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This article considers the implications of the strong poverty focus in the new White Paper for advancing gender equality. Recognizing that there are efficiency arguments in its focus on poor women and some dangers in too rigid a link being made between gender and poverty, it is argued that an equity and empowerment focus nevertheless inform the gender and poverty nexus. This does not necessarily imply that women's subordination is adequately dealt with. Making gender a cross-cutting issue in human rights goes some way towards escaping an anti-poverty approach to women. However, this does not automatically address gender relations and there are some contradictions even within the human rights focus itself. Beyond the principles of the White Paper, the real potential for promoting women's empowerment and advancing gender equity lies in its practice. The commitment to building partnerships needs to be extended to gender equitable partnerships which imply developing skills and new forms of practice among all partners to accommodate the participation of poor women, and recognising that accountability is a two-way street. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with a brief review of why all post-industrial societies tend to be inegalitarian, this paper develops two main themes: (1) how the idea that people are individually responsible for their own fates reduces poverty but impedes redistribution, and (2) how both the loose ties of individuals to their societies and the selective nature of their empathy and pity for others reduces compassion for the poor, making redistribution unlikely. The first theme is elaborated through psychological research on dispositional versus circumstantial attributions, showing their effects on the widely shared belief in a just world and more generally on the prevailing theory of the justice of deserts. The attribution-affect-action model is used to show how dispositional attributions evoke either anger or pity for victims and, if anger, then unwillingness to help. The development of the second theme shows how people divorce their own fates from those of their nations, how the basic tendency to favor the familiar and similar limits support for redistribution, how converting concern regarding deprivations of the self to concern for (fraternal) deprivation of people like the self excludes those who most need help, how envy fails to lead to redistribution, and finally, how people's ideas of the privileged and the disadvantaged reflect market values and often mark the poor and the different as overprivileged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the pro‐poor bias of trade policy in India by estimating the household welfare effects of removing the current protection structure. The elimination of a pro‐poor trade policy is expected to have a negative differential welfare effect at the low end of the distribution. The paper first constructs trade restrictiveness indexes for household consumption items and industries using both tariffs and non‐tariff barriers. The results indicate that Indian trade policy is regressive through the expenditure channel as it disproportionately raises the cost of consumption for poorer households, while it is progressive through the earnings channel. Based on the net welfare effects, the elimination of the current trade protection structure is estimated to reduce inequality. These results indicate that a trade policy that is progressive through the earnings channel may induce a price effect that is regressive through the expenditure channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal surveys allow us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage determine present material welfare and economic upward or downward mobility over time. In this paper, we use five waves of panel data to empirically assess the extent and dynamics of poverty in South Africa between 2008 and 2017. Investigating the correlates of poverty entries and exits, we analyse how multidimensional inequalities in terms of household‐ and individual‐level characteristics relate to these dynamics and identify markers of vulnerability. We utilise these markers to classify the South African population into five strata characterised by their present and future risk to poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including inequality, poverty and heterogeneity in Germany.

This paper focuses on methodological and empirical issues in analyzing regional poverty and inequality trends in China. It provides a time profile of China's regional inequality, outlines the latest development in inequality decomposition techniques, introduces six papers in this special issue of the Review, and finally offers suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greece is the country hit hardest by the crisis and subsequent fiscal consolidation strategies, suffering a cumulative output loss of about 30 percent since 2008. The present paper presents evidence that along with declining average living standards, consumption inequality has seriously grown, fueled primarily by a disproportionate drop in the consumption levels of what can be considered the middle class. Although poverty has not significantly risen in relative terms, it climbs to around 45 percent once the poverty threshold is anchored to pre‐crisis levels. Furthermore, significant indirect tax hikes have further increased inequality in consumption expenditure. The paper also shows that several reforms launched in the name of reducing labor costs, broadening the tax base or rationalizing the targeting of social benefits have had detrimental effects on one of the most vulnerable population groups, namely families with children, thus implying that the social consequences of the crisis will be long‐lasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between January 2006 and April 2008, the prices of most agricultural products rose considerably in international markets. Empirical studies show that this spike in world food prices increased the number of poor households in developing countries, but the extent was not the same in all countries. This article assesses the impact of rising rice prices on poverty and income inequality in Burkina Faso, using a methodology based on the concept of compensating variation combined with the net benefit ratio (NBR) developed by Deaton (1989) and a living standard survey (QUIBB, 2003). The results show that higher prices have a negative impact on income and poverty in the regions with a large proportion of households that are net buyers of rice. The poverty rate increases by 2.2 to 2.9 percentage points depending on the assumptions, the increase being higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Rising rice prices also increase income inequality, which increases particularly in urban areas and in relatively rich regions, but decreases in poor regions with a large proportion of rice producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of income in Russia changed significantly over the past 25 years. This paper examines the factors that have been driving the fall in inequality and poverty over two recent decades in the Russian Federation. Changes in earnings from public and private sectors and pensions have been the main sources of changes in the income distribution between 1994 and 2015. Falling inequality and poverty were the result of a decrease in the dispersion of private sector earnings and an increase in the levels of pensions and public sector earnings. Neither the evolution of socio‐demographic characteristics nor the level or structure of employment alone had big impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, a paradigm of participation has gained prominence and become a dominant policy rhetoric in anti‐poverty policymaking in Europe, embracing the key idea that people in poverty should participate as equal citizens in political decision‐making processes. Based on a historical case study of the production process of a Belgian white paper, the General Report on Poverty (1994), we investigate who participated in the GRP production process, and whether the underlying participatory and democratic mechanisms produced a shift in power and might have led to a more socially just and equal society. We rely on a central set of ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière to theorize different notions of participation, and tease out whether the processing of equality had the capacity to move from policing towards politics through subjectification. Our research study demonstrates how social change and a reconfiguration of the democratic order can appear as a moment of democracy, yet inevitably leads to a new police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries today have become more active participants in regional trade agreements. This raises questions about how the benefits of integration are distributed, and the extent to which lower‐income countries are able to capture development gains. Historically, such impacts have been difficult to identify with precision. This paper seeks to address this gap by empirically analysing the impact of regional integration on development, particularly the effects on growth and welfare. Using both bilateral and regional integration measures, we show that the ability to capture gains from integration varies across developing country regional groups, with developing Asia benefiting on par with developed countries. The findings in the paper indicate that trade and trade policy play an important role in reducing inequality and poverty in developing countries. It also shows that regionalism can function as a channel to make multilateralism a more adept way of addressing national challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current discussions of global inequality are trapped by their core reliance on measures of income. While our field has become ever-knowledgeable on poverty's multi-faceted nature (e.g. the Human Development Index, based on Sen and other's work on the capabilities approach), discussions and debates over global inequalities give short shrift to measurements and understandings of inequality beyond income. The papers in this issue all lend insight to how we may start the long-term process of moving beyond income inequality to re-think common understandings of inequality and to present new questions and opportunities in order to work towards a fuller understanding of the shape and pathways of global inequalities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flows of workers’ remittances have become a major source of external finance for developing countries and are particularly important in Latin America and the Caribbean, where they are estimated to have reached $40 billion in 2004. Not surprisingly, academics, policymakers and development practitioners in general have been devoting increasing attention to the potential development impact that these flows may have on receiving countries. This paper contributes to this debate along four dimensions. First, it reviews the evolution of remittances flows to Latin America, using Balance of Payments data, and compares these statistics with estimates of remittances income based on Household Surveys. Second, the paper describes the varying profile of remittances recipients in ten Latin American countries. Third, the paper reviews the few macro- and microeconomic studies that have estimated the impact of remittances on poverty and inequality. Finally, the paper expands some of the existing works to investigate the extent to which that impact is different in Latin America and varies across countries in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-2015 development agenda requires improved concepts to define and measure different forms of poverty and inequality. Building on the experiences made with the Millennium Development Goals, this paper gives an overview of several possible approaches by discussing their strengths and weaknesses. National, international, relative and multidimensional concepts are considered. Arguing that the discussions on the post-2015 agenda offer an opportunity to introduce new global measurements of progress that complement gross domestic product-based approaches, the authors make the case for a simple yet comprehensive index as a headline indicator that could help to better inform poverty and inequality reduction policies in the post-2015 world. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing should always be included in the construction of the welfare aggregate for welfare analysis. However, assigning a value to the flow of services from dwellings is problematic. Many households own the dwelling in which they live, making this value unobserved; others receive free housing or face prices lower than those at the market. Over the last decades, several estimation techniques have been proposed and implemented by practitioners to overcome this issue. This paper provides a review of methods commonly used to impute rent and discusses the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. We find no consensus on which imputation method is the most appropriate for welfare analysis, as well as a lack of evidence regarding the distributional impact of including rents in the welfare aggregate, particularly in developing countries. Moreover, practices for imputing rents vary across countries, calling for the future development of a unified framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers options for the governments of Sudan and South Sudan to use tax and expenditure policy to reduce poverty and inequality. We focus on understanding who benefits when government spends money on services such as paying teachers, building clinics, and subsidizing food or petrol, as well as the redistributive consequences of some standard taxes. Among the many findings is that it makes sense for South Sudan to concentrate on providing a few public services, such as expanding primary and secondary schooling, and primary health care units, with broad coverage, rather than trying to provide a wide range of public services with more limited coverage, especially given the limits of South Sudan's young bureaucracy. Taxing transport and communication would be strongly progressive. In the case of Sudan, we suggest that policy-makers focus on expanding schooling services at both the primary and secondary levels, and also find that food aid, in kind and in cash, are highly pro-poor. It would make sense to expand the electricity grid to rural areas, but the cost of doing so may be prohibitive. In contrast, it does appear as though petroleum subsidies are regressive in both countries, as they are in most developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Ghana is one of a few African countries where more people now reside in cities than in the countryside. What is not as well-known are the changes that have taken place in the economic base of Ghanaian cities. This paper tells that story. It focuses particularly on jobs, incomes, inequality, and poverty, and their characteristics in an era when neoliberal policies have been implemented. It draws on census reports, national surveys, and published reports in order to overcome the dearth of information about the urban and national economies. The paper shows that, on the one hand, the increasing prominence of the private sector in the urban economy has impacted positively on capital formation and job creation. On the other hand, urban and national inequality levels have dramatically increased. Whether these changes are favourable to the majority of urban citizens is contestable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the pattern of poverty, growth and inequality in Ethiopia in the recent decade. The result shows that growth, to a large extent depends on structural factors such as initial conditions, vagaries of nature, external shocks and peace and stability both in Ethiopia and in the region. Using a rich household panel data, the paper also shows that there is a strong correlation between growth and inequality. In such set up, the effect of implementing a pro-poor growth strategy, compared to allowing the status quo to prevail, can be quite dramatic. On the basis of realistic assumptions, the paper shows that from a baseline in 2000 of a 30 per cent poverty share, over 10 years at growth of 4 per cent per capita, poverty would decline from 44 to 26 per cent for distribution neutral growth (DNG) (i.e. no change in the aggregate income distribution). In contrast, were the growth increment distributed equally across percentiles (equally distributed gains of growth, EDG), the poverty would decline by over half, to 15 per cent, a difference of almost eleven percentage points. Thus, ‘distribution matters’, even, or especially in a poor country like Ethiopia. On the basis of these results the paper outlines policies that could help to design a sustainable pro-poor growth strategy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: How is research on social issues shaped in Latin America? How much attention do researchers give to poverty and inequality? What is the focus of research on these issues? Purpose: The paper aims to analyse the main patterns of academic publications on poverty and inequality in Latin America. Approach and methods: A bibliometric analysis based on different sources is used to review the main trends of publications on poverty and inequality in the region between 1990 and 2014. Findings: We find that although Latin America is widely recognized as one of the most unequal regions worldwide, poverty—not inequality—has been at the centre of the region's research agendas for many years. We detect a gradual shift in research from poverty to inequality, both in the academic literature and in the publications of international organizations. Policy implications: These findings provide new elements to better understand how and why researchers choose certain topics over others. This understanding is important both to gain knowledge on what researchers are prioritizing, and to shed light on the relationship between those priorities and public policies to combat poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the contentious issues about the globalization process is the mechanism by which globalization affects poverty and inequality. This paper explores one of the various strands of the globalization–inequality–poverty nexus. Using microlevel survey data from over 300 poor households in the small village of Umuluwe (about 30 miles west of the regional capital of Owerri) in south-east Nigeria, the paper investigates whether individuals who migrate from the village to take advantage of the urban-biased globalization process do better than non-migrant villagers. The paper concludes that, while the migrant villagers tend to earn slightly higher incomes than the non-migrant villagers, the poverty profiles of both categories of households are essentially the same. In other words, and contrary to conventional wisdom, globalization has not succeeded in alleviating poverty amongst the poor villagers who explicitly took advantage of the process. The paper argues that, by changing relative prices in the urban areas, structural adjustment appears to have eliminated any advantage that globalization may have bequeathed to the migrant villagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of trade liberalisation on poverty and income inequality in South Africa. The main issue of interest is the effect of international trade on households (especially their income). The approach presented in this paper relies on combining a macro-orientated computable general equilibrium model with a microsimulation model. The main concern regarding poor households is whether the decrease in nominal earnings for formal low-skilled and skilled workers is offset by the upward trend in formal employment levels. The analysis indicates that such a trade-off occurs, implying a decrease in poverty due to trade liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income per capita and most widely reported, non- or non-exclusively income based human well-being indicators are highly correlated among countries. Yet many countries exhibit higher achievement in the latter than predicted by the former. The reverse is true for many other countries. This paper commences by extracting the inter-country variation in a composite of various widely-reported, non-income-based well-being indices not accounted for by variations in income pre capita. This extraction is interpretedinter aliaas a measure of non-economic well-being. The paper then looks at correlations between this extraction and a number of new or less widely-used well-being measures, in an attempt to find the measure that best captures these achievements. A number of indicators are examined, including measures of poverty, inequality, health status, education status, gender bias, empowerment, governance and subjective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who benefits from economic growth? This paper analyses the distributional impact of different types of growth within a two-sector model. The paper first presents necessary and sufficient conditions for unambiguous changes in wage inequality in a dual economy, based on analysis of the entire Lorenz curve. These conditions are then applied to the Harris–Todaro model with an urban non-agricultural sector and rural agriculture. It is shown that capital accumulation or technical progress in agriculture can shift the Lorenz curve inwards and reduce wage inequality, while the effects of development in non-agriculture are typically ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief account of how social expenditure in New Zealand has been targeted (i.e. means-tested) since the late nineteenth century, outlines the policy framework at the dawn of the new millennium, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the current targeting regime. It is argued that the existing policy settings are open to challenge on a number of counts. In particular, they are complex, inconsistent and relatively intrusive, they impose significant administrative and compliance costs, and they generate considerable incentive problems. Nor has the greater reliance on targeting since the mid-1980s prevented an increase in relative poverty and inequality. Given this situation, the paper outlines some possible reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of fast growth and increasing average income levels, China's development has been uneven across various sectors and regions. This uneven development has reduced the life satisfaction of many people and has caused social tensions. Using four rounds of the Chinese Household Income Project data, this paper investigates social tensions caused by inequality, poverty and polarization across rural and urban areas, and across the Eastern, Central and Western regions, and between the emerging super provinces/megacities and the rest. It shows that although tensions have been significantly alleviated by fast economic growth, the impact of growth imbalances is still very severe. China should focus on more balanced growth in addition to a high rate of growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel analysis about the capabilities of academic researchers and academic poverty. Adopting the capability approach, which Amartya Sen developed to address concerns such as poverty, inequality and development, we shift the focus of analysis and discussion around evaluating academic research and academics in the social sciences from measures of so-called 'quality', 'impact' or 'excellence' to the capabilities of academics. For us, the conceptualization and evaluation of academic research is a question about what academics have reasons to value, and about their ability to achieve valuable beings and doings. It is also about determining what might constitute academic poverty, and what academics are required to do in order to avoid that poverty. Relating our analysis to debates around universities, in particular about quasi-market pressures, we identify the possibility of basic capabilities in academic research, namely: the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill basic academic needs. Our proposition is that there is academic poverty when an academic researcher is not capable of fulfilling basic academic needs, such as: adhering to standards of coherence, robustness and rigour; searching for and disseminating the spirit of the truth. Moreover, if the academic has the capabilities to fulfill those basic academic needs and yet chooses not to do so, she renders herself in a state akin to academic poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the impact of a subsidy-an increase in someone's income-on generalized Gini inequality indices. We show that for any distribution of income there exists a 'pivotal individual' such that an increment given to an individual poorer (resp. richer) than himself, decreases (resp. increases) inequality. We characterize the pivotal individual for relative and absolute Gini indices. We show that normative prescriptions about the preferred level of inequality aversion can also be formulated in terms of the pivotal, namely the richest individual that we find just to compensate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute poverty reduction and lower inequality. But policy action needs to be better served by analysis and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at poverty and inequality across areas in Malawi. The focus is on both monetary (consumption) and non-monetary (health and education) dimensions of well-being. Stochastic poverty dominance tests show that rural areas are poorer in the three dimensions regardless of poverty line chosen. Stochastic inequality dominance tests find that the north and south dominate the centre in health inequality, and there is no dominance between the north and south. With respect to education inequality, dominance is declared for the south-centre pair only. A subgroup decomposition analysis finds that the south contributes the most to consumption and education poverty, while the centre is the largest contributor to health poverty. We establish that within-area inequalities (vertical inequalities) rather than between-area inequalities (horizontal inequalities) are the major driver of consumption, health and education inequality in Malawi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The Gini index and its generalizations have been used extensively for measuring inequality and poverty in the social sciences. Recently, interval estimation based on nonparametric statistics has been proposed in the literature, for example the naive bootstrap method, the iterated bootstrap method and the bootstrap method via a pivotal statistic. In this paper, we propose empirical likelihood methods to construct confidence intervals for the Gini index or the difference of two Gini indices. Simulation studies show that the proposed empirical likelihood method performs slightly worse than the bootstrap method based on a pivotal statistic in terms of coverage accuracy, but it requires less computation. However, the bootstrap calibration of the empirical likelihood method performs better than the bootstrap method based on a pivotal statistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is conventional wisdom that universalism is more effective than selectivism in addressing the problems of poverty and inequality. In providing income security for the elderly, retirement pensions calculated on the principle of social insurance represent universalism and social assistance benefits on the basis of means-test selectivism. Korea has both a contributory pension scheme and social assistance program for the elderly. The social assistance began in 1961. The contributory scheme, the National Pension, started belatedly in 1988 and its coverage expanded to the entire population in 1999. We can, therefore, expect that the social security system, especially the universal pension scheme based on social insurance, has some positive impacts on the reduction of poverty and inequality. This paper, however, raises doubt as to the conventional wisdom and thus reviews the developmental process of the Korean social security system for the aged. It was found that the dominant ideological controversy revolved, not around universalism versus selectivism, but around the option between developmentalism and other strategies. Our empirical analysis showed that the public pension had little impact on the reduction of poverty and inequality, particularly in comparison with advanced welfare states. This is not surprising at all, since poverty eradication and redistribution were not major objectives of the Korean social security system. The controversy between universalism and selectivism was relatively unfamiliar in the policy process of the Korean social security system. Even though the redistributive effect is getting larger as the National Pension system becomes mature, the developmentalist model has been proved to be a more useful tool for explaining the limited role of Korean social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore represents an instructive case study in responding to rapid ageing, growing inequalities, and significant relative poverty. Unlike other high-income Asian countries, it has relied on single-tier mandatory savings to finance retirement, housing, and to a lesser extent, healthcare. To address the low fertility rates, it has permitted the share of the non-citizen population to triple between 1990 and 2005 to nearly 30 per cent. This is subtly altering Singapore's socio-political dynamics, while assisting in sustaining growth and competitiveness. The paper argues that Singapore has the fiscal, institutional, and organizational capacities for a modern multi-tier social security system. Singapore is, however, determined to continue with current inadequate and inequitable arrangements, requiring individuals and their families to bear disproportionate risks in financing retirement, healthcare, and short-term income support. This reflects conscious policy choices arising from a Darwinist vision of society, and the need for socio-political control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a reasonable model and recent cross-country data to study empirically the effects of income and equality on poverty. Three main points are noted. First, the estimates show highly significant roles of income and equality in poverty reduction, and the effects of increased income and lower inequality are both substantial. Second, the elasticity of poverty with respect to inequality is substantially larger than that relative to income. Third, the estimates suggest a ‘growth elasticity’ of poverty that is much smaller than the values used in almost every study. Therefore, most of the well-known and influential recent research seems to have overstated the impact of income growth on poverty alleviation by de-emphasising the role of inequality, to which poverty is highly responsive, and by using an income (growth) elasticity of poverty that is much larger than what seems reasonable. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

he level of a region's achievement with respect to a particular outcome is usually measured by the mean value of that outcome. This, however, ignores the fact that the distribution of that outcome, between population or geographical subgroups in that region, may be unequal: in order to reflect this inequality, ‘equity-sensitive’ indicators make a downward adjustment to the mean value of the outcome. This paper extends the notion of ‘equity-sensitive’ indicators which take cognisance of inter-group inequality, to ‘equity-sensitive’ indicators which paid heed to intra-group inequality. It constructs – using data from a Northern Ireland survey into poverty and social exclusion conducted in 2002/2003 –‘equity-sensitive indicators’ of living standards in Northern Ireland. These take account of both the average level of the standard of living and also inequality in these levels between groups, and between persons in these groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the previous literature on the ethical links between the measurement of poverty, social welfare and inequality. We show inter alia, how, when the range of possible poverty lines is unbounded above, a robust ranking of absolute poverty may be interpreted as a robust ranking of social welfare, and a robust ranking of relative poverty may be interpreted as a robust ranking of inequality, and this, for any order of stochastic dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses pooled time-series regressions of regional data to reexamine the link between poverty and the macroeconomy. The use of disaggregated data provides additional degrees of freedom and permits the inclusion of controls for demographic changes and increased income inequality. The results indicate a stronger relationship between poverty rates and the macroeconomy in the 1980s than that found in prior research and confirm that the dramatic reduction in unemployment during the late 1990s was instrumental in reducing poverty rates. The estimated results for the 1990s imply a 0.40.9% increase in the poverty rate for each 1% increase in the unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio–economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in general, are multi–factorial. The findings, however, also illustrate how the ways in which questions about health and illness are asked shape people’s responses. In the survey reported on here people had no problem offering explanations for health inequalities and, in response to a question asking specifically about area differences in health experience, people living in disadvantaged areas ‘constructed’ explanations which included, but went beyond, individualistic factors to encompass structural explanations that gave prominence to aspects of ‘place’. In contrast, within thecontext of in–depth interviews, people living in disadvantaged areas were reluctant to accept the existence of health inequalities highlighting the moral dilemmas such questions pose for people living in poor material circumstances. While resisting the notion of health inequalities, however, in in–depth interviews the same people provided vivid accounts of the way in which inequalities in material circumstances have an adverse impact upon health. The paper highlights ways in which different methodologies provide different and not necessarily complementary understandings of lay perspectives on the causes of inequalities in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much research has addressed the impact of microcredit on poverty, less attention has been paid to inequality. This paper draws on research on the Zambian Copperbelt to show how impact on income distribution depends upon who obtains loans, who graduates to larger loans, who exits and group dynamics. Some initial levelling up of business income was found, but the more marked overall effect among borrowers was of income polarisation. To gain a full picture, more research is needed into the wider impact of the big gainers not only on their competitors, customers and employees, but also on political tolerance of inequality. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out the environment of inequality in which social work and the poor have recently operated. It explores pragmatic and idealist arguments concerning whether or not the poor need social work. Finally, policy solutions developed in consultation with social service users and carets are suggested in relation to poverty and social exclusion. Social exclusion can be linked to relative poverty as exclusion from economic and social norms. However, there is a wider brief in our own government's publications and those of Europe, of examining how people are excluded from actions and policies of agencies who are there to support them. The paper will retain the concepts of poverty as lack of material income, and inequality as the gap between the rich and the poor, while being aware of the policy implications for social service users and carets of the more comprehensive process of being shut out partially or fully from social, economic, political and cultural systems. The debates around social work, social exclusion and inequality that follow establish: that some of the poor do need social work; that the poverty of social service users is related to policies that have restructured welfare in Britain; that the reason for individuals approaching or being referred to social services are complex but are likely to include financial deprivation as a key contributory factor; that if the poor do need social work, advocacy is essential rather than social work being seen as concerned only with social control-taking children into care, mentally ill people into hospitals, and advising the DSS on the suitability of claimants for benefits. Finally, the discussion turns to new policy agendas on social exclusion instigated by the Labour government. What positive difference can such policies make for social service users, their carets and social workers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Development is too important simply to be left entirely at the discretion of the state's functionaries’. Mark Turner and David Hulme (1997) Governance, Administration and Development, London: MacMillan Press, p. 241. Conventional poverty reduction strategies have produced disappointing results in many instances, especially in situations of high initial inequality which tend to reflect political obstacles to broad-based development. Participatory governance draws on insights from political and institutional economics and from experiments promoted by social activists. It represents a paradigm shift based on the trilogy of empowerment, accountability and capacity building which constitute the interdependent building blocks of participatory governance. Their role is threefold: i) to ensure that policy makers and their administration are more committed than they tend to be in non-participatory governance settings; ii) to base policies on better information; and iii) to make the implementation of policies more effective and efficient. 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts the Australian and Scandinavian welfare states with a view to demonstrating that, whilst the extent of welfare expenditures and the instruments of social policy vary quite markedly in these countries, policy outcomes in terms of levels of inequality and poverty and social protection are much more similar. In the course of this comparison, the paper casts serious doubts on the usefulness of both the prevailing paradigms for evaluating welfare state performance: measures of expenditure effort and measures of welfare decommodification, instead, it is argued that welfare state performance can only be properly assessed, as Richard Titmuss pointed out many years ago, by evaluating the impact of fiscal and occupational welfare in addition to the extent and character of the explicit expenditures of the state. When we broaden our conception of social policy in this way, Australia appears much less of a welfare state laggard than it is often taken to be and the oft mooted Scandinavian claim to welfare superiority is, perhaps, rather less compelling than is sometimes argued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the data base available in four South Asian countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, for the examination of trends in real inequality and poverty. Taking the position that sample surveys of household income and consumption are the only really adequate bases on which size distributions of income for a less developed country can be constructed, the paper examines in Section I the reliability of the surveys available in the four countries. Section II evaluates available price data. Section III looks at directions for future development of data collection. The conclusion is reached that sample surveys regularly conducted in these countries do not provide a particularly good basis for this type of analysis. Needed alterations include permitting access to the primary data (or redesign of published tabulations to meet the needs of this type of analysis), use of per capita rather than total household income and consumption, better coverage of regions and occupations, and exploitation of the price data implicit in the survey data collected. Further, the surveys themselves need to be overhauled, especially with regard to timing of interviews. The paper concludes with a short discussion of alternatives to estimates of inequality that can be used to measure absolute deprivation, such as the QUAC stick for identifying nutritional insufficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Conference on Experiences and Challenges in Measuring Income, Wealth, Inequality and Poverty in the Middle East and North Africa to be held on November 23-25, 2015 in Egypt and presents a call for paper for an income and wealth conference in Dresden, Germany.

In this paper, using an original survey, we analyze the distributional impact of international migration across two regions of Algeria. A semi-parametric descriptive analysis is complemented with a parametric model. Remittances do not significantly change the Gini coefficient in nearly any of the counterfactual scenarios. However, migration reduced poverty by 40 percent, with different effects across regions for extreme poverty. Foreign transfers, especially foreign pensions, have a strong positive impact on very poor families in one region. Poor families in the other region suffer from a 'double loss': their migrants do not provide local income and they do not send much money home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of cash transfers to the poor on the labor market. This is investigated in a matching model with endogenous labor market participation and job destruction. Depending on their productivity, workers might want to stay in the job, become unemployed, or leave the labor market; in addition, workers out of the labor force might decide to search for a job. Cash transfers are introduced to all agents with income below a given level. Two qualitative results are found: (i) The size of cash transfers has a negative effect on the employment rate, but an ambiguous effect on the unemployment rate; and (ii) the coverage of this welfare program has a positive effect on the employment rate, and an ambiguous effect on the unemployment rate. The numerical simulations also show that: (i) if the government target is to reduce inequality and poverty, the more efficient policy is to increase the level of benefits instead of increasing the eligibility of the program; (ii) compared with a welfare program that condition eligibility to labor market participation, the 'unconditional' cash transfer program has a stronger impact on inequality and poverty, but with a reduction in labor market participation and output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the distribution of well-being and, specifically, the degree of poverty and deprivation in Albania, in the years 2002 and 2005, using Living Standard Measurement Surveys ( LSMS). The distribution analysis is performed by applying both one-dimensional and multidimensional approaches, in particular to better examine the link between economic growth, inequality and poverty in Albania. Furthermore, by estimating a non-monetary indicator, as proposed by Bossert et al. (), and a nonlinear principal component model together with a probit model, the paper focuses on the multidimensional measures of poverty to address the relationship between poverty and socio-economic factors. Our evidence shows that absolute poverty decreased from 2002 to 2005 while national relative poverty increased; economic growth reduced poverty in Albania over the observed period; and living in rural and mountain areas, being female, poorly educated and with a large family increased the probability of suffering from deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Drawing from a wider study of the ideas of poverty and inequality in South Korea, this paper reports on the lived experiences of disadvantaged South Koreans and their relationship to the National Basic Livelihood Security System ( NBLSS), a flagship social assistance program aimed at addressing poverty and inequality. Utilizing a cultural approach to understanding and analysing policy responses to poverty, the impact of familism in the application of the NBLSS safety net is examined. Research data is presented through the testimonies, obtained through qualitative research interviews, of disadvantaged research participants and those who work with them, as well as policy-makers' perspectives, revealing key flaws in the current NBLSS policy objectives. It is clearly evident that, by clinging to outdated Confucian conceptualizations of familial piety as a justification for highly selectivist access to what is no more than a subsistence level of financial support for poor people, the proposition of a poverty safety net is compromised and is widely missing its aim of reducing poverty and inequality in contemporary South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, estimates at the regional, provincial and district level are produced, and both expenditure and income based measures are considered. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. The poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999-2006 tended to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]