Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Longer-Run Effects Of Antipoverty Policies On Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, David Neumark, Brian J. Asquith, Brittany Bass

Brian Asquith

We estimate the longer-run effects of minimum wages, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and welfare on key economic indicators of economic self-sufficiency in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We find that the longer-run effects of the EITC are to increase employment and to reduce poverty and public assistance. We also find some evidence that higher welfare benefits had longer-run adverse effects, and quite robust evidence that tighter welfare time limits reduce poverty and public assistance in the longer run. The evidence on the long-run effects of the minimum wage on poverty and public assistance is not robust, with some evidence pointing to reductions …

Self-Employment And Poverty In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

A key way for the world’s poor—nearly half of humanity—to escape poverty is to earn more for their labor. Most of the world’s poor people are self-employed, but because there are few opportunities in most developing countries for them to earn enough to escape poverty, they are working hard but working poor. Two key policy planks in the fight against poverty should be: raising the returns to self-employment and creating more opportunities to move from self-employment into higher paying wage employment.

Challenges And Policy Lessons For The Growth-Employment-Poverty Nexus In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Productivity growth and structural change are generally considered to be important determinants of economic growth. However recent research revealed that they do not necessarily lead to higher growth and employment rates. Recent studies, drawing on data from developing countries, showed that only the “right” kind of productivity growth resulted in higher employment rates. Enterprises in Africa and Latin America caught up in matters of technology; however, this process resulted in a substitution of employment by technology. The same is true for structural change; only the “right” kind of structural change caused more growth and employment. Whereas in Asia, labour shifted …

Aid, Growth And Jobs, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Various development objectives are worthy, but one objective merits special attention: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. This study focuses on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the labour market for the work they do, so that they can buy the goods and services they need to move up out of poverty. The core of the study is divided into three sections: defining the global poverty challenge and the world’s employment problem, presenting policy options for improving employment outcomes for the poor, and suggesting ways of choosing …

Changing Labor Market Conditions And Economic Development In Hong Kong, The Republic Of Korea, Singapore, And Taiwan, China, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

In the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China), the entire working population has benefited from labor market institutions. The East Asian NIEs attained and maintained generally full employment, improved their job mixes, raised real earnings, and lowered their rates of poverty. This article reaches two principal conclusions. First, labor market conditions continued to improve in all four economies in the 1980s at rates remarkably similar to their rates of aggregate economic growth. Second, labor market repression was not a major factor in the growth experiences of these economies in the 1980s. …

The Dynamics Of Poverty, Inequality And Economic Well-Being: African Economic Growth In Comparative Perspective, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Two hundred and fifty million Africans (about 45% of the population) are poor. In rural areas, where most Africans live, there is, alas, a 'poor majority'. Rural poverty rates range from 37% in Madagascar and 41% in Kenya to 88% in Zambia and 94% in Ghana (Table 1). It is hard to imagine an issue in development economics that is of greater importance to humankind than the effects of economic growth on poverty and economic well-being. Yet there is remarkably little consensus on this vitally important issue, as illustrated by the following two polar positions: New patterns of growth will …

Changes In Poverty And Inequality In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper presents new data on poverty, inequality, and growth in those developing countries of the world for which the requisite statistics are available. Economic growth is found generally but not always to reduce poverty. Growth, however, is found to have very little to do with income inequality. Thus the "economic laws" linking the rate of growth and the distribution of benefits receive only very tenuous empirical support here.

Income Distribution In Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, And Policy Issues In Broad-Based Growth, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The aim of economic development is to raise the standard of living of a country's people, especially its poor. Economic growth, particularly when broadly based, is a means to that end. 'Underdevelopment' can be defined as a state of severely constrained choices. When one is choosing from among an undesirable set of alternatives, the outcome will itself be undesirable. Standards of living will be low. If standards of living are to be improved, people must have a better set of alternatives from which to choose. 'Economic development' is the process by which the constraints on choices are relaxed. Based …

Development Of An Economic And Social Dashboard For Berrien County, George Erickcek

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

Results And Recommendations Of Water And Wastewater Affordability Study, Ryan A. Breisach, George A. Erickcek, Brad R. Watts

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

An Anti-Poverty Proposal For Inner-City Residents Of Kalamazoo, Timothy J. Bartik, George A. Erickcek

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

Economic Development Recommendations That Focus On The "Working Poor": Lessons From Waco, George Erickcek, Don Edgerly, Brian Pittelko, Claudette Robey, Bridget Timmeney, Jim Robey

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

Economic Development Strategic Plan For The City Of Waco, Texas, George Erickcek, Don Edgerly, Brian Pittelko, Claudette Robey, Bridget Timmeney, Dennis Burnside, Jim Robey

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

Designing Inclusion: Tools To Raise Low-End Pay And Employment In Private Enterprise By Edmund S. Phelps, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Subsidizing Increased Employment For The Urban Poor: What Labor Market Problems Might Justify It?, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Long-Run Implications Of Employment At Different Wage Rates For The Disadvantaged, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Moving Up Or Moving On: Who Advances In The Low-Wage Labor Market? By Fredrik Andersson, Harry J. Holzer, And Julia I. Lane, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

An Anti-Poverty Proposal For Inner-City Residents Of Kalamazoo, Timothy J. Bartik, George A. Erickcek

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Generating Jobs: How To Increase Demand For Less-Skilled Workers, Richard B. Freeman, And Peter Gottschalk, Eds., Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Fighting Poverty With Labor Demand Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Local Labor Demand On Individual Labor Market Outcomes For Different Demographic Groups And The Poor, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

The contribution of this paper is to use panel data on individuals (specifically, data from the Panel Survey on Income Dynamics) to examine how local demand conditions affect the economic well-being of disadvantaged groups and the poor. Previous research on local labor demand conditions uses data from a single cross-section of local economies, or a time-series of cross-sections of regions. With such data, estimated effects of local labor demand conditions on average labor market outcomes might be attributable to changes in local population composition, as we would expect local demand conditions to change in- and out-migration patterns. Because panel data …

The Distributional Effects Of Local Labor Demand And Industrial Mix: Estimates Using Individual Panel Data, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Low-Income Housing Development, Poverty Concentration, And Neighborhood Inequality, Matthew Freedman, Tamara Mcgavock

Matthew Freedman

Livestock Development And Poverty In Pakistan: Evidence From The Punjab Province, Sharafat Ali, Najid Ahmad

Sharafat Ali

Agriculture sector being an important and fundamental sector of the economy is the way of life for more than half of the Pakistan’s population. Its major sector is livestock sector. Livestock sector is the source of income and a safety against the crop failures or drought. Most of the rural population earns their living from this sector. Aspired from the argument that livestock has great importance in the life of the poor households, the present study is an attempt to analyze the impact of livestock sector development on poverty in Pakistan. The cross sectional data of 34 districts of Punjab …

Elegy In An American Graveyard, Prose/Poem 3/27/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

An update of Thomas Grey's majestic Elegy In A Country Churchyard. Our Economy is very different and so must be our politics.

The Evolution Of Poverty And Inequality In Sub-Saharan Africa Over The Period 1980-2010: What Do We (And Can We) Know Given The Data Available?, Rodrigo Garcia-Verdu

Rodrigo Garcia-Verdu

No abstract provided.

Double Jeopardy: Low-Wage And Low-Income Workers In Massachusetts, 1980–2009, Randy Albelda, Michael Carr

Michael Carr

Data reveal a growing number of Massachusetts workers who both earn low wages and live in low-income families. They face “double jeopardy”: As low-wage earners, they are least likely to receive employer-sponsored benefits, yet they are often ineligible for means-tested government anti-poverty programs.

A Longitudinal Study Of Well-Being Of Older Europeans: Does Retirement Matter?, Raquel Fonseca, Arie Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro, Kevin Feeney

Gema Zamarro

We examine determinants of financial and subjective well-being, in particular poverty and depression, among older individuals in Europe. We do so using the 2004, 2006, and 2010 waves of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe and estimating dynamic panel data and binary choice transition models. We find a number of common effects across financial and subjective well-being. Unemployment, disabilities, serious health conditions, lower education, being female, and not being married increase the probability of poverty or depression. Conversely, healthy individuals, those with higher levels of education, males, and married individuals have higher probabilities of exiting poverty or …

Review Of The Book Unemployment Insurance: The Second Half-Century, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This extraordinary volume is one that all people interested in the unemployment insurance (Ul) system will want to read. Although research on a wide variety of aspects of the Ul system has been published in many articles and monographs in recent years, this volume represents an attempt to summarize what is known about many aspects of the subject in one place, to provide some new findings, and to speculate about future research and policy directions. The thirteen included papers, written by a mix of scholars and practitioners, are revisions of a set of papers that were originally presented at …

Review Of The Book Minimum Wage Regulation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why yet another book on minimum wages in the United States, especially one that follows so closely on the heels of the 1981 Report of the Minimum Wage Study Commission and parallel studies (including another one by Fleisher) sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute? The author's goal here is to evaluate minimum-wage regulation in light of its benefits and costs as an antipoverty device; and most of his book is based on his interpretation and evaluation of the existing literature, including the large body of recent research. The book is written in a nontechnical fashion for nonspecialists (frustrated econometricians …