Adel Daoud

The Modus Vivendi of Material Simplicity: Counteracting Scarcity via the Deflation of Wants

Abstract This paper studies how voluntary material simplicity may countervail the causal effect of relative scarcity generated by the environment of a consumer society. Analyses of both interviews and texts were performed. It is shown that voluntary material simplifiers manage, though with difficulty, to neutralize the causal effect of consumer society. This is achieved by mediating the cultural properties of the economic ethic of material simplicity, which promotes the deflation of human wants. These simplifiers consequently manage, though with difficulty due to causal interference, to deflate their material wants and maintain them below their material means. Consequently, they actualize the modus vivendi of material simplicity; namely, a practical state of relative abundance. One major implication of this study is that the scarcity postulate of mainstream economics is problematically formulated. Hence, the development of a new model of relative scarcity and abundance encourages an explanation rather than an assumption of scarcity.

Quasi)Scarcity and Global Hunger

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to formulate a sociological critique of the concept of scarcity in mainstream economics by synthesising necessary conceptions in the construction of a theoretical structure with greater explanatory power than the current mainstream articulation. Mainstream economics asserts the universality of scarcity (the scarcity postulate). A critical scrutiny of this assertion is conducted by discussing the empirical phenomenon of global hunger in relation to a theoretical elaboration of the concepts of scarcity and abundance. The historical origins of the scarcity postulate is traced to the work of Carl Menger (1840-1921). The concern of global hunger shows that there is abundance of food goods, but still frustration of human needs occurs. An alternative approach is developed through a theoretical synthesis of Menger, Amartya Sen and critical realism, which asserts an ontologically stratified, differentiated and geo-historically conditioned understanding of scarcity and abundance. It is proposed that this approach is more fruitful than the scarcity postulate in explaining the process and conditions of frustration and satisfaction of human needs. Merely postulating scarcity tends to veil the underlying causes of poverty in general and hunger in particular. Central implications of the new model for socioeconomic analysis are considered.

Impact of International Monetary Fund programs on child health

Significance This study adds to the state of the art by analyzing the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs on children’s health, mediated by their parents’ education. It is the first to combine macrodata and microdata to address this issue systematically across five dimensions of child health: water, malnutrition, shelter, sanitation, and health care access. The sample represents about 2.8 billion (about 50%) of the world’s population in year 2000. Using multilevel models, we find that, although IMF programs do not correlate directly with child health indicators, they reduce the protective effect of parental education on child health, especially in rural areas, and have a mixed impact across the five dimensions of urban child health. Parental education is located at the center of global efforts to improve child health. In a developing-country context, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plays a crucial role in determining how governments allocate scarce resources to education and public health interventions. Under reforms mandated by IMF structural adjustment programs, it may become harder for parents to reap the benefits of their education due to wage contraction, welfare retrenchment, and generalized social insecurity. This study assesses how the protective effect of education changes under IMF programs, and thus how parents’ ability to guard their children’s health is affected by structural adjustment. We combine cross-sectional stratified data (countries, 67; children, 1,941,734) from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. The sample represents ∼2.8 billion (about 50%) of the world’s population in year 2000. Based on multilevel models, our findings reveal that programs reduce the protective effect of parental education on child health, especially in rural areas. For instance, in the absence of IMF programs, living in an household with educated parents reduces the odds of child malnourishment by 38% [odds ratio (OR), 0.62; 95% CI, 0.66–0.58]; in the presence of programs, this drops to 21% (OR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.86–0.74). In other words, the presence of IMF conditionality decreases the protective effect of parents’ education on child malnourishment by no less than 17%. We observe similar adverse effects in sanitation, shelter, and health care access (including immunization), but a beneficial effect in countering water deprivation.

What is the association between absolute child poverty, poor governance, and natural disasters? A global comparison of some of the realities of climate change

The paper explores the degree to which exposure to natural disasters and poor governance (quality of governance) is associated with absolute child poverty in sixty-seven middle- and low-income countries. The data is representative for about 2.8 billion of the world´s population. Institutionalist tend to argue that many of society’s ills, including poverty, derive from fragile or inefficient institutions. However, our findings show that although increasing quality of government tends to be associated with less poverty, the negative effects of natural disasters on child poverty are independent of a country´s institutional efficiency. Increasing disaster victims (killed and affected) is associated with higher rates of child poverty. A child´s estimated odds ratio to be in a state of absolute poverty increases by about a factor of 5.7 [95% CI: 1.7 to 18.7] when the average yearly toll of disasters in the child´s country increases by one on a log-10 scale. Better governance correlates with less child poverty, but it does not modify the correlation between child poverty and natural disasters. The results are based on hierarchical regression models that partition the variance into three parts: child, household, and country. The models were cross-sectional and based on observational data from the Demographic Health Survey and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which were collected at the beginning of the twenty-first millennium. The Sustainable Development Goals are a principle declaration to halt climate change, but they lack a clear plan on how the burden of this change should be shared by the global community. Based on our results, we suggest that the development agencies should take this into account and to articulate more equitable global policies to protect the most vulnerable, specifically children.

An organic view of want formation: pragmatic rationality, habitus and reflexivity

Based on interviews with and questionnaires completed by upper secondary school pupils (n = 27) from academic and vocational programmes, respectively, the present paper focuses on some of the social and individual conditions that precede the individual decision-making process in education transitions. The paper shows that an organic view of decision-making is in better accordance with observations than is a hierarchical view, and thus supports previous research claiming that pragmatic rationality (based on habitus and reflexivity) plays a more important role in students’ decision-making processes than does instrumental rationally.

Examining the changing profile of undernutrition in the context of food price rises and greater inequality

This paper examines how the profile of undernutrition among children in two African countries (Ethiopia and Nigeria) changed over the period of the 2007/08 food, fuel and financial crisis. Using the Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF), an indicator which allows for a comprehensive assessment of undernutrition in young children, we examine what changes occurred in the composition of undernutrition, and how these changes were distributed amongst children in different socio-economic groups. This is important as certain combinations of anthropometric failure (AF), especially the experience of multiple failures (dual and triple combinations of AF) are associated with higher morbidity and mortality risks, and are also related to poverty. Our hypothesis is that increases in food prices during the crisis contributed to an increase in inequality, which may have resulted in concurrent increases in the prevalence of more damaging forms of undernutrition amongst poorer children. While both countries witnessed large increases in food prices, the effects were quite different. Ethiopia managed reduce the prevalence of multiple anthropometric failure between 2005 and 2011 across most groups and regions. By contrast, in Nigeria prevalence increased between 2008 and 2013, and particularly so in the poorer, northern states. The countries studied applied quite different policies in response to food price increases, with the results from Ethiopia demonstrating that protectionist public health and nutrition interventions can mitigate the impacts of price increases on poor children.

Quality of Governance, Corruption and Absolute Child Poverty in India

Mundle, Chakraborty, Chowdhury and Sikdar (2012) developed the first quality of governance (QoG) measures to assess the performance of India’s states. The present article builds on Mundle et al.’s (2012) framework by analyzing the relationship between their QoG measures and absolute child poverty in India. The empirical analysis also includes corruption indicators from Transparency International to test the relative importance of corruption and governance for combating child poverty. I combine macro (states) and micro data (children) with multilevel statistical models to achieve this task. A key finding is that governance has more explanatory power than corruption. Further, among Mundleetal.’s six measures, the BORDA measure performs consistently better and explains about 60 per cent of the between-states variation: one unit improvement in BORDA yields about 1 per cent decrease in absolute child poverty. The sensitivity of this inference is tested with regards to severe education, shelter and food deprivation.

The association of minimum wage change on child nutritional status in LMICs: A quasi-experimental multi-country study*

ABSTRACT There is recognition that social protection policies such as raising the minimum wage can favourably impact health, but little evidence links minimum wage increases to child health outcomes. We used multi-year data (2003–2012) on national minimum wages linked to individual-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 23 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that had least two DHS surveys to establish pre- and post-observation periods. Over a pre- and post-interval ranging from 4 to 8 years, we examined minimum wage growth and four nutritional status outcomes among children under 5 years: stunting, wasting, underweight, and anthropometric failure. Using a differences-in-differences framework with country and time-fixed effects, a 10% increase in minimum wage growth over time was associated with a 0.5 percentage point decline in stunting (−0.054, 95% CI (−0.084,−0.025)), and a 0.3 percentage point decline in failure (−0.031, 95% CI (−0.057,−0.005)). We did not observe statistically significant associations between minimum wage growth and underweight or wasting. We found similar results for the poorest households working in non-agricultural and non-professional jobs, where minimum wage growth may have the most leverage. Modest increases in minimum wage over a 4- to 8-year period might be effective in reducing child undernutrition in LMICs.

Economic sociology – old and new

In this article, we discuss classical sociology and new economic sociology to show the interest of sociologists in economic issues and to examine the relationship between economics and sociology from a sociological perspective. We maintain that, besides empirical studies, sociologists have contributed to the analysis of economic systems, organisations, and action through the development of theoretical approaches to answer two basic questions: Why are the neoclassical assumptions about action problematic? And how are rational economic actions and systems produced? Sociologists have worked on three frontiers to answer these questions. First, by developing a more nuanced action theory. Second, by elaborating the concept of embeddedness to capture how economic action is influenced by cognitive, cultural, structural, and political contexts. Third, by understanding the historical differentiation and rationalisation of institutions and action contexts that produces instrumental rationality.