Time and income poverty. The needed link

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Time and income poverty. The needed link

• Araceli Damián
• El Colegio de México

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Maximum length of the working journey

• At the end of the XIX century (1886) there were
  the first labour strikes (US) that claimed for a
  8 hours working day
• Nowadays in many countries this human right is
  not fulfilled. In China, for example, there is
  some evidence that millions of workers in the
  export manufacture work between 12 to 16 hours
  per day, with only one day per month to rest

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Time as a resource of satisfaction of needs

• Time is money (Committee to evaluate the poverty
  measurement method in the US in 1995, 1977)
• Poverty is often defined as a lack of money
  resources. Income is usually defined as command
  over resources.. Command over resources should
  for comparability at least include a measure of
  home production which in turn depends on
  opportunity and time (Piachaud)
• Time and household members abilities are the
  resources that households can use for paid
  activities and other tasks (quehaceres) (Oscar
  Altimir, ECLAC)
• The lack of free time after accounting for
  productive and reproductive activities is an
  indicator of the satisfaction of the autonomy
  need (Doyal and Gough)

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Time as a resource

• Recreation activities (to have a night out once a
  week), vacations (a week of vacations in the last
  12 months), to have save time household
  appliances (laundry and dryer machines). All
  these indicators are used to measure deprivation
  (Townsend/Gordon)
• Time for education, leisure, or domestic chores
  is seen as a restriction for labour participation
  by neoclassic economics (Becker, Bryant,
  Vickery, Haveman)
• Time as a well-being resource and a key element
  for the human flourishing. It is also a
  satisfactor of human needs (Boltvinik).

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An ideal household in capitalism

• Al members of the household are paid employees.
  All meals are consumed in restaurants, and all
  housework is performed by a paid domestic worker
  or by private companies. The time devoted to
  housework is equal to 0 (or almost 0), and time
  is only needed for consumption and paid work.
• Problems in the model time is needed to take
  care of children. Therefore family work is
  inevitable.
• Household is truly a small factory it combines
  capital goods, row materials and labour to clean,
  feed, procreate and otherwise produce useful
  commodities (Becker)

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PL 2 US dls per day per person
Ana and her son (y 2 USDlls p/p)
Juan, Inés and their son (y 2 USDlls p/p)
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Time for human flourishing

• Capabilities and human needs, developed in the
  past, are found, as fairies godmothers, in their
  objective form, at the head of the cod (Giörgy
  Markus) Adults require time to help children to
  acquire the historical accumulative knowledge and
  capabilities.
• Time is needed to fulfil all human needs to
  achieve self-realisation (Abraham Maslow).
  Hierarchy of human needs 1) physiologic needs,
  2) security needs 3) affection and love needs
  4) self-respect needs 5) self-realization

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Time poverty methodologies

• US committees to evaluate the official poverty
  measurement methodology
• Vickery (1977) Generalised poverty index (Becker)
  (PL)
• Haveman (1977) Household capacity to earn income
  (PL)
• Citro and Michel (1995) time is money (it is
  not clear how to measure the difference in the
  availability of time in different households)
• UK budget standards
• Bradshaw (ed., 1993) one parent households need
  to be compensated for the lack of free time and
  for the smaller amount of potential adult time
  devoted to children, compared with two parents
  household (PL)
• Mexico
• Boltvinik (1993) IPMM Excess of working time
  index (EWI)

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Vickery (poverty standard)

• If the minimum nonpoor level of consumption
  requires both money and household production,
  then the official poverty standards do not
  correctly measure household needs
• Identify those households that appear to have
  insufficient resources (time and income) to
  maintain the physical and mental well-being of
  their members.

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Graph 1. Time-income threshold (Vickery)
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Time requirements (Vickery)
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Some problems of the Vickery model

• She has a minimalist approach on income and time
• There are some households that have an excess of

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