In the context of the growth recovery that sub-Saharan Africa has experienced over the past 15–20 years, this chapter reviews currently available evidence on changes in both monetary and non-monetary ...poverty over this period. Data on monetary poverty, assessed relative to national poverty lines, are taken from carefully conducted country studies from 18 of the largest 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a significant positive correlation between growth in per capita GDP and the poverty reduction, but, at the same time, several countries with good growth performance have been unable to translate this into significant poverty reduction. Evidence on non-monetary poverty is taken from Demographic and Health Surveys, which are available at two or more points in time for 21 of these 24 countries. The evidence shows generally quite good progress in terms of non-monetary poverty, even if some countries have achieved faster progress than others.
Advances in science and policy during the past 50 years have prevented widespread food shortages as the world’s population soared. Malnutrition, however, remains prevalent. This book details ...strategies and practical approaches to address scientific and policy challenges designed to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in a period where technological change, markets, patterns of governance, and social programs have an increasingly global dimension, including: agricultural research and development and the related process of structural transformation; a food system, in an era of globalization, which is increasing under the influence of multinational corporations; misgivings and misperceptions about genetically modified foods; increasing competition of food and energy sectors for agricultural output; worries about climate change and sustainability; and the importance of hidden hunger in the form of micronutrient deficiencies and chronic disease related to obesity, which often coexists in the same communities as malnutrition and poverty. There is also now more emphasis on evidence-based policymaking, which has raised the standard of proof for evaluating impacts of micro-level interventions, traditionally so widely embraced but now under increased scrutiny. It is in this context that this book provides practical advice on programs that can effectively target those at greatest risk of malnutrition. Overlaying all of these challenges is the book’s emphasis on identifying data and information needs for decision-making and formulating food and nutrition policy, as well as practical considerations for better understanding the domestic and international political and social constraints that need to be addressed when trying to translate scientific knowledge and information into practice.
Welfare Dynamics:2006–14 Tarp, Finn; McKay, Andy
Growth, Structural Transformation, and Rural Change in Viet Nam,
02/2017
Book Chapter
Using the five-wave VARHS panel dataset, this chapter analyses the dynamics of household welfare between 2006 and 2014. Welfare is measured based on real per capita food consumption and income, as ...well as an asset index. A descriptive analysis is presented, along with an econometric analysis of welfare changes according to each measure, comparing the beginning and end of the panel and looking at mobility between waves. While the overall pattern is of strong upward mobility over the period for most households, a significant minority in fact became worse off. Some important factors identified for positive improvements in welfare include education and having household members who migrated elsewhere, while ethnic minority households often have significantly lower welfare growth.
A key policy problem in most developing countries is the size of the informal sector and its persistence over time. In need to increase their tax revenues, policy makers face a trade-off between ...decreasing tax rates (making formalizing potentially more attractive) and alternatively raising tax rates (potentially slowing down the formalization of the economy if people prefer informal employment or self-employment).
Agriculture remains a key sector in the Vietnamese economy. Higher world market prices should have a beneficial impact on rural farmers, assuming that world prices are transmitted and that farmers ...can respond. Further, many poorer farm households may be net consumers. Using data from two household survey data sets, combined with available macro-data, this chapter investigates how global price changes impacted rural welfare during 2006–12, studying the case of rice in the context of the 2008 food price spike. The chapter analyzes the responses of domestic producer and consumer prices and discusses policy actions by the government. It also analyzes the distributional impact of resulting domestic price changes. Vietnam was able to manage domestic prices, and many more poor households benefitted from the price increase than lost.
A key policy problem in most developing countries is the size of the informal sector and its persistence over time. At the same time, these countries also need to increase their tax take. However, ...this may slow down the formalization of the economy. Evidence on the wages and characteristics of jobs in different sectors and on the impact of tax changes on the size of the informal sector in developing countries is, however, very limited. This paper therefore estimates the tax responsiveness of the extensive margin of formality, i.e. the propensity to participate in formal work as opposed to working as an informal worker,for four Sub-Saharan African countries. Using repeated cross-sections of household data and applying grouping estimator techniques, this paper finds only very small or statistically insignificant effects of taxes on the extent of formal work.
While many studies of welfare dynamics have been conducted using panel data sets with two or three waves, much richer insights can be obtained where more waves are available. This paper analyses this ...issue for the case of the Viet Nam Access to Resources Household Survey, a carefully collected and high-quality data set collected over a period of eight years from 2008 to 2016. The survey was conducted over a period of impressive overall welfare improvement, but the data set highlights significant heterogeneity in this with significant numbers of households in fact becoming worse off. A panel-based econometric analysis of the evolution of different measures of welfare identifies that there are strong dynamics in welfare for all three measures considered here, but that shocks and changes in household composition are very important drivers of changing welfare levels at the household level.
PDF
