Joan R. Rodgers

Chronic poverty in the United States

This paper proposes a method of measuring chronic and transitory poverty using an axiomatically sound, additively decomposable index of aggregate poverty. Our approach is contrasted with alternative methods of measuring poverty persistence. We use our method to measure chronic and transitory poverty in the United States during the 1980s and late 1970s and find that chronic poverty is a more serious problem than previously thought. Between the late 1970s and mid 1980s poverty not only increased, it became more chronic and less transitory in nature. This is true for the population as a whole and for some, but not all, of the subpopulations we considered. The latter were defined according to race, type of social unit, and educational qualifications of the head of the social unit. All empirical analyses are based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

A Panel-Data Study of the Effect of Student Attendance on University Performance

The literature indicates that absenteeism from university classes is a common phenomenon in Australia and North America. Whether this constitutes a problem from societys point of view depends upon whether absenteeism has a detrimental effect on student learning. Several authors in the economics discipline have argued the affirmative although none has established a causal linkage using experimental data and appropriate statistical analysis. The study reported here used panel data on business and economics students in an introductory statistics class at an Australian university to estimate the effect of attendance on performance. The methodology takes account of unobserved heterogeneity among students and, in so doing, constitutes an improvement over cross-section regression results reported previously. Attendance is found to have a small, but statistically significant, effect on performance.

Encouraging Tutorial Attendance at University Did Not Improve Performance

When tertiary education is subsidised the cost of poor student performance in university subjects falls not only on the individual student but also on society in general. Society therefore has an interest in promoting student performance. There is evidence in the literature that absenteeism from university classes is widespread and that absenteeism adversely affects student performance. In this paper I describe an incentive scheme that increased attendance of business and economics students in an introductory statistics subject at a typical Australian university. Like other authors I find a strong positive association between attendance and academic performance, both in the presence and absence of the scheme. However, there is no evidence that the incentive scheme caused student performance to improve. Although students attended more classes they did not perform better than students in the previous years class who had the same observable characteristics and attendance levels but who were not exposed to the scheme.

Measuring the Intensity of Poverty among Subpopulations: Applications to the United States

This paper proposes an approach to measuring the intensity of poverty within a group, relative to that of the population to which the group belongs. A poverty intensity index is presented which is easy to interpret and satisfies a number of desirable properties. The intensity of poverty among racial and residential groups, in various geographical locations, is measured using 1980 United States Census data.

RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY OF AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIC ECONOMISTS: HUMAN-CAPITAL AND FIXED EFFECTS*

This study investigates why some economics departments in Australian universities are more research productive than others. The hypothesis is simple: research productivity depends upon the human capital of department members and the department-specific conditions under which they work. A Tobit model is used to estimate the magnitude of the two effects. Both are found to be important. Our results help explain why a small number of departments consistently outperform the others in studies that rank Australian economics departments according to research output.

Contributions of Longitudinal Data to Poverty Measurement in Australia

Chronic poverty is of greater social consequence than transitory poverty but its measurement requires longitudinal data. This article uses six waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to explore the extent to which longitudinal data contribute to what is known about poverty from cross-section data. We find an imperfect correspondence between people’s annual poverty status and chronic poverty status. Consequently, policies that aim to reduce chronic poverty using means-tested benefits may be partially misdirected if beneficiaries are identified using annual income. Furthermore, some households experiencing chronic poverty may fall through the safety net.

The effect of motherhood on wages and wage growth: evidence for Australia

Labour market theory provides several reasons why mothers are likely to earn lower hourly wages than non-mothers. However, the size of any motherhood penalty is an empirical matter and the evidence for Australia is limited. This paper examines the effect of motherhood on Australian women’s wages and wage growth using a series of panel-data models which control for other relevant factors, both observed and unobserved. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, an unexplained motherhood wage penalty of around four per cent for one child, and eight per cent for two or more children, is found. Further analysis suggests that the wage penalty emerges over time through reduced wage growth, rather than through an immediate wage decline after the birth of a child. This reduction in wage growth is consistent with discrimination but also with a reduction in mothers’ work effort.

Changes in Poverty Rates During the Howard Era

This article considers changes in poverty rates under the Howard government. We also make three methodological contributions. We consider the statistical significance of the estimated changes in poverty. We propose a decomposition technique that reconciles the trends in absolute and relative poverty. We also use ‘poverty profiles’, which illustrate sensitivity to alternative poverty lines. We find decreases in absolute poverty and increases in relative poverty, both of which are statistically significant over a range of poverty lines. At a poverty line equal to half of the median income, the increase in relative poverty is statistically significant for all people and borders on significance for children.