In this paper we examine the concept of "vulnerability" (Townsend 1994) within thecontext of income mobility of the poor. We test for the dynamics of vulnerablehouseholds in the UK using Waves 1 - 12 of the British Household Panel Survey andfind that, of three different types of risks that we...

The concept of social exclusion has been widely debated in Europe butits application to children has seen relatively little discussion. What couldbe meant by exclusion of children is the first main theme of the paper.Among other things, I consider the choice of reference group, thegeographical...

This paper explores the links between school, family and areabackground influences during adolescence and later adult economicoutcomes. The empirical analysis is based on data covering the period1979 to 1996, drawn from the 1979 US National Longitudinal Survey ofYouth. For a sample of...

This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship betweenaggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive aframework based on individuals’ risks of unemployment and poverty,and how these vary over the economic cycle. Analysing the BritishHousehold Panel Survey for...

We pursue an economic approach to analysing poverty. This requires a focus onthe variables that individuals can influence, such as forming or dissolving aunion or having children. We argue that this indirect approach to modellingpoverty is the right way to bring economic tools to bear on the...

This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamicsbenefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person’s age and familycircumstances – the factors that shape their life cycle – affect the likelihood ofexperiencing key life events, such as partnership formation,...

The paper analyses changes in poverty in Britain since 1997. A povertylevel of 60 percent of median equivalised income is used. The first partexamines the changes that occurred between 1996/7 and 2000/1 asshown by the Family Resources Survey, on which government estimatesof Households Below...

The aim of this paper is to compare academic interpretations of the termsocial exclusion with the understanding of people with direct experienceof the phenomenon. A pre-selected group of residents of deprivedneighbourhoods were asked about various aspects of the concept andtheir responses...

This paper analyses the work of the Nobel Prize winning economist ProfessorAmartya Sen from the perspective of human rights. It assesses the ways inwhich Sen’s research agenda has deepened and expanded human rightsdiscourse in the disciplines of ethics and economics, and examines how hiswork...