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The consequences of extreme climatic events that threaten food security have created the urgent need to properly adopt climate-smart adaptation techniques to improve productivity. The study examined the sustainability responses to climate-smart adaptation and the implication it has for explaining the food security situations among farm households in the Central Region of Ghana.

We estimated Heckit treatment effect model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from randomly selected farmers in the Central Region.

Analysis of farm sustainability index suggests that farmers' agricultural practices in response to climate change are lowly or moderately sustainable. We further found that while majority of the farm households are severely food insecure or food insecure with hunger, only about one-third are food insecure without hunger and the remaining few being food secure. The sustainability of farm practices is being impacted by the farmers’ choice of climate smart adaptation measures at the farm level. Consequently, the farm households' food security situation is found to be improved when sustainable farming practices are employed in the face of managing climate change effects.

Conclusions drawn from the study findings give rooms for policy implications that suggest responsibilities for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders to promote CSA practices in food crop production in Ghana. These policy implications will contribute to improve crop productivity, increase incomes and thus enhance food security among farm families. Awareness campaign about benefits of CSA practices and technologies need to be strengthened among farmers in Ghana by government and NGOs that matter in promoting farm resilience to climate change. Given the important impacts of sustainable farm practices on household food security situation, policies that seek to build the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate vulnerability impacts should take into consideration the sustainability dimensions of the adaptation and mitigation measures to be advocated for use at farm levels.

Our paper contributes to literature knowledge on climate-smart adaptation practices effect on food security as evidenced in some recent literature. The paper makes a unique contribution by highlighting the food security implication of the sustainability impact of CSA practices, thereby exploring sustainability as an impact pathway between climate smart adaptations practices and food security in a developing country like Ghana. We approached our study aiming at making new contribution by introducing in the study implementation a quasi-experimental research design which future studies on impacts of climate smart adaptation practices can replicate.

This paper aims to focus on non-poor households that during the Great Recession experienced economic stress (ES). That is, whose economic comfort was reduced taking into account their previous living standards. The paper seeks to determine how the crisis has affected this extensive (and key) social group.

The analysis has been performed in a dynamic way. The non-poor households ES situation and its changes are studied throughout the period 2008-2016 by taking the four-year intervals provided by the longitudinal Spanish Living Conditions Survey. The authors discuss and select the circumstances to determine whether ES has occurred. To identify which variables determine the probability of suffering ES the authors use a standard logit model.

The main variable is the tenure status of the dwelling: property with a mortgage or rented multiply the risk of ES by up to 3.5 times. ES falls as the household’s work intensity increases. However, an improvement in the employment situation cannot be associated with a reduction in ES probability. The main socio-demographic variables behave as predicted: woman householder, grow in the number of household members and bad health increase the risk of ES, and the higher the level of education of the householder, the lower the risk.

There are very few studies regarding the people above the poverty line. Exploring and analyzing the factors determining the sensitivity of the largest part of the population to the crisis is very relevant, as the pace of the economic recovery depends largely on them.

During the last two decades the share of foreign-born residents in Italy has grown considerably, from just over 1 percent to about 8 percent. This chapter seeks to clarify the status of immigrants in Italy by examining the evolution of their economic situation and, in particular, the presence of economic hardship. Poverty is measured by considering not only the usual income-based indicators but also others that take into account households’ real and financial wealth. The picture that emerges is one of a higher incidence of economic hardship among immigrant households that strongly affects the dynamics of poverty nationwide. The economic gap with respect to natives appears to increase in the years considered, but the condition of poverty is not more persistent for immigrants than for Italians.

The authors’ empirical investigation attempts to identify the nexus between the economic well-being of Polish elderly households and their housing situation, which can be related to the impact of the mass privatization policy implemented in Poland in the early 1990s. The generation who benefited from the process at that time currently includes great majority of people at retirement age who are homeowners.

In the study, the authors employ micro data from the Polish Social Diagnosis household survey and analyze them in a multinomial logistic regression framework. They explore the nexus between both subjective and objective measures of income and housing circumstances.

The results imply that housing arrangements do not significantly differentiate Polish households in terms of their economic well-being when controlling for other sociodemographic factors. This may result from two independent, but possibly overlapping, reasons. The first is that housing circumstances are quite evenly distributed across elderly population as compared to income. This may be a direct effect of the “(socialist) state legacy,” as in the socialist era there was a strong focus on diminishing income and wealth inequalities in society. The second explanation is that better housing circumstances are not a sufficient means to improve the welfare of the elderly.

The study’s analysis is associated with little investigated area of the welfare effects of homeownership in the old age at the individual level. It explores this issue on the example of Poland, which is a typical representative of the group of post-socialist countries that share a common feature of “state legacy welfare” that is characterized by extensive mortgage-free homeownership.

Financial theory suggests that with increasing labor income risk, the reluctance of households to hold stocks increases. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the determinants of a household’s decision on whether to invest in risky financial assets.

Income risk is measured as the observed variation of household income over a five-year period. The authors use both the time and the cross-sectional dimension of the German socio-economic panel to control for unobserved heterogeneity.

The authors find that indeed higher variation, i.e. higher income risk, reduces the propensity to invest in risky assets. However, when controlling for household heterogeneity, as well as subjective measures of a household’s financial situation (income satisfaction, worries about financial situation), the impact of observed labor income variation vanishes. It is therefore concluded that in particular the perception of investment risk and of the riskiness of the environment determines the investment decision to a great extent.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of a household’s investment decision-making process. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to fully exploit the panel structure of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity which leads to novel conclusions with respect to the effect of labor income.

The elderly seem to be more subject to housing problems due to lower income, older age of the housing stock and lower mobility. Nonetheless, housing deprivation (HD) is commonly analysed amongst the general population. Less is known about the differences between age clusters, which seems to be a crucial issue in countries like Poland due to population ageing. What is more, the current literature usually analyses only the occurrence of HD, while also an accumulation of its indicators seems to be substantial. The aim of this article is to identify the differences in HD (its occurrence and accumulation) amongst elderly and non-elderly households and to diagnose the risk factors behind those phenomena.

The HD index was calculated and compared. Next, the multinomial logit models were used to assess risk factors of HD.

The study showed that, surprisingly, HD in Poland occurs more frequently amongst non-elderly households. The elderly ones suffered more from housing cost overburden, while non-elderly from the overpopulation. In large part, analysed risk factors had a stronger influence on housing conditions of the elderly than non-elderly households.

Social policy tools should focus on the situation of single elderly households, especially living in houses, often in villages. This group is particularly affected by problems with the quality of the dwelling and housing cost overburden.

In the paper, the occurrence and accumulation of HD indicators were analysed. The authors applied a methodological framework that is applicable to other European Union (EU) member states based on the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data. It is possible to continue the research study and compare different economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of financial fragility and its disparity across ethnic groups in Malaysia. Disparities related to income and wealth are major concerns as they breed conflict and social instability. The study also compares the level of financial fragility of Malaysians with their neighboring Asian counterparts.

This study uses the World Values Survey to construct two financial fragility measures. Descriptive analysis is used to compare the level of financial fragility of Malaysia with other Asian countries. Ordinary least squares and generalized ordered logit regressions are applied to determine the existence of ethnic disparity in financial fragility in Malaysia.

There exist ethnic differences in financial vulnerability in Malaysia where Malay and Indian are in a more financially fragile situation compared to Chinese. Other socio-economic factors and character trait also impact financial fragility. Compared to neighboring countries, the level of financial fragility in Malaysia is low. Nevertheless, over 40 percent of the Malaysians are just getting by in terms of their expenditure relative to income. They may be at risk to financial shocks without adequate savings or funds.

Ethnic disparity in financial vulnerability added to the inequality in income and wealth can pose a serious threat to Malaysia which attempts to achieve long-lasting social harmony and sustainable development.

This is the first study that attempts to compare the level of individual financial fragility across Asian countries. It also makes use of a larger scale survey and a more representative sample to examine ethnic disparity in financial fragility in Malaysia. In addition, character trait is included in the analysis to provide a better understanding of human behavior in affecting financial outcomes.

Adults raised in poor households tend to be more prone to live in poverty than the rest, ceteris paribus. This holds true even in the presence of observed income transmission channels such as education attainment. We identify this differential poverty risk as intergenerational transmission of economic disadvantage (ITED). This chapter contributes to the literature on cross-country differences in the intensity of ITED in the EU by explicitly testing how macro-economic/institutional features shape the phenomenon. Working on a sample of 30- to 39-year-old interviewees from the EU-SILC 2011 module on Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages, the authors find that, first, past income inequality is positively correlated with current ITED intensity; second, past efforts on inequality reduction via social protection for families with children and unemployment benefits are negatively correlated with later ITED levels; finally, educational expansion correlates with lower ITED, pointing to the relevance of public investments in education as a way to fight inequality of opportunity.

This paper seeks to measure and characterise the extent of consumer over‐indebtedness among the European Union (EU) member states.

The study evaluates alternative measures of over‐indebtedness on the basis of the permanent‐income/life‐cycle theories of consumption behaviour and adopts a subjective approach in identifying over‐indebted households on the basis of European household survey data. It then investigates the main characteristics of over‐indebted households.

The empirical results reveal that over‐indebtedness was a significant problem across EU member states in the mid‐1990s. Moreover, an inverse relationship emerged between the extent of the over‐indebtedness problem and the extent of consumer borrowing across EU countries.

Anecdotal evidence seemed to suggest that some main factors behind over‐indebtedness could be “market failure” on the credit market, the existence of liquidity constraints and lack of access to formal credit markets. However, a comprehensive and rigorous investigation of the extent and determinants of over‐indebtedness can only be achieved through analysis of more extended household data sets, particularly panel data.

The EU credit markets exhibited certain symptoms of “market failure”, on the one hand, and there was also need for further financial liberalisation in the Southern European countries, on the other hand.

The paper provides a first systematic evaluation of existing measures of consumer over‐indebtedness as well as the first EU‐wide empirical investigation of the problem. It should provide valuable information to the credit industry as well as financial regulatory bodies.

This paper aims to study the financial vulnerability of the Spanish households derived from their primary residence mortgage debt payments. This paper shown as the economic and financial crisis triggered after the burst of the housing bubble brought an unemployment shock and a fall in the disposable family income, which alarmingly aggravated the financial vulnerability of the mortgaged households. Consequently, the number of financially vulnerable households almost doubled.

Econometric model of discrete election.

The most vulnerable households – and therefore those with a higher risk of mortgage payment default – are those whose family head is a married and self-employed female. In contrast, in social housing the mortgaged households have been less vulnerable in the context of economic and financial crisis and unlike what would have been initially expected, higher education levels have not acted as a protective factor against households’ financial vulnerability.

There is a great need to understand how the financial health of the mortgaged families that bought their primary residence has deteriorated in a context of significant changes in macroeconomic conditions. This need is specially pressing in a country such as Spain which is one of the OECD’s countries with a higher rate of household property and which shows a sector of highly mortgaged households.