This paper offers an informal theory of fractal poverty traps that lead to chronic poverty at multiple scales of socio-spatial aggregation. Poverty traps result from nonlinear processes at individual, household, community, national and international scales that cause the coexistence of high and low equilibrium levels of productivity and income and high and low rates of economic growth. Multiple...

Poverty remains one of the most pressing problems facing the world. In this paper, I review evidence suggesting that poverty has particular neurobiological consequences, and that these consequences in turn lead to suboptimal economic behaviors which exacerbate and perpetuate poverty. Speci cally, I argue that poverty raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol, causes dysregulation and altered...

Using panel data spanning 15 years, this paper investigates the persistence and correlates of subjective and consumption poverty in urban Ethiopia. Despite the decline in consumption poverty in recent years, which has been linked to rapid economic growth, subjective poverty has remained largely unchanged. Dynamic probit regression results show that households with a history of past poverty cont...

This article aims to broaden current reflections on definitions of decent work and poverty using a transdisciplinary interpretive lens comprising philosophical, juridical, economic, sociological, and psychological understandings. We (the authors) undertook an adapted systematic qualitative review to gather data on different perspectives on decent work and poverty. The article summarizes and com...

BACKGROUND Since 2007 the economic recession has hit most industrial countries and this raises the question of how economic hardship affects illicit drug users' decisions to enter drug treatment. METHODS We test the hypothesis that an improvement in the employment prospects, as measured by a decline in unemployment, strengthens the intrinsic motivation of an unemployed drug user to enter trea...

In a panel framework that includes 18 countries, this paper studies the short and long run effect of financial development on economic growth and the determinants of financial development in Latin America. Financial development shows a positive effect on economic growth in the long run, but a negative effect in the short run for the full sample. When the sample is divided by income levels, this...

Microfinance is a type of banking service that is provided to unemployed or low-income individuals or groups who would otherwise have no other means of gaining financial services. Micro finance through Self Help Group (SHG) has been recognized internationally as the modern tool to combat poverty and for rural development. Micro finance and SHGs are effective in reducing poverty, empowering wome...

Most of the remaining unresolved issues in poverty analysis are related directly or indirectly to the multidimensional nature and dynamics of poverty (Thorbecke, 2005). Analysis on multidimensional poverty has occupied much attention of economists and policymakers, particularly since the writing of (Sen, 1976) and the rising of data availability for relevant research purpose. A significant deve...

Kathleen Short is a senior research economist, in the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau, [email protected]. Thesia I. Garner is a senior research economist in the Division of Price and Index Number Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics, [email protected]. The official measure of poverty in the United States has been in place since the 1960s and has served to i...

Anti-poverty programs implemented in recent years in developing countries typically have multiple goals beyond improving income levels. Assessing the effectiveness of these interventions has gained increased currency in light of the UN‘s Millennium Development Goals. We introduce multidimensional poverty measures to the program evaluation literature in order to provide a comprehensive measure o...