Personal Assessments of Minimum Income and Expenses: What Do They Tell Us about 'Minimum Living' Thresholds and Equivalence Scales?

Subjective minimum income (MIQ) and minimum spending (MSQ) are the study focus. Basic Needs Module (1995) data from the U.S. Survey of Income and Program Participation are analyzed. A regression intersection approach is used to estimate household thresholds. MIQ thresholds are higher than MSQ thresholds. Both are higher than U.S. official poverty thresholds, and thresholds based on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) methodology. Subjective threshold based equivalence scales imply greater economies of scale than those in the other two measures but are similar to behavioral scales. This finding suggests that families make trade-offs to meet their minimum needs.well-being, sufficiency, poverty, expenditures, SIPP

Developing a New Poverty Line for the USA: Are There Lessons for India?

This paper reviews a procedure that is being followed in the United States of America (USA) to experimentally test and evaluate recommendations made for redefining poverty measurement in that country. The recommendations were made in 1995 by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel on poverty measurement. In this paper these recommendations are reviewed and the impact of implementing the recommendations on measures of inequality and poverty are examined. In conclusion, a discussion concerning possible lessons for India is provided. The recommended poverty measure (based on new measures of thresholds and resources) is examined in terms of its impact on inequality statistics, as well as poverty statistics, and results are compared to similar statistics based on the official measure. The standard Gini index, and three generalized entropy inequality measures are used to examine inequality. For the poverty analysis simple head count ratios, poverty gaps, and Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures are computed. Data from the 1991 U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) Interview are used to produce the thresholds, and data from the 1992 through 1997 Current Population Survey (CPS), and in some analyzes, the 1991 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), are used to define resources. The proposed measure produces a distribution of resources that is, in general, more equal than is the distribution of official income. The poverty analysis reveals that changes in the poverty rates based on the official and the experimental measures are similar over time. However, poverty as measured by the NAS measure is greater than official poverty. The experimental poverty measure yields a poverty population that looks slightly more like the total U.S. population in terms of various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics than does the current official measure. Geographically adjusting the thresholds results in greater equality and lower poverty rates than when non-adjusted thresholds are used. With regard to India, poverty measurement is likely not to be based on income and expenditures primarily. Alternative measures based on other needs and resources are reviewed. However, regardless of the measure used, systematic evaluations of the measure are necessary and the USA model may be one to consider in this evaluation process.poverty, Consumer Expenditure Survey, India

Economic Well-Being Based on Income, Consumer Expenditures and Personal Assessments of Minimal Needs

Responses to minimum income and minimum spending questions are used to produce economic well-being thresholds. Thresholds are estimated using a regression framework.  Regression coefficients are based on U.S. Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data and then applied to U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) data. Three different resource measures are compared to the estimated thresholds.  The first resource measure is total before-tax money income, and the other two are expenditure based.  The first of these two refers to expenditure outlays and the second to outlays adjusted for the value of the service flow of owner-occupied housing (rental equivalence). The income comparison is based on SIPP data while the outlays comparisons are based on CE data. Results using official poverty thresholds are shown for comparison. This is among the earliest work in the U.S. in which expenditure outlays have been used for economic well-being determinations in combination with personal assessments, and the first time rental equivalence has been used in such an exercise. Comparisons of expenditures for various bundles of commodities are compared to the CE derived thresholds to provide insight concerning what might be considered minimum or basic. Results reveal that CE and SIPP MIQ thresholds are higher than MSQ thresholds, and resulting poverty rates are also higher with the MIQ.  CE-based MSQ thresholds are not statistically different from average expenditure outlays for food, apparel, and shelter and utilities for primary residences.  When reported rental equivalences for primary residences that are owner occupied are substituted for out-of-pocket shelter expenditures, single elderly are less likely to be as badly off as they would be with a strict outlays approach in defining resources.well-being, sufficiency, poverty, income, expenditures, Consumer Expenditure Survey, Survey of Income and Program Participation

Creating a Consistent Poverty Measure Over Time Using NAS Procedures: 1996-2005

This paper presents an experimental poverty measure and compares it to the current official measure, now more than 40 years old. The experimental measure is based on an approach, drawn from work by a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) expert Panel, to consistently define basic needs and family resources. The experimental thresholds are based on out-of-pocket spending by families on basic goods and services and are based on an “outflows” concept. The resource measure is based on an “inflows” concept and reflects money coming into the household that is available to meet one’s basic needs. The U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey serves as the basis for the experimental thresholds and the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement serves as the basis for the resource measure. Results for 1996 to 2005 are reported with trends examined. An important finding is that increases in expenditures for shelter and utilities, captured in the new thresholds, suggest a greater increase in the number of families not able to meet basic needs than is reflected by the official poverty statistics.NAS, Poverty, Consumer Exenditure Survey, Current Population Survey

Data Needs for Stellar Atmosphere and Spectrum Modeling

The main data need for stellar atmosphere and spectrum modeling remains atomic and molecular transition data, particularly energy levels and transition cross-sections. We emphasize that data is needed for bound-free (b - f) as well as bound-bound (b - b), and collisional as well as radiative transitions. Data is now needed for polyatomic molecules as well as atoms, ions, and diatomic molecules. In addition, data for the formation of, and extinction due to, liquid and solid phase dust grains is needed. A prioritization of species and data types is presented, and gives emphasis to Fe group elements, and elements important for the investigation of nucleosynthesis and Galactic chemical evolution, such as the -elements and n-capture elements. Special data needs for topical problems in the modeling of cool stars and brown dwarfs are described

UV excess measures of accretion onto young very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs

Low-resolution spectra from 3000-9000 AA of young low-mass stars and brown dwarfs were obtained with LRIS on Keck I. The excess UV and optical emission arising in the Balmer and Paschen continua yields mass accretion rates ranging from 2e-12 to 1e-8 Mo/yr. These results are compared with {\it HST}/STIS spectra of roughly solar-mass accretors with accretion rates that range from 2e-10 to 5e-8 Mo/yr. The weak photospheric emission from M-dwarfs at <4000 A leads to a higher contrast between the accretion and photospheric emission relative to higher-mass counterparts. The mass accretion rates measured here are systematically 4-7 times larger than those from H-alpha emission line profiles, with a difference that is consistent with but unlikely to be explained by the uncertainty in both methods. The accretion luminosity correlates well with many line luminosities, including high Balmer and many He I lines. Correlations of the accretion rate with H-alpha 10% width and line fluxes show a large amount of scatter. Our results and previous accretion rate measurements suggest that accretion rate is proportional to M^(1.87+/-0.26) for accretors in the Taurus Molecular Cloud.Comment: 13 pages text, 15 tables, 14 figures. Accepted by Ap

Endovascular Treatment of Symptomatic Intracranial Atherosclerotic Disease

Symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic disease (ICAD) is responsible for approximately 10% of all ischemic strokes in the United States. The risk of recurrent stroke may be as high as 35% in patient with critical stenosis >70% in diameter narrowing. Recent advances in medical and endovascular therapy have placed ICAD at the forefront of clinical stroke research to optimize the best medical and endovascular approach to treat this important underlying stroke etiology. Analysis of symptomatic ICAD studies lead to the question that whether angioplasty and/or stenting is a safe, suitable, and efficacious therapeutic strategy in patients with critical stenoses that are deemed refractory to medical management. Most of the currently available data in support of angioplasty and/or stenting in high risk patients with severe symptomatic ICAD is in the form of case series and randomized trial results of endovascular therapy versus medical treatment are awaited. This is a comprehensive review of the state of the art in the endovascular approach with angioplasty and/or stenting of symptomatic ICAD

Recurrence of the eelgrass wasting disease at the border of New Hampshire and Maine, USA

Eelgrass Zostera marina L. populations in the Great Bay Estuary, on the New Hampshire-Maine border, decreased dramatically between 1981 and 1984. The immedi- ate cause of this decline was not pollution as found recently in other estuaries, but an infection of healthy leaf tissue by a microorganism. The slime mold Labyrinthula, associated with the 1930\u27s eelgrass wasting disease that devasted populations on both sides of the North Atlantic, was isolated from eelgrass tissue, as were other possibly infectious microorganisms. In addition to the decline of eelgrass in the estuary, we have documented the sequence of infection and die-back in meso- cosm and laboratory eelgrass cultures that resulted in condi- tions analogous to those observed in the estuary

NLTE Strontium and Barium in metal poor red giant stars

We present atmospheric models of red giant stars of various metallicities, including extremely metal poor (XMP, [Fe/H]<-3.5) models, with many chemical species, including, significantly, the first two ionization stages of Strontium (Sr) and Barium (Ba), treated in Non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (NLTE) with various degrees of realism. We conclude that 1) for all lines that are useful Sr and Ba abundance diagnostics the magnitude and sense of the computed NLTE effect on the predicted line strength is metallicity dependent, 2) the indirect NLTE effect of overlap between Ba and Sr transitions and transitions of other species that are also treated in NLTE non-negligibly enhances NLTE abundance corrections for some lines, 3) the indirect NLTE effect of NLTE opacity of other species on the equilibrium structure of the atmospheric model is not significant, 4) the computed NLTE line strengths differ negligibly if collisional b-b and b-f rates are an order of magnitude smaller or larger than those calculated with standard analytic formulae, and 5) the effect of NLTE upon the resonance line of Ba II at 4554.03 AA is independent of whether that line is treated with hyperfine splitting. As a result, the derivation of abundances of Ba and Sr for metal-poor red giant stars with LTE modeling that are in the literature should be treated with caution.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in April 2006 Astrophysical Journa