Suchergebnisse

This paper examines empirically the relationship between gender and poverty in eleven industrialized countries that form part of the Luxembourg Income Study. For each of these countries, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty rates, based on a relative poverty line, are calculated separately for men and women. The overall poverty rate for adult men and women is decomposed into male and female poverty shares. These poverty shares are compared to the relative population shares of men and women. The main conclusion is that when the poverty experience of all women is compared to the poverty experience of all men, women are over-represented amongst the poor in some countries and under-represented amongst the poor in others. The latter part of this conclusion is in sharp disagreement with conventional views about the relationship between gender and poverty in industrialized countries.

Japan is the only major democratic nation that has been free of alternations in government since WWII. The significance of democratic alternation is explored through a review of recent governmental changes in France, the UK, & the US. In France, Francois Mitterand aspires to a poorly defined socialism that seeks to avoid both communism & social democracy, but has extreme tendencies approximating both. The UK, seeking to restore a liberal economy, & the US, attempting to abandon Keynesian economics & achieve a balance budget, represent political movement in the opposite direction. All three provide evidence for questioning the belief that alternation in government as such is desirable. Changes achieved by the Left may to some degree be irreversible. W. H. Stoddard.

I MUST CONFESS THAT I DID NOT CHOOSE THE SUBJECT OF this article out of theoretical or scientific interest. My dreams have not been peopled by the merits of replacing one team by another in government. It was FranGois Mitterrand's election to the Presidency of the French Republic to which I reacted in a way that I shall not conceal from you: alternation in government is not in itself a blessing. Let us admit that it is desirable in general and in the abstract that, where a country is divided between two blocs, each of them should some day come to power, one of them should not be condemned to the ungrateful role of a perpetual opposition. But having said that, we should not change government unless the new oneholds out more hope than the old.