Income growth and future poverty rates of the aged

This article estimates the effects of 50 years of steady growth in incomes on poverty rates among the elderly. It assumes that the poverty threshold continues to be adjusted for inflation but not for increases in real incomes. Simulations with the March 1998 Current Population Survey indicate that if the benefit rules for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are not changed and if earnings and other sources of income in an otherwise unchanging population grow by 1 percent per year (the intermediate assumption about earnings growth used in the Social Security Trustees' Report), poverty among the elderly will decrease from 10.5 percent in 1997 to about 7.2 percent in 2020 and to 4.1 percent in 2047. These projected poverty rates are quite sensitive to both the assumption about earnings growth and the assumption that benefits are not further reduced to maintain solvency. This article quantifies the sensitivity of the results to these assumptions and discusses several other aspects that might affect future poverty rates--changes in other income components like SSI, earnings, and pensions; changes in longevity and marital patterns; and changes in the distribution of earnings.     

Hanging in,stepping up and stepping out: livelihood aspirations and strategies of the poor

In recent years understanding of poverty and of ways in which people escape from or fall into poverty has become more holistic. This should improve the capabilities of policy analysts and others working to reduce poverty, but it also makes analysis more complex. This article describes a simple schema which integrates multi-dimensional, multi-level, and dynamic understandings of poverty, of poor people's livelihoods, and of changing roles of agricultural systems. The article suggests three broad types of strategy pursued by poor people: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’, and ‘stepping out’. This simple schema explicitly recognises the dynamic aspirations of poor people, diversity among them, and livelihood diversification. It also brings together aspirations of poor people with wider sectoral, inter-sectoral, and macro-economic questions about policies necessary for the realisation of those aspirations.     

Eugenics and the modern woman on trial in Spain: from the Primer curso eugénico (1928) to the trial of Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira (1934)

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Spanish supporters of eugenics encountered unprecedented opportunities to propagate their ideas and influence public discourse. This article argues that, following the collapse of the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1930, images of modern femininity were used to promote eugenic ideas to new audiences and the mujer moderna (modern woman) imagined as a key consumer of the modernist ideology of race regeneration. The association of Galtonian doctrine with new models of modern femininity affected an increase in the popularity of eugenics, evident in records of the extraordinary professional advancement of adolescent propagandist for eugenic reform, Hildegart (1914–33). Nevertheless, the capacity of Spanish eugenicists to propagate their ideas and shape social reform remained limited due to lingering anxieties about the dangers of popularising scientific knowledge about sex and reproduction among those who might be classified as “unprepared” on the basis of their age and gender.