Persistent income poverty and deprivation in the European Union: An analysis of the first three waves of the European Community Household Panel

Poverty research has increasingly focused on persistent income poverty, both as a crucial social indicator and as a target for policy intervention. Such an approach can lead to an identification of a sub-set of poor individuals facing particularly adverse circumstances and/or distinctive problems in escaping from poverty. Here we seek to establish whether, in comparison with cross-sectional measures, persistent poverty measures also provide a better measure of exclusion from a minimally acceptable way of life and relate with other important variables in a logical fashion. Our analysis draws upon the first three waves of the ECHP and shows that a persistent poverty measure does constitute a significant improvement over its cross-sectional counterpart in the explanation of levels of deprivation. Persistent poverty is related to life-style deprivation in a manner that comes close to being uniform across countries. The measure of persistence also conforms to our expectations of how a poverty measure should behave in that, unlike relative income poverty lines, defining the threshold level more stringently enables us to identify progressively groups of increasingly deprived respondents. Overall the persistent poverty measure constitutes a significant advance on cross-sectional income measures. However, there is clearly a great deal relating to the process of accumulation and of erosion of resources, which is not fully captured in the persistent poverty measure. In the absence of such information, there is a great deal to be said for making use of both types of indictors in formulating and evaluating policies while we continue to improve our understanding of longer-term processes.

Income, deprivation, and economic strain. An analysis of the European community household panel

This paper is concerned with the relationship between household income and life-style deprivation, and their combined impact on households' perceptions of economic strain. It takes as a point of departure findings from a number of European countries showing that the relationship between income and deprivation is weaker than widely assumed and that relative income poverty lines may perform poorly in terms of identifying the most deprived households. It proceeds to examine how far these conclusions about income and deprivation can be generalized to the countries included in the first wave of the European Community Household Panel. Results show that five distinct dimensions of deprivation emerge from an overall European analysis and that these are consistent across individual countries. While a good deal of similarity is observed in the income-deprivation relationship, countries differ in the strength of relationship between income and what is termed 'current liferstyle deprivation' with the relationship being generally weakest in the richer countries. The implications of these findings for the use of relative income poverty lines are developed. Extending this analysis to an assessment of how income and deprivation combine to influence perceptions of economic strain, we show that within-nation reference group processes operating in a uniform manner across countries can account for the bulk of the variation in strain. Cross-national differences can be accounted for by corresponding variation in income and deprivation levels.

The relationship between income and deprivation: A dynamic perspective

Income poverty lines may fail to distinguish households experiencing deprivation/exclusion. Analysing a large sample of Irish households, we find that current income is an important influence on deprivation levels, hut so are many other aspects of a household's current situation and how it arrived there. It is also important to distinguish different dimensions in using deprivation indicators with income to measure poverty.

Analyzing Intergenerational Influences on Income Poverty & Economic Vulnerability with EU-SILC

The European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions
(EU-SILC) 2005 wave includes a special module on inter-generational
transmission of poverty. In addition to the standard data relating to income
and material deprivation, information relating to parental background and
childhood circumstances was collected for all household members aged over
24 and less than 66 at the end of the income reference period. In principle,
the module provides an unprecedented opportunity to apply a welfare regime
perspective to a comparative European analysis of the relationship between
poverty and social exclusion and parental characteristics and childhood
economic circumstances. In this paper, we seek to exploit such potential. In
pursuing this objective, it is necessary to take into account some of the
limitations of the data. We do by restricting our attention to a set of
countries where data issues seem less extreme. Finally, we compare findings
from one dimensional and multidimensional approaches to poverty and social
exclusion in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which our
analysis of welfare regime variation provides a coherent account of the
intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

Dimensions of Financial Autonomy in Low-/Moderate-Income Couples from a Gender Perspective and Implications for Welfare Reform

The ‘unitary household’ lives on in policymakers’ assumptions about couples sharing their finances. Yet financial autonomy is seen as a key issue in gender relations, particularly for women. This article draws on evidence from semi-structured individual interviews with men and women in thirty low-/moderate-income couples in Britain. The interviews explored whether financial autonomy had any meaning to these individuals; and, if so, to what extent this was gendered in the sense of there being differences in men's and women's understanding of it. We develop a framework for the investigation of financial autonomy, involving several dimensions: achieving economic independence, having privacy in one's financial affairs and exercising agency in relation to household and/or personal spending. We argue that financial autonomy is a relevant issue for low-/moderate-income couples, and that women are more conscious of tensions between financial togetherness and autonomy due to their greater responsibility for managing togetherness and lower likelihood of achieving financial independence. Policymakers should therefore not discount the aspirations of women in particular for financial autonomy, even in low-/moderate-income couples where there remain significant obstacles to achieving this. Yet plans for welfare reform that rely on means testing and ignore intra-household dynamics in relation to family finances threaten to exacerbate these obstacles and reinforce a unitary family model.

Magnetic field suppression in collision-less shocks generated during the expansion of a dense plasma into a rarefied medium

A two-dimensional numerical study of the expansion of a dense plasma through a more rarefied one is reported. The electrostatic ion-acoustic shock, which is generated during the expansion, accelerates the electrons of the rarefied plasma inducing a superthermal population which reduces electron thermal anisotropy. The Weibel instability is therefore not triggered and no self-generated magnetic fields are observed, in contrast with published theoretical results dealing with plasma expansion into vacuum. © The Author(s) 2013.

Dynamical characteristics of solitary waves, shocks and envelope modes in kappa-distributed non-thermal plasmas: an overview

Space plasmas provide abundant evidence of highly energetic particle population, resulting in a long-tailed non-Maxwellian distribution. Furthermore, the first stages in the evolution of plasmas produced during laser-matter interaction are dominated by nonthermal electrons, as confirmed by experimental observation and computer simulations. This phenomenon is efficiently modelled via a kappa-type distribution. We present an overview, from first principles, of the effect of superthermality on the characteristics of electrostatic plasma waves. We rely on a fluid model for ion-acoustic excitations, employing a kappa distribution function to model excess superthermality of the electron distribution. Focusing on nonlinear excitations (solitons), in the form of solitary waves (pulses), shocks and envelope solitons, and employing standard methodological tools of nonlinear plasmadynamical analysis, we discuss the role of excess superthermality in their propagation dynamics (existence laws, stability profile), geometric characteristics and stability. Numerical simulations are employed to confirm theoretical predictions, namely in terms of the stability of electrostatic pulses, as well as the modulational stability profile of bright- and dark-type envelope solitons.

Parametric study of non-relativistic electrostatic shocks and the structure of their transition layer

Nonrelativistic electrostatic unmagnetized shocks are frequently observed in laboratory plasmas and they are likely to exist in astrophysical plasmas. Their maximum speed, expressed in units of the ion acoustic speed far upstream of the shock, depends only on the electron-to-ion temperature ratio if binary collisions are absent. The formation and evolution of such shocks is examined here for a wide range of shock speeds with particle-in-cell simulations. The initial temperatures of the electrons and the 400 times heavier ions are equal. Shocks form on electron time scales at Mach numbers between 1.7 and 2.2. Shocks with Mach numbers up to 2.5 form after tens of inverse ion plasma frequencies. The density of the shock-reflected ion beam increases and the number of ions crossing the shock thus decreases with an increasing Mach number, causing a slower expansion of the downstream region in its rest frame. The interval occupied by this ion beam is on a positive potential relative to the far upstream. This potential pre-heats the electrons ahead of the shock even in the absence of beam instabilities and decouples the electron temperature in the foreshock ahead of the shock from the one in the far upstream plasma. The effective Mach number of the shock is reduced by this electron heating. This effect can potentially stabilize nonrelativistic electrostatic shocks moving as fast as supernova remnant shocks. 

Diffusive shock acceleration at laser-driven shocks: studying cosmic-ray accelerators in the laboratory

The non-thermal particle spectra responsible for the emission from many astrophysical systems are thought to originate from shocks via a first order Fermi process otherwise known as diffusive shock acceleration. The same mechanism is also widely believed to be responsible for the production of high energy cosmic rays. With the growing interest in collisionless shock physics in laser produced plasmas, the possibility of reproducing and detecting shock acceleration in controlled laboratory experiments should be considered. The various experimental constraints that must be satisfied are reviewed. It is demonstrated that several currently operating laser facilities may fulfil the necessary criteria to confirm the occurrence of diffusive shock acceleration of electrons at laser produced shocks. Successful reproduction of Fermi acceleration in the laboratory could open a range of possibilities, providing insight into the complex plasma processes that occur near astrophysical sources of cosmic rays.

Cosmic ray acceleration at oblique shocks

We show that the diffusion approximation breaks down for particle acceleration at oblique shocks with velocities typical of young supernova remnants. Higher order anisotropies flatten the spectral index at quasi-parallel shocks and steepen the spectral index at quasi-perpendicular shocks. We compare the theory with observed spectral indices.