Poverty Situation Research Articles

Discursos sobre la pobreza: las voces de las mujeres

The term «feminization of poverty» was coined by Diane Pearce in 1978 when she found that it was women with children who led poor households. The central objective of this article is to show the trajectories, management, and experiences of women in poverty in Castelló de la Plana (Spain) from their own voice, applying the gender perspective. The methodology used is qualitative, the technique of interviews with a semi-structured script has been used for women of different profiles who are in a situation of poverty or at risk of being so. The results advance that, together with variables or structural factors, such as social origin or employment situation, a set of conjunctural factors or critical life events are added that, on the one hand, converge and intersect, and on the other, they lead to ending up in this situation.

Poverty issues, including the working poverty in Russia

Subject. The poverty of the population with all features and factors of its manifestation causes deep structural problems that affect the development of the national economy. Objectives. The aim of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the poverty of the population category, using statistical data, identification of causes of the gap in the level of salaries of Russian and foreign specialists, determination of factors that have the greatest impact on the development of working poverty in Russia. Methods. The study draws on methods of logical and statistical analysis. Results. We considered approaches to the definition of poverty in Russia and other countries, analyzed absolute and relative poverty in Russia, the impact of subsistence minimum on the definition of poverty, assessed nominal and real incomes of the population. The ratio of the average per capita income of the population and the subsistence minimum decreased over the past decade, however, the poverty was not overcome during this period. The per capita income in Russia turned out to be low, real incomes continue to decline. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a decline in wages can be traced, both in space and in time. Conclusions. Worsening the poverty situation in the country creates a chain of problems related to the distrust of the State policy in the social and labor spheres, expanded production slowdown, an increase in social tension in the society. A reduction of working poverty should be a priority task for the State.

Food Insecurity Is Associated with the Quality of Diet of Non-Institutionalized Older Adults from a Southern Chilean Commune: A Cross-Sectional Study.

As the population ages, greater attention to age-related health problems related to diet and lifestyles is needed. Here, we sought to evaluate the associations between demographic and clinical characteristics and food insecurity with the quality of diet of non-institutionalized elderly from a southern Chilean commune. We performed an analytical cross-sectional study in a sample of 376 older adults. Nutritional status was evaluated through anthropometric measurements. Quality of diet was determined by the healthy eating index (HEI), obtained through the frequency of consumption questionnaire. Socioeconomic, demographic, and lifestyle variables were also collected. Ordinal logistic and Poisson regression models were applied to study associations with quality of diet. The sample consisted of more women (81.6%) than men (18.4%). Most older adults were found to live in a situation of vulnerability or poverty (82.4%), with most having food security (65.7%). According to the HEI, only 14.1% had a good quality of diet, 83.8% had diet in need of improvement, and 2.1% had an unhealthy diet. There was an association of food insecurity and cardiovascular risk (according to waist circumference) with lower quality of diet categories. However, an association with the unhealthy quality of diet category was not confirmed with Poisson regression analysis, which was possibly due to the low number of subjects in that category (n = 8, 2.1%). Other modifiable factors like physical activity, hours of sleep, and polypharmacy were not associated with lower quality of diet categories. Socioeconomic status, which is a structural health determinant, was not associated with decreased quality of diet. Since this was a cross-sectional study performed on a small sample from a Chilean commune, directionality of associations cannot be discerned, and future longitudinal studies could aim to better characterize these associations in larger samples of elderly patients.

Entre Ave y Eva: las mujeres de las Cantigas de Santa María. II. Las trabajadoras. III. Las Evas

The Church, heavily present in medieval society, contributed to consolidate the patriarchal allocation of spaces: women in the domestic sphere, men in the public sphere. The works of the wife and of the mother had to be carried out within the household, which extended beyond the intimacy of the house, so that she had to take care of the farm, the animals and the land, without neglecting the education of the children. The Cantigas de Santa María, which gather versions of ancient legends but also make up others contemporary to the compilation of the work, offer a panoramic view of these working women, but also of those who developed a commercial activity in an urban environments as befits a work that portrays the society that has evolved over a century. Thus, we find women working in the most varied trades, thus participating in different productive sectors, mainly commerce, hospitality and the textile sector; but we also find women who, driven by a situation of extreme poverty, are forced to carry out the oldest trade in the world.

Impact of clip project on the livelihood outcomes of Sheabutter processing women in Karaga District of Northern Region, Ghana

The poverty situation in northern Ghana is a major challenge to sustainable development. As a result of socio-cultural factors, women are vulnerable and their poverty situation is even more overwhelming. Development agencies, Governmental and Non- Governmental Organizations have adopted and implemented different strategies aimed at reducing poverty in these areas. Micro-credit delivery to the poor especially women is one of these strategies that seems to be making impact towards improving the livelihoods of the rural poor women. In recognition of the fact that the shea industry has a great potential and could help alleviate poverty in the five northern regions of Ghana, and most especially among the rural women, the Community Life Improvement Programme (CLIP) was established in 1997 to help boost the shea industry through the initiation of micro-credit scheme to help the northern women patronize, intensify and expand the sheabutter processing micro-business. This study was therefore conducted in 2015 to evaluate the impact of the CLIP project on the livelihood outcomes of women in the micro-scale sheabutter processing in Karaga district of Northern region. By means of purposive and snow ball sampling techniques, 110 respondents (consisting of 80 beneficiary and 30 non-beneficiary women) were interviewed for the study. An interview guide and focus group discussions were used to obtain information from the sheabutter processing women. Relevant literature documents of the CLIP project were also consulted. From the survey, the activities undertaken by the CLIP project to improve the livelihood of the beneficiary sheabutter processors were identified and the impact of the project on the beneficiary women assessed. The results of the study revealed that the livelihood outcomes of the beneficiary women have been improved. The study further revealed that the livelihood outcomes of the beneficiary women were far better off as compared to that of the non-beneficiary women of the CLIP project. The study recommended that, the CLIP project should expand its base to cover many more sheabutter processing women in the target communities, and intensify its training and monitoring activities.

The impact of adoption of artificial pollination technology in cocoa production: Evidence from Ghana

This study analyzed the impact of adoption of artificial pollination on productivity, income, poverty and food security among cocoa farmers in Ghana. Primary data was collected from 206 cocoa farmers drawn through a multi-stage sampling technique and analyzed using Propensity Score Matching. The study revealed that households who adopted artificial pollination had improvements in their productivity, income, poverty situation, and food security. It was also revealed that adopters increased their productivity by close to 15.34% on average, earned between GH₵ 2756.84 to GH₵ 11074.38 more on average in terms of income, reduced their poverty by an average of between 0.83% and 3.53%, and finally, improved their food security by approximately 3% compared to non-adopters. Leveraging on the positive impact of adoption of artificial pollination, policymakers should take steps in implementing artificial pollination to help increase the yield of Ghana’s cocoa. • Adoption of artificial pollination is negatively influenced by age of farmer. • Extension, Experience, Off farm income and Household size increase adoption. • Adoption of artificial pollination increased smallholder productivity. • Adoption of artificial pollination improves food security of farmers. • Adoption of artificial pollination reduces poverty.

Legal nature of social assistance benefits provided to persons at risk

Social assistance is an important link in the national social protection system, through which the state is committed to protecting and supporting people and families who are at risk or vulnerable. The nature of the vulnerability depends on poor material condition, physical and health status, family status (single-parent families, orphans), exposure to situations of violence, etc. To prevent and annihilate social risks, state institutions with social functions provide citizens in need with a range of social benefits to alleviate existing inequalities, normal integration into society and regain their autonomy. In this article, we will identify the problems of the social benefits system, which make the purpose and objectives of providing these monetary supports remain purely ideological, because they do not ensure a visible improvement in living conditions. In the author’s opinion, the state’s social policy must be aimed at combating in time the causes that lead to the risk of poverty, and not get involved post factum, when a large part of our citizens are in a situation of absolute poverty. In this context, it is found that all reforms, policies, and budgetary decisions, regardless of the field they regulate (education, agriculture, economy, construction), negatively or positively influence the well-being of the family, and must be directed towards the healthy development of families in the Republic of Moldova.

Vulnerabilidad y cronificación de la pobreza: estudio de caso de la exclusión social en Olot (Girona)

We are in a context where situations of poverty and social exclusion have spread, intensified and transformed. This context shows a more complex and diverse reality than the usual one; which, in turn, challenges the traditional ways of defining and implementing social policies. Although the debate is extensive, this article focuses on the emergence of two central phenomena to define the current social reality: the chronification of poverty and an increase in social vulnerability. First, these two phenomena will be placed in a conceptual framework on social exclusion; next, their empirical manifestation will be examined in a specific case: the city of Olot in the province of Girona). This will serve to assess the extent to which these new concepts (chronification and vulnerability) are useful to present the social reality of a specific community and, simultaneously, to observe how conceptual debates translate into practical challenges.

Low-carbon retrofits in social housing: Energy efficiency, multidimensional energy poverty, and domestic comfort strategies in southern Europe

Social housing providers have a significant amount of influence over large housing stocks, which gives them unique opportunities to address both energy efficiency and social inclusion. However, there are significant barriers to achieving these goals in southern European contexts, where obsolete housing stocks and widespread energy poverty situations combine to create a “prebound effect”, whereby residents consume less energy than in projections of standardised patterns, thus invalidating models based on energy efficiency gains and energy production. This paper uses empirical findings from interviews with social housing providers in the metropolitan areas of Porto [Portugal] and Barcelona [Spain] to understand how this contradiction is being handled in the sector, and compares the findings with surveys of the nature and depth of energy poverty situations in a broadly defined social housing sector. Our results show that social housing providers tend to favour strategies based on retrofitting the envelopes of the buildings, and to resist installing renewable energy equipment, for which cost recoupment is near-unachievable. We argue that this focus on achieving thermal comfort by passive measures overlooks the multidimensionality of energy poverty situations in the social housing sector, with widespread practices of restrictions on cooking, lighting and DHW uses.

Using humor to disguise racism in television news: the case of the Roma

Abstract It has been argued that more research is needed on the role of humor in the expression of racism. One reason is that, in the ‘post racial’ society, overt racism has become publicly unacceptable and, therefore, tends to appear in more concealed forms. In this paper, as part of a larger project on media representations of the Roma, we look at the role of humor in a Romanian television news clip reporting on the financial rewards of begging. We draw on the critical scholarship in humor research and carry out a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a news report selected from a larger corpus. We argue that through humor a recontextualisation of the Roma’s situation takes place, transforming their actual situation of poverty and social marginalisation into a humorous account of cultural failure, incompetence, stupidity and calculated money grabbing. We show that humor is one way by which culture becomes represented as embodied by ethnic minorities.

Energy Poverty and Sustainable Economic Development: An Exploration of Correlations and Interdependencies in European Countries

The problem of energy poverty exists in practically every European country. Its size and scope are determined by a variety of factors, ranging from economic development to the direction of energy and climate policy implementation to cultural factors. Our aim in this paper was to carry out a comparative analysis of indicators related to energy poverty and sustainable development to identify correlations and links between the two issues and determine how they are related. The fact that the analysis was performed for most European countries is new and represents a broad spectrum of research; we were not limited to studies of countries bound by formal political-economic arrangements or by consideration of the degree of economic development. This approach enabled explication of how diverse the situation is in Europe. The research methods used included a critical analysis of the literature and the use of descriptive and mathematical-statistical tools. The main conclusions and findings of the analysis were that in some countries in economically developed Europe, energy poverty is a major problem, and that, in this respect, there are large differences between “old European Union” and “new European Union” countries, and in the countries that do not belong to political-economic structures in Europe. It is clear, from the research, which countries are rapidly and effectively reducing their energy poverty problems and which factors are the determinants of this. These results are linked to the new direction of energy policy and the shift towards more environmentally friendly energy use. In conclusion, it has been possible to identify the causes of energy poverty and how the energy poverty situation in Europe is changing.

From Fisher wives to fish vendors: Gendered livelihood transitions in a fishing village in Egypt

Like women in fishing communities elsewhere, the women interviewed as part of this study play a pivotal in the fishing sector. When there is an aggravated depletion of fish capture in this coastal area, households witness very gendered livelihood transitions. Able-bodied men mostly seek livelihoods elsewhere. The women left behind face a situation of poverty and multiple transitions at the household, market and community levels. While the supply chain of farmed fish provided livelihood opportunities to these women, the transition was fraught with perils and challenges both at the market and household levels. Capital, in its different human, financial, and social forms, defines to a greater extent the parameters of these livelihood transitions.

Toward an Empirical Analysis of Income and Time Poverty in Urban China

Many earlier studies have assessed Chinese poverty using monetary dimensions, but few have considered the time dimension. This research investigates multidimensional poverty in urban China, using data from the 2013 China Household Income Project, from the standpoints of income and time. A logistic regression model was used to estimate the socioeconomic causes of income poverty, time poverty, and income–constrained time poverty. Empirical results obtained from this study reveal that being a paid female worker or a private enterprise employee and bearing the financial burdens of housing and medical care have significant effects on the probability of being time poor. In addition, workers who have low academic achievement, children, and educational loans are particularly prone to suffering income–constrained time poverty. This study contributes to the assessment of severe poverty situations and suggests an increasing need for working time regulations and more support for less-educated workers in urban China.

Housing Evaluation Methodology in a Situation of Social Poverty to Guarantee Sustainable Cities: The Satisfaction Dimension for the Case of Mexico

Currently, one in eight people live in neighborhoods with social inequality and around one billion people live in precarious conditions. The significance of where and how to live and in what physical, spatial, social, and urban conditions has become very important for millions of families around the world because of mandatory confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, many homes in poor condition do not meet the basic requirements for residential environments in the current framework. Theoretical models for the urban evaluation of this phenomenon are a necessary starting point for urban renewal and sustainability. This study aims to generate a model for evaluating homes in a situation of social inequality (hereinafter Vrs) with indicators on physical, spatial, environmental, and social aspects. The methodology used in this study evaluates housing, taking into consideration habitability factors (physical, spatial, and constructive characteristics), as well as the qualitative characteristics assessing the satisfaction of users with the adaptation and transformation of the housing and its surroundings. The application of 51 indicators distributed in four previous parameters was established for this study. This quantification identifies the deficiencies of the dwellings and sets the guidelines for the establishment of future rehabilitation policies for adapting the dwellings to current and emergency scenarios. The innovation of this study is the construction of a tool for social research surveys designed to include individual indicators from the dwellings’ users, to provide a more dependable representation of the problems found in Vrs. The results of this research identified the deficiencies of precarious housing and could be used for applying effective proposals for improvement of habitability and their surroundings in the future. Furthermore, the results showed that when all the indicators were considered, the level of lag reached would be similar to that of a real housing situation, further confirming the suitability of the methodology applied in this investigation.

The Non-Linear Effects of Energy Efficiency Gains on the Incidence of Energy Poverty

Energy poverty is defined as insufficient access to modern energy resources which are relatively cleaner than the traditionally utilized ones. In this regard, the incidence of energy poverty is particularly higher in the cases of the developing countries across the globe. Accordingly, the chronic energy poverty issues in the developing countries within Sub-Saharan Africa have become a major socioeconomic and environmental concern for the associated governments. Hence, this study aims to evaluate the effects of energy efficiency gains and shocks to other key macroeconomic factors on energy poverty in the context of selected Sub-Saharan African nations. In this study, we measure energy poverty in terms of the lack of access to clean cooking fuels and technologies for the population of the selected Sub-Saharan African countries. The overall findings from the common correlated effects panel regression analysis reveal that energy efficiency gains initially aggravate the energy poverty situation but improve it later on; consequently, a U-shaped relationship between energy efficiency and access to clean cooking fuels and technologies is evidenced. Besides, the predicted threshold levels of energy efficiency are observed to be higher than the average energy efficiency level of the Sub-Saharan African nations. Moreover, the results also portray that economic growth, carbon dioxide emissions, foreign direct investment inflows, and international trade are effective in reducing energy poverty. Conversely, financial development is witnessed to be ineffective in influencing the incidence of energy poverty in this region.

"I Don't Know Where I Have to Knock for Support": A Mixed-Methods Study on Perceptions and Experiences of Single Mothers Raising Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Introduction and Objectives: It is well-documented that single mothers in sub-Saharan Africa face unique psychosocial challenges which can lead to child health and developmental disadvantages, often impacting life trajectories for both the mother and child. Years of instability, conflict, and widespread poor governance within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have resulted in magnified challenges for parents, making it more difficult to provide supportive and effective parenting. To address gaps in knowledge regarding the specific challenges experienced and adaptations made among single mothers raising children in contexts of adversity, the present study aimed to investigate the phenomenon of single mother parenting in the DRC. Methods: Cognitive Edge SenseMaker, a mixed-method data collection tool, was used to collect self-interpreted narratives among parents in eastern DRC. Quantitative SenseMaker data were uploaded into Tableau, a data organization and analysis tool, to visualize differences in response patterns between single mother (n = 263) and two-parent family study participants (n = 182). Single mother micronarratives (n = 251) were then coded line-by-line and analyzed thematically. Qualitative themes identified in the single mother micronarratives were used to facilitate a deeper and more nuanced understanding of key quantitative SenseMaker findings. Findings and Conclusions: Our study found that single mothers experienced immense challenges raising children in the DRC, including financial-, health- and parenting-related hardships. Single mothers described negative emotions and higher levels of household adversity while providing for their children in situations of extreme poverty compared to two-parent family respondents. Self-reliance was exhibited among most single mothers in an attempt to overcome challenges, primarily financial barriers, and to prioritize the health and well-being of their children. However, many children still lacked access to sufficient food, education, and healthcare. Limited governmental and social security support for single mothers was identified as contributing to heightened challenges and the self-reliance observed among single mothers. Findings emphasize that additional research and attention should be directed towards identifying the specific needs of, and available resources for, single mothers in different localities in an effort to inform policies and programs that best support families.

The Impact of Foreign Aid Conditionality on Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh: A Recipient’s Perspective

Donors provide aid to the recipient government with conditions to implement some policies so that the recipient government can use aid effectively and able to improve its economic, social, and political situation as well as reduce its poverty. However, concerns have been raised that aid conditionality has promoted reforms that could not reduce the poverty situation in some countries such as sub-Saharan Africa, while some countries in East Asia were able to break out of poverty and find themselves better off than before the conditional aid was accepted. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of foreign aid conditionality on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. The paper is qualitative in nature and a case study on Bangladesh. The study has been conducted by using secondary data, like journal articles, research papers, and Bangladesh government and aid donors’ reports. The study finds that Bangladesh has started to show considerable improvement in reducing poverty, though it is still ranking low on the Human Development Index. The findings have important implications for policymakers and captured insights about the foreign aid conditionality in Bangladesh.

Optimization of a Combination of Thermal Insulation and Cool Roof for the Refurbishment of Social Housing in Southern Spain

Social housing built in the middle of the last century in Spain suffers from poor thermal insulation conditions that cause situations of discomfort and energy poverty. For this reason, the energetic refurbishment of the envelope of this social building stock is necessary to overcome these situations and reduce energy consumption aimed at achieving interior comfort for its occupants. The goal of this work is to optimize a constructive solution that combines cool roof techniques with the use of thermal insulation applied to the refurbishment of the roof of buildings belonging to a quarter of social housing in Seville, Spain. The optimization analysis is based on the computation of the energy performance of the roofs when the energy retrofitting measure is applied, considering a variety of combinations of solar reflective coatings and insulation layer thickness, performing a dynamic analysis that accounts for the aging effect of the cool coats on the monthly roof energy performance and on the economic balance for the whole life cycle (LC) span. Economic and energy optimization analysis show that a suitable combination of cool roof emissivity and insulation layer thickness produces significant savings in the operational energy and in the economic profitability of the proposed retrofitting measure: the optimum combination obtained provides for the entire life cycle timespan an energy savings of 5.71 GJ/m2 and a cost savings equivalent to the 63.1% of the total costs when compared to the non-refurbished roof. The application of a time-dependent pattern for the changes on time produced by the aging effect on the cool roof emissivity, and its effects on the optimization of the combination of cool roof and insulation layer, can be considered novel in literature, both from an energy and an economic point of view.

Covid-19 and Poverty Assessment in Nigeria – The Vulnerability Approach

The aim of the study was to abstract from the vulnerability theory to predict the likelihood of more people in Nigeria falling into the poverty trap as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study used a parametric technique to obtain estimates of the mean and variance of one-period ahead log-consumption. In doing this, the study hypothesized that estimating household consumption function is important in making inferences about the future and in assessing the vulnerability of household to shocks. The simulation analysis shows that of the 82 percent of the households that are vulnerable to poverty, only about 13 percent are in transitory poverty while the rest are in structural poverty. The implication of this finding is that poverty situation in Nigeria is widespread, entrenched and inter-generational. The current coronavirus pandemic has merely worsened the poverty situation and is not the fundamental cause of poverty in Nigeria. The study recommended among others, that anti-poverty intervention measures of the government, going forward, must be forward-looking and aim largely to increase the productive capacity of the populace instead of merely aiming to alleviate their current state of poverty.

Dealing with risk in situations of poverty: when complexity in frontline practice becomes wallpaper for organisational policy

ABSTRACT A recent body of research draws on the concept of child welfare inequality and shows that social inequalities, such as poverty, are reproduced in and through child welfare and protection interventions. We therefore examine how the recent preoccupation with risk relates to ways in which frontline social workers in child welfare and protection deal with poverty. Our contribution is based on a qualitative research project in a governmental organisation in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) that implements the Australian risk assessment method Signs of Safety (SofS). We explore how frontline social workers who implement Signs of Safety in Flanders deal with risk in situations of poverty, and identify four strategies of discretion in dealing with poverty: (1) poverty as a complicating factor, (2) poverty as a concern, (3) poverty as an undercover concern for social workers, and (4) poverty as a social problem that requires structural responses. Our research findings particularly show that the interaction of frontline social work with organisational policy is crucial. Rather than framing poverty as ‘the wallpaper of frontline practice’, we argue that the complexity and struggle at stake in frontline practice becomes ‘wallpaper’ for child welfare and protection organisational policy in Flanders.