Poverty: Concepts and Challenges
Objectives
This course aims at providing students with a broad knowledge about poverty. The focus is on the manifold relationships between poverty and the labor and housing markets, family composition and fertility choices, and education. It starts with poverty measurement in the following perspectives: static, dynamic, uni-dimensional, and multi-dimensional, this latter relating to equality of opportunity and civic participation. It provides an understanding of poverty´s main causes, and helps the students into critical thinking about how to fight it. It also covers the basics of low-income support programs. The students are endowed with the tools to critically assess different programs aiming at reducing poverty in developed countries.
General characterization
Code
2160
Credits
3.5
Responsible teacher
Susana Peralta
Hours
Weekly - Available soon
Total - Available soon
Teaching language
English
Prerequisites
N/A
Bibliography
Poverty and Discrimination, by Kevin Lang (2007)
The Economics of Poverty, by Martin Ravaillon (2016)
Selected research papers and book chapters Resources
Lecture slides, all relevant material and announcements available on Moodle.
Teaching method
There will be two classes of 1 hour and 20 minutes per week. For each topic, a general overview of the literature will be given. Recent literature will be studied in greater detail. Empirical studies will also be presented, in most cases by students.
Evaluation method
Presentation of a research paper (30 % for the grade): to be done in groups of 5‐6 (depending on class size) for the duration of approximately 40 minutes.
During this session students should:
(I) provide motivation to the research question;
(II) introduce the related literature;
(III) present the empirical results;
(IV) provide appropriate responses to questions from the class.
-Final exam (70% of the grade).
Subject matter
Motivation
Some history: the concept of Poverty, how the idea has evolved through time
Concepts of Welfare Economics
Using household surveys for welfare measurement
Alternatives to welfare measurement
Measuring inequality
Increasing global and national inequality
Poverty lines
Measuring povertly
Uni-dimensional vs multidimensional poverty
Static vs dynamic poverty
Impact evaluation
Education policy, non-cognitive skills, early childhood interventions
Neighbourhoods and urban policy
Health care policies
Price (wage and rents) interventions
Low income support policies