Measure Of Wealth Research Articles

Inequalities in adolescent self-rated health and smoking in Europe: comparing different indicators of socioeconomic status

BackgroundAlthough there is evidence for socioeconomic inequalities in health and health behaviour in adolescents, different indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) have rarely been compared within one data sample. We examined...

Is there any chance for the poor to cope with extreme environmental events? Two case studies in the Solomon Islands

Our paper analyses the patterns and factors that explain households’ responses to extreme environmental events (EEEs) in two case studies of indigenous communities in the Solomon Islands. We used the ethnographic approach to describe the case studies and carried out thematic analysis to disentangle the factors that explain such responses. The first case was that of a rural community from Ranogha Island in the Western Province that was hit by the Tsunami of April 2007; the second was of a community settled in an informal development on a flood-prone area in peri-urban Honiara that was hit by a flash flood in April 2014. Drawing from the villagers’ experiences, we found that aid and support from family and community, referred to by the respondents as the “wantok” system, was key to recovering from the disasters. Many respondents identified climate change as one leading factor that explained such catastrophic events. The social cooperation system, the government’s role in responding to catastrophes and household net worth were identified among the main components of household responses. These constitute an effective engine to build palliative and preventive responses against catastrophic events and climate change risks. In spite of the extreme poverty observed, and the lack of government assistance, we conclude that amenities obtained from the community (through the wantok system) and household net worth (including the availability of common pool resources) enabled them to cope with the catastrophes. These factors are critical for long-term adaptation to EEEs and climate change risks. The community responses analysed with thematic analysis showed to be consistent with the conceptualization led by a farm-household model, and the household net worth as a source of income appears to be the correct measure of wealth instead the level of income in these less monetarised communities. Learning from how these communities and households responded to such EEEs provides evidence on how other communities could successfully adapt to increasing climate change risks.

Targeting Poor Students With Proxy Means Test

Proxy Means Test (PMT) is one of the most efficient ways to target the poor. The procedure of PMT is using household characteristic variables, which have a relationship with income, as a proxy for poverty. That is, PMT is a measurement of wealth, that is so to say poverty without using income, consumption or expenditure. In this study, we created the PMT poverty scorecard to be used as a tool for targeting poor student in 10 provinces of Thailand, including Mae Hong Son, Nan, Nakhon Ratchasimi, Udon Thani, Nakhon Phanom, Chiang Rai, Trung, Kanchanaburi, Chanthaburi, and Phuket. We estimated the relationship between these household characteristic variables and student’s average monthly household income per capita by using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression separately by province to capture any geographical characteristic in each province. We then turned 11 of household characteristic estimated coefficients into PMT poverty scorecard for each province. The result suggests that overall, PMT poverty targeting works well in 10 provinces of Thailand in terms of low undercoverage rate, high targeting accuracy rate in both poverty and total accuracy, except for Phuket which has a huge leakage rate since its geographical characteristics which are quite different comparing to others. This leakage problem, however, needs to be explored more as student maybe, in fact, actually poor as same as PMT poverty targeting suggested. For policy recommendation, we suggested using PMT as the main poverty targeting approach together with an identification survey of student who has been targeted as poor to increase the efficiency of poverty targeting. Also, we suggested the addition of household characteristic variables in survey questionnaire could lead to an increase in efficiency of PMT poverty targeting in statistical term.

Informing the development of assistive technologies for persons with dementia by connecting financial measures of wealth to perceptions of task dependence

Informing the development of assistive technologies for persons with dementia by connecting financial measures of wealth to perceptions of task dependence

The Politics of Housing

Owning a house is the most important economic choice most families will ever make. Yet, our understanding of the political causes and consequences of homeownership is rather thin. This review argues that political scientists need to take housing much more seriously, not least because of the unprecedented surges and collapses of house prices over the past two decades. The housing market is both a proxy for and a cause of growing social cleavages that shape how citizens view political issues from the size of the welfare state to the attractiveness of populist campaigns. The article begins by re-examining classic work on property from the nineteenth century as a still-relevant guide to the winners and losers from property market shocks and regulations. It then turns to the postwar era and work that suggests that the welfare state and property ownership are in some sense substitutes. It concludes by examining the role housing plays in shaping contemporary political preferences, both as a direct measure of individuals' wealth and welfare and as a proxy for the relative fortunes of different places.

Family Networks and Distributive Politics

AbstractWe study the distribution of public services by local politicians when political support spreads through social networks. We sketch a model showing that incumbents target goods and services to individuals who would lead to the largest aggregate loss of support if they stopped supporting the incumbent. Those individuals have high betweenness centrality. Using data on 3.6 million households from the Philippines, we show that households with high betweenness centrality receive a greater number of public services from their local government. This result is robust to the inclusion of controls for program eligibility, detailed measure of family wealth and elite status, family ties with politicians, and other measures of centrality.

Skin tone and asset inequality in Latin America

ABSTRACT Much of our information about the relationship between skin tone, race/ethnicity, and wealth inequality centers on the U.S. context. Latin America, characterised by the highest levels of inequality globally and distinctive racial/ethnic hierarchies, provides a unique opportunity to extend our understanding of these dynamics. Drawing on sociocognitive theories and the preference for whiteness hypothesis, this study uses unique LAPOP data from 18 countries to examine the relationship between skin tone, race/ethnicity, and wealth inequality in Latin America. We use three measures of wealth, focusing on assets which yield extensive individual advantages: homes, cars, and motorcycles. Results from logistic regression models suggest that darker skin shades hinder individuals’ ability to acquire vehicles but is less important for homeownership. Our results for car ownership best map onto the theoretical expectations for how skin tone might matter for asset acquisition in Latin America. However, we also find notable variation across countries that merits further cross-national exploration. We conclude by discussing fruitful directions for future research.

Functional and Structural Brain Correlates of Socioeconomic Status.

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a multidimensional construct that includes not only measures of material wealth, but also education, social prestige, and neighborhood quality. Socioeconomic correlates between wealth and cognitive functions have been well established in behavioral studies. However, functional and structural brain correlates of SES remain unclear. Here, we sought to uncover the most likely neural regions to be affected by low SES, specifically associated with age. Using effect size-seed-based d Mapping, we compiled studies that examined individuals with low SES and performed functional magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry meta-analyses. The results revealed that as from early to late age, individuals exposed to low SES are less likely to have sustained executive network activity yet a greater likelihood to enhanced activity within reward-related regions. A similar activity was shown for gray matter volume across early to older age. These findings provide the first quantitative integration of neuroimaging results pertaining to the neural basis of SES. Hypoactivation of the executive network and hyperactivation of the reward network in low SES individuals may support the scarcity hypothesis and animal models of the effects of early adversity.

What do we learn about redistribution effects of pension systems from internationally comparable measures of Social Security wealth?

AbstractWe present novel estimates of Social Security Wealth (SSW) at the individual level based on the SHARE survey. Our estimates are based on a rigorous methodology taking into account country-specific legislations, the earning history and the longevity prospects of individuals. The key advantage over existing estimates is that our measures of SSW are fully comparable across countries. This allows us to construct indexes of the redistribution enacted by the pension systems in Europe. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence of the relationship between SSW and private wealth.

Good Societies, Financial Inequality and Secrecy, and a Good Life: from Aristotle to Piketty

Abstract In this paper we show that for a dataset of 105 countries, four candidate objective indexes (Human Development Index (HDI), Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), Social Progress Index (SPI) and Sustainable Society Index (SSI)) and one subjective index (World Happiness Survey (WHS)) of at least aspects of the quality of life or human well-being have good convergent validity among themselves and expected statistically significant negative correlations with Gini measures of wealth and income, and a measure of political jurisdictions’ institutionalized financial secrecy (Financial Secrecy Scores (FSS)). A measure of offshore wealth as a fraction of GDP (FOW) showed only a couple significant correlations with one overall quality of life index (SSI). When we combined the four objective indexes to the subjective index to create overall measures of the quality of life (including Happy Life Years (HLY)), the correlations among the indexes increased. Most of the correlations increased again when we used Gini indexes to create wealth-equality overall quality of life indexes and these correlations were higher on average than those among income-equality overall quality of life indexes. Combining results using 21 quality of life/well-being indexes, we rank ordered 105 countries from best to worst. The top 10 in order were Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. This is the first time anyone has built the array of index options presented here based on a handful of originals. We offer them as another potential starting point for the next generation of researchers.

Abstract P238: Sociodemographic Factors Associated With Under- and Overweight Among Women of Reproductive Age in Sub-Sahara Africa

Introduction: In the last three decades, many countries in SSA have undergone rapid epidemiological and nutritional transitions, with an ever-increasing prevalence of cardio-metabolic conditions. Because of these changes, health care systems in the sub-region are faced with the simultaneous challenge of handling both underweight and overweight related sequelae. There is still limited epidemiological evidence on the drivers of this phenomenon within and across countries in SSA. Hypotheses: We assessed the following hypotheses: 1) SSA countries vary in terms of the type and extent of malnutrition; 2) Macro (country level) and micro (individual level) sociodemographic factors are associated with the double burden of malnutrition (i.e. under- and overweight) in SSA. Methods: Macro- and micro-level data for 34 SSA countries were acquired from the World Bank data base and Demographic and Health (DHS) surveys respectively. A total of 247,691 eligible participants (women between the age of 15 and 49) from the DHS surveys were analyzed. We first determined malnutrition categories in SSA from country level prevalence estimates of underweight and overweight using statistically defined logic expressions. Second, we used random forest analysis to investigate the association between the malnutrition groups and macro-level variables. Third, we used random forest analysis and multivariable multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the association between micro level variables and the three BMI categories i.e. underweight (BMI <18.5), normal weight (BMI 18.5 to 24.9) and overweight (BMI≥25). Results: Out of the 34 countries studied, the prevalence of underweight was greater than 10% in 3 countries, whereas 13 countries had both underweight and overweight prevalence exceeding 10%. Overweight (BMI 25 to 29.9) prevalence exceeded 10% in 7 countries, while the obese (BMI≥30) prevalence was at least 10% in 11 countries. Macro level random forest analysis showed that fertility rate and gross domestic product (GDP) were key correlates of the malnutrition groups found in SSA. However, age, wealth and parity were key correlates of women’s nutritional status at the micro level. Old age and wealth were consistently associated with overweight across all the countries. However, parity was a risk factor for underweight in underweight countries, and a risk factor for overweight in overweight countries. Conclusion: In conclusion, we observed consistent cross-sectional associations between measures of fertility, wealth and age and the dual forms of malnutrition (under- and overweight) among women in SSA.

Introducing the Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States

This paper describes the construction of the Distributional Financial Accounts (DFAs), a new dataset containing quarterly estimates of the distribution of U.S. household wealth since 1989, and provides the first look at the resulting data. The DFAs build on two existing Federal Reserve Board statistical products --- quarterly aggregate measures of household wealth from the Financial Accounts of the United States and triennial wealth distribution measures from the Survey of Consumer Finances --- to incorporate distributional information into a national accounting framework. The DFAs complement other existing sources of data on the wealth distribution by using a more comprehensive measure of household wealth and by providing quarterly data on a timely basis. We encourage policymakers, researchers, and other interested parties to use the DFAs to help understand issues related to the distribution of U.S. household wealth.

Health system performance for people with diabetes in 28 low- and middle-income countries: A cross-sectional study of nationally representative surveys.

BackgroundThe prevalence of diabetes is increasing rapidly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), urgently requiring detailed evidence to guide the response of health systems to this epidemic. In an effort to understand at what step in the diabetes care continuum individuals are lost to care, and how this varies between countries and population groups, this study examined health system performance for diabetes among adults in 28 LMICs using a cascade of care approach.Methods and findingsWe pooled individual participant data from nationally representative surveys done between 2008 and 2016 in 28 LMICs. Diabetes was defined as fasting plasma glucose ≥ 7.0 mmol/l (126 mg/dl), random plasma glucose ≥ 11.1 mmol/l (200 mg/dl), HbA1c ≥ 6.5%, or reporting to be taking medication for diabetes. Stages of the care cascade were as follows: tested, diagnosed, lifestyle advice and/or medication given (“treated”), and controlled (HbA1c < 8.0% or equivalent). We stratified cascades of care by country, geographic region, World Bank income group, and individual-level characteristics (age, sex, educational attainment, household wealth quintile, and body mass index [BMI]). We then used logistic regression models with country-level fixed effects to evaluate predictors of (1) testing, (2) treatment, and (3) control. The final sample included 847,413 adults in 28 LMICs (8 low income, 9 lower-middle income, 11 upper-middle income). Survey sample size ranged from 824 in Guyana to 750,451 in India. The prevalence of diabetes was 8.8% (95% CI: 8.2%–9.5%), and the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes was 4.8% (95% CI: 4.5%–5.2%). Health system performance for management of diabetes showed large losses to care at the stage of being tested, and low rates of diabetes control. Total unmet need for diabetes care (defined as the sum of those not tested, tested but undiagnosed, diagnosed but untreated, and treated but with diabetes not controlled) was 77.0% (95% CI: 74.9%–78.9%). Performance along the care cascade was significantly better in upper-middle income countries, but across all World Bank income groups, only half of participants with diabetes who were tested achieved diabetes control. Greater age, educational attainment, and BMI were associated with higher odds of being tested, being treated, and achieving control. The limitations of this study included the use of a single glucose measurement to assess diabetes, differences in the approach to wealth measurement across surveys, and variation in the date of the surveys.ConclusionsThe study uncovered poor management of diabetes along the care cascade, indicating large unmet need for diabetes care across 28 LMICs. Performance across the care cascade varied by World Bank income group and individual-level characteristics, particularly age, educational attainment, and BMI. This policy-relevant analysis can inform country-specific interventions and offers a baseline by which future progress can be measured.

Happiness and the Resource Curse

There has been increasing interest in the so-called ‘resource curse’: the tendency of resource-rich countries to underperform in several socio-economic outcomes. More recently, several papers have looked beyond the traditional impact on economic growth and instead focused on the effects upon broader human welfare indicators. A separate empirical literature in recent decades has probed into the determinants of happiness and subjective well-being (using either country or household data). Our paper contributes to the literature by bringing these two empirical strands of research together. This is the first study, to our knowledge, that makes use of a large panel dataset to explore the links between changes in happiness across countries and several measures of resource wealth. Consistent with prior empirical evidence of a resource curse in oil-rich nations, we find that oil rents are negatively linked to improvements in happiness over time. This happiness ‘resource curse’ curse appears to be oil-specific and holds both for the levels as well as changes in happiness.

Does Wealth Matter for Responsible Investment? Experimental Evidence on the Weighing of Financial and Moral Arguments

Responsible investment is increasingly prevalent, and both financial and moral concerns can drive such investment. In this article, we investigate how responsible investors of different wealth weigh financial and moral arguments. Prior research on different factors that may codetermine responsible investment behavior yield competing predictions about the influence of personal wealth on investment. We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment on responsible investment, wherein we treat investors with financial, moral, and no arguments. We find that there is a statistically and economically significant difference in responsiveness to financial and moral arguments between investors of different wealth. Specifically, financial arguments are more effective than are moral arguments for high wealth investors but not for low wealth investors, and the effect is particularly high for the wealthiest investors. The findings hold for several different measures of wealth. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the moderating effect of wealth on responsible investment choice. Furthermore, these insights may enable more fine-tuned strategies to stimulate responsible investment among different individual investor segments.

Natural Hazards and Well-Being in a Small-Scale Island Society

The literature investigating the relationship between natural hazards and individuals' subjective well-being has so far focused on industrialized countries. Using the life-satisfaction approach, this paper is the first to study the link between natural hazards, in particular heavy storms and droughts, and subjective well-being for a small-scale island society in the Pacific Ocean. Results indicate that the experience of drought markedly diminished life satisfaction, whereas the experience of storms had only somewhat negative impact. The primary driver of the negative well-being impact appeared to be damage experience for both storms and droughts. Since regular cash-income did not exist for the majority of the population, the marginal effect could not be calculated in monetary terms. To account for differences in wealth across respondents, we developed a wealth index in the form of a simple ‘asset score’. Comparing the marginal effect of the hazard variables with our measure of wealth, the positive marginal effect of doubling the number of household assets was significantly smaller than the negative impact of drought experience on subjective well-being.

Wealth measurement and the role of built asset investment: an empirical comparison

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the role of investment in built assets in the achievement of economic growth as part of a wealth measurement approach and to undertake an analysis of the relative importance of such investment as part of a country’s overall capital asset portfolio.Design/methodology/approachPanel data on capital asset investment are used to compare groups of countries at different stages of development. Data sets on investment and capital levels from the Penn World Tables 9.0 are used. Population and gross domestic product data are taken from the same source and the UN Statistics Division. World Bank reports provide data on countries’ income group classification.FindingsThere is confirmation of the view that, as economies grow, a pattern of investment based on developing a different structure of capital asset portfolio occurs. Investment patterns similar to those found in advanced countries arise as low income countries move to higher income classification groups even though built assets remain the most valuable capital asset group.Originality/valueThe study provides time series evidence on the nature of changing capital investment patterns in countries’ economies and demonstrates the value of a wealth measurement approach.

ДИСПЕРСІЯ ДОХОДІВ В ПОЛЬЩІ НА ОСНОВІ АНАЛІЗУ ДОХОДІВ ПОЛЬСЬКИХ ГМІН (ТЕРИТОРІАЛЬНИХ ОДИНИЦЬ) ЗА 2005 - 2018 РОКИ

Presented paper addresses the issue of income inequalities among regions in Poland. Although the topic is broadly discussed both in scientific literature and public debates, the problem of territorial cohesion still remains important for many scholars and politicians. In the article the main attention is focused on the measuring the wealth and its dispersion which is coherent with the current public data state and enables following the phenomena in all statistical units of NUTS nomenclature and local administrative units (local self-government entities: poviats and gminas). In the calculations presented in the paper gminas’ own resources are taken into consideration as a measure of welfare, then Theil index is employed to identify the dispersion for aggregated date on NUTS 1,2,3 units for post-accession to European Union structures period. Authors used the data delivered by the Central Statistical Office. Referring to the goals of the article, conducting of the research enabled to draw two following conclusions. Measures of wealth used in the convergence analysis are derived from national/regional accounts statistics. They are mainly depended on the place of creating value (like GDP). On the local/regional level it is recommended to analyze the situation of residents. So, other measures like gminas’ (basic local administration unit) own resources, based on personal and commercial income tax should be at least parallelly taken into consideration. An analysis of the convergence process inside the country, carried out for Polish NUTS 1, 2 and 3 administrative units in years 2005-2018, based on gminas’ own resources as a standard of living measure, showed different (opposite) patterns than the results of studies using national/regional accounts measures. Starting from the year 2006 the convergence process (sigma type) is observed in all levels of statistical regions in Poland.

Key methodological issues in the research on household wealth

The interest of economists and policy makers in collecting data on house-hold wealth has been growing over the last decade (from the beginning of financial crisis in 2008). It has two fundamental reasons: wealth accumulation and growing inequalities as well as formulation of better public policies. The aim of the article is to discuss key methodological issues in the research on household wealth, to present solutions devel-oped by the OECD expert committee applied in the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) and to identify areas that require further consideration. Since 2010 signifi-cant progress has been achieved in the measurement of private wealth. Further research on the adequate representation of the richest households in the research sample and concepts of wealth broader than private wealth should be encouraged.

Association of proximal elements of social disadvantage with children's language development at 2 years: an analysis of data from the Children in Focus (CiF) sample from the ALSPAC birth cohort.

An association between social disadvantage and early language development is commonly reported in the literature, but less attention has been paid to the way that different aspects of social disadvantage affect both expressive and receptive language in the first 2 years of life. To examine the contributions of gender, parental report of early language skills and proximal social variables (the amount of stimulation in the home, the resources available to the child and the attitudes/emotional status of the primary carer and the support available to him/her) controlling for distal social variables (family income and maternal education) to children's expressive and receptive language development at 2 years in a community ascertained population cohort. Data from 1314 children in the Children in Focus (CiF) sample from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were analyzed. Multivariable regression models identified the contribution of proximal (what parents do with their children) measures of social disadvantage adjusting for more distal (e.g., family income and material wealth) measures as well as early language development at 15 months to the development of verbal comprehension, expressive vocabulary and expressive grammar (word combinations) at 2 years of age. In the final multivariable models gender, earlier language and proximal social factors, co-varying for distal factors predicted 36% of the variance for expressive vocabulary, 22% for receptive language and 27% for word combinations at 2 years. Language development at 15 months remained a significant predictor of outcomes at 24 months. Environmental factors were associated with both expressive scales but the picture was rather more mixed for receptive language suggesting that there may be different mechanisms underlying the different processes. This study supports the argument that social advantage makes a strong contribution to children's language development in the early years. The results suggest that what parents/carers do with their children is critical even when structural aspects of social disadvantage such as family income and housing have been taken into consideration although this relationship varies for different aspects of language. This has the potential to inform the targeting of public health interventions focusing on early language and pre-literacy skills on the one hand and home learning environments on the other and, potentially, the two in combination.