Rubberized Geopolymer Composites: Value-Added Applications

The discovery of an innovative class of inorganic polymers has brought forth a revolution in the history of construction technology. Now, no energy-intensive reactions at elevated temperatures are essential, as found in the case of contemporary cement production. In addition to their attributes of low energy and a mitigated carbon footprint, geopolymeric composites can incorporate diversely originated and profound wastes in their manufacturing. As of today, profoundly accessible landfills of rubber tyre waste negatively impact the environment, water, and soil, with many health hazards. Their nonbiodegradable complex chemical structure supports recycling, and toxic gases are emitted by burning them, leading to aesthetic issues. These, altogether, create great concern for well-thought-out disposal methods. One of the achievable solutions is processing this waste into alternative aggregates to thus generate increased economic value whilst reducing primary aggregate consumption through the incorporation of these vast automobile solid wastes in the manufacturing of geopolymer construction composites, e.g., binders, mortar, concrete, etc., produced through the process of geopolymerization as a replacement for natural aggregates, providing relief to the crisis of the degradation of restricted natural aggregate resources. Currently, tyre rubber is one of the most outstanding materials, extensively employed in scores of engineering applications. This manuscript presents a state-of-the-art review of value-added applications in the context of rubberized geopolymer building composites and a review of past investigations. More significantly, this paper reviews rubberized geopolymer composites for their value-added applications.

HOUSING CHOICES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR CONSUMPTION HETEROGENEITY

This paper proposes a model to jointly explain two stylized facts observed in the recent empirical literature—the existence of a significant size of wealthy hand-to-mouth consumers and negative marginal propensities to consume associated with housing upgrades. The key ingredients of the model are a realistic set of housing choices, sizable down payment requirements, transaction costs, and endogenous borrowing constraints. Moreover, in the presence of unanticipated income shocks, this richness in marginal propensities to consume has significant implications for aggregate consumption and helps explain the puzzling increase in savings by low net worth households observed during the Great Recession as well as the consumption responses to recent tax rebates.

Household Inflation Expectations and Consumer Spending: Evidence from Panel Data

Recent research offers mixed results concerning the relationship between inflation expectations and consumption, using qualitative measures of readiness to spend. We revisit this question using survey panel data of actual spending from the U.S. between 2009 and 2012 that also allows us control for household heterogeneity. We find that durables spending increases with expected inflation only for selected types of households while nondurables spending does not respond to expected inflation. Moreover, spending decreases with expected unemployment. These results imply a limited stimulating effect of inflation expectations on aggregate consumption, which could be reversed if inflation and unemployment expectations move together.

1075Patterns, determinants and socioeconomic inequalities in eating healthy in Kenya

Background Kenya is undergoing an epidemiological transition marked by an increase in the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) with unhealthy diet being a key risk factor. This study sought to identify patterns, determinants and socioeconomic inequalities in healthy food consumption in Kenya. Methods A secondary analysis of the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey 2015/2016 (KIHBS) data was conducted. A healthy diet indicator (HDI) was computed from food consumption information using principal component analysis (PCA) based on WHO and FAO recommendations. Multivariable probit regression was used to identify determinants of eating healthy. The concentration index (CI) method was used to identify socioeconomic inequalities in eating healthy overall, by gender and residence using household aggregate consumption per adult equivalent. Results The final sample consisted of 21, 512 households. Two thirds of them were rural and majority were male-headed (66%). 49% of households were eating healthy countrywide. HDI scores increased with increasing socioeconomic status overall, by gender and residence. Households with higher socioeconomic status (0.30, p < 0.01), rural (0.20, p < 0.01), in union (0.07, p < 0.01) and Christian (0.16, p < 0.01) were more likely to eat healthy while male-headed (-0.04, p < 0.01), Muslim (-0.07, p < 0.05) and households whose household-heads had lower education status (-0.09, p < 0.01) were less likely to eat healthy. Eating healthy was concentrated among the rich overall, by gender and residence. Conclusions A large proportion of Kenyans are consuming unhealthy foods with the rich eating healthier than the poor. Key messages Interventions are required to promote healthy dietary patterns and reduce socioeconomic inequality in eating healthy.

The Distribution of Households’ Indebtedness and the Transmission of Monetary Policy

We investigate whether the dynamic response of aggregate consumption to monetary policy depends on the distribution of household debt relative to income. Using UK loan-level micro-data, we propose a novel approach to isolate the fraction of households with a limited ability to smooth consumption. By exploiting time and cross-sectional variation, we show that consumption responds more to monetary policy when the share of highly-indebted households is large, but find no state-contingency with respect to the overall level of debt-to-income. Our results highlight the role of household heterogeneity for understanding monetary transmission to aggregate consumption.

Leisure and housing consumption after retirement: new evidence on the life-cycle hypothesis

Foreseeable income reductions around retirement should not affect aggregate consumption. However, given higher leisure endowments after retirement, theory also predicts lower consumption of leisure substitutes. To avoid misinterpreting this predicted drop as a puzzle, our novel approach focuses on housing consumption (complementary to leisure in utility) and controls for leisure changes. In Germany tenants represent roughly half of all households, making many housing expenditures directly observable in micro data. We find significant negative impacts of the retirement status on housing consumption, which is hard to reconcile with life-cycle theory. Despite the lock-in nature of past housing decisions, income reductions at retirement have additional – though small – effects on housing.

Public Perception of the Effects of Poverty on Economic Growth in Ghana

The paper examined public perception of the effects of poverty on economic growth in Ghana. It specifically examined public perception on the relationship between poverty and economic growth in Ghana using a combination of descriptive statistics and Logit Model to analyse the primary data collected. The result revealed that poverty does not lower investment, per capita income was not high enough to reflect Ghana’s resources, it was also discovered that poverty programmes are effective and standard of living were inadequate. The paper further discovered that unemployment rate was not too high in Ghana. Corruption does not pose any threat to poverty and economic growth. There existed low income inequality between the rich and the poor but income was not evenly distributed while inflation does not increased the plight of the poor or deteriorates the living standard of the poor. The result further discovered that government performance was inadequate, lifespan was low, Ghana was able to meet MDGs goal by the end of 2015 but may not be able to sustain the achievement beyond 2015. Above all, poverty decisively slowed down the pace of economic growth in Ghana. The result of the Logit model showed that unemployment, corruption, secondary school enrollment, government policy, life-expectancy and poverty retarded economic growth while investment, aggregate consumption expenditure, pattern of income distribution and inflation, enhanced economic growth in Ghana. The result further revealed that only investment, aggregate consumption expenditure and inflation are the determinants of economic growth in Ghana. The paper concluded that poverty slowed down the pace of economic growth in Ghana. The paper therefore recommends that government should introduce and maintain policies that will permit improved relationships between poverty and other variables except investment, welfare and inflation so that they can positively and significantly contribute to increase economic growth in Ghana.