Social Assistance Receipt and its Importance for Combating Poverty in Urban China Since the second half of the 1990s economic restructuring in urban China has led to widespread joblessness and income insecurity. The rapid expansion of the system of social assistance, Di Bao, can be understood from this perspective. Using a survey covering large parts of urban China in 2002, we investigate facto...

Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes In this paper, the concept of Income Satisfaction Inequality is operationalized on the basis of individual responses to an Income Satisfaction question posed in the German SocioEconomic Panel (GSOEP). Income satisfaction is the subjective analogue of the objective income concept and includes objective income inequality as a special case. The paper i...

According to economic theory, well-being or utility depends on consumption. However, at the household level, total consumption is rarely measured because its collection requires a great deal of survey time. As a result income has been widely used to assess economic well-being and poverty rates. Yet, because households can use wealth to consume more than income, an income-based measure of well-b...

Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer individuals, and establish that this ...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Using available data on the distribution of HIV/AIDS prevalen...

Understanding the role of foreign aid in poverty alleviation is one of the central inquiries for development economics. To augment past crosscountry studies and randomized evaluations, this project estimates the first sub-national model of foreign aid allocation and impact. Newly geocoded aid project data from Malawi is used in combination with multiple rounds of living standards data to predic...

Are Lone Mothers Responsive to Policy Changes? Evidence from a Workfare Reform in a Generous Welfare State There is a heated debate in many European countries about a move towards a welfare system that increases the incentives for lone mothers to move off welfare and into work. We analyze the consequences of a major Norwegian workfare reform of the generous welfare system for lone mothers. Our ...

This is an ambitious attempt to view the relationships involving education and income as forming a system, and one that can generate a poverty trap. The setting is rural China, and the data are from a national household survey for 2002, designed with research hypotheses in mind. Enrolment is high in rural China by comparison with most poor rural societies, but the quality of education varies gr...

1 Radiology Department, Mashhad branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran 2 Gasteroenterology and Hepatology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran 3 Gastroenterology and Hepatology Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran 4 Surgical Oncology Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran ...

microfinance, banking to the poor, is a recent global phenomenon introduced as a way for combating the poverty in the 1970’s. before that the poor were not allowed access to credit and loans due to the widespread belief that the poor could not repay loans. but microfinance movement with financial innovations reduced the costs and risks of lending to poor households, and presented as tool for re...