Economics Commons^™

Adam Smith And Poverty, Jonathan B. Wight

English Faculty Publications

Can we end poverty in America? Does economic theory offer a solution? Humility would be a good starting place, because systemic problems like generational poverty rarely stem from single causes. Putting the broken pieces together is difficult when some edges are sharp, some are shattered, and others missing. This essay draws on insights from Adam Smith in order to examine the problem of poverty. It focuses on a case study involving Serena Robins (the real names have been altered).

The Flood: Political Economy And Disaster, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As summer faded to fall in 2005, a hurricane hit New Orleans, a city so unique in its history that it has more history than many American cities. It was nonetheless an American city in these telling parameters: a city of luxury alongside squalor, two-thirds Black, one-fourth poor, with the gap between its rich and poor growing at a gallop as the waters of lake and river lapped gently along aging, grass-covered levees.

Freeze the frame before the waters rise, and what do you see? A devastated public school system, where Black children are labeled “failing,” along with their schools. …

The Geography Of American Poverty: Is There A Need For Place-Based Policies?, Mark D. Partridge, Dan S. Rickman

Upjohn Press

Partridge and Rickman explore the wide geographic disparities in poverty across the United States. Their focus on the spatial dimensions of U.S. poverty reveals distinct differences across states, metropolitan areas, and counties and leads them to consider why antipoverty policies have succeeded in some places and failed in others.

Searching For Social Capital In U.S. Microenterprise Development Programs, Nancy C. Jurik, Gray Cavender, Julie Cozogill

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper focuses on the claims and efforts of U.S. microenterprise development programs (MDPs) to build social capital among poor and low income entrepreneurs. MDPs offer business training and lending services to individuals operating very small businesses (with five or fewer employees and less than $20,000 in start-up capital). Advocates suggest that MDPs help promote economic development by building social capital defined as networks among small entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and their larger community. We begin our paper with a short review of the varied definitions and claims about the role of social capital in promoting civic and economic empowerment. …

County Characteristics And Poverty Spell Length, Andrew Grodner, John A. Bishop, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

*In this paper we ask, how do individual and community factors influence the average length of poverty spells? We measure local economic conditions by the county unemployment rate and neighborhood spillover effects by the racial makeup and poverty rate of the county. We find that moving an individual from one standard deviation below the mean poverty rate to one standard deviation above the mean poverty rate (from the inner city to the suburbs) lowers the average poverty spell by 20 to 25 percent. This effect is equal in magnitude to the effect of changing the household head from female to …

The Effects Of Maternal Welfare Receipt On Children’S Development, Nikolay O. Doskov

Gettysburg Economic Review

Over the past 25 years, welfare and other public policies for families living below the poverty line have developed a primary objective of promoting parents’ self-sufficiency. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), passed in 1996, was a milestone in this effort, limiting the number of years that families can receive federal cash welfare assistance and requiring most of them to participate in work-related activities to be eligible for such assistance. This new emphasis on work was one of the main reasons for the dramatic decline in welfare dependency during the late 1990s. The new legislation, however, also …

Part 6: The Youth Of Hampton Roads: Pride Or Problem, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

By several measures, our region’s youth are not doing so well. Particularly problematic are the high percentages of youth who live in poverty and babies born to very young mothers. It is easy to track the societal problems that result.

An Empirical Analysis Of County-Level Determinants Of Small Business Growth And Poverty In Appalachia: A Spatial Simultaneous-Equations Approach, Gebremeskel H. Gebremariam, Tesfa Gebremedhin, Peter V. Schaeffer

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

A spatial simultaneous-equations growth equilibrium model estimated by GS2SLS and GS3SLS estimators is used to determine the interdependence between small business growth and poverty. The parameter estimates are mostly consistent with the theoretical expectations. The coefficients for the endogenous variables of the model are positive and significant indicating strong interdependence (feedback simultaneity) between small business and median household income growth rates. The results also show the presence of spatial autoregressive lag simultaneity and spatial cross-regressive lag simultaneity, with respect to both small business and median household income growth rates, and the existence of spatial correlation in the error terms. In …

Vanity And The Daedalian Wings Of Paper Money In Adam Smith, Maria Pia Paganelli

Economics Faculty Research

Adam Smith presents a detailed technical analysis of both private and public credit. Many contemporaries, including David Hume, recognized that public credit, and in part private credit, could be used to affect the economy, either for good or bad. Nevertheless, Smith does not seem to recognize the full potential of public credit as a policy instrument whether as a way to stimulate the economy, fine-tune it, or cause economic disasters. The reason for this shortcoming may be Smith's downplaying the desire for power and benevolence as motivational forces in human conduct, due to his emphasis on vanity instead.

A Spatial Analysis Of Obesity In West Virginia, Anura Amarasinghe, Gerard D'Souza, Cheryl Brown, Tatiana Borisova

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

A spatial panel data analysis at the county level examines how individual food consumption, recreational, and lifestyle choices ― against a backdrop of changing demographic, built environment, and policy factors ― leads to obesity. Results suggest that obesity tends to be spatially autocorrelated; in addition to hereditary factors and lifestyle choices, it is also caused by sprawl and lack of land use planning. Policy measures which stimulate educational attainment, poverty alleviation, and promotion of better land use planning and best consumption practices (BCPs) could both reduce obesity and result in sustainable development of regions where obesity is prevalent and the …

[Introduction To] Poverty And Progress In The U.S. South Since 1920, Suzanne W. Jones, Mark Newman

Bookshelf

Poverty, disease, and illiteracy had long bedeviled the U.S. South, even before the agricultural depression of the 1920s became subsumed within the Great Depression of the 1930s. The essays collected in this volume examine a variety of responses to economic depression and poverty. They recount specific battles for civil, educational, and labor rights, and explore the challenges and alternatives to the corporate South in the post World War II agribusiness era. Scholars from both the U.S. and Europe assess how far the South has come in the last century, what forces (from the Sears Roebuck Catalog to the Civil Rights …

Poverty And Fertility In The American South, Leonard M. Lopoo

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This project first reports descriptive evidence of the characteristics of mothers in the American South and compares them to mothers in other regions of the country. Women in the South (and West) tend to have their children at younger ages than those in the Midwest and Northeast. Mothers in the South (and West) also have much lower levels of education and are more likely to be African American or Hispanic compared to women in the Midwest and Northeast. Next, this paper attempts to link the characteristics of the mothers in the American South to the high rates of poverty there. …

Ranking Inequality: Applications Of Multivariate Subset Selection, William C. Horrace, Joseph T. Marchand, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are simultaneously and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data …

Poverty, Race And The Contexts Of Achievement: Examining Educational Experiences Of Children In The American South, Maryah Stella Fram, Julie Miller-Cribbs, Lee Van Horn

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper reports findings of a study examining child-, classroom-, and school-level factors that effect academic achievement among public school children in the South. Using ECLS-K data, we compare and contrast the learning environments in high/low minority and high/low poverty schools. A sizeable minority of Southern children attend schools that are race and/or class segregated; on multiple dimensions these schools are less desirable than are schools attended by more privileged children, and children attending these schools have lower levels of academic achievement. Results from 3-level random intercepts models show that a range of child and family factors, as well as …

An Analysis Of The Duties And Obligations Of The International Legal Community To The Eradication Of Poverty And Growth Of Sustainable Development In Light Of The Jus Cogens Nature Of The Declaration Of The Right To Development, Freda R. Murray-Bruce

ExpressO

This paper examines the copious problem of world poverty affecting half of the world’s population in the South and assesses the international legal obligations of the international legal community, viz., developed states, transnational corporations and the international financial institutions of the IMF, World Bank and WTO to the eradication of poverty and the growth of sustainable development, in view of the inviolability and peremptory nature of the Charter of the UN, and the international human rights provisions arising therefrom. To this extent, we examine the 1986 General Assembly Declaration on the Right to Development, along with the other International Bill …

The Impact Of Trade Liberalization On Growth, Unemployment, And Poverty In Bangladesh, Maha Z. Mirza

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Trade liberalization has been one of the major policy components of the governments of the developing countries in the recent decades. Bangladesh as many other developing nations, has adopted different measures of trade reform policies as an element of International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), as well as to be an integral part of the world wide trend of globalization. Such policy measures include the reduction/rationalization of tariff rate, simplification of import and export trade procedures, relaxation of restrictive trade policies, and reform of financial and monetary policies. Even though, the trade reform measures were anticipated to increase …

Fiscal Federalism And Its Discontents: Theory And Policy, Abu Girma Moges

International Conference on African Development Archives

A number of countries have pursued fiscal decentralization within a broad context of political and economic reforms to improve the performance of their public sector. Fiscal decentralization can potentially improve the allocation efficiency of the public sector and increase the capacity of a nation to address its pressing economic, social and political problems. The sustainability of such an approach is conditioned by the existence of effective democratic institutions and implementation capabilities. When political imperatives dictate the adoption of fiscal decentralization, however, the process would confront problems of the commons, capacity constraints and externalities that would limit the potential efficiency gains …

Globalization, Regional Integration, And National Development, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

I would, at the outset, like to welcome the foreign delegates and particularly those from the countries in the South Asia Region. I am extremely happy to join you on this occasion and thank you for inviting me, once again, to this important event. The views that I would like to share with you this evening will focus on the economic situation globally, regionally within Asia and South Asia and nationally within the South Asian Countries. I will then briefly examine the prospects and challenges that face our region in moving forward in this age of globalization and integration to …

2005-4 What Can Be Learned About Peer Effects Using College Roommates? Evidence From New Survey Data And Students From Disadvantaged Backgrounds, Todd R. Stinebrickner, Ralph Stinebrickner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Poverty In Kenya: A Household Level Analysis, Alemayehu Geda, Niek De Jong, Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu

Economics Working Papers

Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and that are amenable to modification by policy. This article uses household level data collected in 1994 to examine probable determinants of poverty status, employing both binomial and polychotomous logit models. The study shows that poverty status is strongly associated with the level of education, household size and engagement in agricultural activity, both in rural and urban areas. In general, those factors that are closely associated with overall poverty according to the binomial model are also important in the ordered-logit model, but they appear to …

Why Equality? How Equality?: The Desirability Of A Focus On Income Distribution, Arthur Macewan

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Much of the discussion of economic development in low and middle income countries and of poverty reduction has either ignored the issue of income distribution or has tended to view income distribution only in terms of its impact on economic growth. In this paper I argue that such an approach is misguided. I will explain, first, why I believe that it is desirable to give a great deal of attention to income distribution in the analysis of economic development and poverty reduction. My argument includes conceptual, political and practical elements. Second, I will suggest some of the ways in which …

Ranking Inequality: Applications Of Multivariate Subset Selection, William C. Horrace, Joseph T. Marchand, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are *simultaneously* and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data …

Does Regional Variation In Multiple Measures Of Health Status Differ Across Income Levels?, Janet M. Bronstein, Shailender Swaminathan, Joshua Klapow

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This study examines whether regional variations in health status measures are consistent across the income gradient, or whether they are more pronounced at the lowest income levels. We use data from the Community Tracking Survey, a large randomized telephone survey of residents in 60 U.S. communities. Controlling for individual risk factors and county level income inequality, lowest income individuals have poorer scores on counts of chronic diseases, global health ratings, and the physical and mental components of the SF-12. Residents of the South have poorer scores on chronic disease counts, global health and physical health than residents of the Northeast, …

Reducing Poverty Or Redistributing Income?, Ishrat Husain Dr

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

If there were violent fluctuation and swings in exchange rate, interest rate, tax rate and tariff rate then it becomes extremely difficult for a businessman to cost his products in a realistic manner and earn a decent rate of profit.

Constructing A Social Welfare Function Under Poverty And Inequality With Application To Developing Countries, Nyiwul Linus Mabughi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

In this study entitled "Constructing a Social Welfare Function under Poverty and Inequality with Application to Developing Countries"; prepared by Nyiwul Linus Mabughi under the supervision of Dr. Tarek Selim (The American University in Cairo), we provide a post-Sen theoretical conceptualization of a social welfare function and application to developing countries. In the methodology, we undertake a decomposition of efficiency and distribution aspects of welfare and examine the sensitivity of the various elements of the social welfare formulation. We develop a new social welfare .. function based on different ec9nomic development elements. These elements include per capita income (PPP), total …

Presidents, Profits, Productivity, & Poverty: A Great Divide Between The Pre- & Post-Reagan U.S. Economy?, Richard K. Caputo

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper examined profits, productivity, and poverty in the United States from 1961 through 2002. Results indicated that the "great divide" thesis regarding the U.S. economy before and after the Reagan administration depends on which measure of the economy is the focus of attention. In addition, on some measures where before and after differences were detected, the nature of those differences was paradoxical. Corporate profits as a share of national income, for example, were highest in Democratic rather than Republican administrations and despite the increased income inequality of the post-Reagan years, individual and family poverty rates remained relatively constant after …

Building A Better World, Pierre Landell-Mills

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Rights in World Politics by William Felice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 204pp.

An Economic Analysis Of Fiscal Federalism In Ethiopia, Abu Girma Moges

International Conference on African Development Archives

Fiscal federalism is a process of redistribution of fiscal decision-making power in an effort to improve the performance of the public sector in resource mobilization, efficient resource allocation and in the process enabling the economy achieve fast and sustainable economic growth. This paper addresses the economic rationale, implications and concerns of pursuing fiscal federalism in a poor country and in a political environment of ethnic federalism. The main findings suggest that when fiscal decentralization is exercised with high horizontal and vertical imbalances, it fails to diversify public output in line with the preferences and priorities of local population and to …

Review Of "The World Bank, A Case For Aid: Building A Consensus For Development Assistance," By James D. Wolfensohn & Nicolas Stern, Bryan Erickson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "The World Bank’s new book, A Case for Aid: Building a Consensus for Development Assistance, indicates how dramatic and lasting the progress against global poverty has been in the past 50 years. It also shows how dramatically the Bank’s own understanding has risen, even in the past decade, of how to make its efforts more effective in relieving poverty and achieving other development goals. These two themes form the basis for the World Bank’s visionary thesis: that eradicating much of the poverty, ill health, and illiteracy around the world is within reach.

The occasion for pronouncing this message in …

Poverty And Macroeconomic Performance Across Space, Race, And Family Structure, Craig Gundersen, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Understanding the link between poverty and economic growth is of long-standing interest, but heretofore it has not received much attention within the context of the dramatic changes in recent business-cycle conditions and social policies. In this paper we use state-level panel data from the 1981–2000 waves of the Current Population Survey to examine the impacts of the macroeconomy and welfare reform on family poverty. We estimate models of before-tax and after-tax poverty rates and squared poverty gaps for all families, by family structure, and by race. Our results indicate that a strong macroeconomy at both the state and national levels …