Rural settlement in previously sparsely occupied areas of the Brazilian Amazon has been associated with high levels of forest loss and unclear long-term social outcomes. We focus here on the micro-level processes in one settlement area to answer the question of how settler and farm endowments affect household poverty. We analyze the extent to which poverty is sensitive to changes in natural capital, land use strategies, and biophysical characteristics of properties (particularly soil quality). Cumulative time spent in poverty is simulated using Markovian processes, which show that accessibility to markets and land use system are especially important for decreasing poverty among households in our sample. Wealthier households are selected into commercial production of perennials before our initial observation, and are therefore in poverty a lower proportion of the time. Land in pasture, in contrast, has an independent effect on reducing the proportion of time spent in poverty. Taken together, these results show that investments in roads and the institutional structures needed to make commercial agriculture or ranching viable in existing and new settlement areas can improve human well-being in frontiers.

Obtaining the labor necessary to perform household agricultural tasks in contexts with periods of intense labor demand can be a challenge. The challenge is especially pronounced in Northeast Thailand where biophysical conditions constrain the possibilities for labor reduction, while still maintaining productivity, and demographic changes in the supply of laborers place some households in a particular bind. Out-migration is hypothesized to impact the household's decision to grow rice and method of acquiring the necessary labor. Out-migration influences these decisions through lost labor and migrant remittances. These relationships are used to help explain the rapid monetization of agricultural labor in a region of Northeastern Thailand over the period 1994 to 2000. I find that remittances are related to the monetization of agricultural labor, likely through allowing households to escape labor constraints by paying non-household laborers in cash. No such support is found for a pure labor-loss effect driving monetization.

In this paper the theoretical tradition of coping strategies and capital portfolios is used as the basis for adaption and combination of existing methodologies to analyze well-being in rural households. Special attention is given to comparisons among different contexts. First we estimate a multidimensional measurement of poverty based on fuzzy logic for two areas of rural frontiers: Nang Rong, Thailand, and Altamira, in the Amazon Basin in Brazil. To enable a cross-contextual comparison we calculated a second estimate using a subset of shared measurements in the two areas. The findings suggest that the pattern of responses on a range of numerous key variables -including education, income and demographic dependency ratio -is robust for the model specification. It is concluded that comparative generalizations, useful in formulating cost-effective public policy interventions across contexts, could be satisfactorily identified in many situations. More generically, this approach provides researchers and policymakers with a framework for understanding the interaction of contexts with the subjective construction of well-being. The understanding of this interaction is useful for distinguishing stable corollaries of poverty from those that are volatile across contexts. IntroductionThe concept of poverty has received renewed theoretical attention and revision in recent years (SEN;1985, 1999KAKWANI;SILBER, 2008a;ALKIRE, 2007). The result has been the emergence of a large literature seeking to identify specific dimensions of poverty that are argued to better capture the complex paths to well-being than existing unidimensional measures of monetary income (BIBI;2005). However, the literature on Multidimensional Poverty (MDP) presently does a poor job of acknowledging the new challenges that highinformation measures of MDP present to comparative cross-contextual studies of MDP. Using these more refined and data-intensive measures has the potential to reduce the ability to assess and compare poverty across contexts for reasons that range from mundane but important restrictions imposed by data collection and the use of secondary data sources to significant questions about the meaning, relevance, and significance of various dimensions to the overall assessment of poverty across contexts.Methodologically, differences across the data sets used in studies of MDP -in data collection strategy, rigor, and substantive purpose -create a host of challenges, some of which are error-related, and others of which take on theoretical importance. Based informally upon our own experience in attempting to construct high-information MDP measures for comparative work, the relationship between the number of indicators used in an MDP measure and the availability of that measure (or taking it to the next level, of any measures of a given dimension) in all study areas is a negative one. In short, the likelihood that all relevant measures exist across all comparison contexts is low, and any success in obtaining such a match is due mostly to good fortun...

Across North America, many older adults have expressed their preference to live in their own homes and communities for as long as possible — and to 'age in place'. To address challenges faced by older adults living in the community, home-sharing - an exchange-based intergenerational housing approach, has empowered older adults to ‘thrive in place’ by providing additional income, companionship, and support with household tasks. In 2018, Toronto HomeShare was launched as an intergenerational home-sharing pilot program (n=22), matching older adults (55+) with postsecondary students intending to simultaneously address social isolation and the affordable housing crisis. In 2019, the pilot was adopted as a funded program in the City of Toronto with over 200 participants. Program results highlight unique benefits and challenges for older adults participating in home-sharing: (1) the capacity for intergenerational engagement to fulfill social needs, and (2) the importance of agency facilitation as a determinant of the experience for older adults. Survey findings indicate 88% of participants reported that participation in HomeShare positively impacted their general well-being, 88% reported improved financial security, 94% reported a delay in the need to move out of their community, and 72% felt that participation in HomeShare prevented the need for institutional care. These findings were used to transition Toronto HomeShare into a fully funded program as well as in the development of a national program. Beginning in January 2021 Toronto HomeShare transitioned to Canada HomeShare and will be scaling the program to Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax, Calgary, Montreal and other Canadian cities.