Time and Income Poverty - An Interdependent Multidimensional Poverty Approach with German Time Use Diary Data

Income as the traditional one dimensional measure in well-being and poverty analyses is extended in recent studies by a multidimensional poverty concept. Though this is certainly a progress, however, two important aspects are missing: time as an important dimension and the interdependence of the often only separately counted multiple poverty dimensions. Our paper will contribute to both aspects: First, we consider time - and income - both as striking and restricting resources of everyday activities and hence account for time and income as important multiple poverty dimensions. Second, the interdependence of the poverty dimensions will be evaluated by the German population to allow an advanced approach to understand possible substitution effects and the respective trade offs between the dimensions. Referring to the time dimension, we follow Sen's capability approach with its freedom of the living conditions' choice and social exclusion and argue, that restricted time might exclude from social participation. In particular, restricted genuine, personal leisure time (not entire leisure time) in particular is associated with a restricted social participation. The crucial question then is how to measure the substitution between income and such genuine leisure time. In our analysis we consider the country population's valuation with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and estimate the substitution by a CES-utility function of general utility/satisfaction. Given this quantification we disentangle time, income and interdependent multidimensional poverty regimes characterising the working poor. In addition, we quantify further socio-economic influences for each interdependent multidimensional poverty regime by a multinomial logit based on time use diary data of the German Time Use Study 2001/02. One striking result for Germany: the substitution between time and income is significant and we find an important fraction of time poor who are unable to substitute their time deficit by income. These poor people are ignored within the poverty and well-being as well as the time crunch and time famine discussion so far

Intensity of Time and Income Interdependent Multidimensional Poverty: Well-Being and Minimum 2DGAP – German Evidence

Extending the traditional income poverty concept by multidimensional poverty has been of growing interest within the last years. This paper contributes with an analysis of interdependent multidimensional (IMD) poverty intensity of time and income, which in particular restricts social participation. The interdependency of the multiple poverty dimensions under a strong (union approach) and weak focus axiom (compensation approach) are regarded in particular when measuring the intensity of multidimensional poverty. In addition to various poverty gap measures including the multidimensional well-being gap, for the first time we propose a minimum multidimensional poverty gap (2DGAP). To respect Sen's capability approach with its social participation aspects we define the time dimension as genuine personal leisure time. Based on a CES well-being function and a multidimensional poverty line evaluated by the German population (estimated with the German Socio-Economic Panel) the individual poverty intensity of the active population is analysed for various regimes of multiple poverty. For this purpose the German Time Use Surveys 1991/92 and 2001/02 and its time use diary data are used. Analysing the active population this paper contributes too to the poverty situation of the working poor. All the empirical results, including the microeconometric Heckman type estimation of the IMD poverty intensity (2DGAP) and the IMD poverty risk, indicate the overall importance of the time dimension with its social participation aspect incorporated within an interdependent multidimensional time and income poverty approach. An important dimension would be neglected in the poverty analysis and in targeted poverty policies if time additional to income is not respected