In this paper I explore how five competing theories of poverty shape anti-poverty strategies. Since most rural community development efforts aim to relieve causes or symptoms of poverty, it makes a difference which theory of poverty is believed to be responsible for the problem being addressed. In this paper five theories of poverty are distilled from the literature. It will be shown that these...

F ew economic indicators are more closely watched or more important for policy than the official poverty rate. It is used to gauge the extent of deprivation in the United States and to determine how economic well-being has changed over time. The poverty rate is often cited by policymakers, researchers, and advocates who are evaluating social programs that account for more than half a trillion d...

We study the level and severity of asset poverty, the characteristics of asset-poor households, the trends and persistence of asset poverty, and the role of major lifetime events affecting transitions in and out of asset poverty. We find that, contrary to a sharp decline in the official measure of poverty, which is based on income, the asset poverty rate barely changed over the 1984–99 period a...

I survey key developments in applied and theoretical research on poverty rates and poverty gaps over the past two decades, and provide a detailed analysis of poverty trends across a of variety of income measures and poverty indexes. Included is an extensive summary of how poverty thresholds and economic resources are measured and several proposed recommendations for revision. In addition I disc...

BACKGROUND An understanding of the complex relationship between health status and welfare is crucial for critical policy interventions. However, the focus of most policies in developing regions has been on current welfare to the neglect of forward-looking welfare analysis. The absence of adequate research in the area of future poverty or vulnerability to poverty has also contributed to the focu...

Residential demand for electricity is estimated for China using a unique household level dataset. Household electricity demand is specified as a function of local electricity price, household income, and a number of social-economic variables at household level. We find that the residential demand for electricity responds rather sensitively to its own price in China, which implies that there is ...

This paper briefly reviews the social science on "neighborhood effects" as an independent force in shaping poor outcomes, specifically mental illness and criminal behavior, before discussing the implications of that research for understanding the relationship between neighborhoods, race and class. Neighborhood effects research has proliferated in recent years with extensive attention again bein...

The age group composition of populations varies substantially across continents and within countries, and is linked to levels of development, health status and poverty. The subnational variability in the shape of the population pyramid as well as the respective dependency ratio are reflective of the different levels of development of a country and are drivers for a country's economic prospects ...

1 Since 2009, the UK witnessed marked increases in the rate of sanctions applied to 2 unemployment insurance claimants, as part of wider agenda of austerity and welfare 3 reform. In 2013, over 1 million sanctions were applied, stopping benefit payments for 4 a minimum of four weeks and potentially leaving people facing economic hardship 5 and driving them to use food banks. Here we explore whet...

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, millions of people in Europe are still struggling with poverty. This despite the fact that Europe is a relatively economically well-off region. Taking a conventional relative measure of poverty, calculated in terms of income below 60% of the national median, it is estimated that about 16% or 75 million people in the European Union can be termed p...