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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relationship between lifestyles, household and household wastes, by exploring possible future development path for the lifestyle and the possible consequences for household waste composition. The study predicates on a reasonably simple and straightforward idea that the waste generated from homes is a product of the way the people live and since the way of life of people change overtime, getting an idea of how people may live in future may give an insight into the sorts of composition of waste produced by them. It tends to provide a contribution to the evidence base on household waste at a general level.

The overall approach hinged on the notion that the household is the appropriate analytical unit of household waste production composition. This specified inputs needed to develop scenarios for future waste composition. The weekly generation of sorted wastes from their various sources was determined by direct measurement in kilograms on a weighing scale. Questionnaires were administered to elicit information on key drivers and factors that influence lifestyles scenarios and their development. Interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders and government agencies on waste management.

The results indicated that food related waste constituted the major percentages and tonnages (44 percent, 269,870 tons) of household waste, while the least portion was glass (1.2 percent,7,278 tons). The key drivers responsible for generation of food waste include level of income, subsistence farming that generate organic food waste and rise in fast food outfits that give preference to readymade food over cooking at homes. The drivers for developing future scenarios include population, government regulations, nature of apartment, level of income, consumer spending, management technology. Three scenarios were developed: status quo trends, strong government and destination point.

Models should be developed for better simulation studies of lifestyle scenarios by quantifying household wastes in terms of carbon footprint and money instead of relying on quantities generated in tons. Further studies should extend to other sources of waste such as industrial waste, electrical and electronic waste, among others. The implication from research findings shows the need for sustained for sustained awareness on people’s lifestyle with regard to handling of household wastes by government agencies, institutions and non-governmental organizations. Scenario planning is required to enable, encourage and engage householders to make changes in their lifestyles.

Food waste, by virtue of its tonnage and percentage composition, dominated the overall picture during the study period and will continue to do so in the near future. The composition of household waste in the future will be driven by the population and lifestyles of the householders. The drivers of lifestyles are crucial factors that determine the picture of the future. Furthermore, it is possible to conjecture circumstances in which household waste is converted to wealth at the destination point but the period before then imply some radical changes in both lifestyles and underlying economic growth facilitated by a strong political will.

This research could be of enormous benefit to policy makers, practitioners and others with an interest in or responsibility to the development and implementation of sustainable waste management. Scenarios are devices for enabling organizations and the individuals within them better to understand their operating environment, so as to make better decisions. This research is a scenario-planning exercise, considering how future changes in lifestyles of people in Port Harcourt metropolis now and in future may impact on the future composition of wastes they generate.

Most poverty research has explored monetary poverty. This chapter presents and analyzes the global multidimensional poverty index (MPI) estimations for China. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find China’s global MPI was 0.035 in 2010 and decreased significantly to 0.017 in 2014. The dimensional composition of MPI suggests that nutrition, education, safe drinking water, and cooking fuel contribute most to overall non-monetary poverty in China. Such analysis is also applied to subgroups, including geographic areas (rural/urban, east/central/west, provinces), as well as social characteristics such as gender of the household heads, age, education level, marital status, household size, migration status, ethnicity, and religion. We find the level and composition of poverty differs significantly across certain subgroups. We also find high levels of mismatch between monetary and multidimensional poverty at the household level, which highlights the importance of using both complementary measures to track progress in eradicating poverty.

We investigate the reasons why income inequality is so high in Spain in the EU context. We first show that the differential in inequality with Germany and other countries is driven by inequality among households who participate in the labor market. Then, we conduct an analysis of different household income aggregates. We also decompose the inter-country gap in inequality into characteristics and coefficients effects using regressions of the Recentered Influence Function for the Gini index. Our results show that the higher inequality observed in Spain is largely associated with lower employment rates, higher incidence of self-employment, lower attained education, as well as the recent increase in the immigration of economically active households. However, the prevalence of extended families in Spain contributes to reducing inequality by diversifying income sources, with retirement pensions playing an important role. Finally, by comparing the situations in 2008 and 2012, we separate the direct effects of the Great Recession on employment and unemployment benefits, from other more permanent factors (such as the weak redistributive effect of taxes and family or housing allowances, or the roles of education and the extended family).

The purpose of this paper is to understand determinants of food waste through analysing patterns of practices including shopping, planning, consumption of leftovers and attitudes around best-before dates.

A survey and waste composition analysis of 142 households was conducted in the City of Toronto. Bivariate analyses and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a structural equation model were used to identify relationships between per capita food waste, household socio-demographic characteristics and household food practices.

Constructs related to planning practices and best-before date practices were identified through the CFA. Household size and the best-before construct were negatively correlated with per capita food waste. The planning construct had no correlation, which may be attributed to the influence of the retail environment in encouraging unplanned purchases. The best-before construct was significantly correlated with the presence of children in the home, an indicator of the compromises that parents make in domestic provisioning to ensure healthy foods for their children, such as more caution in handling items after their best-before dates.

This is the first study of its kind that uses directly measured per capita food waste from a waste composition study in a structural equation model with a construct related to best-before dates to determine drivers of food waste. It is also the first to find that children in the home can have an indirect influence on food waste through the household's best-before practices.

The purpose of this paper is to present evidences on the spillover effects of a cash transfer addressed to poor elders in Brazil.

Using the Brazilian National Households Survey (PNAD) the authors assess the effects of an income transfer to the elders on household composition and the labor supply of elders and co-residing relatives, under a regression discontinuity design.

The authors do not find strong evidences of changes in the household composition due to the program. However the authors found reductions in the elders’ labor force participation, indicating that the program allow elders to retire. Moreover, the transfer yields a decrease in the labor force participation of co-residents, depending on their age. The authors also observe decreases in child labor.

Along with the cash comes context-dependent effects, showing there are many latent aspects of these transfers yet to be uncovered.

The chapter estimates the cost of maintaining a child, at different ages, the cost of being single, and the cost of additional adults present in a family, with the aim of making comparable the income levels of different households. The study investigates the issue of econometric identification of equivalence scales within a demand system modified to include demographic characteristics consistently with economic theory. It shows that a robust estimation of equivalence scales must take into formal consideration the problem of econometric identification. The estimate also puts forward all-encompassing demographic specifications to identify costs due to differences in needs, household lifestyles, and economies of scale.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze patterns of consumption expenditure and the effects of income, prices and socioeconomic and demographic factors on demand among elderly- and young-adult-headed households in Brazil.

The authors estimated a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System demand system using the main household consumption good groups – food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care and other expenses – with data from three Brazilian Household Budget surveys.

The study results showed that elderly- and young-adult-headed households have different consumption patterns. The consumption of food, transportation and health care was more price-sensitive for households headed by the elderly, while higher income increases health care expenses in elderly-headed households to a greater extent than it does in younger-headed households.

The limitations are due to the structure of the data used, such as the effects of seasonality and individualized demand analyses, and sample design in the estimates. However, due to the structure of the demand models, which when estimating by seemingly unrelated regressions do not allow to take into account the sample design.

As a consequence of population aging, the Brazilian economy will experience changes in the composition of household consumption, mainly for food, housing, transportation and health-care-related products.

This paper fulfills the lack of studies that analyze the consumption patterns and how demand varies across different types of elderly-headed households in a developing country, such as Brazil.

In 1995, Mexico again slid into economic and social crisis without full recovery from the crisis of 1982. When the Mexican peso plunged in value right before Christmas 1994, many segments of the society that were affected had not regained the purchasing power of 1980. The broad outline of the Mexican government's program for responding to the most recent crisis is parallel to the prescriptions offered in the 1980s; indeed, the response represents prevailing mainstream neo‐liberal economic thinking — stabilization, structural adjustment, privatization, and so on. However, lacking a well developed social welfare system, the burdens of adaptation to adverse economic conditions fall primarily on women in households in the struggle to preserve individual well‐being. This paper, then, joins a growing body of work attempting to analyze the connection between micro‐level household conditions, including gender relations, and gendered macro‐level processes, such as ongoing economic liberalization in Mexico.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether downside-risk measures help to explain why households largely refrain from investing in Exchange Traded Funds that replicate broad and internationally diversified market indices, so-called XTFs, although studies frequently recommend to do so.

The paper analyzes whether evaluating risk in terms of downside-risk measures which reflect households' interpretation of risk closer than the standard deviation (SD) of returns, yields less risk-return-enhancements, and thus, fewer incentives for households to invest in XTFs. Household portfolios are compiled by combining stylized portfolio compositions that involve multiple asset classes and German households' security holdings. The data set covers the period from January 2014 to December 2016 and includes 47,388 securities.

The results indicate that none of the downside-risk measures can help to explain the reluctance of households to invest in XTFs. On the flip side, the results show that all stylized household portfolios can enhance the risk-return position from employing XTFs, regardless of the underlying risk measure. This supports the advice to invest in XTFs and extends it upon households that evaluate risk in terms of downside-risk.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to investigate risk-return-enhancements from XTFs while simultaneously considering various downside-risk measures and multiple asset classes of household portfolios.

In the United States, there is little difference in annual income inequality and income mobility between the rural and urban sectors of the economy. This forms a sharp contrast with China where income inequality is greater and income mobility lower among rural households than among urban households. When incomes are averaged over three years and when adjustments are made for the size and composition of households, income inequality among all households differs little between China and the United States in the 1990s. Moreover when pooling rural households and urban households and when measuring annual income inequality and income mobility of the pooled households, the mobility of incomes of households in the United States differs little from that in China. Social welfare functions are posited that allow for a trade-off between increases in income and increases in income inequality. These suggest strong increases in well-being for urban households in China. The corresponding changes in rural China and in the United States are smaller. Four sets of data on households are drawn on to document these findings.