Influence of Race on Household Residential Utility

Residential location choice models are an important tool employed by urban geographers, planners, and transportation engineers for understanding household residential location behavior and for predicting future residential location activity. Racial segregation and residential racial preferences have been studied extensively using a variety of analysis techniques in social science research, but racial preferences have generally not been adequately incorporated into residential location choice models. This research develops residential location choice model specifications with a variety of alternative methods of addressing racial preferences in residential location decisions. The research tests whether social class, family structure, and in‐group racial preferences are sufficient to explain household sensitivity to neighborhood racial composition. The importance of the interaction between the proportion of in‐group race neighbors and other‐race neighbors is also evaluated. Models for the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area are estimated and evidence of significant avoidance behavior by households of all races is found. The results suggest that social class differences, family structure differences, and in‐group racial preferences alone are not sufficient to explain household residential racial preference and that households of all races practice racial avoidance behavior. Particularly pronounced avoidance of black neighbors by Asian households, Hispanic neighbors by black households, and Asian neighbors by white households are found. Evidence of a decrease in household racial avoidance intensity in neighborhoods with large numbers of own‐race neighbors is also found.     

Perceptions of Risk among Households in Two Australian Coastal Communities

There is limited knowledge of risk perceptions in coastal communities despite their vulnerability to a range of risks including the impacts of climate change. A survey of 400 households in two Australian coastal communities, combined with semi‐structured interviews, provides insight into household perceptions of the relative importance of climatic and non‐climatic risks and the subsequent risk priorities that may inform household adaptive action. In contrast to previous research, the results demonstrated that geographic location and household characteristics might not affect perceptions of vulnerability to environmental hazards. However, past experience was a significant influence, raising the priority of environmental concerns. Overall, the results highlight the priority concerns of coastal households (from finance, to health and environment) and suggest to increase the profile of climate issues in coastal communities climate change strategies need to better demonstrate links between climate vulnerability and other household concerns. Furthermore, promoting generic capacities in isolation from understanding the context in which households construe climate risks is unlikely to yield the changes required to decrease the vulnerability of coastal communities.     

微观视角下中国大城市家庭汽车拥有情况研究——以北京市为例

目前国内从微观角度对家庭汽车所有权的研究很少。本文试图基于对北京市的一项大型问卷调查数据,从微观视角分析中国大城市家庭汽车所有权的主要影响因素。结果显示,中国城市家庭汽车所有权主要受能力因素和需求因素两方面影响。具体而言,家庭收入越高、持有驾照的成员数越多、户主受教育程度越高、户主年龄越大、离地铁站越远,家庭拥有汽车的可能性越大。家庭规模、家庭内的孩子数及是否住在内城等在国外研究中较为重要的解释变量在国内并不显著。有车家庭的户主在日常通勤中对汽车的使用强度较高,说明居民购买汽车主要为满足实际需要,"炫耀性"消费的因素不多。     

Gender and household decision-making in a Lao Village: implications for livelihoods in hydropower development

Hydropower development with concomitant changes in water and land regimes often results in livelihood transformation of affected people, entailing changes in intra-household decision-making upon which livelihood strategies are based. Economic factors underlying gender dimensions of household decision-making have been studied rigorously since the 1970s. However, empirical data on gender and decision-making within households, needed for evidence-based action, remain scarce. This is more so in hydropower contexts. This article explores gender and livelihood-related decision-making within rural households in the context of hydropower development in Lao PDR. Based on a social well-being conceptual approach with data from a household survey and qualitative interviews, it focuses on household decisions in an ethnic minority resettlement site soon after displacement, from an interpretive perspective. The article, first, aims to assess the extent to which household decision-making is gendered and secondly, to understand the complex reasoning behind household decisions, especially the relevance of material, relational, and subjective factors. It argues that while most household decisions are ostensibly considered as ‘joint’ in the study site, the nuanced nature of gendered values, norms, practices, relations, attitudes, and feelings underlying these decisions are important to assessing why households might or might not adopt livelihood interventions proposed by hydropower developers.     

Location choice,life cycle and amenities

Our study proposes a housing location choice model where a household faces a trade‐off between proximity to place of employment and proximity to amenities. We consider subsamples of high amenity cities and low amenity cities and households with and without children. We show that the roles of gender, education, homeownership, household composition, and public transportation vary significantly depending on level of amenities. Households with a female head of household, those with a working spouse and with older children prefer locating closer to downtown amenities. Female workers with and without children locate closer to work, in high and low amenity cities.     

经济地理学中的农户研究

中国目前约有2/3的人口生活在农村,农村地区的发展成为中国区域发展中令人关注的大问题。然而,经济地理学在农区发展的研究中,存在一个明显的缺陷,既大多数研究均忽视了农区经济中最基本的单位-农户。文章分析了忽视农户对地理学研究的局限,论述了农户与农区的关系,评述了国内外的相关研究成果,提出在经济地理学的农户研究中,应加强农户发展环境研究、基于农户的农区发展模型研究、农户与地理环境相互作用研究、基于农户的农区发展战略研究。     

基于农户视角的农区发展研究

基于河南省11村的1251农户调查数据的分析表明:①农村发展的主要障碍是资金缺乏以及农区发展环境约束,农民自身素能(如缺乏技术、文化水平低等)也有一定影响。②农区发展中最希望得到的外部支持是给项目建厂或提供资金支持,还有一些农户期望政府提供其他发展生产上的帮助。③农户对未来的期望以改善生活条件为主,且随着未来时间段的变长,他们的总体期望变得更加模糊。④多数农户(占样本71.58%)对其生活现状"基本满意"或"满意"。⑤农户对其发展的考虑,受多种因素的影响。其中家庭收入状况、受教育水平、地理环境等的作用更为明显。基于农户视角对农区发展的分析,对有关农区发展政策的设计有借鉴意义。     

Poor Areas,or Only Poor People?

Anti-poverty programs often target poor areas even when there is seemingly free migration. Should such programs focus instead on households with personal attributes that foster poverty, no matter where they live? Possibly not; there may be “hidden” constraints on mobility, or location may reveal otherwise hidden household attributes. Using survey data for Bangladesh we find significant and sizable geographic effects on living standards after controlling for a wide range of nongeographic characteristics of households, as would typically be observable to policy makers. The geographic structure of living standards is reasonably stable over time, consistent with observed migration patterns, and robust to testable sources of bias.     

AUTOMOBILE USE AND LOCATIONAL INTERDEPENDENCIES

ABSTRACT. Congestion and pollution externalities from automobile use are simultaneously included in an urban monocentric model. The externalities enter household utility functions directly, and result in a complex interdependency in household location decisions in the city. Implications of the model are drawn out by a simulation and complete sensitivity analysis. The two unpriced externalities are examined for their impact on urban structure, and contrasted with each other. Also, the effect of changes in speed of travel are examined for the impact on urban structure. Speed affects the level of both external effects, and is affected by location decisions.     

Living above the shop: home, business, and family in the English "Industrial Revolution"

This article explores the living arrangements and familial relations of small business households in northwest English towns between 1760 and 1820. Focusing on evidence from inventories and personal writing, it examines the homes that such households lived and worked in and the ways in which space was ordered and used: indicating that access to particular spaces was determined by status. This study suggests both the continuance of the "household family" into the nineteenth century (rather than its more modern, "nuclear" variant) and the existence of keenly felt gradations of status within households making it likely that the constitution of "the family" differed according to one's place in the domestic hierarchy.     

Migrant household homeownership outcomes in large Chinese cities - the sustained impact of hukou

Homeownership by migrant households in large Chinese cities is increasingly evident and sometimes blamed for driving up local housing prices. Hukou reform grants local hukou to migrants in small cities while it allows large cities to set up hukou entry barriers to control migration. This paper explores whether migrant households’ micro-level characteristics and macro-level urban policies relating to hukou reform have any impact on their housing tenure choices. Using data from a 2009 survey of migrant households in six large cities, this study adopts logistic regression models to examine factors influencing labor migrant households’ tenure decisions. We find that household income and head of household hukou type, contribution to pension fund, and enrollment in health insurance all positively predict homeownership. Migrant households are more likely to be found in cities with larger population size. We argue that city entry barriers create new forms of institutional haves and have-nots and new forms of inequality. The sustained impact of previous hukou types suggests inherited inequalities through intergenerational wealth transfer, which calls for targeted welfare policies to mediate.     

Multiperiod migration patterns: the timing and frequency of household responses

"The structure of intertemporal patterns of household migration responses is empirically examined. The findings indicate that migration decisions are often related to changes in household conditions in both prior as well as following periods, are dependent on the duration of household status characteristics (e.g., marital status) and not just their presence at any point in time, and finally that migration response in any particular period very often differs among households as a result of differences in the underlying structure of migration frequency behavior. These findings suggest that inferences based on comparisons of household migration responses over only a single period of time are incomplete, possibly to the point of being misleading." The study is based on a calculation of "the distribution of migration patterns between 1976 and 1979 for a sample of 4,739 households in the [U.S.] Michigan Panel Survey on Income Dynamics (PSIC)."     

How Wealth Happened in Neolithic Central Europe

This paper advances the proposition that three key technological and logistical systems matured during the fourth and third millennia BC in Late Neolithic/Copper Age Europe: transportation infrastructure, durable goods made of metals, and capital investment in oxen used for traction. As risk rather than uncertainty became the dominant condition under which decisions were made, the convergence of these factors permitted individuals and households to accumulate genuine wealth.     

Securing the Return: How Enhanced US Border Enforcement Fuels Cycles of Debt Migration

Expanded border enforcement has made unauthorised migration to the US more risky, costly, and prone to failure. Research on the material consequences of border enforcement for migrant‐sending households in Central America reveals that the economic hardships enforcement exacts on migrants at times diminishes enforcement's desired deterrent power. Heightened risks have driven up the cost of migration and pushed many to fund their trips through loans. Consequently, migrant detention, deportation, or death can result in poverty and privation for indebted households and the seizure of loan collateral, typically homes and land, in turn prompting crises in household reproduction. With a US wage the most viable means to ameliorate economic hardships, enforcement outcomes push some to return migration. Our findings suggest that US border enforcement efforts at times perpetuate the very unauthorised migration they seek to impede, while also helping to reproduce the border itself by deepening the marginalisation that drives migration decisions.     

A Life‐cycle Model of Locational Choice in a Two‐region Economy*

The ability to use the amenities or other characteristics of a location may be a function of the length of time a household has resided in the location. We explore the implications of the hypothesis that the enjoyment of regional amenities depends on the accumulation of amenity‐specific human capital. We establish that the interaction of this human capital with regional wage rates determines life‐cycle locational trajectories. The model explains the timing of moves in the working and retirement periods of life as well as observed heterogeneity in household behavior. Small differences between households may result in dramatically different life‐cycle behavior.     

Drought,Domestic Budgeting and Wealth Distribution in Sahelian Households

Over the past twenty‐five years, Sahelian households have experienced recurrent harvest failure and greater reliance on remittances from migratory wage labour. Household subsistence has become less dependent on household grain stores and more on the liquidation of individual wealth stores. This study investigates how these broader changes have affected struggles between household members over obligations to support the household in the Zarmaganda region of western Niger. As the land‐derived leverage of male patriarchs has declined and household dependence on individual wealth stores has increased, domestic budgeting has become more contested. Household heads make case‐by‐case moral claims on other household members during times of grain shortage. Women and subordinate males invoke Islamic law, which accords primary provisioning responsibility to the household head, to protect their individual wealth in times of grain deficit. This article investigates the nature of these budgetary struggles, showing how individuals’ decisions to contribute individual wealth to support the household are best understood as highly situated, affected not only by the specific material conditions of the household but also the interplay of the moral, structural, and individualistic imperatives that derive from one’s position within the household. Using reconstructed livestock wealth histories for the members of fifty‐four households in western Niger, this study investigates the material consequences of these struggles. Male heads of corporate households, the historic managers of the household’s land and agricultural labour, have lost wealth relative to their wives and married male subordinates since the drought of 1984.     

Caste and Regional Influences on the Practice of ‘Untouchability’ in India

Millions of people in India are born with scars that will last a lifetime. These are scars of social rather than physical blemish and they reduce the capacity of such persons to function in life, free of prejudice and untainted by stigma. The source of these wounds is the practice of ‘untouchability’, meaning that any physical contact with them is avoided because they are considered ‘unclean’. This article studies the nature of households in India that admit to ‘practising untouchability’ — in the sense of avoiding contact with persons they regard as unclean — and contrasts such households with those that claim to be not ‘practising untouchability’. Such a contrast is possible because the data used, which are from the Indian Human Development Survey, associate with each household a wealth of economic, social and demographic data. Consequently, it is possible to estimate the likelihood of a household practising untouchability, conditional upon the values pertaining to it of a number of relevant factors. These include its social group, its main source of income, the highest educational level of its members, its urban or rural location and its region of residence. The central finding of the analysis is that the practice of untouchability is determined more by the region in which a household is located than by the caste to which it belongs.     

THE PURE THEORY OF HOUSEHOLD LOCATION AN AXIOMATIC APPROACH*

In this paper, I present an axiomatic basis for the neoclassical model of household location in a monocentric urban area. I generalize the existing framework and demonstrate that many of the conclusions derived using parametric models continue to hold even without the popularly assumed well-behaved utility and transportation cost functions.     

西部地区农户经济的空间差异及其发展对策

西部不同地带生态条件的优劣差异决定了西部地区农户经济的空间差异,劣等、中等、优等三类生态条件相应地发育出贫困、温饱、富裕三类群落的农户经济。西部各类农户经济的发展有着不同困难,贫困群落农户脱贫面临人口压力大与生态环境脆弱矛盾突出,及农户人均财政负担重,财政支农能力差的困难,已得温饱的农户面临收入与文化素质低、可带动农户从事产业化经营的企业少的困难,富裕农户面临生产要素流失严重,制度创新滞后的困难。由政府主导,以多种手段、方式带动贫困农户脱贫致富;扶持建立农业合作经营组织,促进已得温饱农户发展农业产业化经营;以制度创新推动富裕农户经济的进一步发展,是应采取的针对性对策。     

MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES

This paper examines patterns of remittances among migrants from Guizhou province of China. Our research is motivated by three lines of theoretical arguments, namely the new economics of migration, a translocal perspective linking remittances and development, and the culture of remittances. Taking individual, household, and village-level characteristics into account, we estimated multilevel logistic models of the decision to remit and multilevel models of the amount of remittances. Our results show that migrant remittance behaviour is responsive to family needs as well as household economic position in the village. Migrants who come from entrepreneurial households are more likely to remit a large amount than other types of households. We find some evidence of ‘culture of remittances’ in these villages. Consistent with our expectations, migrants who are from villages with higher amounts of average remittances are likely to remit a larger amount than otherwise.