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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the socio-economic factors that will affect women’s empowerment from an Islamic perspective (the Tawhidi epistemological approach) and the impact of women’s empowerment on reducing family poverty.

Using a quantitative approach to see the relationship between research variables with structural equation model-partial least squares as the analysis tool.

In general, socio-economic variables had direct and indirect effects on reducing family poverty. In addition, the variable of women’s empowerment in an Islamic perspective can strengthen the influence of socio-economic variables on the alleviation of family poverty.

The limitation of this research lies in the use of religiosity as an indicator with some constraints and the inclusion of all the necessary dimensions of a Muslim family. Additionally, because of the scope of the present research, the results may not be applicable in different areas, especially countries with distinctive characteristics such as having Muslims as the major population. On the other hand, the results of this research may provide comprehensive indicators of empowered Muslim women which enable the correlation between the socio-economic factors and women’s empowerment and how women’s empowerment can contribute to the alleviation of family poverty from the perspective of Islam.

This research provides new insights into the variable of women’s empowerment measured using the Islamic paradigm (Tawhidi epistemology) and includes religiosity as a variable that directly and indirectly influences the reduction of family poverty.

Rising energy expenditures due to more intensive use of energy in modern agriculture and increasing energy prices may affect rural households’ agricultural incomes, particularly the incomes of the rural poor in developing countries. However, the exact link between energy costs and income among the rural poor needs further empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between energy use and family income, using household-level panel data collected from 500 potato farmers in a poor region of Northern China, where eliminating poverty by 2020 is now the top government priority.

The paper uses household survey data collected from six counties in a poor region in northern China in 2013 to measure the relationship between energy cost and family income. A fixed effect model is employed to estimate the relationship.

The findings indicate that potatoes play an important role in the surveyed families’ incomes, and that the energy costs of potato production have a significant negative relationship with family income. However, this negative relationship is only significant for farmers with low economic standing, such as those living below or just above the poverty line. The negative relationship between energy costs and family income is only significant for those cultivating a certain size of potato-sown area; it is insignificant for those cultivating smaller areas.

These findings indicate that, in general, reducing energy costs helps the poor increase their income but is not necessarily helpful to those with high economic standing or a relatively small potato-sown area. If rural development policies are to support poverty reduction and energy savings (at least in major potato production regions), interventions aimed at energy cost reduction may be effective only for the poor whose family income depends, to a relatively high degree, on potato production.

This paper aims to investigate dynamics of food consumption practices among poor families in a developing country to advance the Food Well-being (FWB) in Poverty framework.

The research design used semi-structured interviews with 25 women and constructivist grounded theory to explore food consumption practices of poor families in rural South India.

Poor families’ everyday interactions with food reveal the relational production of masculinities and femininities and the power hegemony that fixes men and women into an unequal status quo. Findings provides critical insights into familial arrangements in absolute poverty that are detrimental to the task of achieving FWB.

The explanatory potential of FWB in Poverty framework is limited to a gender (women) and a specific country context (India). Future research can contextualise the framework in other developing countries and different consumer segments.

The FWB in Poverty framework helps identify, challenge and transform cultural norms, social structures and gendered stereotypes that perpetuate power hegemonies in poverty. Policymakers can encourage men and boys to participate in family food work, as well as recognise and remunerate women and girls for their contribution to maintaining familial units.

This paper makes an original contribution to the relevant literature by identifying and addressing the absence of theoretical understanding of families, food consumption and poverty. By contextualising the FWB framework in absolute poverty, the paper generates novel understandings of fluidity and change in poor families and FWB.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors influencing the use of family planning and its link with multidimensional poverty in rural Nigeria.

The Alkire and Foster measure of poverty as well as the Logistic and Probit models were used to identify the factors influencing the use of family planning and its effect on the multidimensional poverty status of rural households in Nigeria.

The results indicate that 31.1 percent of rural households were poor with deprivations in health and education contributing the most to multidimensional poverty. The low use of contraception was closely linked to low level of literacy, lack of awareness of the different methods and high levels of poverty. The use of contraception reduced the level of poverty in the household.

The intensity of poverty should be considered in the design of policies and programs. The wide and proper use of family planning is a sine qua non for any significant reduction in poverty. Potent and assertive family planning programs by government could be achieved through public-private sector partnership and assistance of international development partners.

This paper attempts to bridge the knowledge gap in the empirical literature on the link between multidimensional poverty and family planning. In particular`, its application to the rural context, often characterized by high rate of poverty and unmet needs for family planning employing nationally representative data is of immense value for social policy.

This article raises five questions: What kinds of persons and families are poor? How do they become poor? How long do they remain poor? How do they cope with being poor? How do they escape from being poor? These questions are significant for one central and obvious reason: answering them improves our understanding of the nature of poverty or unmet human physical need, thereby contributing to the development of forms of aid to remedy that need. To the extent that we are successful in helping the needy, our social economics is enhanced, and any economic order based on that social economics should function more effectively. Two main sources of information on poverty from the Census Bureau are used to address those questions: the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Both use the same absolute standard of poverty but each source produces a different estimate of poverty because they are fundamentally different in design and coverage. The data presented herein cover the period 1985 through 1993.

With the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government reaching its mid-term point, this paper examines its austerity measures and public expenditure reductions in family support and children's services, and its revisions of family support, family intervention, child poverty, child well-being and children's services reform policies in contrast to the former Labour governments.

The paper is informed by policy analysis and research reviews.

The analysis focuses on three dimensions of policy change: first, reductions in income support for children and families and central government funding for children's services; second, refocusing child poverty, child well-being and family policies around the Conservative's “Broken Britain” campaign and the Liberal Democrats targeted social mobility initiatives; and finally, broader children's services reforms. The paper recognises some progressive developments but charts the social welfare implications of reduced welfare entitlements for families and the pressures on support services for families from children's services reforms.

The paper combines reflections on the aims, achievements and limitations of Labour reforms to family support and children's services with a broader analysis of welfare state retrenchment and restructuring under the Coalition. It places current changes in family support and children's services within the context of the ideological influences on the Coalition's social policies and the primacy of its austerity programme and welfare state reform agendas.

In spite of the War on Poverty programs of the 1960s and the economic boom of the 1990s, poverty remains consistently high among families with children in the USA. The main source of income for these families is employment, which is largely a function of educational attainment. The purpose of this paper is to turn to aggregate and individual level data and demonstrate the power of college education in economic well‐being of women with children.

A nationally representative sample of single and married mothers was retrieved and the role of education in economic well‐being of these women was examined using descriptive, bi‐variate, and multiple ordinal logistic regression.

Both married and single mothers benefit immensely from a bachelors degree.

In recent years, policy makers in the USA have trimmed resources that promote education among poor women with children. This analysis, underscores the importance of postsecondary education in the economic well‐being of mothers with children and therefore the need for social policy promoting college education.

This article shows the power of education on economic well‐being of both married and single women with children.

Several ideas exist about social justice and how inequalities can be tackled to help families and children in poverty. The Coalition government released the UK’s first Child Poverty Strategy in 2011. Pervaded by neoliberal ideology, the strategy mentions “empowering” pre-school services and practitioners within the childcare market “to do more for the most disadvantaged” (Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Department for Education (DfE) 2011, p. 35). The purpose of this paper is to bring to light how Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) practitioners across England have engaged with policy discussions and adopted expectations concerning their place in addressing child poverty.

Using a phenomenological qualitative research design the paper draws upon 30 interviews with pre-school practitioners in three geographic areas of England. All interviewees worked with families and children in poverty and were senior ECEC practitioners within their pre-school settings.

Many interviewees shared the Coalition’s construction of child poverty as a problem of “troubled” parenting. These views pervaded their interaction with parents and intersected with the regulatory influence of “policy technologies” to influence their practice within a context of austerity cuts. This limited practitioners’ poverty sensitivity and their promotion of social justice. Therefore this paper concludes by critiquing the contribution which ECEC practitioners can make to addressing child poverty.

The findings suggest there may be a need for poverty proofing toolkits in the pre-school sector.

This paper provides a rare insight into how pre-school practitioners have engaged with, adopted and adapted assumptions about their role within policy discussion over child poverty and the promotion of social justice.

This paper is a study on child poverty from two perspectives: child income poverty (derived from family income) and child deprivation (evaluated by non‐monetary indicators). On the one hand, empirical evidence supports the thesis that income‐based poverty measures and deprivation measures do not overlap. On the other hand, the relationship between poverty and the child's living conditions is not linear. Uses micro‐econometric techniques to analyse child income poverty and present deprivation indicators, and thereby an index of child deprivation, to study child poverty. The measurements used are centred on the child. The results obtained support the thesis that the study of child poverty differs whether the focus is on the child or on the family.

Micro-businesses contribute to economic development by improving individual welfare. Women are the primary drivers and owners of such businesses in urban Ethiopia. The purpose of this study is to investigate the poverty status and determinants among women-owned micro-businesses.

The basic study units were women who owned micro-businesses. A sample of 384 women-owned micro-business was chosen using a stratified and systematic random sampling technique. Thirty-six participants were purposely chosen for in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were used to collect data. The poverty head count, poverty gap and poverty severity indices were computed to estimate poverty status. The major determinants of women’s poverty were investigated using a logistic regression model.

The overall poverty incidence, gap and severity were estimated to be 24.27%, 3.85%, and 1.11% respectively, among the women who owned micro-businesses. Eight of the 14 poverty determinants, including age, dependents, savings, remittance and the number of days and hours women work in their businesses, were found to have a significant effect on women’s poverty. The results suggest that local governments, technical and vocational training institutions should work together to reduce the impact of poverty-aggravating factors on women and increase the contribution of women-owned micro-businesses to poverty reduction.

This study addressed the poverty status of women who run micro-businesses, which is a crucial issue in Ethiopia’s urban context. It adds new knowledge to the issue of gendered economic participation, poverty reduction and poverty determinants in the Ethiopian context.