Difference in Housing Finance Usage and Its Impact on Housing Wealth Inequality in Urban China

With the increasing importance of financial loans in home purchases in urban China, the role of housing loans in the accumulation of housing wealth needs to be unraveled. Using the data from the 2017 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this study investigates the use of housing loans and their impact on housing wealth inequality. It has been found that people with higher socioeconomic status and institutional advantages benefit more from housing provident fund loans and are more likely to fully invoke different financing channels to accumulate housing wealth. On the contrary, disadvantaged groups have to resort to costly market-based mortgages to finance their home purchases. This leads them to fall further behind in housing wealth accumulation. The spatial stratification of housing wealth accompanying the urban hierarchy was also observed and found to be closely linked to the type of housing loans. In this increasingly financialized era, relying on financial instruments in the process of household asset accumulation may further amplify the existing wealth inequality among social groups.

Telling the Stories of Asset Accumulation

This chapter sums up the lessons from the book as a whole. We argue that a common, but not universal trend is that rural assets have increased. Because these assets are not recorded in poverty-line data this wealth is not easily visible, directly, in some poverty statistics. However we also insist that this does not mean that rural Tanzanian families are ‘really’ wealthy even though they look poor. Rather assets capture one facet of the experience of poverty and prosperity. Nonetheless the prevalence and frequency of asset change surprised us. It is notable that asset accumulation appears to have been driven by agricultural activities, although the timing and nature of these changes has varied in each case. We consider the implications of these findings for rural development policy and development data and the implications of our methods for long term research projects.

Intergenerational Redistributive Effects of Monetary Policy

This paper investigates the distributional consequences of monetary policy across generations. We use a life-cycle model with a rich asset structure as well as nominal and real rigidities, calibrated to the euro area using both macroeconomic aggregates and microeconomic evidence from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. We show that the life-cycle profiles of income and asset accumulation decisions are important determinants of redistributive effects of monetary shocks. The redistribution is mainly driven by nominal assets and labor income, less by real financial assets and housing. Overall, we find that a typical monetary policy easing redistributes welfare from older to younger generations, and decreases net worth inequality associated with life-cycle motives.

The Wealth of Immigrants: Expanding our Understanding of Immigrant Economic Integration in Canada

Wealth is a key feature of immigrants' successful economic integration in Canada, while more broadly contributing to their level of social inclusion and sense of self-efficacy throughout the life course. Yet, immigrant wealth has been largely ignored in the Canadian literature. Current analyses of immigrant economic integration focus primarily on labour market outcomes and growing earnings inequalities. This body of literature would be greatly enriched by strengthened understandings of immigrant savings, consumption, asset accumulation and investment. This paper thus brings together the fragmented and scarce literature related to immigrant wealth; consequently merging literatures from different fields and generating an important disucssion of the overarching issues affecting immigrant wealth in Canada. A critical review of the literature reveals that recent immigrant cohorts face increasing economic inequality compared to the Canadian born population and established immigrants, while wealth is increasingly polarized among recent immigrant groups. These trends have profound implications for the long-term economic well-being of immigrants in Canada, particularly as they reach retirement age.

The Wealth of Immigrants: Expanding our Understanding of Immigrant Economic Integration in Canada

Wealth is a key feature of immigrants' successful economic integration in Canada, while more broadly contributing to their level of social inclusion and sense of self-efficacy throughout the life course. Yet, immigrant wealth has been largely ignored in the Canadian literature. Current analyses of immigrant economic integration focus primarily on labour market outcomes and growing earnings inequalities. This body of literature would be greatly enriched by strengthened understandings of immigrant savings, consumption, asset accumulation and investment. This paper thus brings together the fragmented and scarce literature related to immigrant wealth; consequently merging literatures from different fields and generating an important disucssion of the overarching issues affecting immigrant wealth in Canada. A critical review of the literature reveals that recent immigrant cohorts face increasing economic inequality compared to the Canadian born population and established immigrants, while wealth is increasingly polarized among recent immigrant groups. These trends have profound implications for the long-term economic well-being of immigrants in Canada, particularly as they reach retirement age.

Investor Decision for Retirement: An Exploratory Review on Financial Resource and Economic Force Influences

In Malaysia, many people exhibit sluggish retirement investor decisions despite the presence of investment platforms such as unit trusts, which provide a reliable source for asset accumulation. While prior literature advocates the influences of financial advisors; medical expense risk; and housing on retirement financial planning behaviours, there is a dearth of clarity on the roles these influences play in clarifying the investor behaviour aspect of retirement financial planning. This study is aimed at investigating the importance of these influences on individual retirement investor decisions through an inclusive review of relevant literature. Outcomes of the study mainly inform retirement planning researchers the value in further examining the extended lifecycle theory in the investment domain of retirement financial planning behaviour. The importance of financial advisors, housing, and medical expense risk further prove critical in explaining such behaviours, and accordingly deserves more attention in studies forthcoming. These influences are consequently proposed as factors to be considered in retirement investor decisions believed to stir decisions and in turn, wealth accumulation for late-life.

Family Poultry (FP) as a Tool for Improving Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment in Developing Countries: Evidence from Bangladesh

The study assessed the integrated gender issues of family poultry production in developing countries with evidence in Bangladesh. The result draws attention to the widespread acknowledgment of the critical roles of gender in family poultry production system. The results show that women hold the maximum of the ownership (90.58%, p=0.0001) and responsible for the caring of (93.94%, p=0.0001) family poultry in Bangladesh, likewise other developing countries. The result reveals that women control over the decision-making for the selling of eggs and birds in Bangladesh. Women mostly (94.58%) hold the knowledge useful in the prevention and treatment of poultry illness; however, their role was found low (3.46%) in buying medicine and vaccines for poultry as compared to men (96.54%) in Bangladesh. The findings show that women were nearly two times more willing than men to adopt improved rearing technologies related to family poultry production. Both women and men are impacted indifferently by lower adoption of scientific poultry-keeping technologies. Women are independently facing more problems in access to knowledge, training, services, marketing systems, and financial services related to family poultry production. Despite having many limitations, it is clear that family poultry empowers women through asset accumulation and increasing their decision-making ability in the families and the broader community. The study also highlights the necessity of considering an engendered approach in policy and operational level for the family poultry development.