How Have the Subjective Poverty Lines and The Perceived Consequences of Poverty Changed During the Pandemic in Minnesota?

I examine how the subjective interpretation of poverty has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic downturn in St. Louis County, Minnesota, using comparative data from a data collection conducted before and during the pandemic. The data collection using cultural domain analysis asked information about the informants’ beliefs about poverty. I find that the importance of the main perceived consequences of poverty did not change significantly during the pandemic. In both Surveys, consequences related to material needs made up an important part of the items. A remarkable difference, however, is that the problem of perpetuated poverty is perceived to be more important during the pandemic. The subjective poverty lines did not change significantly during the pandemic either. The income level below which most of the people can be considered poor is between $ 14-15 per capita hourly net income on average. Three friends who are ready and able to help were enough to avoid poverty. Most of the large families are perceived to be poor when they bring up at least three children, while it was two children right before the pandemic. As for educational level, the poverty threshold was increased from 11th grade to high school graduate. It implies that if the individual did not graduate from high school, (s)he is more likely to become poor than before the pandemic.

Donne, famiglie e pandemia. Tra vecchie e nuove discriminazioni al femminile

2020 will be remembered as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2: a virus that suddenly spread worldwide affecting the health and the life of millions of people of all ages and putting a strain on welfare, economic, scientific and politic structures of all the Nations that have tried to respond to the multiple needs of their populations facing many obstacles and difficulties. Starting from a reflection about the new poverty lines that coronavirus produced in family context, this paper analyses the biggest difficulties that women faced during the “confinement” at home, when the housework and the children care multiplied, both in qualitative and in quantitative viewpoint, and gender violence registered an alarming increase. What happened in these months is a evident confirmation that women are still vulnerable people, and that the way to reach a significant gender equality is still fraught with obstacles.

First estimates of inequality benchmark incomes for a range of countries

It is known that virtually all inequality measures imply the existence of a ‘benchmark income’, above which adding incremental income increases inequality, and below which it decreases inequality. Benchmark incomes can be interpreted as social reference levels that identify the richest individual for whom it would be just to subsidize their income. Despite the intuitive appeal of benchmark incomes, there have been hardly any empirical applications to date. This paper provides the first estimates of benchmark incomes for a range of contrasting countries and different inequality measures. All benchmark incomes lie far above official national poverty lines. The results suggest that economic growth together with falling inequality need not necessarily be poverty reducing.

How to implement sub-national poverty lines in a SOUTHMOD country model using conditional constants: The case of UGAMOD

This note describes how to incorporate sub-national poverty lines into a SOUTHMOD country model using conditional constants within the constants function in such a way that the Statistics Presenter can generate national-level poverty statistics. The Uganda tax-benefit microsimulation model UGAMOD is used as an example.

POVERTY IN RURAL AREAS: AN OUTLINE OF THE PROBLEM

This article is an attempt to determine the level of poverty in rural areas in Poland. The author reviewed the most important publications on poverty and the indicators that determine its scale. Relative, objective and subjective poverty lines were used to present the range of rural poverty against the background of total poverty. Analyses showed that the at-risk-of-poverty rate for rural areas in Poland amounted to 21.2%. This means that almost every fifth rural resident is at risk of poverty, whereas every tenth resident is at risk of extreme poverty. The article also presents the rural areas in Poland which are at the highest risk of social exclusion. These areas were distinguished on the basis of the number of registered families receiving social benefits. Both Eurostat (EU-SILC) and Local Data Bank of the Statistics Poland (BDL GUS) were used.

The social reproduction of labour in the context of the work of women: Past and present

After the primary role that Gordon Childe assigned to women in prehistory in both the beginnings of agriculture and cattle-domestication, women have been placed at an inferior position in both the realms of production and consumption. Even when they were employed in factories after the Industrial Revolution, they were paid much lower wages than men workers. As Marx pointed out, however, wages have to cover the entire family expenses, and, on this count, wage-levels in colonial countries, even after ‘decolonisation’, have not reached appropriate levels. In colonial India, owing both to tribute and free trade, Indian labouring women, for example, spinners, suffered very grievous hardship. Today it is essential that poverty-lines should be raised and minimum wages adjusted to subsistence needs.

Estimation of Equivalence Scale and Assessment of Its Impact on Poverty Measurement in Bangladesh

Anti-poverty policies for sustainable development require efficient targeting, for which appropriate poverty lines play a crucial role. In Bangladesh, official poverty lines are estimated with the implicit assumption that there are no economies of scale in household consumption with respect to household size or composition, which raises the question of the accuracy and reliability of the measurement of poverty line. We test the existence of economies of scale, estimate their size, and assess the impact of applying equivalence scale to poverty measurement, using the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey data of Bangladesh. The results confirm the existence of economies of scale in household consumption. Following the model developed by Kakwani and Son, the overall index of economies of scale in household consumption is estimated around 0.85. Modified poverty lines show that under official poverty lines, the probability of being poor is high with respect to household size. The result implies that the poverty head-count ratio(HCR) for households with large number of members might be overestimated in Bangladesh, and that there may be an incentive for low income families to enlarge family size to avail of anti-poverty public transfers.