRPF who were the subject of a serious case review, and the responses of agencies responsible for safeguarding child welfare. We conclude with recommendations for practices aimed at promoting the rights and well‐being of children and families subject to NRPF rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of social pensions on old‐age poverty. To achieve causal identification, we leverage the reduction in the minimum eligibility age of Mexico's flagship non‐means‐tested social pension program. We find that the program's expansion significantly reduced extreme poverty, mainly among indigenous seniors and in rural areas. However, it had negligible effects on labor force participation, suggesting that social pensions were not effective in ensuring minimum economic well‐being and simultaneously inducing retirement among seniors at early stages of old age. The program's small cash transfer and mistargeting are among the main explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: High‐income countries offer social assistance (welfare) programs to help alleviate poverty for people with little or no income. These programs have become increasingly conditional and stringent in recent decades based on the premise that transitioning people from government support to paid work will improve their circumstances. However, many people end up with low‐paying and precarious jobs that may cause more poverty because they lose benefits such as housing subsidies and health and dental insurance, while incurring job‐related expenses. Conditional assistance programs are also expensive to administer and cause stigma. A guaranteed basic income (GBI) has been proposed as a more effective approach for alleviating poverty, and several experiments have been conducted in high‐income countries to investigate whether GBI leads to improved outcomes compared to existing social programs. Objectives: The aim of this review was to conduct a synthesis of quantitative evidence on GBI interventions in high‐income countries, to compare the effectiveness of various types of GBI versus "usual care" (including existing social assistance programs) in improving poverty‐related outcomes. Search Methods: Searches of 16 academic databases were conducted in May 2022, using both keywords and database‐specific controlled vocabulary, without limits or restrictions on language or date. Sources of gray literature (conference, governmental, and institutional websites) were searched in September 2022. We also searched reference lists of review articles, citations of included articles, and tables of contents of relevant journals in September 2022. Hand searching for recent publications was conducted until December 2022. Selection Criteria: We included all quantitative study designs except cross‐sectional (at one timepoint), with or without control groups. We included studies in high income countries with any population and with interventions meeting our criteria for GBI: unconditional, with regular payments in cash (not in‐kind) that were fixed or predictable in amount. Although two primary outcomes of interest were selected a priori (food insecurity, and poverty level assessed using official, national, or international measures), we did not screen studies on the basis of reported outcomes because it was not possible to define all potentially relevant poverty‐related outcomes in advance. Data Collection and Analysis: We followed the Campbell Collaboration conduct and reporting guidelines to ensure a rigorous methodology. The risk of bias was assessed across seven domains: confounding, selection, attrition, motivation, implementation, measurement, and analysis/reporting. We conducted meta‐analyses where results could be combined; otherwise, we presented the results in tables. We reported effect estimates as standard mean differences (SMDs) if the included studies reported them or provided sufficient data for us to calculate them. To compare the effects of different types of interventions, we developed a GBI typology based on the characteristics of experimental interventions as well as theoretical conceptualizations of GBI. Eligible poverty‐related outcomes were classified into categories and sub‐categories, to facilitate the synthesis of the individual findings. Because most of the included studies analyzed experiments conducted by other researchers, it was necessary to divide our analysis according to the "experiment" stage (i.e. design, recruitment, intervention, data collection) and the "study" stage (data analysis and reporting of results). Main Results: Our searches yielded 24,476 records from databases and 80 from other sources. After screening by title and abstract, the full texts of 294 potentially eligible articles were retrieved and screened, resulting in 27 included studies on 10 experiments. Eight of the experiments were RCTs, one included both an RCT site and a "saturation" site, and one used a repeated cross‐sectional design. The duration ranged from one to 5 years. The control groups in all 10 experiments received "usual care" (i.e. no GBI intervention). The total number of participants was unknown because some of the studies did not report exact sample sizes. Of the studies that did, the smallest had 138 participants and the largest had 8019. The risk of bias assessments found "some concerns" for at least one domain in all 27 studies and "high risk" for at least one domain in 25 studies. The risk of bias was assessed as high in 21 studies due to attrition and in 22 studies due to analysis and reporting bias. To compare the interventions, we developed a classification framework of five GBI types, four of which were implemented in the experiments, and one that is used in new experiments now underway. The included studies reported 176 poverty‐related outcomes, including one pre‐defined primary outcome: food insecurity. The second primary outcome (poverty level assessed using official, national, or international measures) was not reported in any of the included studies. We classified the reported outcomes into seven categories: food insecurity (as a category), economic/material, physical health, psychological/mental health, social, educational, and individual choice/agency. Food insecurity was reported in two studies, both showing improvements (SMD = −0.57, 95% CI: −0.65 to −0.49, and SMD = −0.41, 95% CI: −0.57 to −0.26) which were not pooled because of different study designs. We conducted meta‐analyses on four secondary outcomes that were reported in more than one study: subjective financial well‐being, self‐rated overall physical health, self‐rated life satisfaction, and self‐rated mental distress. Improvements were reported, except for overall physical health or if the intervention was similar to existing social assistance. The results for the remaining 170 outcomes, each reported in only one study, were summarized in tables by category and subcategory. Adverse effects were reported in some studies, but only for specific subgroups of participants, and not consistently, so these results may have been due to chance. Authors' Conclusions: The results of the included studies were difficult to synthesize because of the heterogeneity in the reported outcomes. This was due in part to poverty being multidimensional, so outcomes covered various aspects of life (economic, social, psychological, educational, agency, mental and physical health). Evidence from future studies would be easier to assess if outcomes were measured using more common, validated instruments. Based on our analysis of the included studies, a supplemental type of GBI (provided along with existing programs) may be effective in alleviating poverty‐related outcomes. This approach may also be safer than a wholesale reform of existing social assistance approaches, which could have unintended consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas (PAs) are central to sustainability targets, yet few evaluations explore outcomes for both conservation and development, or the trade‐offs involved. We applied counterfactual analyses to assess the extent to which PAs maintained forest cover and influenced well‐being across >31,000 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia. We examined multidimensional aspects of well‐being, tracking education, health, living standards, infrastructure, environment, and social cohesion in treatment and control villages between 2005 and 2018. Overall, PAs were effective at maintaining forest cover compared to matched controls and were not detrimental to well‐being. However, impacts were highly heterogeneous, varying by island and strictness of protection. While health, living standards, and infrastructure aspects of well‐being improved, education access, environmental conditions, and social cohesion declined. Our analysis reveals the contexts through which individual PAs succeed or fail in delivering multiple benefits and provides insights into where further on‐ground support is needed to achieve conservation and development objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]