Alleviating time poverty among the working poor: a pre-registered longitudinal field experiment

Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of working mothers, a population who is especially likely to experience severe time poverty. Participants received vouchers for services designed to reduce their burden of unpaid labor. We compared the effect of these vouchers against equivalently valued unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) and a neutral control condition. In contrast to our pre-registered hypotheses, a pre-registered Bayesian ANCOVA indicated that the time-saving, UCT, and control conditions led to similar increases in subjective well-being, reductions in perceived stress, and decreases in relationship conflict (Cohen’s d’s ranged from 0.25 to 0.85 during the treatment weeks and from 0.21 to 0.36 at the endline). Exploratory analyses revealed that the time-saving vouchers and UCTs produced these benefits through distinct psychological pathways. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for economic development initiatives. Protocol registration The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 27/06/2019. The protocol, as accepted by Nature Human Behaviour, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4368455.

How Employed Students Lived the Covid-19 Lockdown in Romania

This paper draws on the conceptual framework of “time poverty” to explore how employed students, a group much affected by “time poverty”, experienced changes in time allocation during the COVID-19 lockdown in Romania. Findings of a mixed-method study indicate that working and non-working students perceived and engaged differently with this sudden increase in discretionary time. Compared to non-working students, working students, welcomed this newly acquired time and saw it as an opportunity to engage in both education and self-growth activities. They also show higher levels of engagement with educational activities and an increased sense of satisfaction resulting from this engagement, as well as higher levels of wellbeing. This quick reorientation clearly reveals that time poverty is a barrier to education and personal well-being for working students.

Income Mobility in the Developing World

This chapter examines income mobility in developing countries. We start by synthesizing findings from the available evidence on relative mobility and poverty dynamics. We then describe evidence on economic mobility obtained via synthetic panels constructed from cross-section data. We echo earlier literature in pointing to substantial movement across income classes by households over time—poverty is not inevitably a chronic condition. However, less clear are the factors driving the observed ‘churning’. In an attempt to make headway, we consider the story of economic mobility in one village in northern India over seven decades. We describe patterns of poverty dynamics and economic mobility in the village, and we highlight some of the processes that have been important in driving these patterns. While this in-depth study does not permit inferences to broader populations, it may provide a reference point against which findings from studies elsewhere can be compared.

Rural entrepreneurship and the context: navigating contextual barriers through women's groups

PurposeThis study aims to examine how women's groups help women to navigate context-related barriers to their engagement in rural entrepreneurship. The paper combines the contextualisation of entrepreneurship framework and the feminist separatist theory to describe how women's groups in patriarchal rural communities enable women to circumvent context-related barriers and actively engage in rural entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachBased on a case study of 12 women's groups engaged in paddy farming, rice processing and marketing in rural Tanzania, this study draws on semi-structured interviews with 46 women, four focus group discussions, four in-depth key informant interviews and non-participant observation.FindingsRural women face unique context-related challenges that hinder them from effectively participating in rural entrepreneurship. Specifically, limited access to farmlands and profitable markets, lack of business networks, limited time, poverty and insufficient financial resources constrain women's engagement in entrepreneurship. To overcome these contextual barriers, rural women have organised themselves into groups to gain access to business services, business-related training, grants and business networks.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the existing literature on contextualising entrepreneurship by focussing on how rural contexts may constrain women's entrepreneurial engagement while showing how women respond to contextual barriers that enable them to participate in rural entrepreneurship.Practical implicationsThis study shows that women with low education can pursue rural entrepreneurship if they are supported through training and access to networks. This will support the performance of these groups of women.Originality/valueThis study offers new insights into the role of women's groups in navigating gender-related constraints that hinder women from participating in rural entrepreneurship within the patriarchal context of low-income countries. Thus, new perceptions for the gender and rural entrepreneurship theory and the policy implications thereof are proffered.

Toward an Empirical Analysis of Income and Time Poverty in Urban China

Many earlier studies have assessed Chinese poverty using monetary dimensions, but few have considered the time dimension. This research investigates multidimensional poverty in urban China, using data from the 2013 China Household Income Project, from the standpoints of income and time. A logistic regression model was used to estimate the socioeconomic causes of income poverty, time poverty, and income–constrained time poverty. Empirical results obtained from this study reveal that being a paid female worker or a private enterprise employee and bearing the financial burdens of housing and medical care have significant effects on the probability of being time poor. In addition, workers who have low academic achievement, children, and educational loans are particularly prone to suffering income–constrained time poverty. This study contributes to the assessment of severe poverty situations and suggests an increasing need for working time regulations and more support for less-educated workers in urban China.

An Assessment of the Energy Poverty and Gender Nexus towards Clean Energy Adoption in Rural South Africa

South Africa has about 2.5 million households without electricity access, most of which are located in rural areas and urban informal settlements. The nexus of energy poverty and gender is at play in the affected communities, as women and girls are culturally stereotyped with the task of collecting unclean fuels (e.g., firewood) and using these for their households’ energy demands. Therefore, this study prioritized rural women and girls as respondents in the provinces most affected by gendered energy poverty (GEP) in the country. The study was carried out in selected rural unelectrified areas of Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and KwaZulu-Natal provinces using structured interviews. The study revealed that GEP in the rural areas has exposed women and girls living there to security concerns, health hazards, premature death, domestic fire accidents, time poverty, income poverty, illiteracy, drudgery in households and farm tasks, etc., at different levels of severity. It also showed the effects of perceptions, age, income, and culture on the choice of energy use among the respondents. Mitigation strategies against GEP in rural South African communities through clean energy adoption are also proposed in this paper.