forest dependence and income distribution in a subsistence economy evidence from india abstract we examine an area of northern india where forestry acts to ameliorate the incidence of poverty and destitution though it does not otherwise contribute significantly to the reduction of income inequality the poor would be doubly disadvantaged without common property access to forest products conservation measures entailing curtailment in the right to common access pose a dilemma this issue is explored here

willingness of rural communities to adopt biogas systems in pakistan critical factors and policy implications abstract biogas is a methane rich gas that is produced by the anaerobic fermentation of organic material such as animal dung pakistan has the sixth largest livestock based economy in the world and thus demonstrates great potential for biogas production the government has already started the biogas support program bsp in a few selected areas of the country with that in mind this study was designed to determine a household s predicted willingness to adopt a biogas system in khyber pakhtunkhwa kp province the study is based on primary data collected from four districts peshawar nowshera charsadda and mardan data was collected from 200 livestock farming households selected through an equal allocation technique probit analysis was used to identify those factors influencing the willingness of a household to adopt a biogas system the results of the probit model reveal that the education level of the respondents total daily electric shortfall the effect of electric shortfall on childrens education and female drudgery and respondents awareness regarding the pros and cons of using biogas were statistically significant factors on the basis of p

a million off incapacity benefit how achievable is labour s target since 1997 welfare reform has been a defining feature of the uk s labour government this article assesses the extent to which the new aspiration to reduce the number of incapacity benefit claimants by one million within 10 years is deliverable the assessment is based on a model of flows on and off incapacity benefits and their impact on the stock of claimants in particular the analysis takes account of the major geographical variations in the distribution of incapacity claimants and the ability of britain s divergent regional economies to absorb substantial numbers of extra workers the article concludes that without an accelerated revival in the economies of the north scotland and wales labour looks set to fall short of the one million target

local level incapacity benefits rolls in britain correlates and convergence mcvicar d local level incapacity benefits rolls in britain correlates and convergence regional studies there is considerable variation across british local authority districts in the proportion of the working age population claiming incapacity benefits ranging from 2 in hart to 16 in merthyr tydfil and easington in 2008 these claimant rates are strongly correlated with local unemployment rates and self reported disability rates but spatial differences in claimant rates for incapacity benefits were even greater a decade ago this paper describes the extent of this claimant rate convergence and discusses possible explanations for it mcvicar d 2008 hart 2 merthyr tydfil easington 16 10 mcvicar d la liste des demandeurs des prestations d incapacite en grande bretagne a l echelle loc

spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain hamnett c spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain regional studies this paper examines the structure of state welfare expenditure in britain it argues that the geography of state welfare expenditure and its impacts have been relatively neglected given their importance in terms of state expenditure regional distribution and spatial equality it shows that welfare spending is a key component of government expenditure and that it has a distinct regional and local geography the paper shows that there are distinct differences in the geographical incidence of different welfare benefits some of which function to redistribute income from the south to the north of britain and it focuses on the geography of housing benefit as an example of what has been termed spatial divisions of welfare hamnett c les ecarts geographiques de l aide sociale la geographie des prestations sociales et des allocations logement en grande bretagne regional

the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts beatty c and fothergill s 2005 the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts regional studies 39 837 854 around 2 7 million non employed adults of working age in the uk claim sickness related benefits and the numbers have risen steeply over time the very large variation in the numbers across districts and regions points strongly to extensive hidden unemployment especially in older industrial areas affected by job losses this paper builds on two previous papers by the same authors one dealing with the theoretical framework and the other with a local case study to present wholly new estimates of the scale of the diversion across all parts of the country it also questions contemporary perceptions of the uk labour market and the validity of current approaches to re engaging sickness claimants with employment

further reflections on hidden unemployment an examination of the off flows from the claimant count in the north west of england one of the most significant set of papers to come out of the portfolio of regional studies association publications in recent years has concerned the exposure of the levels of hidden unemployment in many of the old industrial areas of britain see for instance labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields regional studies 30 7 1997 627 640 the authors of these papers christina beatty and stephen fothergill have generated a debate that has uncovered major implications for the way the regional problem is measured perceived and tackled although these are important in terms of regional economic development strategies and policies it remains to be seen how the failure to count the real levels of unemployment will impact on the review of regional policy assisted areas the designation of european structural fund areas and the successful introduction of such initiatives as the new deal and welfare to work underpinning and deepening the rigour of t

recovery or stagnation britain s older industrial towns since the recession britain s older industrial towns have long been known to face economic problems however in the aftermath of the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis recorded unemployment in the town

the role of natural capital in sustaining livelihoods in remote mountainous regions the case of upper svaneti republic of georgia in the greater caucasus of the republic of georgia proponents of a new ski tourism zone and long term timber concessions claim that new wage opportunities will benefit households these developments will also limit access to common pool resources cprs this study uses the sustainable livelihoods framework to identify the conditions under which a development strategy will improve livelihood outcomes in the region analysis of original household survey data in depth interviews and field observation reveals that households depend on cprs for a range of market and non market benefits low income households depend on cprs for up to 60 of their total income ols regression estimates show that households in villages farthest from market centers have a higher income dependence on cprs and are more likely to participate in forest use activities a majority of households report that there are few available substitutes to improve livelihood outcomes a development strategy should secure access to market benefits from cprs or wage income must increase in proportion to lost cpr income and affordable substitutes must be provided access to non substitutable components of cprs must be secured and the distribution of changes in access to natural capital and new wage opportunities must be accounted for

aggregate concentration market concentration and diversification studies of business concentration have traditionally focused on two alternative levels of aggregation overall or aggregate concentration is concerned with the extent to which the macro economy or broad sectors thereof is dominated by the largest firms this is commonly measured by the share of aggregate activity accounted for by the largest ioo firms market concentration on the other hand is concerned with the dominance of individual markets by the leading firms therein this is measured variously by the herfindahl or entropy indices concentration ratios etc markets often being defined at the minimum list heading m l h level e g sugar bricks tobacco etc rather surprisingly these two subjects have generated traditions of research which are in the main independent of each other on the theoretical level there appears to exist no formal statement of the relation between aggregate and market concentration and because of this we have no empirical examinations of fairly interesting and obvious questions for example while we know that in the united kingdom both aggregate and market concentration have grown throughout much of the post war period we do not have estimates of what proportion of growth in theformer can be attributed to growth in the latter this paper has two objectives first in section i we establish that a simple formal relation does exist between the two concepts we choose to illustrate that relation using the herfindahl concentration index but it is clear that similar results could be derived using alternative measures in fact the relationship which emerges is particularly convenient for analytical purposes aggregate concentration is found to be proportional to the weighted sum of market concentration in constituent industries where the factor of proportionality has an obvious interpretation as an index of diversification second and having established this it is clear that we have a framework in which a number of interesting theoretical and empirical developments are possible in the present paper we consider one such development this is an empirical application described in section ii which involves using the relationship in conjunction with census size distribution tables to derive estimates of the degree of diversification at various levels of aggregation given the ready availability of census data as opposed to the major data collection exercises usually involved in studies of diversification this raises the real possibility of increasing our knowledge of the industrial distribution and time series development of diversification with comparatively little effort as a worked example in section iii we report some findings on

a measure of horizontal inequity politicians academicians and the general public alike have perceived that the status quo tax and transfer legislation creates inequities among living units tax laws create numerous situations in which living units with seemingly equal abilities to pay are taxed quite different amounts state by state differences in welfare eligibility rules benefit schedules and administrative procedures the general unavailability of cash welfare to childless nonaged healthy couples and single individuals and other features of transfer programs similarly provide vastly different levels of income support to units with equal needs advocates of major tax and welfare reform have marshalled such evidence into a central argument in favor of their proposals while there is wide agreement that the process of redistributing incomes abounds with inequities there have been few attempts to quantify their extent 2 this paper develops a measure of horizontal inequity and illustrates its use section ii discusses the concept of horizontal equity then builds upon familiar lorenz curve gini coefficient analysis to derive the inequity index the third part considers some problems of implementing the measure and illustrates it section iv provides a short conclusion

equity equality and welfare this paper argues that horizontal equity he and vertical equity ve are two of the basic commands of social justice and can be seen as hierarchical the information content of the ve command is sufficient also to implement he a general vector specification of inequity is proposed for a tariff treatment system which does not satisfy he and ve in the case of the income tax the distinction between the he and ve commands and the nr no reranking criterion which has coexisted in the income tax literature with these for the last 15 years is drawn a complication not recognised by he and ve is the effect of pursuing the common interest efficiency goal of the tariff the paper concludes with a call for further work on the meaning and implementation of concepts of justice in direct taxation and on the common interest dimension

why have uk disability benefit rolls grown so much abstract over the last 30 years many countries including the uk have seen a dramatic rise in the share of the working age population receiving sickness and disability benefits hereafter disability benefits this is despite health levels that are generally thought to be slowly improving this paper describes the time path of uk disability benefit rolls and explores the existing uk literature together with literature from the usa in search of potential explanations for it since the early 1990s despite a number of detailed descriptive studies surprisingly little attention has been paid to quantifying the importance of the different factors believed to be driving the uk benefit roll growth this is all the more surprising given the continued growth and the level of policy attention recently and currently devoted to disability benefits in the uk

thank goodness for stickiness unravelling the evolution of income related health inequalities before and after the great recession in europe the great recession in europe sparked concerns that the crisis would lead to increased income related health inequalities irhi did this come to pass and what role if any did government transfers play in the evolution of these inequalities motivated by these questions this paper seeks to i study the evolution of irhi during the crisis and ii decompose these evolutions to examine the separate roles of government versus market transfers using panel data for 7 eu countries from 2004 to 2013 we find no evidence that irhi persistently rose after 2008 even in countries most affected by the crisis our decomposition reveals that while the health of the poorest did indeed worsen during the crisis irhi were prevented from increasing by the relative stickiness of old age pension benefits compared to the market incomes of younger groups austerity measures weakened the irhi reducing effect of government transfers

empirical measurement of horizontal inequity abstract horizontal inequity is the unequal treatment of equals a crucial problem arising when measuring its extent is how should differential treatment which has some equity justification be distinguished from that which does not the literature to date has suggested that genuine equals can be identified and thence the problem solved by adjusting incomes prior to calculations using equivalence scales the paper argues that there are some good reasons for considering an alternative approach labelled partial symmetry in this the emphasis is on measuring horizontal inequity within each group of households with the same equity relevant characteristics rather than on adjusting incomes and then using the same measure for all households in the population the approaches are compared theoritically with reference to summary indices based on the generalised entropy family and to the conditions required to make partial orderings of different redistributions exploratory empirical work suggests there has been a substantial reduction in the horizontal inequity of u k direct taxes between 1976 and 1981 whichever approach is used the sources of the inequity observed are analysed in detail

how income transfer programs affect work savings and the income distribution a critical review for helpful comments on earlier drafts we thank without implicating moses abramovitz yves balcer john bishop alan blinder richard burkhauser michael darby irwin garfinkel alan gustman daniel hamermesh martin holmer george jakubson robert lampman paul menchik robert moffitt michael murray joseph quinn timothy smeeding eugene smolensky barbara wolfe and two anonymous referees

labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields beatty c and fothergill s 1996 labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields reg studies 30 627 640 the paper explores the labour market consequences of the near terminal decline of employment in the uk coal industry despite the job loss registered unemployment has not risen using labour market accounts derived mainly from census of population data the paper examines the roles of migration commuting job creation and changes in labour force participation as mediating influences substantial hidden male unemployment is exposed and rates of real unemployment are also calculated beatty c et fothergill s 1996 l ajustement du marche du travail dans les zones serieusement touchees par le declin industriel cas d etude des bassins houillers au royaume uni reg studies 30 627 640 cet article cherche a examiner l impact sur le marche du travail du declin quasi terminal de l emploi dans l industrie houillere au royaume uni en depit des supp

market share stability in commercial airline markets and the impact of deregulation while the degree of rivalry in a market is often concealed and therefore difficult to observe directly various measures of market share variation have been used in the literature as an indicat or of behavior using a similar measure the primary task of this stu dy is to estimate the degree to which rivalry both price and nonpric e had actually increased during the first two years of deregulation the paper also provides an analytical framework which may be used to assess the impact of regulatory reform on rivalry in other industrie s copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

shocks income and wealth do they affect the extraction of natural resources by rural households summary this paper examines the effects of household and village level characteristics on environmental reliance and participation in resource extraction decisions unlike previous analyses that used case studies or regional samples i use a nationally representative sample of rural households rounds i and ii of the mexico national rural household survey enhrum econometric results show that participation in resource extraction follows an inverted u shaped relationship with income and that environmental reliance decreases with income beyond income results show that relatively wealthy households in rural mexico are less likely to participate in resource extraction and have lower reliance than those with less wealth there is also clear evidence that natural resources provide some sort of insurance for households that are subjected to negative agricultural shocks

building on poor people s capacities the case of common property resources in india and west africa revised version of a paper commissioned by the international development research centre idrc of canada for a world bank conference on poverty environment growth linkages held in washington dc march 1999

disability capacity for work and the business cycle an international perspective important policy issues arise from the high and growing number of people claiming disability benefits for reasons of incapacity for work in oecd countries economic conditions play an important part in explaining both the stock of disability benefit claimants and inflows to and outflows from that stock employing a variety of cross country and country specific household panel data sets as well as administrative data we find strong evidence that local variations in unemployment have an important explanatory role for disability benefit receipt with higher total enrolments lower outflows from rolls and often higher inflows into disability rolls in regions and periods of above average unemployment in understanding the nature of the cyclical fluctuations and trends in disability it is important to distinguish between work disability and health disability the former is likely to be influenced by economic conditions and welfare programmes while the latter evolves in a slower fashion with medical technology and demographic changes there is little evidence of health disability being related to the business cycle so cyclical variations are driven by work disability the rise in unemployment due to the current global economic crisis is expected to increase the number of disability insurance claimants

old industrial regions and employability inactivity has been growing across the developed world and is especially high in old industrial areas a general move towards more flexible labour markets and the restructuring in these regions ove

a theory of employment unemployment and sickness beatty c fothergill s and macmillan r 2000 a theory of employment unemployment and sickness reg studies 34 617 630 this paper explains how the measurement of unemployment is distorted by the way that sickness is defined and counted by social security systems drawing on the concepts of hidden sickness the queue for jobs and hidden unemployment and on empirical observations from the uk it shows how job loss can result in increased recorded sickness rather than recorded unemployment it also shows how this process may vary between localities and countries the argument has profound implications for perceptions of the true extent of unemployment and of labour market disparities between regions beatty c fothergill s et macmillan r 2000 l emploi le chomage et la maladie une theorie reg studies 34 617 630 cet article chercheaexpliquer comment la mesure du chomage s avere fausseeacause de la fac on dont la secu definit maladie et la comptabilise puisant dans des notions de

reranking and pro poor growth decompositions for china and vietnam abstract reranking in the move from one income distribution to another makes it impossible to infer from changes in lorenz and generalised lorenz curves how income growth among those toward the bottom of the initial income distribution compares to that among those toward the top and whether there has been income growth among those who were initially poor decompositions allowing for reranking indicate that economic growth in china and vietnam has been better for households who were initially poor than changes in the lorenz and generalised lorenz curve and poverty growth curve would suggest

regional unemployment in poland rural urban contrasts unemployment continues to bedevil poland albeit with striking sub national differences which this article seeks to explain using random effects error component two stage estimation for the country s nuts 4 nomenclature des unites territoriales statistiques level powiats given the economy s peculiar configuration under communism with its large private agricultural sector emphasis is placed on rural urban differences while less densely populated areas do suffer higher unemployment rates the effect is moderated by hidden unemployment in farming on the other hand powiats that housed the ex state farms suffer a negative long term legacy other notable results include an evident positive impact of foreign capital on local labour market fortunes

a new measure of horizontal equity in this paper we propose a new measure of horizontal equity that overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous proposed measures our starting point is the observation that a well behaved social welfare function need not evaluate global vertical equity differences in after tax income using the same weights it applies to local horizontal equity differences even though this constraint has been applied in the past following work on the structure of individual preferences we show that a social welfare function can imply different preferences toward horizontal and vertical equity adopting the general approach to the measurement of inequality developed by atkinson 1970 we use such a social welfare function to derive measures of inequality that are decomposable into components naturally interpreted as indices of horizontal and vertical equity in particular the former index measures deviations from the fundamental principle that equals be treated equally finally we apply our new measure to two tax return data sets evaluating the degree to which the horizontal equity of the us personal income tax has changed over time and how horizontal equity would be altered by one version of recent proposals to do away with the so called marriage penalty this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

static versus dynamic measures of aggregate concentration the case of fortune s 500 studies of business concentration have usually made a distinction between market concentration which is concerned with the dominance of individual markets by the leading firms therein 4 182 and aggregate concentration which looks at the degree of control exercised over a large portion of some aggregate of economic activity assets sales value added by a small absolute or relative number of firms 17 239 various indexes such as the concentration ratio the hirschman herfindahl the rosenbluth the hannah and key or the entropy index have been proposed to measure such a concentration 17 22 but the general idea has always been that a higher degree of concentration of output or sales implies a greater extent of monopoly power in a given market or industry some authors have however questioned the choice of such concentration indices in particular those looking at the relative size of leading firms as measures of market control demsetz 7 3 has for example criticized the public policy implications which are too often derived from analyses of market structure if rivals seek better ways to satisfy buyers or to produce a product and if one or a few succeed in such endeavors then the reward for their entrepreneurial efforts is likely to be some short term monopoly power and this may be associated with increased industrial concentration to destroy such power when it arises may very well remove the incentive for progress this is to be contrasted with a situation in which a high rate of return is obtained through a successful collusion to restrict output here there is less danger to progress if the collusive agreement is penalized in fact as argued by gort 14 51 a high degree of concentration may be consistent with considerable instability in the market shares of individual firms in judging the intensity of competition in an industry the ability of leading firms to maintain their relative position in a market is probably more significant than the extent of concentration at a single point in time this is why simon and bonini 32 616 suggested that a measure of mobility for firms would appear to provide a better index of what we mean by equality of opportunity than do the usual measures of concentration such a point of view was also shared by joskow 19 113 when he stated that

between ostrom and nordhaus the research landscape of sustainability economics abstract we survey the emerging research area of sustainability economics through a quantitative full text analysis of peer reviewed journal publications from 1987 to 2013 to identify relevant contributions we draw on existing definitions of sustainability economics for a keyword based identification strategy a combined focus on a the human nature relationship b the long term uncertain future c normative orientation towards sustainability and d economic analysis our analysis of a random subsample of 343 relevant papers reveals that i sustainability economics is a rapidly developing research area ii while theoretical contributions shaped the area in earlier years applied work now constitutes the largest share of contributions iii the research landscape can be clustered into eleven research clusters these range from participatory governance of social ecological systems associated with the work of elinor ostrom to questions of intertemporal allocation and distribution applied to climate economics associated with the work of william nordhaus iv the research area is broad in scope and heterogeneous and there is relatively little interaction between important clusters v relevant contributions are published in more than 100 journals ten journals publish half of all contributions led by ecological economics and 40 appear in non economics journals underscoring the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

why do disability benefit rolls vary between regions a review of the evidence from the usa and the uk mcvicar d 2006 why do disability benefit rolls vary between regions a review of the evidence from the usa and the uk regional studies 40 519 533 over the last 30 years many organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries have seen a dramatic rise in the share of the working age population receiving earnings replacement sickness and disability benefits the reasons behind this growth particularly for the usa but also to a lesser extent elsewhere have been extensively researched in the economics literature what have been less well researched are the large spatial differences in the size of disability benefit rolls that have emerged in some countries over this period the uk displays a distinct regional pattern where working age men and women in the north are considerably more likely to be claiming disability benefits than those in the south the usa has its own version of the north south divide with many southern states displaying disproportionately large disabilit

evaluating effective income tax progression abstract an algorithm to compute effective income tax progression is devised for use when taxes are a function of both money income and other socioeconomic attributes and the data is in grouped summary form suppressing non income information effective progression can be evaluated at percentiles in the distribution of either money or equivalent income the normative significance of the new measures is explained in both cases the methodology is illustrated by application to u s individual income tax annual data for 1950 1987 yielding contour plots which show how effective progression has varied across the income distribution and with the passage of time

assessing poverty deforestation links evidence from swat pakistan abstract this paper contributes to the debate on the links between poverty and forestry degradation the view that due to poverty and the meeting of subsistence needs the poor use natural resources more intensively and hence cause them to degrade using the case of the forest rich swat district pakistan the paper addresses the issue empirically historically and institutionally we do not find empirical support for the poverty environment nexus in that the poor and other income groups are equally resource dependent and also show that resource degradation is not associated with poverty our historical and institutional analyses provide alternative explanations for resource degradation selective and rotating ownership patterns starting with the 17th century provided limited incentive for resource conservation it also created tension between de jure and de facto owners that has persisted and is one source of forest degradation ill defined resource rights have also exacerbated the impacts of several other factors contributing to forest degradation which is compounded by poor management corruption and perverse incentives

hidden unemployment among men a case study the debate about the extent of hidden unemployment is central to understanding the contemporary uk labour market this paper provides a detailed case study of one area barrow in furness where major industrial job losses have co existed with falling claimant unemployment among men using aggregate statistics and new survey evidence it argues that these trends mask extensive hidden unemployment especially among men on sickness related benefits comparisons are also made with areas covered by similar surveys the paper concludes that the claimant and international labour organization measures of unemployment both appear deeply flawed in the uk context because of the diversion from unemployment to sickness benefits le debat sur l importance du chomage cache est essentiel a la comprehension du marche du travail contemporain au royaume uni cet article cherche a fournir une etude de cas detaillee d une zone barrow in furness ou d importantes suppressions d emplois ont coexiste avec une baisse du nomb

statistical inference for the measurement of the incidence of taxes and transfers we establish the asymptotic sampling distribution of general functions of quantile based estimators computed from samples that are not necessarily independent the results provide the statistical framework within which to assess the progressivity of taxes and benefits their horizontal inequity and the change in the inequality of income which they cause by the same token these findings characterise the sampling distribution of a number of popular indices of progressivity horizontal inequity and redistribution they can also be used to assess welfare and inequality changes using panel data and to assess poverty when it depends on estimated population quantiles we illustrate these results using micro data on the incidence of taxes and benefits in canada

redistributive effect progressivity and differential tax treatment personal income taxes in twelve oecd countries this paper decomposes the redistributive effect of the personal income taxes pits of twelve oecd countries into four components i an average rate effect ii a departure from proportionality or progressivity effect iii a horizontal equity effect and iv a reranking effect the product of i and ii indicates the vertical redistribution associated with the pit and the sum of iii and iv indicates the impact on the distribution of income of differential tax treatment the average tax rate is found to be low in france and high in the nordic countries and the pit is found to be most progressive in france ireland and spain and least progressive in denmark and sweden taking i and ii together denmark and the us achieve broadly similar levels of vertical redistributive effect differential treatment is found to have a much smaller effect on income redistribution as a proportion of redistributive effect than the vertical redistribution caused by progressivity though there are differences between countries these differences appear to be due principally to a different emphasis on deductions such as tax deductibility of mortgage interest payments and insurance premiums and on local income tax

income and the environment in rural india is there a poverty trap we study the relationships between rural income distributions and changes in environmental conditions in southern western and central india between 1994 95 and 2000 01 other than the relatively rich we find that all income strata benefit from an improved environment and intermediate expenditure households benefit more than the very poor in absolute terms higher median consumption expenditures and richness are estimated to increase environmental decline but we do not find a significant impact of income poverty on local environmental health the results do not support the poverty trap conjecture with environmental degradation driving expenditure reductions that promote offsetting aforestation which benefits the poor

hidden male unemployment in northern ireland armstrong d 1999 hidden male unemployment in northern ireland reg studies 33 499 511 in recent years there has been growing research evidence in the uk to suggest that official unemployment figures do not accurately reflect the true extent of joblessness mainly because they ignore aspects of economic inactivity such as long term sickness early retirement and participation on government employment and training schemes this paper examines the nature and extent of hidden unemployment in northern ireland and in different local areas within northern ireland the paper shows that there are large numbers of people who do not appear in official unemployment figures but who under plausible assumptions ought to be considered to be part of the stock of unemployed the results show that if the hidden component of joblessness is accounted for total male unemployment in northern ireland is more than one third higher than official figures suggest armstrong d 1999 le chomage masculin deguise en irlande

flows funds and the complexity of deprivation using concepts from ecological economics for the study of poverty abstract poverty has been increasingly conceptualized as being multidimensional involving deprivation in many dimensions of life this paper discusses issues and implications of multidimensional poverty by adopting concepts commonly used in ecological economics in particular poverty is approached as an irreducible complex phenomenon for which many legitimate but non equivalent descriptions exist issues of social and technical incommensurability are illustrated for different meanings and measurement types of poverty georgescu roegen s flow fund framework is interpreted informed by the capability approach of amartya sen the paper argues that a predominant focus on flows as a proxy to analyze poverty represents rather a short term perspective on access to satisfiers to fulfill particular needs contrary to that focusing on valued funds may provide useful information for the analysis of capabilities that persons and societies might pursue in the long term furthermore it is argued that strong poverty alleviation needs to adopt analytical tools that can deal with non trade off cases improvements in one poverty dimension cannot always compensate for the deterioration of other poverties this implies to rethink the usefulness of aggregate multidimensional poverty indices as well as the predominant use of income measures

local labour supply and demand interactions in britain during the 1980s green a e and owen d w 1991 local labour supply and demand interactions in britain during the 1980s reg studies 25 295 314 this paper attempts to identify the influence of labour supply and demand trends upon local employment prospects during the 1980s through the application of the local labour market accounts technique for the 322 travel to work areas ttwas of great britain the individual components of the accounts are estimated for each ttwa for two different time periods first 1981 4 characterized by economic depression conditions and secondly 1984 7 characterized by improved economic circumstances a cluster analysis classification of ttwas is then developed in order to identify similarities and differences between local areas in their responses to changing economic circumstances green a e et owen d w 1991 l interaction de l offre et de la demande du travail en grande bretagne pendant les annees 80 reg studies 25 295 314 cet article a pour but d identifier l effet de

poverty and resource dependence in rural india abstract previous studies of rural households in developing countries have tended to find that the dependence of these households on common pool resources declines with income our study of households in jhabua india finds a more complex relationship using the share of resource income in total long run or permanent income as our dependence measure which we argue is more appropriate than the short run income based measure commonly used in the literature we find that for households that collect any resources at all dependence exhibits a u shaped relationship with income that is the poorest and richest households depend more on resources than households with intermediate incomes the poorest and richest households are also found to be least likely to collect however indicating that resource use at the income extremes is bimodal either zero or above average moreover the observed trends for resources as a whole are not mirrored in those for individual resources dependence on fuelwood and dung declines with income for example while dependence on fodder and construction wood increases these findings suggest that common pool resources are a productive source of income not just for the poor but also for the rich and that improvements in the stocks of these resources can potentially form the basis of poverty reduction efforts in these economies

the true scale of the regional problem in the uk this article argues that the scale of unemployment in the uk and the differences between regions are severely understated by claimant unemployment data it explains how unemployment becomes hidden in particular by a major diversion of older and less healthy workers from unemployment related benefits and how this process is especially marked in the traditional industrial parts of northern britain the true scale of regional differences in joblessness is also underlined by employment rates in different parts of the country

the heckman correction for sample selection and its critique this paper gives a short overview of monte carlo studies on the usefulness of heckman s 1976 1979 two step estimator for estimating selection models such models occur frequently in empirical work especially in microeconometrics when estimating wage equations or consumer expenditures it is shown that exploratory work to check for collinearity problems is strongly recommended before deciding on which estimator to apply in the absence of collinearity problems the full information maximum likelihood estimator is preferable to the limited information two step method of heckman although the latter also gives reasonable results if however collinearity problems prevail subsample ols or the two part model is the most robust amongst the simple to calculate estimators

progressivity horizontal inequality and reranking caused by health system financing a decomposition analysis for switzerland abstract this paper presents an application of the duclos et al duclos j y jalbert v araar a 2003 classical horizontal inequity and reranking an integrated approach research on economic inequality 10 65 100 decomposition to an analysis of the 1998 swiss health system financing we see that in addition to measuring horizontal inequality in the classical sense this decomposition is more efficient and flexible than earlier ones it is also pointed out that methods involving a nonparametric estimation lead to asymptotically biased vertical and horizontal effects a procedure to estimate this bias is given finally it is shown that despite a major reform health system financing is still very regressive and social health insurance is more regressive than direct financing

equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting abstract we propose a general approach that jointly integrates horizontal and vertical equity criteria in the assessment of poverty alleviation programs with the strength of each criterion being captured through its own inequity aversion parameter this contrasts with the assessment of poverty alleviation programs done with simple under coverage and leakage ratios or with other methods that do not take into account the heterogeneity of the poor and that do not address directly the social benefits of achieving normative criteria our methodology is illustrated using tunisian data and two alternative poverty alleviation policies we find inter alia that the social ranking of commodity and socio demographic targeting in tunisia depends on the policymaker s comparative preference for vertical and horizontal equity

longitudinal analysis of income related health inequality this paper considers the characterisation and measurement of income related health inequality using longitudinal data the paper elucidates the nature of the jones and lopez nicolas 2004 index of health related income mobility and explains the negative values of the index that have been reported in all the empirical applications to date the paper further presents an alternative approach to the analysis of longitudinal data that brings out complementary aspects of the evolution of income related health inequalities over time in particular we propose a new index of income related health mobility that measures whether the pattern of health changes is biased in favour of those with initially high or low incomes we illustrate our work by investigating mobility in the general health questionnaire measure of psychological well being over the first nine waves of the british household panel survey from 1991 to 1999

empirical regularities in the poverty environment relationship of rural households evidence from zimbabwe abstract analysis of rural households and environmental resources is beset by inadequate data especially in africa using purpose collected panel data from zimbabwe we demonstrate seven empirical regularities in the rural poverty environment relationship most important environmental resources make a significant contribution to average rural incomes poorer households also depend heavily on these resources which contribute c 40 to their incomes richer households however use greater quantities of environmental resources in total finally considerable differentiation exists in the economic characteristics of environmental goods these results demonstrate the considerable economic significance of environmental resources to rural households surveys which ignore them miscalculate rural incomes and welfare

economic change and the labour market in britain s seaside towns beatty c and fothergill s 2004 economic change and the labour market in britain s seaside towns reg studies 38 461 480 for thirty years britain s seaside towns have faced the challenge of the rising popularity of foreign holidays this paper explores how their economies have adapted and in particular the extent to which high claimant unemployment in many of the towns is rooted in local job loss by deploying labour market accounts for 1971 to 2001 the paper shows that in fact the continuing imbalance in seaside labour markets owes more to high levels of in migration than to job loss and even the sectors of the local economy most closely linked to tourism show growth in employment