Simple Transfers,Complex Outcomes: The Impacts of Pensions on Poor Households in Brazil

Drawing on quantitative survey data and in‐depth interviews, this article seeks to map out the potential direct and indirect effects of simple cash transfers on households in impoverished rural and urban settings. Brazil is shown to have an extensive system of old age pensions, which affords almost universal coverage to households containing older people. These benefits have a significant impact on levels of poverty and vulnerability in recipient households. They also facilitate access to essential healthcare items, such as drugs, which are seldom freely available through the state health system. The in‐depth interviews reveal that pensions can have important effects on intra‐household relations, but these effects were not generalizable nor easily captured by quantitative survey tools. There was clear evidence that pensions reduced the propensity of older people to remain economically active, but this must be understood in a context of limited employment opportunities for all age groups and a high prevalence of disability. Overall, the article demonstrates the complex effects of a relatively simple cash transfer, which policy makers need to take into account.     

Is Land‐based Resettlement Still Appropriate for Rural People in China? A Longitudinal Study of Displacement at the Three Gorges Dam

Now complete, the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on rural livelihoods can be observed. This article presents the first longitudinal analysis of the livelihoods of two groups of rural households that were first surveyed in 2003, just after inundation, and again in 2011. It finds remarkable gains in income and social well‐being along with moderate improvements in food security and income equality. This study explores the livelihood strategies associated with these outcomes, namely land consolidation, agricultural specialization, livelihood diversification and migration. These strategies are discussed in the context of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Three Gorges Resettlement Area over the last decade and across China more broadly. The article concludes that while non‐farm jobs are increasingly important, land remains an essential resource in the reconstruction of rural livelihoods, allowing rural households to respond to their drastically altered environment more effectively and at a pace of their own choosing.     

ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS AND URBAN–SUBURBAN DISPARITIES

ABSTRACT This paper develops a spatially explicit model to examine how urban and suburban communities evolve differently with changes in local economic fundamentals such as rising income or falling commuting costs in the metropolitan area. The model highlights the importance of environmental amenities and the economy of scale in the provision of public services as determinants of urban spatial structure. Results suggest that urban sprawl, income segregation, and jurisdictional disparities are driven by the same economic conditions and thus tend to co‐exist. Rising incomes or falling commuting costs for high‐income households in a metropolitan area tend to increase land prices and public services in every community, while rising incomes or falling commuting costs for low‐income households can have the opposite effects.     

Income Inequality and Wealth Concentration in the Recent Crisis

This article shows that the increase of income inequality and global wealth concentration was an important driver for the financial and Eurozone crisis. The high levels of income inequality resulted in balance of payment imbalances and growing debt levels. Rising wealth concentration contributed to the crisis because the increasing asset demand from the rich played a key role in the growth of the structured credit market and enabled poor and middle‐income households to accumulate increasing amounts of debt. This analysis thereby puts both income and wealth inequality at the epicentre of the recent crisis, and as crucial for social scientists analysing the causes of the crisis. The authors’ findings suggest that the policy response to the crisis should not be limited to financial regulation but must involve policies to address inequality by increasing the bargaining power of labour as well as redistributive tax policies.     

LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICE PROVISION AND SPATIAL INEQUALITY IN CHINESE CITIES: THE ROLE OF RESIDENTIAL INCOME SORTING AND LAND‐USE CONDITIONS

Spatial inequality refers to unequal access to local public services between high‐ and low‐income households in relation to their residential locations. We examine two hypotheses regarding the role of income sorting and land‐use conditions in shaping spatial inequality in Chinese cities, where residents have little direct influence on local public service provision. First, in the presence of resource indivisibility, travel cost, and location‐based rationing, scarcity of public‐service resources in a city makes access to public services more uneven across neighborhoods, thus exacerbating income sorting and spatial inequality in the city. Second, the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity is mitigated by land‐use conditions that limit income sorting. Estimates of willingness to pay by households of different income levels for public‐service resources across cities corroborate both the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity and the mitigating effect of inclusive land‐use conditions.     

Growth and Convergence in a Multiregional Model with Space–Time Dynamics. 多区域时空动态模型的增长与收敛

The goal of this article is to test four distinct hypotheses about whether the relative location of an economy affects economic growth and economic well‐being using an extended Solow–Swan neoclassical growth model that incorporates both space and time dynamics. We show that the econometric specification takes the form of an unconstrained spatial Durbin model, and we investigate whether the results depend on some methodological issues, such as the choice of the time span and the inclusion of fixed effects. To estimate the fixed effects spatial Solow–Swan model, we adjust the Arrelano and Bond (1991) generalized method‐of‐moments (GMM) estimator to deal with endogeneity not only arising from the initial income level, as in the basic model, but also from the initial income levels and economic growth rates observed in neighboring economies.     

Understanding Chinese Consumption: The Impact of Hukou

Since the onset of the economic reforms more than three decades ago, the Chinese growth miracle has been based on exports and investment. While strong output growth was maintained even during the financial crisis, imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable development path, recent government policies have aimed to improve the role of private consumption. This article argues that China's institutional framework is an impediment to this strategy, as it weakens the incentives of households to consume. As well as a low level of social security and highly regulated financial markets, the authors stress the relevance of the hukou system as the main driver for modest consumption, especially in recent years. After controlling for different income levels, the average propensity to consume is found to be significantly lower for migrants, as their access to public services is limited. If not accompanied by relevant reforms, the urbanization strategy of the government is likely to raise the number of migrants with limited hukou rights, further increasing the downward pressure on consumption. Therefore, in the absence of reforms in the household registration system, the shift towards consumption‐driven growth is at risk.     

Innovative strategies of political regionalization: the case of North Rhine‐Westphalia

This article deals with two innovative public policy instruments instituted in North Rhine‐Westphalia (Germany) over the last two decades: the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park and the regionalization of structural policies. Both instruments are characterized by the introduction of a greater flexibility, decentralization and new forms of organization as well as the integration of sectoral policies within the public sector. Paradoxically, these regionalized public policies have not been bottom‐up but rather top‐down. Their institution reflects the state's determination to show its ability to effect change despite the fact that overall structural changes in the economic and the political subsystems have severely curtailed public sector powers. The state demonstrates that aptitude by initiating diverse and case‐specific forms of restructuring the political apparatus. The article looks into the specific features of both policy instruments and tries to position the empirical evidence within the current debate on the shift in importance between various planning levels in Europe.     

An economic assessment of informal recreation policy in the Scottish countryside

Countryside recreation policy in Scotland is currently delivered through numerous ad hoc arrangements. This paper assesses the economic effectiveness of these arrangements using cost‐benefit analysis. The benefits associated with recreation enhancements are measured using the contingent valuation method, while the costs are assessed through a survey of public and voluntary section expenditure on informal recreation. The analysis demonstrates that recreation policies are generally economically efficient in that they target enhancement programmes that are shown to generate high economic benefits. The exception to this is related to investments in visitor centres. The paper concludes that the cost‐benefit methodology adopted in this research can provide useful information for the strategic analysis of countryside recreation policy.     

When Innovation Does Not Pay Off: Introducing the “European Regional Paradox”

In the last few decades, innovation has been widely recognized to be the engine of wealth and prosperity as it intensifies competition and increases productivity, which both in turn lead to significant economic benefits such as higher income per capita and increased employment. However, empirical evidence in this article illustrates that innovation seems not to have paid-off for some of the most innovative regions in Europe, as these regions, despite being highly innovative, grow at a slower pace than their national counterparts, as well as presenting poor economic outcomes such as low income per capita and high unemployment rates. The aim of this article is to communicate this intriguing observation to both innovation scholars and to policy-makers, since its very existence seems to cast doubt not only on one of the most principal assumptions in the field of innovation studies (i.e. innovation as the engine of growth) but also on one of the most fundamental pillars currently underpinning several regional, national and supranational economic policies.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WORKER PENSION FUNDS

Increasing concentration of economic power within the corporate sector, as well as the extent of corporate control by a few financial institutions such as commercial banks, have been subjects of intense scrutiny and debate in recent years. However, the role of private and public worker retirement trusts in providing power for institutional investors has not been adequately addressed. Pension fund assets, which were relatively inconsequential prior to 1960, and their investment in and share of total corporate equities minor, have grown to over $l410 billion by the end of 1977. In their analysis of and interest in public and private pension trusts, scholars, employers and even employees have tended to emphasize narrow economic issues such as investment performance. It is the central argument of this article that workers’ funds have become a major source of capital in the American economy, and as such have been used to help create and/or sustain practices that adversely impinge on workers themselves. It is argued that pension assets have contributed to: 1) the increasing power of financial institutions; 2) growth of corporate profits that only minimally benefit some pension plan participants; 3)capital shortages for 'socially useful’ investments; and 4)support of corporate enterprises that refuse basic worker demands including unionization itself. The study further suggests that the rapidly growing pension assets have the potential to serve‘the public interest’ as well as the needs of workers. Threat of withdrawal of funds from selected money managers and corporations, and utilization of share–holder voting rights to influence corporate policies can be potent weapons for organized labor. Since this is an exploratory analysis, the aim of the article is to gather, present and clarify basic information on worker pension trusts and to propose alternative avenues for future research in this critical area.     

Public and Private Policy Change: Pension Reform in Four Countries

This article offers a comparative, qualitative analysis of the changing nature of—and relationship between—public and private old age pensions in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Japan. Stressing the impact of institutional legacies on policy change, the article explains why these countries have taken contrasting paths toward the restructuring of public and private pension policies. The study finds that the four countries fall into two distinct clusters. On the one hand are Canada and the United States, which have essentially witnessed policy drift toward a greater reliance on private savings. On the other hand are Britain and Japan, which have reshaped their pension systems largely through legislative revision. The last section explains the differences between and within these two country clusters. The article concludes that institutional forces explain the distinctive policy patterns between the two country clusters but that it is necessary to bring in other factors (i.e., demographic aging, union density, and the role of ideas) to account for differences within each of these clusters.     

城市人均受教育水平对居民主观幸福感的影响——基于多尺度模型的研究

提升居民幸福感是和谐宜居城市建设和实现人民美好生活愿望的重要目标。地理背景特征对居民幸福感的影响在社会学、地理学、经济学等学科领域受到极大关注,但尚缺乏城市人均受教育水平及其异质性影响研究。基于2016年中国劳动力动态调查数据,采用多尺度线性模型探讨了我国城市人均受教育水平、人均收入与居民幸福感的关系。研究发现：①居民幸福感存在显著区域差异,东部城市居民幸福感最高,西部整体偏低。②作为重要的城市背景特征之一,与人均收入相比,人均受教育水平对居民幸福感有正向提升作用,即城市人均受教育水平越高,居民幸福感越高。③城市人均受教育水平对居民幸福感的影响是复杂的,在不同学历群体间存在明显差异,对高中及以下学历群体幸福感的提高具有积极影响,但对本科及以上学历群体的幸福感产生消极影响。     

How much heterogeneity can the welfare state endure? The influence of heterogeneity on attitudes to the welfare state

Cultural and economic heterogeneity is often seen as a major threat to modern welfare states. This article contributes to the discussion of how much heterogeneity the welfare state can endure by theoretically and empirically focusing on the relationship between different levels of national identity and the support for welfare state policies. We analyse the effect of different types of national identity on attitudes towards taxation and redistribution. We show that it is the subjective aspect of national identity, or social cohesion, that in fact matters for predicting attitudes to the welfare state. In comparison, more objective measures of heterogeneity like the inequality of income distribution, language fractionalisation or the percentage of foreign‐born individuals do not have any effect on attitudes to the welfare state.     

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.     

Household Incomes in Cuban Agriculture: A Comparison of the State,Co-operative,and Peasant Sectors

This article presents the results of a 1991 household income survey of the three main groups in Cuban agriculture: wage workers on state farms, members of production co-operatives, and peasant producers. It is shown that since the 1959 revolution household income levels in the agricultural sector have improved dramatically, while regional differences have been ameliorated considerably. Households in the private sector of Cuban agriculture have fared the best. It is also demonstrated that agricultural households rely on multiple sources of income to generate their livelihood. Rather than being strictly proletarian, collective, or petty commodity producers, these households are best characterized by the multiple class relations in which they participate.     

Why Illness Causes More Serious Economic Damage than Crop Failure in Rural Cambodia

In rural Cambodia, illness has caused more serious economic damage to rural households than crop failure. This article explores the reasons for this using data on the strategies adopted by households in two Cambodian villages to cope with these different types of shock. The data show that Cambodian households can cope with crop failure by earning additional income. However, to cope with illness, which entails lump‐sum treatment costs, they have to borrow money or sell their assets, because households cannot acquire the necessary funds in a short period just by earning additional income. Combined with the harsh conditions of credit markets (high interest rates, strict debt collection and credit rationing), and weak risk‐sharing among households, this results in illness causing a large number of land sales in the surveyed villages.     

Actually how Empowering is Microcredit?

This article re‐assesses the effect of microcredit programme participation on women's empowerment by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well‐being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency in the attainment of greater well‐being. The author finds that microcredit programme participation has only a limited direct effect in increasing women's access to choice‐enhancing resources, but has a much stronger effect in increasing women's ability to exercise agency in intra‐household processes. Consequently, programme participation is able to increase women's welfare and possibly to reduce male bias in welfare outcomes, particularly in poor households.     

Macroeconomic Effects of 21st Century Trade and Investment Agreements: The Case of the Trans‐Pacific Partnership

Following United States withdrawal, the Trans‐Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) is likely to be replaced or complemented by a series of bilateral deals between the US and TPP partners. In this case, TPP will shape trade, finance and public policy globally even without formal US participation. Proponents of TPP emphasize its prospective economic benefits, with economic growth increasing due to rising trade volumes and investment. Widely cited projections suggest modest GDP gains after 10 years, varying from less than half a percentage point in the USA to 13 per cent in Vietnam. However, these projections assume full employment and constant income distribution in all countries, excluding some of the major risks of trade liberalization. This article provides alternative projections of the TPP's economic effects using the United Nations Global Policy Model, which allows for changes in employment and income distribution. Using this model, the authors obtain very different results. They find that the benefits to economic growth are even smaller than those projected with full‐employment models, and are negative for Japan and the USA. More importantly, they find that the TPP will likely lead to losses in employment and increases in inequality.     

DETERMINANTS OF IMMIGRANTS’ ENTRY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP IN THREE NORDIC CAPITAL CITY REGIONS

The extent of homeownership among immigrants may be seen as an indicator of integration and as a determinant of ethnic residential segregation. Studies have shown differences in the determinants of homeownership between immigrants and natives, indicating that variation in homeownership is not only a function of differences in economic resources. These studies have largely focused on Anglo‐American contexts, using mostly cross‐sectional data. We apply survival analysis methods to analyse the determinants of entry to homeownership in the capital regions of three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – utilizing longitudinal individual‐level register‐based datasets. We find that differences in entry to homeownership between natives and different immigrant groups cannot be explained by differences in socio‐economic background factors. We also find differences in the effects of these factors. Effects of income are generally weaker among non‐Western immigrants and immigrants are less responsive to changes in household composition. The share of non‐Western immigrants in the neighbourhood is only weakly related to entry to homeownership, while immigrants and natives living in public rental housing tend to be slightly less inclined to move to homeownership. Weaker income effects among immigrants, weak effects of ethnic segregation and the importance of the public rental sector differentiate our results from earlier findings. Weaker income effects may indicate that uncertainty about the future also affects middle‐income immigrants. Differences between the three contexts in housing markets and policies do not seem to matter much, although the results indicate that difficult access to the private rental sector may push immigrants to homeownership.