What happened to poverty in India in the 1990s has been fiercely debated, both politically and statistically. The debate has run parallel to the wider debate about globalization and poverty in the ...1990s and is also an important part of that debate. The economic reforms of the early 1990s in India were followed by rates of economic growth that were high by historical standards. The effects on poverty remain controversial, however. The official numbers published by the government of India, showing an acceleration in the rate of poverty reduction from 36 percent of the population in 1993/94 to 26 percent in 1999/2000, have been challenged for showing both too little and too much poverty reduction. The various claims have often been frankly political, but there are also many important statistical issues. The debate, reviewed in this article, provides an excellent example of how politics and statistics interact in an important, largely domestic debate. Although there is no consensus on what happened to poverty in India in the 1990s, there is good evidence both that poverty fell and that the official estimates of poverty reduction are too optimistic, particularly for rural India. The issues covered in this article, although concerned with the measurement of poverty in India, have wide international relevance—discrepancies between surveys and national accounts, the effects of questionnaire design, reporting periods, survey nonresponse, repair of imperfect data, choice of poverty lines, and interplay between statistics and politics.
Looking for accurate, up-to-date data on development issues? 'World Development Indicators' is the World Bank's premier annual compilation of data about development. This indispensable statistical ...reference allows you to consult over 900 indicators for some 150 economies and 14 country groups in more than 80 tables. It provides a current overview of the most recent data available as well as important regional data and income group analysis in six thematic sections: World View, People, Environment, Economy, States and Markets, and Global Links. World Development Indicators 2009 presents the most current and accurate development data on both a national level and aggregated globally. It allows you to monitor the progress made toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals endorsed by the United Nations and its member countries, the World Bank, and a host of partner organizations. These goals, which focus on development and the elimination of poverty, serve as the agenda for international development efforts.
A new assessment is made of the developing world's progress against poverty. By the frugal $1 a day standard there were 1.1 billion poor people in 2001—almost 400 million fewer than 20 years earlier. ...During that period the number of poor people declined by more than 400 million in China, though half the decline was in the early 1980s and the number outside China rose slightly. At the same time the number of people in the world living on less than $2 a day rose, so that there has been a marked bunching up of people living between $1 and $2 a day. Sub-Saharan Africa has become the region with the highest incidence of extreme poverty and the greatest depth of poverty. If these trends continue, the 1990 aggregate $1 a day poverty rate will be halved by 2015, meeting the Millennium Development Goal, though only East and South Asia will reach this goal.
Although average incomes in China have
risen dramatically since the 1980s, concerns are increasing
that the rural elderly have not benefited from growth to the
same extent as younger people and the ...urban elderly.
Concerns about welfare of the rural elderly combine spatial
and demographic issues. Large gaps exist between conditions
in coastal and interior regions and between conditions in
urban and rural areas of the country. In addition to
differences in income by geography, considerable differences
exist across demographic groups in the level of coverage by
safety nets, in the benefits received through the social
welfare system, and in the risks of falling into poverty.
This book aims to do two things: first, it provides detailed
empirical analysis of the welfare and living conditions of
the rural elderly since the early 1990s in the context of
large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and second, it
explores the evolution of the rural pension system in China
over the past two decades and raises a number of issues on
its current implementation and future directions. Although
the two sections of the book are distinct in analytical
terms, they are closely linked in policy terms: the first
section demonstrates in several ways a rationale for greater
public intervention in the welfare of the rural elderly, and
the second documents the response of policy to date and
options to consider for deepening the coverage and effects
of the rural pension system over the longer term.
Microfinance supports mainly informal activities that often have a low return and low market demand. It may therefore be hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of microfinance is modest or ...even nonexistent. If true, the poverty impact of microfinance observed at the participant level represents either income redistribution or short-run income generation from the microfinance intervention. This article examines the effects of microfinance on poverty reduction at both the participant and the aggregate levels using panel data from Bangladesh. The results suggest that access to microfinance contributes to poverty reduction, especially for female participants, and to overall poverty reduction at the village level. Microfinance thus helps not only poor participants but also the local economy.
The book examines India?s experience with poverty reduction in a period of rapid economic growth. Marshalling evidence from multiple sources of survey data and drawing on new methods, the book asks ...how India?s structural transformation - from rural to urban, and from agriculture to nonfarm sectors - is impacting poverty.Our analysis suggests that since the early 1990s, urban growth has emerged as a much more important driver of poverty reduction than in the past. We focus in particular on the role of small and medium size conurbations in India, both as the urban sub-sector in which urban poverty is overwhelmingly concentrated, and as a sub-sector that could potentially stimulate rural-based poverty reduction. Second, in rural areas, we focus on the nature of intersectoral transformation out of agriculture into the nonfarm economy. Stagnation in agriculture has been accompanied by dynamism in the nonfarm sector, but there is much debate about whether the growth seen has been a symptom of agrarian distress or a source of poverty reduction.Finally, alongside the accelerating economic growth and the highly visible transformation that is occurring in India?s major cities, inequality is on the rise. This is raising concern that economic growth in India has by-passed significant segments of the population. The third theme on social exclusion asks if, despite the dramatic growth, historically grounded inequalities along lines of caste, tribe and gender have persisted.This book would be of interest for policymakers, researchers, non-governmental organizations, and international agencies?from India and abroad--who wish to know more about India?s experience of the last two decades in reducing poverty.
Understanding changes in poverty Inchauste, Gabriela; Azevedo, João Pedro; Essama-Nssah, B ...
2014., 2014, 8-21-2014, 2014-08-12, 2014-08-29
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
Understanding Changes in Poverty brings together different methods to decompose the contributions to poverty reduction. A simple approach quantifies the contribution of changes in demographics, ...employment, earnings, public transfers, and remittances to poverty reduction. A more complex approach quantifies the contributions to poverty reduction from changes in individual and household characteristics, including changes in the sectoral, occupational, and educational structure of the workforce, as well as changes in the returns to individual and household characteristics. Understanding Changes in Poverty implements these approaches and finds that labor income growththat is, growth in income per worker rather than an increase in the number of employed workerswas the largest contributor to moderate poverty reduction in 21 countries experiencing substantial reductions in poverty over the past decade. Changes in demographics, public transfers, and remittances helped, but made relatively smaller contributions to poverty reduction. Further decompositions in three countries find that labor income grew mainly because of higher returns to human capital endowments, signaling increases in productivity, higher relative price of labor, or both. Understanding Changes in Poverty will be of particular relevance to development practitioners interested in better understanding distributional changes over time. The methods and tools presented in this book can also be applied to better understand changes in inequality or any other distributional change.
As events highlight deep divisions in attitudes between America and Europe, this is a very timely study of different approaches to the problems of domestic inequality and poverty. Based on careful ...and systematic analysis of national data, the authors describe just how much the two continents differ in their level of State engagement in the redistribution of income. Discussing various possible economic explanations for the difference, they cover different levels of pre-tax income, openness, and social mobility; they survey politico-historical differences such as the varying physical size of nations, their electoral and legal systems, and the character of their political parties, as well as their experiences of war; and they examine sociological explanations, which include different attitudes to the poor and notions of social responsibility. Most importantly, they address attitudes to race, calculating that attitudes to race explain half the observed difference in levels of public redistribution of income. This important and provocative analysis will captivate academic and serious lay readers in economics and welfare systems.
Dollar a Day Revisited Ravallion, Martin; Chen, Shaohua; Sangraula, Prem
The World Bank economic review,
01/2009, Letnik:
23, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The article presents the first major update of the international $1 a day poverty line, proposed in World Development Report 1990: Poverty for measuring absolute poverty by the standards of the ...world's poorest countries. In a new and more representative data set of national poverty lines, a marked economic gradient emerges only when consumption per person is above about $2.00 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity. Below this, the average poverty line is $1.25, which is proposed as the new international poverty line. The article tests the robustness of this line to alternative estimation methods and explains how it differs from the old $1 a day line.
Contents: Poverty and the response to the economic crisis in Liberia. brief overview -- Poverty and human development diagnostic -- Poverty in Liberia. level, profile and determinants -- Education in ...Liberia. basic diagnostic using the 2007 CWIQ survey -- Health in Liberia. basic diagnostic using the 2007 CWIQ survey -- Impact of higher food prices and fiscal measures taken to respond to the crisis -- Rice prices and poverty in Liberia -- Benefit incidence of fiscal measures to deal with the impact on households of the economic crisis in Liberia. comparing import and income taxes -- Evaluation of the cash for work temporary employment program -- Ex ante assessment of the potential impact of labor intensive public works in Liberia -- Liberia's cash for work temporary employment project. responding to crisis in low income, fragile countries -- Impact of labor intensive public works in Liberia. results from a light evaluation survey -- List of tables, figures, and boxes.
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