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Poverty Line (poverty + line)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	51%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%
Medical Sciences	11%

Selected Abstracts

Identifying the poor in the 1870s and 1880s1

ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
ALAN GILLIE
Poverty lines devised throughout England and Wales in the 1870s and 1880s defined ,the poor', a new class not recognized by the poor law. This article provides an account of the poverty lines adopted, mainly by school boards, in about 40 different places; the context in which they were developed; and what has been retrieved of the reasons determining the adoption of specific poverty lines. In particular, it examines the principal controversies surrounding them, and the challenge they posed to the poor law; and, incidentally, compares them to the poverty lines proposed, many years later, by Booth and Rowntree. [source]

The Within-Year Concentration of Medical Care: Implications for Family Out-of-Pocket Expenditure Burdens

HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 3 2009
Thomas M. Selden
Objective. To examine the within-year concentration of family health care and the resulting exposure of families to short periods of high expenditure burdens. Data Source. Household data from the pooled 2003 and 2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) yielding nationally representative estimates for the nonelderly civilian noninstitutionalized population. Study Design. The paper examines the within-year concentration of family medical care use and the frequency with which family out-of-pocket expenditures exceeded 20 percent of family income, computed at the annual, quarterly, and monthly levels. Principal Findings. On average among families with medical care, 49 percent of all (charge-weighted) care occurred in a single month, and 63 percent occurred in a single quarter). Nationally, 27 percent of the study population experienced at least 1 month in which out-of-pocket expenditures exceeded 20 percent of income. Monthly 20 percent burden rates were highest among the poor, at 43 percent, and were close to or above 30 percent for all but the highest income group (families above four times the federal poverty line). Conclusions. Within-year spikes in health care utilization can create financial pressures missed by conventional annual burden analyses. Within-year health-related financial pressures may be especially acute among lower-income families due to low asset holdings. [source]

Social, Economic and Demographic Consequences of Migration on Kerala

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2001
K.C. Zachariah
Migration has been the single most dynamic factor in the otherwise dreary development scenario of Kerala during the last quarter of the last century. It has contributed more to poverty alleviation and reduction in unemployment in Kerala than any other factor. As a result of migration, the proportion of the population below the poverty line has declined by 12 per cent. The number of unemployed persons , estimated to be only about 13 lakhs in 1998 compared with 37 lakhs reported by the Kerala Employment Exchanges , has declined by over 30 per cent. Migration has caused nearly a million married women in Kerala to live away from their husbands. Most of these so-called "Gulf wives" experienced extreme loneliness to begin with, and were burdened with added family responsibilities to which they had not been accustomed when their husbands were with them. But over a period, and with a helping hand from abroad over the ISD, most came out of their early gloom. Their gain in autonomy, status, management skills and experience in dealing with the world outside their homes were developed the hard way and would remain with them for the rest of their lives for the benefit of their families and society. In the long run, the transformation of these million women will have contributed more to the development of Kerala society than all the temporary euphoria created by remittances and modern gadgetry. Kerala is dependent on migration for employment, subsistence, housing, household amenities, institution building, and many other developmental activities. The danger is that migration could cease, as shown by the Kuwait war of 1993, and repercussions could be disastrous for the State. Understanding migration trends and instituting policies to maintain the flow of migration is more important today than at any time in the past. Kerala workers seem to be losing out in international competition for jobs in the Gulf market. Corrective policies are needed urgently to raise their competitive edge over workers in competing countries in South and South-East Asia. Like any other industry, migration from Kerala needs periodic technological upgrading of workers. Otherwise, there is a danger that the State might lose the Gulf market permanently. The crux of the problem is Kerala workers' inability to compete with expatriates from other South and South-East Asian countries. The solution lies in equipping workers with better general education and job training. This study suggests a twofold approach. In the short run, the need is to improve the job skills of prospective emigrant workers. This could be achieved through ad hoc training programmes focussed on the job market in Gulf countries. In the long run, the need is to restructure the educational system, taking into consideration the future demand of workers not only in Kerala but also in potential destination countries all over the world, including the US and other developed countries. Kerala emigrants need not always be construction workers in the Gulf countries; they could also be software engineers in developed countries. [source]

Health perceptions and health behaviours of poor urban Jordanian women

JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 1 2001
Sawsan Majali Mahasneh PhD RN
Health perceptions and health behaviours of poor urban Jordanian women Background.,The economic recession and stringent economic adjustment programme that Jordan has gone through since the early 1980s have resulted in lower living standards and higher rates of poverty and unemployment. Poverty debilitates women and impairs their access to health care, proper nutrition and well-being in general. Rationale.,Women's health behaviours and problems need to be analysed from the perspective of women themselves. The purpose of this study was to describe the health perceptions and health behaviours of poor urban Jordanian women aged 15,45 years in the context of the family and community in which they live. The sample consisted of 267 Jordanian women aged 18,45 years, whose household income was below the poverty line. Method.,This was a community-based study that collected data using semi-structured interviews with women. Health perceptions were measured by asking the women to describe their health status, as they perceived it. Health behaviours were measured by asking the women about their personal hygiene, diet, activity and exercise, sleep, smoking, drinking alcohol, and safety and security. Results.,The average age of women was 33 years, 93% were or had been married, and 87·5% had received some form of education. Although the mean age at marriage was about 20 years, 13·6% were married when they were less than 16 years of age. Study women gave a lower rating of their health status than those reported in national studies. Although they reported bathing once a week, eating about three meals a day, and getting 8 hours sleep, there remain areas for improvement in their health behaviours in terms of performing regular exercise, carrying out regular health examinations, and the type and amount of food consumed. Recommendations.,Implications for nursing, with a special focus on health education and meeting the health needs of these women, are presented. [source]

Area-Level Poverty Is Associated with Greater Risk of Ambulatory,Care,Sensitive Hospitalizations in Older Breast Cancer Survivors

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 12 2008
Mario Schootman PhD
OBJECTIVES: To estimate the frequency of ambulatory care,sensitive hospitalizations (ACSHs) and to compare the risk of ACSH in breast cancer survivors living in high-poverty with that of those in low-poverty areas. DESIGN: Prospective, multilevel study. SETTING: National, population-based 1991 to 1999 National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program data linked with Medicare claims data throughout the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Breast cancer survivors aged 66 and older. MEASUREMENTS: ACSH was classified according to diagnosis at hospitalization. The percentage of the population living below the U.S. federal poverty line was calculated at the census-tract level. Potential confounders included demographic characteristics, comorbidity, tumor and treatment factors, and availability of medical care. RESULTS: Of 47,643 women, 13.3% had at least one ACSH. Women who lived in high-poverty census tracts (,30% poverty rate) were 1.5 times (95% confidence interval (CI)=1.34,1.72) as likely to have at least one ACSH after diagnosis as women who lived in low-poverty census tracts (<10% poverty rate). After adjusting for most confounders, results remained unchanged. After adjustment for comorbidity, the hazard ratio (HR) was reduced to 1.34 (95% CI=1.18,1.52), but adjusting for all variables did not further reduce the risk of ACSH associated with poverty rate beyond adjustment for comorbidity (HR=1.37, 95% CI=1.19,1.58). CONCLUSION: Elderly breast cancer survivors who lived in high-poverty census tracts may be at increased risk of reduced posttreatment follow-up care, preventive care, or symptom management as a result of not having adequate, timely, and high-quality ambulatory primary care as suggested by ACSH. [source]

Poverty in America 1970,1990: who did gain ground?

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMETRICS, Issue 6 2003
An application of stochastic dominance criteria employing simultaneous inequality tests in a partial panel
Atkinson (1987) proposed stochastic dominance criteria for analysing poverty which, under certain conditions, establish orderings of states for any poverty line and any poverty measure within given class, refocusing debate on the nature of the income distribution of the poor. Employing new empirical techniques, these criteria are implemented for the United States from 1970 to 1990 using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results highlight the pivotal role of family size scale economies in consumption, indicate different experiences for white versus non-white groups and suggest that optimism over the progress of the poor is not warranted. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Consistent poverty comparisons and inference

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2-3 2007
Channing Arndt
Poverty measurement; Entropy estimation; Revealed preferences; Bootstrap Abstract Building upon the cost of basic needs (CBN) approach, an integrated approach to making consumption-based poverty comparisons is presented. This approach contains two principal modifications to the standard CBN approach. The first permits the development of multiple poverty bundles that are utility consistent. The second recognizes that the poverty line itself is a random variable whose variation influences the degree of confidence in poverty measures. We illustrate the empirical importance of these two methodological changes for the case of Mozambique. With utility consistency imposed, estimated poverty rates tend to be systematically higher in rural areas and lower in urban areas. We also find that the true confidence intervals on the poverty estimates,those incorporating poverty line variance,tend to be considerably larger than those that ignore poverty line variance. Finally, we show that these two methodological changes interact. Specifically, we find that imposing utility consistency on poverty bundles tends to tighten confidence intervals, sometimes dramatically, on provincial poverty estimates. We conclude that this revised approach represents an important advance in poverty analysis. The revised approach is straightforward and directly applicable in empirical work. [source]

An analysis of food security and poverty in Central Asia,case study from Kazakhstan,

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2008
Valerie Rhoe
Abstract During the transition from planned to market-oriented economies, Central Asian countries experienced major socio-economic shocks that increased food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty. In the last 15 years, these countries underwent economic reforms in order to transform their economies, and in response to growing food insecurity and poverty levels, they adopted food self-sufficiency policies. For designing and implementing policy reforms, a good understanding of the magnitude of food insecurity and poverty and their determinants are required. Using the Kazakhstan Living Standard and Measurement Survey, this paper identifies a food poverty line and a total poverty line for Kazakhstan. Then poverty measures from both lines are compared and determinates of poverty are analysed. The results show that the total poverty line captures more of the poor population. Although there are some variations amongst the determinants of poverty under the two poverty lines, the strength of the common determinants is generally weaker when non-food expenditures are included in deriving the poverty line. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Globalisation and poverty: impacts on households of employment and restructuring in the textiles industry of South Africa,

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2007
Andries Bezuidenhout
Abstract This paper addresses an important but often neglected theme in debates on globalisation,the consequences for workers of engagement in global markets, particularly for those workers who are retrenched in the process. Using the South African textiles industry as a case study, the paper investigates the impact on workers' household livelihoods of industrial restructuring following trade liberalisation in the 1990s. Interviews with textile workers and retrenched textile workers were conducted in five locations in three provinces,the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal,in order to capture different local dynamics. Workers employed in textiles generally enjoy a relatively stable formal sector wage, which, though less than the manufacturing average, is well above the national poverty line. However, the benefits were not evenly spread between the regions and job insecurity has been increasing. Workers retrenched from textile employment have faced extreme difficulties in a country with exceptionally high levels of open unemployment, and many families have fallen into deep poverty, which may now be transmitted intergenerationally. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Can a subjective poverty line be applied to China?

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 8 2004
Assessing poverty among urban residents in 199
For the first time, subjective poverty line methodology is applied to China. The data refer to 12 cities for the year 1999. A major conclusion is that poverty counts, based on the subjective poverty line, is surprisingly close to those obtained when applying the methodology used when providing official estimates on poverty in urban China. However, the opinions of the general public can differ considerably across cities. Applying the poverty line we find substantial variation across cities in the extent of poverty. Poverty status in urban China is very much related to education level of the household, to life cycle, as well as to labour market status. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Families in Poverty in the 1990s: Trends, Causes, Consequences, and Lessons Learned

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 4 2000
Karen Seccombe
During the 1990s, poverty rates in the United States remained relatively stable despite a robust economy in which unemployment and inflation were at their lowest points in many years. Approximately 13% of individuals, 11% of families, and 19% of children lived below the poverty line in 1998, a decline of only 1% or less for each of these categories since 1990. These high rates of poverty result in many severe consequences. This essay reviews the research and theoretical and conceptual developments during the past decade, including: (a) a background on how the poverty line was developed; (b) general research themes in the 1990s; (c) the causes of the virtually unchanged poverty rate; (d) the consequences of poverty, particularly for children; and (e) the lessons we have learned from research over the past decade, with some directions for the future. [source]

The devil may be in the details: How the characteristics of SCHIP programs affect take-up

JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2005
Barbara Wolfe
In this paper, we explore whether the specific design of a state's program has contributed to its success in meeting two objectives of the Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): increasing the health insurance coverage of children in lowerincome families and doing so with a minimum reduction in their private health insurance coverage (crowd-out). In our analysis, we use two years of Current Population Survey data, 2000 and 2001, matched with detailed data on state programs. We focus on two populations: the eligible population of children, broadly defined,those living in families with incomes below 300 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL),and a narrower group of children, those who we estimate are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP. Unique state program characteristics in the analysis include whether the state plan covers families; whether the state uses presumptive eligibility; the number of months without private coverage that are required for eligibility; whether there is an asset test; whether a face-to-face interview is required; and specific outreach activities. Our results provide evidence that state program characteristics are significant determinants of program success. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management [source]

Land under pressure: soil conservation concerns and opportunities for Ethiopia

LAND DEGRADATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2003
B. G. J. S. Sonneveld
Abstract This paper evaluates the future impact of soil degradation on national food security and land occupation in Ethiopia. It applies a spatial optimization model that maximizes national agricultural revenues under alternative scenarios of soil conservation, land accessibility and technology. The constraints in the model determine whether people remain on their original site, migrate within their ethnically defined areas or are allowed a transregional migration. Key to this model is the combination of a water erosion model with a spatial yield function that gives an estimate of the agricultural yield in its geographical dependence of natural resources and population distribution. A comparison of simulated land productivity values with historical patterns shows that results are interpretable and yield more accurate outcomes than postulating straightforward reductions in yield or land area for each geographic entity. The results of the optimization model show that in absence of soil erosion control, the future agricultural production stagnates and results in distressing food shortages, while rural incomes drop dramatically below the poverty line. Soil conservation and migration support a slow growth, but do not suffice to meet the expected food demand. In a transregional migration scenario, the highly degraded areas are exchanged for less affected sites, whereas cultivation on already substantially degraded soils largely continues when resettlement is confined to the original ethnic,administrative entity. A shift to modern technology offers better prospects and moderates the migration, but soil conservation remains indispensable, especially in the long term. Finally, an accelerated growth of non-agricultural sectors further alleviates poverty in the countryside, contributing to higher income levels of the total population and, simultaneously, relieving the pressure on the land through rural,urban migration. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Sen measures of poverty in the United States: Cash versus comprehensive incomes in the 1990s

PACIFIC ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2001
John Formby
Recently developed statistical inference procedures for the Sen index and its components , the headcount, income gap and Gini index among the poor , are used to test explicit hypotheses concerning aggregate poverty in the United States for the period 1989 to 1997. Changes in Sen measures of poverty are investigated for cash and comprehensive income using the official poverty line and six additional poverty lines drawn using thresholds set at 50, 75, 125, 150, 175 and 200 percent of the official level. The paper also reports on the effects of using comprehensive income on subgroup poverty rates and on the demographic composition of the poor. [source]

A Consistent Poverty Approach to Assessing the Sensitivity of Income Poverty Measures and Trends

THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2008
Peter Saunders
This paper examines the sensitivity of estimates of income poverty rates and trends to variations in the poverty line and to whether or not certain households are included or excluded from the sample used to estimate poverty. The approach draws on the concept of consistent poverty, which has been used to identify those with incomes below the poverty line who also experience deprivation. Our approach involves excluding households with incomes below the poverty line if they report zero or negative income or are self-employed, have expenditure well in excess of their income, have substantial wealth holdings, or if they do not report having experienced financial stress over the past year. The combined impact of all four exclusions is to reduce the half-median income poverty rate from 9.9 per cent to 5.4 per cent, but also suggests that poverty increased by more over the decade to 2003,04 than the original estimates indicate. [source]

What Really Happened to Child Poverty in the UK under Labour's First Term?*

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 488 2003
Mike Brewer
Child poverty in Britain fell in Labour's first term, though by much less than micro-simulation exercises suggested. Nonetheless, the decline is statistically significant, and is greater if measured just in the last 6 months of 2000/1, rather than the whole year. The decline also proves robust to the choice of poverty line, although that which the Government has emphasised (60% of contemporary income) shows a somewhat bigger drop than any other than any other poverty line that is a fraction of median income. Among those who remain poor, the average shortfall in measured income below the poverty line has increased since 1996/7. Looking ahead, the methodology currently used in official poverty statistics may limit the potential to reduce child poverty significantly further. [source]

Managing risk and vulnerability in Asia: A (re)study from Thailand, 1982,83 and 2008

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 3 2009
Jonathan Rigg
Abstract In the 1980s, rural settlements in the Northeast of Thailand were farming focused, and strategies of living were structured around the need to secure subsistence in the face of a capricious environment and a weak developmental state. More than half of households in the region lived below the poverty line, and the immediate prospects for ,development' were not bright. Drawing on a 25-year longitudinal study of two villages in Mahasarakham, the paper describes and reflects on how risk and vulnerability have been re-shaped during a quarter of a century of profound economic and social change. From largely environmental and local, the pattern of risk and opportunity have become increasingly economic and non-local as external events wash across the shores of rural settlements like Ban Non Tae and Ban Tha Song Korn. [source]

Identifying the poor in the 1870s and 1880s1

An analysis of food security and poverty in Central Asia,case study from Kazakhstan,

The labour market and household income inequality in South Africa: existing evidence and new panel data

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2001
Murray Leibbrandt
South Africa's very high Gini coefficient has always served as the starkest indicator of the country's extreme inequality. The racial legacy has always been highlighted in explaining this inequality. This paper presents evidence that between race contributions to inequality have declined from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s. However, they are still considerably higher than comparative international figures. The racially rigged labour market has always been assumed to operate as the key force underlying these changing inequality patterns and the paper presents findings for more formal decompositions of the linkage between the labour market and household inequality. This work confirms the dominance of the labour market in driving total South African, African and even KwaZulu-Natal inequality. However, the contribution of wage income is uneven across these different levels of aggregation and across time; suggesting complex patterns of inequality generation. The following lengthy section of the paper uses a panel data set to measure and explain the mobility patterns of a sample of African households in Kwazulu-Natal. It is found that there was less income mobility at the top and the bottom of the distribution than in the middle and overall there was an increase in income differentiation. Simple mobility profiling and more complex modelling confirm the importance of labour market changes in influencing movement of real adult equivalent income of households as well as mobility across deciles, across poverty lines. Demographic changes are also seen to be very important. The paper concludes with a summary and some suggestions for further work. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Sen measures of poverty in the United States: Cash versus comprehensive incomes in the 1990s

Dietary Diversity, Food Security and Undernourishment: The Vietnamese Evidence,

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009
Vinod Mishra
C23; O15; O53; R23 As is widely known, Vietnam experienced a rise in living standards and a decline in expenditure poverty during the first half of the 1990s. This paper extends this knowledge by providing evidence on the Vietnamese experience of food security, undernourishment and poverty from the late 1990s to the early part of the new millennium. The results suggest that poor households did not experience increases in food consumption, calorie intake and dietary diversity of the same magnitude as non-poor households. Nevertheless, Vietnam experienced impressive reductions in both calorie deprivation and expenditure poverty at the turn of the century. Non-poor households, in particular, experienced spectacular increases in calorie intake and dietary diversity during the period 1997/1998,2004. This paper also reports regression results which point to the role of urbanization and improvement in education levels in promoting dietary diversity and nutrient intake. The present study finds evidence of sharp regional differences in calorie intake and calorie costs, which suggests that the authorities should set provincial poverty lines, contrary to the current practice adopted by Vietnam's General Statistical Office. [source]