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This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

Background: Rising food bank usage in the UK suggests a growing prevalence of food insecurity. However, a formalised, representative measure of food insecurity was not collected in the UK until 2019, over a decade after the initial proliferation of food bank demand. In the absence of a direct measure of food insecurity, this article identifies and summarises longitudinal proxy indicators of UK food insecurity to gain insight into the growth of insecure access to food in the 21st century.

Methods: A rapid evidence synthesis of academic and grey literature (2005–present) identified candidate proxy longitudinal markers of food insecurity. These were assessed to gain insight into the prevalence of, or conditions associated with, food insecurity.

Results: Food bank data clearly demonstrates increased food insecurity. However, this data reflects an unrepresentative, fractional proportion of the food insecure population without accounting for mild/moderate insecurity, or those in need not accessing provision. Economic indicators demonstrate that a period of poor overall UK growth since 2005 has disproportionately impacted the poorest households, likely increasing vulnerability and incidence of food insecurity. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by welfare reform for some households. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically intensified vulnerabilities and food insecurity. Diet-related health outcomes suggest a reduction in diet quantity/quality. The causes of diet-related disease are complex and diverse; however, evidence of socio-economic inequalities in their incidence suggests poverty, and by extension, food insecurity, as key determinants.

Conclusion: Proxy measures of food insecurity suggest a significant increase since 2005, particularly for severe food insecurity. Proxy measures are inadequate to robustly assess the prevalence of food insecurity in the UK. Failure to collect standardised, representative data at the point at which food bank usage increased significantly impairs attempts to determine the full prevalence of food insecurity, understand the causes, and identify those most at risk.

The purpose of this paper is to examine pro-poor urban asset adaptation to climate variability and change. It constructs a conceptual framework that explores the appropriate asset adaptation strategies for extreme poor households as well as the process of supporting these households and groups in accumulating these assets.

Qualitative data are obtained from life histories, key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus-group discussions (FGDs). These data are collected, coded and themed.

This research identifies that households among the urban extreme poor do their best to adapt to perceived climate changes; however, in the absence of savings, and access to credit and insurance, they are forced to adopt adverse coping strategies. Individual adaptation practices yield minimal results and are short lived and even harmful because the urban extreme poor are excluded from formal policies and institutions as they lack formal rights and entitlements. For the poorest, the process of facilitating and maintaining patron–client relationships is a central coping strategy. Social policy approaches are found to be effective in facilitating asset adaptation for the urban extreme poor because they contribute to greater resilience to climate change.

This study analyses the empirical evidence through the lens of a pro-poor asset-adaptation framework. It shows that the asset-transfer approach is an effective in building household-adaptation strategies. Equally important is the capacity to participate in and influence the institutions from which these people have previously been excluded.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of household food insecurity in the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa. This is motivated by the fact that food insecurity remains a key challenge at the household level in South Africa. Furthermore, the Gauteng Province has been rapidly urbanising due to a migrant influx, both locally and internationally. The findings will assist the country in achieving its mandate on the local economic development policy, Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2.

The study adopted a quantitative cross-section design, utilising the binary logistic regression technique, drawing on the Gauteng City-Region Observatory Quality of Life 2020/2021 data, consisting of 13,616 observations, randomly drawn from nine municipalities in Gauteng City-Region.

The main findings of the study highlight unemployment, health status, education, household size, indigency and income as the main determinants of food insecurity in Gauteng City-Region. Policies towards sustainable urban agriculture, improving access to education, increasing employment and income, and health for all can help improve the food insecurity status of households in the Gauteng City-Region.

Further studies would require an in-depth assessment of household coping mechanisms, as well as the influence of household income (notably government social grants) and access to credit on household food security status, to better understand the dynamics of food security in the Gauteng City-Region.

Determinants of food insecurity should be considered when developing and implementing policies to reduce food insecurity in urban municipalities.

The study is of interest as it interdicts food insecurity issues, which have an effect on socio-economic well-being.

The study adds value by providing evidence on the determinants of food insecurity in an urban setting in a developing country. Gauteng is the richest of all provinces in South Africa and is also at the receiving end of internal and international migration. Factors affecting food insecurity have changed in the nine cities. This compromises nutrition safety and calls for targeted policy interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of the saving behaviour of Vietnamese households and to explore the possible heterogeneity of household saving propensities.

The authors estimate the effects of household characteristics on Vietnamese household saving rates by means of a quantile regression approach using the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2010 data set.

The results suggest that the way household characteristics influence saving rates is different for each quantile of the household saving rate distribution. Household characteristics tend to have stronger effects at lower quantiles. Particularly, the marginal propensity to save of households at low quantiles is higher than those at high quantiles. Analysing rural and urban households separately, the authors find evidence that household and household head characteristics have stronger significant effects for rural than for urban households. Children and elderly members should be treated as part of the household labour force, instead of household dependency, since both of them increase household saving rates.

This research contributes to the literature on Vietnamese household saving behaviours, especially for households living in urban areas.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the financial well-being (FWB) of Malaysian households and to construct a subjective FWB index with present and future time perspectives.

Data were collected from 1,867 respondents across five major regions in Malaysia. Adapting the InCharge Financial Distress/Financial Well-being (IFDFW) Scale by Prawitz et al. (2006) and the method of computing an index by Devlin (2009), this study develops an FWB index using subjective measures that include future time perspectives (retirement). The index was employed to measure the FWB across low-, middle- and high-income groups and socio-demographic characteristics.

This study finds evidence that Malaysians' FWB is at an average level (46.8). Middle-income households' FWB (46.1) flanks between the financial well-being index (FWBI) levels of the low-income (37.4) and high-income households (58.7). Across age groups, education levels and employment sectors, the FWB of Malaysians significantly varies, although not across different ethnics, religions, zones and residential areas. Overall, the results suggest that the detrimental effects of FWB are perceived by all Malaysian households nationwide regardless of their religion, ethnicity and residential areas.

The results of this study complement the other well-being indices used by policymakers and may serve as a useful input for government and policymakers for them to formulate appropriate strategies to promote higher FWB of Malaysian households based on their socio-demographic characteristics.

This study used primary data and developed a subjective FWB index that leverages on people's perceptions of their own financial well-being while including present and future time perspectives. The main contribution of this paper is to construct an index that is easily interpretable and that complements the existing FWB indices, and to identify the segments of society that have low vis-à-vis high FWB.

The purpose of this study results and recommendations will have a paramount significance for policymakers, policy advocates, development planners and practitioners who may be in need of such information for reconsideration, evaluation and inclusion into their respective development and humanitarian programming and operational strategies. Above all, the study result has further provided the local community with viable adaptation strategies to climate-induced changes in the study area.

This study was conducted to measure the livelihood vulnerability of Borana pastoralists to climate change and variability in southern Ethiopia. Pastoralists’ households were sampled using multistage sampling techniques. A total of 27 socio-economic and biophysical indicators were used to reflect vulnerability components: adaptive capacity, exposure and sensitivity. Principal component analysis was used to develop weights for indicators and to produce livelihood vulnerability index to classify households according to their level of vulnerability. Ordinal logistic regression was used to identify the determinants of vulnerability to climate-induced stresses.

The results showed that 24.4% of households were highly vulnerable, 60.3% were moderately vulnerable and 15.3% of households were less vulnerable to climate-induced stresses. Factor estimates of the logistic model further revealed that early warning information, bush encroachment, coping strategy, temperature, drought frequency, provision of humanitarian services and food shortage during the normal season of the year have a significant influence on vulnerability in the study area.

The study’s results and recommendations will be of great significance to policymakers, development planners, and practitioners who require such information for reconsideration, evaluation, and inclusion in their respective development and humanitarian program and operational strategies. Most importantly, the study’s findings have provided the local community with practical adaptation strategies to climate-induced changes in the study area.

The study explored pastoralist perception of climate change and variability and measured the livelihood vulnerability of pastoralists’ households to climate change and variability and finally investigated viable adaptation and coping strategies in the study area.

In Covid-19 pandemic era when most households' members have lost their jobs and incomes, the government assistance and programs in ensuring household consumption smoothing is very significant. The main objectives of this study are to analyze the impact of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare (FMHC) policy on household consumption expenditure in Ghana in both long run and short run.

They used the ARDL to estimate the impact of government expenditure on household consumption and Segmented Linear Regression to examine impact of FMHC policy household consumption using longitudinal data from 1967 to 2018.

The results revealed that government expenditure had a negative and statistically significant effect on household consumption expenditure suggesting that government expenditure crowed-out private consumption in Ghana. Also, it was observed that before the implementation of the FMHC policy, there was an increase household consumption expenditure, but after the introduction of the FMHC policy, the study household consumption expenditure decreases significantly suggesting that FMHC policy has strong association with household consumption in Ghana.

Due to limited data availability, this study did not assess the impact of the FMHC policy at the household or district level. Also, Ghana has introduced a free senior high school education policy in 2017 so further research could analyze the implications of these policies for household consumption in Ghana at the micro-level using different estimation technique such as the difference in difference.

The study suggests the need to increase public spending on basic social amenities and also extend the free maternal healthcare policy to all pregnant women especially those in the rural areas of Ghana as these have a greater impact on household consumption in Ghana. The findings from this study have important implications for household savings and interest rate in Ghana. The findings from this study also have important implications for both fiscal policy and healthcare policy in Ghana and other developing countries.

To the best of my knowledge this is the first empirical study to examine the effect of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare policy on household consumption in Ghana.

The study’s first aim is to estimate the scale of working poverty using a nationwide household survey. The second aim is to answer the following research questions: is working enough to escape poverty, and what are the determinants of working poverty?

The focus is on working people in Indonesia who have per capita household expenditure below the provincial poverty line. The determinant analysis used logistic regression on the first quarter of 2013 Susenas microdata.

The study found that the scale of the working poverty problem is equivalent to the scale of the poverty, although the in-work poverty rate is lower than the poverty rate in all provinces. The logistic regression results conclude that the three factors, namely individual-level, employment-related and household-level variables, have significant contributions to the incidence of the working poor in Indonesia.

Some practical implications for reducing the incidence of working poverty are increasing labor earnings through productivity growth and improving workers' skills, encouraging the labor participation of the poor and reducing precarious work. This study also suggests the need to continue assisting the working poor, particularly by increasing access to financial credit.

Research aimed at studying working poverty in Indonesia in the peer-reviewed literature is rare until now based on the authors' search. This study will fill the gap and provoke further research on working poverty in Indonesia.

This paper explores the relationship between married women's intrahousehold decision-making participation and marital gender roles, next to factors suggested in the household bargaining literature. Additionally, the authors investigate whether women's employment carries the same importance for decision-making participation as contributions to household incomes.

Using 2011/2012 Nicaraguan Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the authors estimate multinomial logistic regressions for eight decision-making domains, analyzing three levels of decision-making: wife-dominant or sole decisions, joint decision-making (with the partner) and decision-making by someone else. The authors create an additive index for measuring internalized marital gender roles.

Women's intrahousehold decision-making participation is explained differently depending on the decision-making area and level of participation. Women with a better relative position vis-à-vis partners and not following patriarchal gender roles are more likely to make decisions jointly with their partners, but not alone. Women's age and educational level are the strongest predictors in the analysis. Women's employment reduces their decision-making participation in children's disciplining and daily cooking-related decisions.

It focuses on married women only, while marital status might be a determinant of decision-making itself and left out the contribution of unearned incomes.

Interventions aimed at increasing women's intrahousehold decision-making participation should not only focus on economic endowments but also comprehend the gendered dynamics governing intrahousehold allocation.

The study incorporates quantitative measures of marital gender roles in the study of intrahousehold decision-making. It also contributes to the literature with insights from contexts where women's involvement in employment increased against a background of patriarchal gender roles.