The U.S. Census Bureau recently released new, experimental measures of poverty based on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel's recommendations. This article examines the effects of the experimental measures on poverty rates among persons aged 65 or older in order to help inform policy debate. Policymakers and analysts use poverty rates to measure the successes and failures of existing pro...

Vulnerability is an important aspect of households’ experience of poverty. Many households, while not currently “in poverty” recognize that they are vulnerable to events that could easily push them into poverty — a bad harvest, a lost job, an unexpected expense, an illness, an economic downturn. Most operational measures define poverty as some function of the shortfall of current income or cons...

Using data from the March Current Population Surveys, this paper provides mid-1980s poverty rates by state under four alternative measures of poverty: the official measure, prewelfare poverty, pretransfer poverty (federal and state transfers), and a new measure, pre-state-transfer poverty. It also analyzes state-by-state the antipoverty effectiveness of transfers. The results show considerable ...

This paper presents an axiomatic framework for measuring lifetime poverty over multiple periods. For an individual, we argue that lifetime poverty is influenced by both the “snapshot” poverty of each period and the poverty level of the “permanent” lifetime consumption; it is also influenced by how poverty spells are distributed over the lifetime. For a society, we consider a path-independence r...

While there is increasing evidence of an association between poor mental health and the experience of poverty and deprivation, the relationship is complex. We discuss the epidemiological data on mental illness among the different socio-economic groups, look at the cause -effect debate on poverty and mental illness and the nature of mental distress and disorders related to poverty. Issues relate...

This paper explores the effects of general and agricultural trade openness on economic freedom and alongside with the quality of institutions, on income and poverty. Recent cross-country data for over 200 nations in global regions were used to estimate equations for income, poverty and economic freedom. Economic freedom appears to have positive impacts on income levels, which together with good...

3.1 Poverty and environmental governance 3.2. Poverty, disasters and risk mitigation 3.3 Poverty, the environment and livelihoods 3. 4 Poverty and environmental degradation 3.5 Poverty and environmental justice and entitlement 4. Relative importance of issues 4.1 Issues for regional action 4.2 Country specific issues 4.3 Issues for national attention across the region 4.4 Trade offs between loc...