Evaluating the Success of President Johnson's War on Poverty: Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Full-Income Poverty Measure

To date the main indicator used to compare the well-being of children in industrialised countries has been the proportion of children in income poverty. This article exploits data from recent work developing indices of child well-being in EU, OECD and CEE/CIS countries to explore whether child income poverty is a good representation of a wider understanding of child well-being. Using the poverty estimates in each index, as well as more recent estimates for the European Union, we find that for OECD countries income poverty still has some explanatory power but this is not the case for EU and CEE/CIS countries.

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Asset Poverty and Material Hardship in South Korea

10.31235/osf.io/4qbs7 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Soyoon Weon ◽

David W. Rothwell

Keyword(s):

Binary Logistic Regression ◽

Living Conditions ◽

Economic Resources ◽

Future Research ◽

Binary Logistic Regression Analysis ◽

Income Poverty ◽

Material Hardship ◽

Poverty Measure ◽

Policy Responses ◽

The Poor

Decades of research and experience with anti-poverty programs around the world have revealed that there is more to poverty than simply maintaining a certain income level. However, until recently, poverty analysis in Korea has been mostly based on income. This study examines the multidimensional living conditions of the poor and its causes in Korea by testing the association between the material hardship and asset and income poverty. Material hardship is a direct poverty measure to identify the poor as those whose actual consumption fails to meet the basic needs. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to our understanding of the living conditions of the poor and the causes of material hardship including food, housing, utilities, and health hardship. Using the binary logistic regression analysis, this study found that households who were poor only in assets (and not income) were more likely than households who were income poor but not asset poor to experience all types of material hardship except for food. This finding suggests that the asset poor are more vulnerable to material hardship than is estimated by the income poverty measure. We describe how future research needs to expand hardship measures to encompass various living conditions in relation to the current Korean social context. This study implies that policy responses to poverty could be improved to the extent they consider the type and amount of a household’s available economic resources.

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Hardship Among Immigrants and the Native-born in the United States

Demography ◽

10.1215/00703370-8958347 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

John Iceland

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Race And Ethnicity ◽

Well Being ◽

The United States ◽

Income Poverty ◽

Foreign Born ◽

Management Skills ◽

Poverty Measure ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Using Data

Abstract This study examines the prevalence of several types of hardship (e.g., bill paying and housing hardships) among immigrants by race and ethnicity in the United States using data from the 2008 and 2014 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and logistic regressions. I find that Blacks, and to some extent Hispanics, are more likely to report hardships than Whites and Asians, who are about equally likely to report hardships. Exploring results by nativity and citizenship status, I find that immigrants who became U.S. citizens are less likely than the native-born population to report some kinds of hardship. Undocumented immigrants, however, are more likely to report some kinds of hardships, particularly in the 2008 panel conducted at the time of the Great Recession, which hit immigrants especially hard; this relationship, however, is explained by the lower incomes of undocumented immigrant households in the 2008 panel. Results within racial and ethnic groups are generally in the same direction but are less frequently statistically significant. Overall, these findings suggest that immigrants are not particularly prone to hardship, especially when other characteristics are controlled for. In fact, the lower likelihood of some hardships among foreign-born citizens suggests that they are positively selected: they may have unobserved characteristics that are protective, such as better health, stronger social networks, or money management skills. Because the foreign-born are less likely to be disadvantaged vis-à-vis the native-born when hardship rather than the official income poverty measure is used, this study highlights the importance of using multiple measures when assessing the well-being of immigrants.

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Waging War on Poverty: Historical Trends in Poverty Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure

10.3386/w19789 ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Liana Fox ◽

Irwin Garfinkel ◽

Neeraj Kaushal ◽

Jane Waldfogel ◽

Christopher Wimer

Keyword(s):

War On Poverty ◽

Historical Trends ◽

Poverty Measure

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Identifying people in poverty: a multidimensional deprivation measure for the EU

10.31235/osf.io/7prxq ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Selçuk Bedük

Keyword(s):

Target Population ◽

Financial Strain ◽

Income Poverty ◽

Poverty Measure ◽

Four Dimensions ◽

Address Data ◽

Multidimensional Deprivation ◽

Conceptual Problems ◽

Deprivation Measure ◽

The Eu

In this article, I propose a multidimensional deprivation measure of poverty for the EU. The paper stands on the claim that a deprivation measure can be adequate, both conceptually and empirically, to capture poverty in the EU defined in Townsendian terms. Yet existing deprivation scales have three conceptual problems such as data-driven specification, neglected dimensionality and missing dimensions, and four data problems such as limited extent, cross-cultural equivalization, behavioral choices and reporting error. To address conceptual problems, I offer a concept-led methodology for constructing a multidimensional measure. To address data problems, I apply a post-hoc adjustment strategy using dual criteria of income poverty and financial strain. The proposed measure has four dimensions, namely needs for basic goods, health, education, leisure and social relationships, where each dimension is evaluated separately with relevant scales. When compared to the formal EU 2020 poverty target measure, the proposed measure is more likely to capture people with needs and lower resources as well as those in less affluent countries than those in more affluent countries. The (adjusted) proposed measure can be used as a stand-alone indicator to identify a target population for policy; or the unadjusted proposed measure can be combined with an income poverty measure to identify a worst-off group within that target population.

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Income Poverty, Deprivation and Exclusion: A Comparative Study of Australia and Britain

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279406000080 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 35 (4) ◽

pp. 559-584 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

PETER SAUNDERS ◽

LAURA ADELMAN

Keyword(s):

Low Income ◽

Poverty Line ◽

Poverty Rate ◽

Income Poverty ◽

Data Sets ◽

Poverty Measure ◽

Lone Parents ◽

Low Incomes ◽

Working Age ◽

Using Data

Poverty research has a long history in both Australia and Britain, but its influence on policy remains subject to political priorities and ideology. This can partly be explained by the limitations of defining poverty as low income and measuring it using an income poverty line. This article examines two national data sets that allow the income poverty profile to be compared with, and enriched by, the incidence of deprivation and social exclusion, measured using data that directly reflect experience. Although a degree of care must be applied when interpreting these new indicators within and between countries, a validated poverty measure is developed that reflects both low income and the experience of deprivation and exclusion. When results for the two countries are compared, they reveal stark differences between the alternative indicators. Britain has the higher income poverty rate and, although the incidence of both deprivation and exclusion are higher in Australia, Britain still has more validated poverty. The distributional profiles of deprivation and exclusion are shown to be very different in the two countries. These differences are explained by the very low incomes of low-income households in Britain, relative to other British households and relative to their Australian counterparts. Despite these differences, the results indicate that the same three groups face the greatest risk in both countries: lone parents, single working-age people and large (couple) families.

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