Showing papers on "Poverty published in 1985"

A synthesis of poverty line definitions

Abstract: A fundamental point of discussion in poverty research is whether poverty is an absolute or a relative concept. If poverty is seen to be a situation of absolute deprivation, a poverty line will usually be defined to be independent of the general style of living in society. If poverty is considered to be a situation of relative deprivation, a poverty line will be defined in relation to the general style of living in society. The choice for one of these two approaches has important consequences for social policy, as absolute poverty may be reduced by economic growth, while relative poverty will only decrease when income inequality decreases. This paper suggests a poverty line definition that is not a priori meant to be either absolute or relative, but depends on the perception of poverty in society. If the poverty line is higher in countries with higher median income (as an indicator of “general style of living”) the poverty line is said to be relative; if the poverty line does not vary with median income, it is said to be absolute. The poverty line definition suggested appears to be a generalization of almost all well-known poverty line definitions. Poverty lines thus defined are estimated for eight European countries on the basis of a 1979 survey. The resulting lines appear to have an elasticity with respect to median income of 0.51, and hence can be said to be halfway on the scale between absolute and relative.

Macroeconomics, Income Distribution, and Poverty

Abstract: This paper investigates the impacts of macroeconomic activity and policy on the poverty population It is shown that both the poverty count and the income share of the lowest quintile of income recipients move significantly with the business cycle The differential impact of inflation versus unemployment on low income groups is analyzed at lengthThe evidence indicates that unemployment has very large and negative effects on the poor, while inflation appears to have few effects at all In addition, changes in tax policy since 1950 have led to decreasing progressivity in the overall tax structure Special attention is given to changes in the poverty rate over the past decade and to prospective changes in the remainder of the 1980s

Wealth and Poverty

Abstract: Essays in Development Economics collects many of Jagdish Bhagwati's writings that have established him as a major postwar developmental economist. The selection is diverse and highlights the close relationship and mutual reinforcement in Bhagwati's research between economic theory, empirical validation, and policy debate. Volume I, Wealth and Poverty, addresses domestic or internal development problems. Its 22 essays are divided into five parts covering Development Theory and Strategy; Economic Structure: Regularities and Explanations; Class Structure, Poverty, and Redistrbution; Technology and Employment; and Eminent Economists: Sketches and Commentary. Volume 2, Dependence and Interdependence, deals with international or external problems and its 20 essays are in four parts covering North-South Issues; Developmental Strategy: Import Substitution versus Export Promotion; Foreign Assistance; and International Migration and Investment. Within each volume, the essays are topically grouped and preceded by brief introductions by the author discussing his current views of the nature of the contributions and the relationship among them. In several cases, previously unpublished papers or postscripts to previously published papers have been added to round out the sections. Jagdish N. Bhagwati is Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Director of the International Economics Research Center at Columbia University. Essays in Development Economics, in conjunction with the two-volume work, Essays in International Economic Theory (edited by Robert C. Feenstra, MIT Press), constitute a comprehensive selection of Bhagwati's influential and important contributions to the theory and policy ofdevelopment and of international trade. Gene M. Grossman is Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Africa in Crisis: The Causes, the Cures of Environmental Bankruptcy

Abstract: Introduction * A Continent on the Brink * Why Famine: Is The Climate Changing? * The Backdrop to Despair: Importing Poverty - The Population 'Crises' - Health and Poverty * Misuse of Land, Misuse of Water: Overcultivation - Cash Crops Versus Food Crops - Irrigation: The Need and the Reality - The Big Dam * Overgrazing and the Nomads * Forests, Fuel and Energy - Energy and Firewood * Soil and Fish: Peasant Farmers, Peasant Fishermen: Peasants and Rainfed Food Crops - Conserving Africa for Africans - The Fisheries of Africa * Apartheid: Institutionalized Bankruptcy * Conflict, Refugees and the Environment * Aid, Development and the Future: Africa, Is there Hope? References * Further Reading

Growing up Poor

Abstract: This ethnographic study looks at teenagers trapped in poverty-how some succeed in the struggle to get out and others finally give up trying. It is an outgrowth of interviews with some 900 teens in New York City, Cleveland, Louisville, and Meridian, Mississippi. The neighborhoods where they live are socially and racially diverse. Among them are white areas slding into poverty as traditional blue-collar jobs in smokestack industries fade away, and black and Hispanic neighborhoods where chronic unemployment has long been the prevailing tradition and fact of life. Based on the teenagers' own accounts, the book describes their experiences with working and seeking work, achievements in school and athletics, family life, and the positive influences of their peers and adult mentors. It also details the negative choices that tend to make poverty a life sentence: prostitution and street hustles, pregnancy and early parenthood, gang membership and criminal outlets, drugs and withdrawal into despair. Still, hope is an unquenchable attribute of youth, and it bubbles up in this book as the authors show how much these teenagers seek to do for themselves in exercising their limited options.

The Taming of the Scold: the Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England

Abstract: Fears of an impending breakdown of the social order have been common in many periods of history. At no time were they more widespread, or more intense, than in early modern England: the ‘crisis of order’ detected by modern historians in the sixty years before the civil war accords with the perceptions of many people in that period. Among the causes and symptoms of the apparently growing instability were those now familiar problems of excessive population growth, inflation, land shortage, poverty and vagrancy, all of which have attracted the attention of recent scholars. There are those who, like Peter Laslett, stress the stability of English society throughout the entire pre-modern period, and dismiss the signs of tension as the minor conflicts that exist in even the most smoothly functioning social system. Few contemporaries would have agreed with them. It could no longer be safely assumed that all Englishmen and women were bound together in that interlocking network of households and communities on which, according to the prevailing orthodoxy, stability depended. ‘Was there ever seen less obedience in youth of all sorts, both menkind and womenkind, towards their superiors, parents, masters and governors?’ the puritan Philip Stubbes demanded in the 1580s, echoing a common preoccupation. Even the patriarchal family, the linch-pin of the whole structure of order, appeared to be threatened. These anxieties were not confined to puritan moralists.

Childhood death and poverty: a study of all childhood deaths in Maine, 1976 to 1980.

Abstract: All child deaths occurring from 1976 to 1980 in Maine were studied. All children who were participating in social welfare programs (Medicaid, Food Stamps, or Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC]) at the time of death were categorized as children from "low-income" families. This group of children had an overall death rate 3.1 times greater than children who were not on a social welfare program at the time of death. Children from low-income families were at higher risk for disease-related deaths (3.5:1), accidental deaths (2.6:1), and homicide deaths (5.0:1), but not for suicides. These data suggest that excess mortality is occurring among infants and children from low-income families in spite of Medicaid and other poverty programs and that this excess mortality has important public health and social policy implications. Pediatricians and others interested in the well-being of children should support improvement of current health care delivery and social welfare programs, because the current system is failing to provide an optimal health outlook for every child.

Health Service Funding Cuts and the Declining Health of the Poor

Abstract: The federal funding cuts in health care initiated in 1981 were meant to protect the truly needy while reversing the alarming upward spiral in costs. The cuts have been targeted at those on the margin of poverty and at providers. The combined effect has been to force hundreds of thousands of the working poor and the elderly below the poverty line and to restrict their access to health care. Thirty-five million people, or 15 per cent of the population, are without health insurance today — an increase of 10 million, or 25 per cent, since 1977. Five million people annually . . .

Vulnerability to impoverishment in south african rural areas: the erosion of kinship and neighbourhood as social resources

Abstract: Since 1960 several million Africans have been relocated in South Africa, mainly from the common (or 'white') area to the so-called 'homelands'. This process of relocation is still under way, and precise enumeration of the numbers of people who have been and will be affected is impossible. Estimates vary according to the definition of'relocation': it is apparent, for instance, that official sources define the process as narrowly as possible in order to minimize the numbers involved. There is abundant evidence, however, that relocation has taken place on a vast scale, and that the process has generally resulted in increased poverty and misery for its victims (Surplus People Project, 1983). Kane-Berman has recently argued that the South African Bantustans are, at present, not so much reservoirs of a reserve army of labour as dumping grounds 'for people who have little chance of obtaining employment anywhere' (1981: 29). From having been sub-subsistence dormitory areas for labour migrants, they are rapidly becoming places to which the structurally unemployed are being permanently consigned. Recent theoretical analyses make it increasingly possible to understand these processes and their consequences at the macro-level. Generalized poverty in the whole rural periphery of southern Africa is being shown to result from the particular dynamics of capitalist development in the region (for instance, Southall, 1982b). And at this level there is a considerable body of general literature, pertaining to the logic of capital accumulation in underdeveloped countries, which can be drawn on to show that increasingly capital-intensive production is entirely consistent with a large and growing pool of structurally unemployed people (eg. Kay, 1975). All these arguments provide a very important background to the processes of relocation and impoverishment in South Africa, and help to explain some of the recent political and ideological adaptations made by the South African government to the Bantustan system (Maree, 1978; Molteno, 1978; Southall, 1982a, b). It is also apparent, however, that poverty - although general - is not experienced to an equal degree throughout the rural periphery. This has been shown by several recent micro-studies, mainly in neighbouring countries such as Botswana and Lesotho. These indicate not only that there are regional differences in class structure, but also that members of the working class experience significantly different social conditions and economic opportunities in different parts of the periphery (Cooper, 1982; Gay, 1980; Murray, 1981a; Quinlan, 1983; Spiegel, 1980a). We believe that a similar variation will be found within South Africa's Bantustans, and have written this article' as a first step towards more systematic consideration of the factors which render the inhabitants of different areas more or less vulnerable to impoverishment.

Myth and reality: The causes and persistence of poverty

Abstract: Policies directed at alleviating poverty rest on a set of assumptions regarding the demographic composition of the poor and the psychological dispositions of poor individuals Evidence from a long-term study of a representative sample of low-income individuals shows that poverty is very widespread but not usually very persistent, and that the characteristics of the persistently poor do not conform to the conventional wisdom Furthermore, the economic status of the poor does not appear to have been caused by psychological dispositions Intergenerational data from the same study show generally weak links between the poverty or welfare status of parents and that of their children Public policies for dealing with poverty can be properly devised without attempting to resocialize poor people and without undue concern that poverty programs will generate dependency among the majority of those they help

Medical care use and expenditure among children and youth in the United States: analysis of a national probability sample.

Abstract: Good access to health care for all US children and youth remains an important social policy goal. Recent patterns of access as reflected in the presence of regular care sources, health care use, health insurance coverage, and expenditures for medical care are described and analyzed using the subsample of all children 0 to 18 years of age from the 1980 National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey. Data from the survey indicate that in 1980, 92% of US children and youth had a regular care source and the same percentage were covered for the full year or part of the year by some form of public or private health insurance. However, use rates and patterns of expenditure continued to differ dramatically according to family background factors, particularly race, ethnicity, poverty status, and location of residence. These differences are analyzed and comparative data are presented for groups of children from various sociodemographic groups. Minority-group and near-poor children were found to be at highest risk for limited utilization of services and inadequate insurance coverage.

Poverty in America: is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?

Abstract: This paper reviews the current policies for fighting poverty and explores the impact they have had. We begin by reviewing trends in poverty, poverty spending and economic performance. It is immediately apparent that economic performance is the dominant determinant of the measured poverty rate over the past two decades. Government assistance programs expanded greatly over this period, but the growth in cash assistance was too modest to have major effects, and the large growth in in-kind benefits could not reduce measured poverty since such benefits are not counted as income. Next we focus on three groups: the disabled, female family heads, and unemployed black youth. We find little evidence that government deserves the blame for the problems of each group, and suggest that the broad outlines of current policies are defensible on economic grounds.

Inequalities in health in the city of Bristol: a preliminary review of statistical evidence.

Abstract: This article compares statistical indicators of health with those of material and social deprivation for 28 wards of the city of Bristol, England. Four general indicators of health were examined-a combined rate per 1,000 live births of stillbirths and infant deaths; deaths of persons aged 15 to 64 per 1,000 of that age; deaths of persons aged 65 and over per 10,000 of that age, and numbers of babies born after 40 weeks gestation weighing less than 2,800 (and 2,500) grams per 1,000 births having that period of gestation. Measures of average and cumulative rank were used to augment tests of the significance of correlations between different indicators. The degree of rank consistency was high, and several wards at the top and the bottom of the rankings were clearly distinct on all indicators. Five indicators of deprivation were also examined-the percentages of: 1) households with fewer rooms than persons; 2) households lacking a car; 3) economically active persons seeking work; 4) children aged 5 to 15 who receive school meals free; and 5) households experiencing disconnection of electricity in the previous 12 months. Again the consistency of ranking according to the five indicators was high, with marked differences on all five indicators between the highest and lowest ranking wards. Between 1971 and 1981 some forms of deprivation increased in nearly all wards. According to some criteria, deprivation increased more in wards already most deprived in 1971 than in those least deprived. Finally, a strong association between the two sets of indicators was found. On the data available to health and planning authorities poor health is significantly correlated with deprivation. There are therefore implications for new forms of joint policy-making on the part of different departments of local and central government.

Rural Roads And Poverty Alleviation

Abstract: This study analyses the pattern and the use of local road networks, and the causes and effects of road programmes, for goods transport and in the areas of personal travel, education, health - and poverty alleviation in general. The impact of the selection criteria actually used in specific road programmes in four countries - Egypt, India, Botswana and Thailand - is presented, and suggestions made for appropriate selection criteria for the future.

'Rotten Social Background': Should the Criminal Law Recognize a Defense of Severe Environmental Deprivation?

Abstract: Considers whether socioeconomic deprivation, also known as rotten social background (RSB), can ever constitute a criminal defense. Summarizes social scientific and medical literature on the contribution of extreme poverty and deprivation to criminal behavior. Canvasses existing criminal defenses and analyzes their ability to accommodate RSB defendants. Identifies the forms that an RSB defense might take and the costs and benefits of each option.

Modern Varieties, International Agricultural Research, and the Poor

Abstract: Plan t breeders select f o r roots , leaves and s ta lks , making efficient and stable use of waterr n u t r i e n t s and l ight . Therefore, i n many environments, modern v a r i e t i e s (MV) now produce higher y i e l d s of less c o s t l y c a l o r i e s and less vulnerabili ty t o drought and disease, even without purchased inputs , per ton of food. Physical r i sks (e.g. the narrow genet ic base of sane p lan t s , and " s o i l mining") a r e r e a l , but have been exaggerated. The bio-econanic impact of MVs should be e spec ia l ly favorable t o smaller farmers, hired workers, and poor consumers, y e t much of t h i s "pro-poor poten t ia l" has been l o s t due t o (a) i n s e r t i o n of MVs i n t o social systems favoring urban groups and the b ig farmers who supply them, (b) demographic dynamics making labor cheaper relative t o land, and (c) research s t r u c t u r e s p r i o r i t i z i n g fashionable t o p i c s rather than genuine needs of the poor. Too much research i n t o "how MVs affect the poor" still focuses on small farmers i n MV-affected areas. I n general these adopt MVs l a t e r than bigger farmers, bu t then a t t a i n a t least as high adoption r a t e s , i n t e n s i t i e s , y i e l d s , and efficiency. Only except ional ly a r e they dispossessed before they can gain from MVs. But e a r l y adopters , who go t better prices, gained more from MVs (see (a) above). Alsor most poor farmers i n South Asia and Africa are still ou t s ide MV areas . As producers they have probably l o s t from MVs. Especially i n South and Southeast Asia, the r u r a l poor are increas ingly l abore r s rather than farmers. MVs raise demand f o r l abor per acre and clearly re su l t ed i n r a i sed employment around 1965-75. More recently, farm employers

Rural elderly in demographic perspective

Abstract: Any strategy for economic diversification requires considerable and continuing local effort. No one group can, or should, undertake the task alone. Perhaps local city and county government can serve as a catalyst or coordinator, but many groups and interests should cooperate. Groups that can make important contributions are Chambers of Commerce, downtown development com.mittees, county and regional planning bodies, private industry councils, State government economic development offices, and extension services of agricultural and business colleges.