A quality-index of poverty measures

The multitude of available poverty measures can confuse a policy maker who wants to evaluate a poverty-reduction policy. We proposes a rule for ranking poverty measures by use of the food-gap, calculated as the cost-difference between a household’s normative food basket, derived from a healthy diet, and the actually chosen food basket. The rationale for this indicator is based on the fact, that (1) basic food needs reflect an ultimate necessity, (2) food expenditure is highly divisibility, thus allowing for efficient marginal substitution between competing necessities when the household’s economic hardship increases. For these reasons we believe this to be an objective indicator for the sacrifice in the standard of living of a family under economic stress. A household is identified as ‘truly’ poor or non-poor by a given poverty measure if the diagnoses coincide and vice versa. The ranking is obtained by a gain-function, which adds up congruent and deducts contradicting outcomes for each poverty measure. We calculate four types of gain-functions –of headcounts, food-gaps, FGT-like powered food-gaps and an augmented version of the latter. The poverty measures include expenditure-based, income-based, relative, absolute, mixed measures and a multidimensional measure of social deprivation. The most qualitative measure is found to be Ravallion’s Food Energy Intake and Share measure, though it suffers from a possible bias, since it includes the food-norm in its design. The 60%-median income measure from all sources ranks highest among the unbiased measures. The absolute poverty measure yields the worst performance.poverty measures, food poverty, evaluation of poverty reduction policies

Editing in America

A survey and discussion of modern copy editors that attempts to provide perspective on their role in the communications and publishing industry. This capstone compares past research perspectives on copy editors with new survey responses to create a modern context for professional copy editors, discussing their skills, work environment, outlook, and professional role. This research also discusses the influence of evolving technologies on the role of copy editors and their perspectives

Domain Wall Fermions and MC Simulations of Vector Theories

It is known that domain wall fermions may be used in MC simulations of vector theories. The practicality and usefulness of such an implementation is investigated in the context of the vector Schwinger model, on a 2+1 dimensional lattice. Preliminary results of a Hybrid Monte Carlo simulation are presented.Comment: Talk presented at LATTICE96(chirality in qcd), 3 pages in LaTex, 4 Postscript figure

Symmetric stability of compressible zonal flows on a generalized equatorial β plane

Sufficient conditions are derived for the linear stability with respect to zonally symmetric perturbations of a steady zonal solution to the nonhydrostatic compressible Euler equations on an equatorial � plane, including a leading order representation of the Coriolis force terms due to the poleward component of the planetary rotation vector. A version of the energy–Casimir method of stability proof is applied: an invariant functional of the Euler equations linearized about the equilibrium zonal flow is found, and positive definiteness of the functional is shown to imply linear stability of the equilibrium. It is shown that an equilibrium is stable if the potential vorticity has the same sign as latitude and the Rayleigh centrifugal stability condition that absolute angular momentum increase toward the equator on surfaces of constant pressure is satisfied. The result generalizes earlier results for hydrostatic and incompressible systems and for systems that do not account for the nontraditional Coriolis force terms. The stability of particular equilibrium zonal velocity, entropy, and density fields is assessed. A notable case in which the effect of the nontraditional Coriolis force is decisive is the instability of an angular momentum profile that decreases away from the equator but is flatter than quadratic in latitude, despite its satisfying both the centrifugal and convective stability conditions

A study of social service referrals from the home medical service of the Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals, January 1, 1950 to June 30, 1950.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Exploiting p53 Status to Enhance Effectiveness of Chemotherapy by Lowering Associated Toxicity

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