Relative Economic Well-being Research Articles

Oh, the education (you think) you’ll have! Relative deprivation and students’ academic expectations, aspirations, and attainment

Scholars generally agree that financial deprivation negatively affects students’ educational outcomes. However, while absolute levels of resources are important, individuals’ perceived relative economic wellbeing also shape their educational outcomes. This article asks whether attending school with peers from comparably richer families is related to adolescents’ educational expectations, aspirations, university plans, and university attainment. We test the relative deprivation theory by comparing three different forms of the Yitzhaki Index. Data for this study comes from the Taiwan Youth Project, which consists of two cohorts of adolescents (N = 5098) from 162 middle school classrooms. The results show that relative deprivation in the classroom is negatively related to students’ educational expectations, aspirations, and plans to attend university. Yet, relatively deprivation is not associated with higher educational attainment when controlling for absolute measures of family background. These results highlight the need for a more nuanced understanding of perceived relative economic disadvantages in shaping student outcomes.

Economic Persistence Despite Adverse Policies: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Abstract We study the long-run persistence of relative economic well-being under adverse government policies using a combination of historical and contemporaneous data from Kyrgyzstan. After controlling for unobservable local effects, the economic well-being of Kyrgyz households in the 2010s correlates with the early twentieth-century average wealth of their tribes. Inequality at the tribe level in the 2010s correlates with wealth inequality in the early twentieth century. The likely channels of persistence are the inter-generational transmission of human capital, relative status, political power and cultural traits. Transmission of material wealth, differences in natural endowments or geographic sorting cannot explain persistence.

Perceptions of relative deprivation and women’s empowerment

Abstract How do perceptions of one’s relative economic status affect gender attitudes, including support for women’s economic participation and involvement in decision-making in their community and household? We conducted a 2018 survey experiment with female and male adults in approximately 1000 households in Papua New Guinea. Employing an established survey treatment to subtly alter respondents’ perception of their relative economic wellbeing, we find that increased feelings of relative deprivation make both men and women significantly more likely to support girls’ schooling and women’s paid employment, suggesting that relative economic insecurity can actually prompt support for women’s economic participation. However, increased feelings of relative deprivation may trigger greater intra-household tension. While increased perceptions of relative deprivation cause women to want more household decision-making authority, men’s attitudes toward women’s proper roles in decision-making are unchanged. In other words, increased support for women’s economic participation among men appears to stem mainly from a desire to raise household income, and not to alter the general role of women in society. The results underscore the multifaceted nature of gender attitudes, and how support for women’s economic participation may rise without simultaneous increases in women’s agency in decision-making.

Money, possessions and happiness: The relationships beetwen subjective and relative assessment of young adults’ material situation, materialism and well-being

The aim of this paper was to explore both direct and indirect associations between subjective and relative economic well-being, materialism and SWB of young adults of the post-transformation generation. In particular, the moderating role of materialism on the relationship between subjective and relative assessment and SWB was explored. The study was conducted on a group of 207 evening/weekend students, from public and private Warsaw colleges and universities. Correlational design was used and hierarchical regression analysis and moderation analysis using Hayes Model macro # 1 were done. The study’s results indicate that young people’s well-being is positively associated with their material situation assessment (subjective and relative) and negatively with materialism. The study’s results also show that a high level of materialism weakens or eliminates the relationship between subjective and relative assessment of one’s material situation and SWB.

The relationship between multidimensional economic well-being and children's mental health, physical health, and executive function development in South Africa.

Conceptualizing both economic well-being (EWB) and children's development as multidimensional constructs, the present study examines their association using bioecological developmental theory and structural equation modeling with Zulu children (ages 7-10) in KwaZulu-Natal, a highly impoverished region of South Africa (N=1,958). Relative EWB within impoverished communities consists of three dimensions: material assets (durable goods and living environment), fiscal appraisal (subjective experiences of access to/allocation of resources), and fiscal capacity (monetary inflow/outflow). Children's development also is measured across multiple dimensions: physical health, mental health, and executive functioning. In addition to an overall association between EWB and children's development across outcomes, the sub-dimensions of EWB are differentially related to aspects of children's development. The dimension of material assets exhibits the greatest association with child outcomes, while fiscal capacity exhibits the least. Implications of these findings are discussed, including the use of multidimensional approaches to measuring EWB to understand, more clearly, its relationship to multiple dimensions of children's development. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcawZ6oOt-Q.

ON RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LIFE QUALITY AND MORBIDITY OF POPULATION IN INDUSTRIAL KUZBASS.

The authors studied relationship between life quality of population inKemerovoregion and prevalence of occupational diseases and tuberculosis in municipal counties and municipal districts in the region. So, occupational diseases inKemerovoregion are widely distributed among the population in coal metallurgic and chemical specializations of economy — i.e. within industrial and transport zone characterized by relative economic well-being and higher life quality. Tuberculosis is more frequent in population of the districts with low life quality, in rural and forestry zone.

More with less: the Almost Ideal Pension Systems (AIPS)

After exploring the rationale of pension systems, I outline the essential characteristics of ‘almost ideal pension systems’ (AIPSs), an improved version of the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model. Depending on the policy choices, to be expressed in relative terms with parameters that range between zero and one, several—and possibly very different—forms of AIPSs can take shape: e.g. with high or low pension benefits, or with early or late retirement. (Almost) independent of the version chosen, AIPSs compare favourably in theory and in simulations to all other PAYG pension systems: for example, AIPSs are found to be superior in terms of their ability to ensure a balanced budget, intergenerational equity, resilience in the face of virtually all possible demographic and economic changes, and constancy at the preferred level for the relative economic well-being of the three basic age groups (young people, adults, and seniors). In addition, AIPSs are able to reduce, and even partly redress, the normally perverse redistributive effects that derive from heterogeneity in survival rates between subpopulation groups.

Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town into an International Community by Marjorie Rosen

Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town into an International Community by Marjorie Rosen

Does The Mix Of A State‟s Tax Portfolio Matter? An Empirical Analysis Of United States Tax Portfolios And The Relationship To Levels And Growth In Real Per Capita Gross State Product

An important part of the economic environment for any business is the tax climate. At the federal level, arguments are often made for abandoning the income tax in favor of a national sales tax or other type of tax. At the state level, the United States has a laboratory of sorts for examining the economic impact of various types of taxes. The states exhibit a wide degree of variation in the kinds and mix of taxes upon which they rely to raise revenue. This provides an opportunity for comparing economic well-being with the mix of taxes for the various states. This paper presents the results of an empirical study of the relationship between the relative economic well-being of a state and its relative portfolio of taxation. Data on the kinds and relative mix of taxes for the 50 United States for the years 1993-1999 are summarized. While the direction of causation is still an issue, the results of the study show that statistically significant relationships do exist between a state’s tax portfolio and its level and growth of real per capita gross state product. Hopefully this study will add to our understanding of the impact of taxation on the economic climate for business.

Trends in the Relative Household Income of Working-Age Men With Work Limitations

Policy makers relying on public-use Current Population Survey (CPS) data to measure the success of government policies in overcoming the gap in economic well-being between working-age men with and without disabilities will understate the mean income of both and overstate the relative economic well-being of the former. This understatement results from topcoding in the public-use CPS, which suppresses top incomes in the data set. Using cell means with the public-use CPS, the authors better correct for these topcoding problems than alternate methods and provide a relative economic well-being series (1980—2006) based on the mean incomes of working-age men with and without disabilities.

Bankruptcy for the Poor?

For two reasons, the conventional wisdom is that the poor are not heavy users of the insolvency system. First, creditors are reluctant to extend credit to the poor because the risks of non-payment are high. Not having been able to borrow, the poor are not over-indebted and are therefore not in need of bankruptcy protection. Second, some poor debtors - lone parents on social assistance for example - are judgment-proof meaning that judgments for money recoveries obtained by their creditors are of no effect because these debtors do not have sufficient non-exempt property or income to satisfy the judgment. Developments in two areas may challenge the conventional view. Undoubtedly, credit is now widely available across the spectrum of income groups. Even a short-term, low-wage job can bring a credit card to the doorstep of the poor and the slogan no credit, no problem testifies to the availability of retail credit. In addition, we now know that poverty is often a temporary state for many Canadians, with many moving in and out of low-income. Accordingly, the judgment-proof state is not a permanent condition, but a temporary status for many. While this may be welcome news in some respects, it means that debts can be accumulated during periods of relative economic well-being only to go unpaid when a job ends or when hard times return. These developments suggest the possibility that some of those who are poor at any point in time are in fact in need of bankruptcy protection. They have debts that they are unable to pay and little likelihood of being able to repay in the near future. We begin the paper by presenting evidence from the 1999 Survey of Financial Security on indebtedness among families in the lower income deciles. We then turn to the main question: should the Canadian bankruptcy process be more readily available to poor debtors. We draw on two sources to shed light on this question: a) a comparative analysis (considering England and Wales, the United States, Australia and New Zealand) and b) a series of semi-structured interviews with Canadian bankruptcy trustees and other insolvency professionals.

Program Expenditures for Working-age People with Disabilities in a Time of Fiscal Restraint

Public expenditures in federal and federal-state programs for working-age people with disabilities totaled an estimated $276 billion in 2002. The federal share of these expenditures, $226 billion, was 11.3 percent of all federal outlays; states contributed an additional $50 billion. These expenditures accounted for about 2.7 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) and are growing much faster than GDP and all federal outlays. Most expenditures were for income support and health care to people with disabilities who were not employed or who had very low earnings. The fact that the relative economic well-being of working-age people with disabilities is falling has prompted increased scrutiny of how money is spent and whether there are any significant policy reforms that should be pursued (Stapleton and Burkhauser, 2003). This scrutiny will become more intense if the federal deficit rises, as it is projected to do, and the prevalence of disability grows as the baby boom generation ages. These circumstances make it an opportune time to re-evaluate the structure of federal disability programs and whether they are properly aligned with the evolving disability paradigm - a paradigm that stresses helping people with disabilities help themselves to be full members of the economic and social lives of their communities, rather than objects of charity (Stapleton et. al, 2005).

Who Gets What? Gender Differences in “Spendable” Income

SUMMARY Feminist policy makers need accurate measures of inequality in the economic well-being of men and women. In this paper, we explain why the wage gap by gender gives a misleading measure of women's relative economic well-being in the United States, emphasizing the effects of income pooling within households. We construct a household-level index of women's “spendable” income relative to men's that builds on Randy Albelda's (1988) “PAR index.” We improve on the PAR index in three ways. First, we account for economies of scale associated with additional household members. Second, we utilize the Current Population Survey to capture the impact of government taxes and transfers, providing an indicator of “spendable,” rather than “money,” income. Finally, as a step toward redefining the concept of “spendable” income, we deduct a lower-bound estimate of child care costs.

Poverty and Inequality Among Children

The deteriorating economic well-being of children portends less well-adjusted adults and a diminished economic future for America. A disproportionate share of today's poor children will become tomorrow's poor adults. This chapter discusses the concept, definition, and measurement of children's economic well-being and poverty. Children's current economic well-being is evaluated in comparative perspective—international, historical, and demographic. The chapter also evaluates the etiology of changes in children's absolute and relative economic well-being, focusing especially on the role of the changing family, parental employment, and levels of social provision for poor families. These “causes” are then evaluated in the context of recent public policy debates, including the devolution of federal welfare programs to the states.

Changes in Wage Rates Between 1959 and 1967

DESPITE the importance of wage rates in our understanding of economic activity, there are almost no wage data available appropriate for studying changes in the wages received by different race, sex, age, and education groups in the labor force. The only official data on hourly wages, those published in Employment and Earnings, are disaggregated by industry, but not by the personal characteristics of the wage-earners. Data on annual incomes and earnings by personal characteristics are available from the Current Population Survey, but they are not suitable for the calculation of hourly wage rates. As a result of this substantial defect in the wage statistics of the Federal Government, the recent controversy about the changes in the last decade in the relative economic well-being of blacks and whites was carried out in the absence of any information about changes in their wage rates. This study uses the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity (SEO), a new source of data, and the 1960 Census 1/1000 Sample in a comparison of wage rates in 1959 and 1967. Estimates of wages of individuals in 1959 are obtained by making use of additional data which were unavailable to previous investigators.' Using 1967 wage rates, recorded directly in the SEO, and the improved estimates of 1959 wage rates, average wages by race and sex are found in each of the two years. The variation of individual wages by characteristics such as age, race, sex and education is then estimated in both years, so that changes in wages can be calculated when hours worked by age, race, sex and education are held constant. This gives Laspeyres and Paasche indices of wage rates. In the final part of the paper, the structure of wage rates by personal characteristics in each of the years is studied. We found that average wage rates of blacks increased considerably more than those of whites between 1959 and 1967. Part of the increase of blacks' wages can be attributed to changes in the composition of the labor force, (mainly to an increase in average education). Even when the 1959 composition is used to calculate 1967 wages, so that changes in the level of education are eliminated, blacks had substantially greater increases in wages than whites. The average wage of blacks was still much lower than that of whites in 1967. Wages differentials by education were almost the same in both years, especially for whites. Wages of older workers declined relative to those of prime-aged workers. There was no consistent pattern in the changes of wages of young workers relative to wages of 35-44-yearold workers: young white females had higher relative wages; young white males had almost the same relative wages; young black females had generally higher relative wages; wages of black males aged 18-24 increased but wages of black males aged 16-17 decreased relative to wages of prime-aged black males. In both periods wages were, in general, lower in the South and higher in the West than in the rest of the country. Relative wages in the South and West increased during the period, so that by 1967 wages in the West were substantially higher than the average nationwide wage rates.