695 research outputs found
A poverty dynamics approach to social stratification: The South African case
No full textThe wave of upbeat stories on the developing world’s emerging middle class has reinvigorated a debate on how social class in general and the middle class in particular ought to be defined and measured. In the economics literature, most scholars agree that being middle class entails being free from poverty, which means being able to afford the basic things in life – not only today, but also tomorrow. In consequence, there is an increasing tendency to define the middle class based on a lack of vulnerability to poverty. In this paper, we strengthen and expand on these existing approaches in three ways: First, we incorporate the differentiation between the middle class and a (non-poor) vulnerable group into a broader social-stratification schema that additionally differentiates between transient and chronic poverty. Second, in estimating the risk of poverty, we employ a multivariate regression model that explicitly allows for possible feedback effects from past poverty experiences and accounts for the potential endogeneity of initial conditions, unobserved heterogeneity, and non-random panel attrition – four factors insufficiently addressed in existing studies. Third, we highlight the value of paying attention to these conceptual and modelling issues by showing that class divisions based on monetary thresholds inadequately capture a household’s chances of upward and downward mobility. We then apply our conceptual framework to the South African case. We find that only one in four South Africans can be considered stably middle class or elite. Access to stable labor market income is a key determinant of achieving economic stability. A lack of jobs as well as the prevalence of precarious forms of work drive high levels of vulnerability, which in turn constrains the development of an emergent middle class – not only in South Africa but potentially also in other parts of the developing world that face similar labor market challenges.This paper has been produced with financial assistance from the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD), located within the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), and from the World Bank Group, Poverty Global Practice Unit, Africa Region. Simone Schotte acknowledges support from the German Institute of Global and Area Studies and the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst. Murray Leibbrandt acknowledges the Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation for funding his work as the Chair in Poverty and Inequality Research.
The authors are grateful to Francois Bourguignon, Denis Cogneau, Arden Finn, Lena Giesbert, Kanishka Kacker, Stephan Klasen, Jann Lay, Nga Thi Viet Nguyen, Victor Sulla, Martin Wittenberg, Ingrid Woolard, Precious Zikhali and three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions
Are we really painting the devil on the walls? Polarization and its drivers in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past two decades
No full textThe development path of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past two decades has been characterized by sluggish poverty reduction occurring alongside robust economic growth. Applying polarization measures to comparable survey data from 24 SSA countries, we find that there has been a generalizable increase in polarization over the past two decades - and in particular, an increased concentration of households in the lower tail of the welfare distribution of SSA countries. The polarization process is further analyzed by identifying the main drivers and singling out the effect of different covariates at different points in the consumption distribution. This investigation reveals that the drivers of polarization are relatively similar across SSA: demographic, urban/rural, regional variables and access to basic infrastructure are found to be the most important drivers of polarization in many countries
Worlds apart: what polarization measures reveal about Sub-Saharan Africa's growth and welfare distribution in the last two decades
No full textSub-Saharan Africa's development path over the past two decades has been characterized by sluggish poverty reduction occurring alongside robust economic growth. While in this context we would expect inequality to increase, standard synthetic measures provide little evidence of a generalizable uptick in inequality over this period. We argue that the standard empirical toolkit available to development economists working on SSA has limited our ability to understand the role that distributional change plays in the persistence and reproduction of poverty on the continent. For this reason, we propose that supplementing inequality measures with the analysis of polarization provides a cleaner distributional lens through which to make sense of SSA's poverty performance during this period of growth. Applying polarization measures to comparable survey data from 24 Sub-Saharan African countries, we find that there has been a generalizable increase in polarization over the past two decades - and in particular, an increased concentration of households in the lower tail of the relative distribution. That this inegalitarian trend is overlooked when using standard synthetic inequality measures confirms our hypothesis that our current toolkit represents a technical bottleneck to understanding the effects of distributional trends on poverty reduction in Sub Saharan Africa - and that polarization analysis may help overcome this
Worlds apart: what polarization measures reveal about Sub-Saharan Africa's growth and welfare distribution in the last two decades
No full textSub-Saharan Africa's development path over the past two decades has been characterized by sluggish poverty reduction occurring alongside robust economic growth. While in this context we would expect inequality to increase, standard synthetic measures provide little evidence of a generalizable uptick in inequality over this period. We argue that the standard empirical toolkit available to development economists working on SSA has limited our ability to understand the role that distributional change plays in the persistence and reproduction of poverty on the continent. For this reason, we propose that supplementing inequality measures with the analysis of polarization provides a cleaner distributional lens through which to make sense of SSA's poverty performance during this period of growth. Applying polarization measures to comparable survey data from 24 Sub-Saharan African countries, we find that there has been a generalizable increase in polarization over the past two decades - and in particular, an increased concentration of households in the lower tail of the relative distribution. That this inegalitarian trend is overlooked when using standard synthetic inequality measures confirms our hypothesis that our current toolkit represents a technical bottleneck to understanding the effects of distributional trends on poverty reduction in Sub Saharan Africa - and that polarization analysis may help overcome this
Exploring psychological well-being and poverty dynamics in South-Africa: evidence from NIDS waves 1-5
No full textThe mechanisms that perpetuate poverty are still not well understood. An emerging literature focuses on the psychology of poverty, investigating psychological and behavioral factors that may affect poverty entry and make it difficult to escape poverty. This paper explores the relationship between psychological well-being and poverty in South Africa. We rely on Waves 1-5 of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), a nationally representative household panel survey that spans a decade. A descriptive analysis shows a strong negative correlation between psychological well-being and per capita household expenditure, with individuals in lower expenditure deciles displaying significantly higher risks of depression and lower levels of life satisfaction. To identify causal effects, we turn to an econometric framework that accounts for endogenous initial poverty conditions, unobserved heterogeneity and non-random panel attrition. Preliminary results suggest that the risk of poverty significantly increases as psychological well-being deteriorates, and the other way around. We discuss a range of avenues for follow-up research.Funding for this research from the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation is gratefully
acknowledged.
We are grateful to Simone Schotte for her willingness to share do-files. Murray Leibbrandt would
like to thank the NRF/DSD National Research Chair’s Initiative for funding his research and for
partial funding of the work on this paper by Nik Stoop and Rocco Zizzamia
Data for: Improved modelling and critical analysis of future electrification pathways: the case of Tanzania
No full textSupplementary material accompanying the paper:Improved modelling and critical analysis of future electrification pathways: the case of TanzaniaMatteo V. Rocco, Elena Fumagalli, Chiara Vigone, Ambrogio Miserocchi, Emanuela ColomboDepartment of Energy, Politecnico di MilanoCopernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht UniversityCorresponding author: Via Lambruschini 4, 21056 Milan, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]
Gabriel García Márquez and the cinema : life and works / Alessandro Rocco.
No full textRocco focuses on Gabriel GarciÌa MaÌrquez's relations with the world of cinema and gives us the first detailed study of the author's wide-ranging filmography. A unique and indeed indispensable addition to the critical literature on a writer of world importance. Gerald Martin, author of Gabriel GarciÌa MaÌrquez: A Life Far from being an occasional occupation, GarciÌa MaÌrquez's film work forms an intrinsic part of his overall aesthetic and literary poetics. The book's primary aim is to present a detailed study of GarciÌa MaÌrquez's wide-ranging filmography, which has never received a comprehensive,systematic analysis. Rocco argues that it should be recognised as an integral part of the author's narrative output, and brought into the mainstream of studies concerning his literary activity. The first part of the book reconstructs the trajectory of GarciÌa MaÌrquez's career in cinema and his connections with the world of film. The second part looks at all his screenplays on which actual films have been based. These are examined chronologically, but also analysed according to thematic and aesthetic concerns and placed in relation to the novels and short stories with which they are 'twinned'. Alessandro Rocco is Researcher in Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Bari, ItalyTitle from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Feb 2023).Rocco focuses on Gabriel GarciÌa MaÌrquez's relations with the world of cinema and gives us the first detailed study of the author's wide-ranging filmography. A unique and indeed indispensable addition to the critical literature on a writer of world importance. Gerald Martin, author of Gabriel GarciÌa MaÌrquez: A Life Far from being an occasional occupation, GarciÌa MaÌrquez's film work forms an intrinsic part of his overall aesthetic and literary poetics. The book's primary aim is to present a detailed study of GarciÌa MaÌrquez's wide-ranging filmography, which has never received a comprehensive,systematic analysis. Rocco argues that it should be recognised as an integral part of the author's narrative output, and brought into the mainstream of studies concerning his literary activity. The first part of the book reconstructs the trajectory of GarciÌa MaÌrquez's career in cinema and his connections with the world of film. The second part looks at all his screenplays on which actual films have been based. These are examined chronologically, but also analysed according to thematic and aesthetic concerns and placed in relation to the novels and short stories with which they are 'twinned'. Alessandro Rocco is Researcher in Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Bari, Ital
Is employment a panacea for poverty in South Africa? A mixed-methods investigation
No full textUnemployment is a key determinant of poverty in South Africa and job losses are closely associated with descents into poverty. Disparities in opportunities that characterise individual fortunes in the labour market, in turn, reflect deep-rooted structural inequalities in South Africa. I focus on a black, urban demographic and investigate the conditions under which transitions out of employment lead to descents into poverty and/or declines in self-reported wellbeing. Of particular relevance are those cases in which a transition out of employment leads to a descent into money-metric poverty without resulting in a fall in self-reported wellbeing. These apparent inconsistencies – especially prevalent in cases where workers choose to leave work – may help illuminate how disadvantaged workers face non-negligible disincentives to certain forms of low-skill employment, which, under certain circumstances, may outweigh the disincentives to unemployment. Analysing both NIDS panel data and qualitative data collected by the author in Cape Town, I show how a purely quantitative analysis cannot provide an adequate account of the relationship between job loss and changes in self-reported wellbeing. In contrast, a qualitative analysis can illuminate the causal mechanisms which explain why, under certain circumstances, transitioning out of employment will be the welfare optimising choice for workers. To aid this explanation, I develop a model which analyses the welfare effect of job losses as being jointly determined by the strength of outside options and the disincentives to work. Younger workers with no dependants and with alternative sources of support can be said to have stronger outside options, and are especially likely to turn down or quit “bad” jobs. Older workers, with dependants and without alternative sources of support, are more likely to accept and persist in “bad” jobs – leading me to characterise wage work in these instances as a “survivalist” livelihood choice. This study shows that understanding the complexity and multidimensionality of the incentives that workers face and which inform labour market choices will be indispensable in effectively designing policies which aim to reduce inequalities in the labour market – in South Africa and beyond.I am grateful to Pramila Krishnan, Hannah Dawson, Vimal Ranchhod, Stefan Dercon, Murray
Leibbrandt, Joshua Budlender, Ravi Kanbur, David Neves, Debbie Budlender, participants at
talks and conferences including the 2017 HDCA Conference in Cape Town, the 2018 CSAE
Conference in Oxford, and at SALDRU, ReSEP and Oxford African Studies Centre seminars, as
well as several anonymous reviewers at the Oxford Department for International Development
for helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. Nina Zizzamia provided excellent assistance with
proofreading. Arden Finn provided helpful Stata code for cleaning and deflating National Income
Dynamics Study data. I am especially grateful to Simone Schotte, who has been an inimitable
partner in both the design of this research project and in running field research in Khayelitsha,
and who also helped with the design of weights for the NIDS balanced panel. I am also indebted
to an exceptional team of fieldworkers, among whom Mzulungile Cabanga, Sibongile Mthini,
Andiswa Mtini and Amanda Moocha deserve special mention. Fieldwork was implemented
with the financial support of the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit, the
German Institute for Global and Area Studies, St Anne’s College, Oxford, and the Department of
International Development at the University of Oxford. I am grateful for support through the Skye
Foundation and the Dulverton and Michael Wills Trusts. Responsibility for any errors remains my
own
The Vitruvian Man of Leonardo Symbol of Western Civilization
No full textABSTRACT: THE VITRUVIAN MAN by Rocco Sinisgalli,
Federighi Editori, Certaldo, Florence, 2006.
ISBN 978-88-89159-22-4
9 788889 159224
The famous drawing of Leonardo (Vinci 1452, Amboise 1519) has become the symbol of western civilization. The author wrote The man is named Minor World by
the ancients. As Plato had bound fire and earth, the components with which God created the universe (the macrocosm), through the proportional mean, which was
named Divine, thus Leonardo bound man (the microcosm) which Vitruvius dissected in a circle and a square using the Golden Section. The Vitruvian man of Leonardo dates 1490 circa and measures 344x245 mm; the author was inspired by Vitruvius in the relationship between proportions, as he himself reports. We restrain ourselves to delineate how the square becomes the circle, or how from the circle one passes to the square, applying what we will discuss in Applied problems and in How to graphically obtain the
Golden Section.
Paragraphs: Leonardo's man, The man of Vitruvius, The Golden Section, Applied problems, How to graphically obtain the Golden Section, From the square to the circle, From the circle to the square, The bidimensionality within space, What Leonardo says about his drawing, Chronological summary of Leonardo's life
CROATIAN EMIGRANTS IN VENICE AND SCUALA GRANDE S. ROCCO
No full textU radu se, na osnovi izvorne građe iz Državnog arhiva u Mlecima i Arhiva Bratovštine sv. Jurja i Tripuna (oporučni spisi), predstavljaju različiti oblici komunikacije hrvatskih iseljenika u Mlecima s Bratovštinom S. Rocco, u prošlosti jednom od najpoznatijih i najuglednijih bratimskih udruga u gradu na lagunama. Obrađuju se zavičajna, profesionalna i društvena struktura Hrvata povezanih s Bratovštinom S. Rocco i predstavljaju temeljne sastavnice koje se odnose na upućenost Hrvata sa spomenutom bratovštinom.In this article, on the basis of the extant archival sources kept in the State Archives in Venice and in Archive of St. George and Triphon fraternity (testaments), author tries to describe various relationships of Croatian emigrants in Venice with the members of St. Rocco fraternity, which was one of the most prominent and most respectable fraternities in the history of Venice. Author tries to analyze provenience, professional and social structure of the Croats related to the fraternity of St. Rocco, which was quite important regarding these relations between Croatian emigration and the aforementioned fraternity. Since the primary sources for this investigation were testaments, which contain rather specifi c
sort of information, this investigation was focused chiefl y at the information regarding the burial place – taking into account all the testators who had chosen St. Rocco fraternity as their last resting place. Moreover, author also has analyzed all the legacies regarding the bestowal of the fraternity and their members, as well as the legacies regarding the funeral ceremony that included the fraternity or its members. At the end, author emphasizes that one of the purposes of this research was to point out importance of this, not so known but very signifi cant, part of daily life of Croatian emigration in Venice
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