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Poverty remains a serious problem in Nigeria; women are among those mostly affected and are often deprived in many ways. This paper uses the multidimensional approach to examine poverty levels among women in Ibadan South West Local Government Area, Oyo State. Primary data was obtained from a sample of 393 women across the population density areas on socio-economic characteristics and poverty indicators (health, education and standard of living). The Alkire-Foster multidimensional approach was used to estimate the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) for the sampled women. The weights assigned to these poverty dimensions were generated using the multiple correspondence analysis. The MPI for each woman were categorized as abject poor (deprived in at least two dimensions), moderate poor (deprived in one dimension) and non-poor (not deprived in any dimension). The mean age of the women was 30.8±6.7 years. One-third of the respondents were mostly artisans (30.0%) and traders (26.5%), and 52.2% had completed secondary education. About 23.0% of women were deprived in education, 61.0% in health and 70.4% in standard of living. Based on location, the study indicated that the women in the medium and high density areas are mostly deprived in the different dimensions of poverty. When the poverty cut off K= 1, poverty incidence is 94% and 51.7% of the women were multidimensional poor as against 28% poverty incidence and 19.6% poor women when k=3 using the Alkire-Foster Multidimensional methodology. This implies that when women are deprived in at least one dimension; 51.7% are multidimensional poor. More than half of the respondents (51.0%) were categorized as moderately poor, 26.0% were abject poor while 23.2% were non-poor. This study revealed high poverty levels among women in Ibadan South West Local Government Area. Deprivation in standard of living and health in the three areas could be improved upon through the concerted effort of the government with appropriate ministries by initiating more productive and empowerment programs to improve their purchasing power and disseminating educative information that will improve their nutritional status through health talks to reduce the level of multidimensional poverty in urban locations respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why some nations are wealthier than others are one of the most contentious and enigmatic questions in international development economics. This has necessitated plausible explanations for the reasons behind Africa's poor development record over the past 50 years. Among other factors, fragility arising from different conflicts in African countries has been ranked as a key factor that undermines the development of the continent. Nigeria found itself in this set due to growing conflicts in different parts of the country. Consequently, fragility worsened the country's development due to the huge associated economic and social costs. More so, conflict-affected countries are characterized by the worst socio-economic outcomes. Hence, existing studies have been preoccupied with the understanding of the relationship between fragility and economic growth as well as fragility and poverty. To provide evidence in the context of Nigeria, this paper, therefore, empirically investigated the fragility-growth nexus, as well as the fragility-poverty nexus, in a sample of 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria. We further considered the macroeconomic and socio-political relationships in fragile and non-fragile states of Nigeria. Using data covering the period between 2011 and 2015, both the static approach (Ordinary Least Squares, Fixed Effect, and Random Effect) and the dynamic approach (Difference and System Generalized Method of Moments) were explored to provide answers to some key questions in the study. The results showed that the neoclassical and socio-political approaches complement each other. Specifically, fragility significantly weakened economic growth and further worsened poverty levels among the states. This suggests that conflict-related fragility creates an unstable environment that discourages economic activities and aggravates hunger among the population. More so, the results indicated that only debt enhances economic growth while income reduces poverty in both fragile and non-fragile states. Hence, conflict resolution is crucial to addressing conflicts in different parts of the country. Also, the country needs to explore various strategies (security infrastructure, and human capital) to overcome fragility, enhance economic growth, and combat poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze the nature of inequalities among the municipalities of Chihuahua State, Mexico and the factors that contribute to the disparity. The state of Chihuahua has a deep household inequality due to the nature of the inhabitants’ occupations and comprises a significant percentage of the people living in poverty in Mexico because of social deprivation and low income. Previous studies on inequality in Mexico show that significant differences among the municipalities is caused by factors such as marginalization, low economic activity, and informal activities while some other studies have used similar variables selected from social and economic sphere. All these works used these variables to obtain the socioeconomic development index for each region under study. Following the methodology used in de Haro et al. (2017), this paper examines the social and economic conditions of the 67 municipalities of Chihuahua State by calculating the Socioeconomic Development Index (SEDI) of each municipality using the data compiled on variables such as marginalization, degree of urbanization, gross economic activity rate, economic dependence coefficient and density of paved roads. The result shows that two municipalities: Juarez and Chihuahua City have the most favorable socioeconomic conditions due to a high urban density and a low marginalization. On the other hand, Batopillas, Carichí, El Tule, Balleza, Dr. Belisario Domínguez, Chínipas, Rosario, Uruachi, Morelos, San Francisco de Borja, Urique, Nonoava and Temósachi have the most unfavorable conditions due to high marginalization and high economic dependence coefficient. The policy implications of the study are stated in the conclusion which recommends that the Mexican government must concentrate efforts on education through incentives that will encourage schooling in order to increase the pool of human capital in deprived municipalities. Likewise, creating considerate fiscal policies for poorer regions-all for the purpose of attracting businesses that can create employment. Lastly, the government should work on providing enough amenities, infrastructures and better town planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper had two main objectives. Firstly, to investigate the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction in emerging markets. Secondly, to explore the effect of complementarity between economic growth and human capital development on poverty reduction efforts in emerging markets. In the available literature, it is no longer contestable that economic growth is necessary for poverty reduction to take place. However, what is still not yet conclusive in the literature is whether economic growth itself directly translates to poverty alleviation. Emerging literature argues that certain absorption capacities needs to be in place if economic growth is to contribute towards poverty reduction. It is against this backdrop that the current study is also investigating whether human capital development is a necessary precondition that must be considered for economic growth to translate into poverty alleviation in emerging markets. The study used panel data analysis methods, namely fixed effects, random effects, pooled ordinary least squares and dynamic generalized methods of moments (GMM) econometric estimation methods with secondary data ranging from 2000 to 2018. All the four econometric methods were used for results comparison purposes. The advantage of using GMM approach for robustness test purposes is that it considers the dynamic features of the poverty data (vicious cycle of poverty) and addresses the endogeneity problem. The panel data was easily downloadable in World Development Indicators database and was easy to use because it was denominated in a similar currency. To a larger extent, economic growth was found to have reduced poverty levels in emerging markets. The complementarity between economic growth and human capital development was also generally found to have had a deleterious effect on poverty in emerging markets. In other words, human capital development was found to be a channel through economic growth reduced poverty in emerging markets. All these results are in line with theoretical predictions. Emerging markets are therefore urged to implement economic growth policies to reduce poverty levels. They are also encouraged to accelerate the implementation of human capital development programmes so that the people can easily benefit (get out of poverty) or manage to benefit from economic growth of their countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth and poverty reduction now take the centre stage in most global policy discourse. This is coming at a time that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are fast gaining global relevance. Africa has witnessed the highest but non-inclusive level of growth in the last decade because the continent still grapples with high unemployment rate especially among the youths. This paper therefore examines some drivers of and constraints to growth and poverty reduction in Africa. The paper focused on Africa by using secondary data sourced from different such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Transparency International (TI), Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports and Annual Abstract of Statistics. Analytical methods employed were mainly descriptive statistics and comparative statistics. Findings showed that economic growth recorded in the continent is a 'jobless' one advancing inequality and poverty. More so, 75 percent of countries with low human development are in Africa with the continent's consistent economic growth imparting insignificantly on the livelihoods of the people. In fact, 27 out of 54 African countries were reported to have GDP of less than $USD 2000 per capita. GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa was estimated at 4.9 percent in 2013 and this increased to 5.3 percent in 2014 and further estimated to rise to 5.5 percent in 2015. The fight against inequality, poverty and unemployment is tantamount to aiming a moving target. Youth unemployment remains a component of Africa's growth owing to persistent low productivity and underemployment in the informal sector. The resultant implication of this is manifested through persistent inequality, poverty, armed conflict and unchecked migration of young people to industrialised nations in search of the non-existing livelihood opportunities. This paper therefore recommends increased and monitored investments in critical infrastructural facilities. There is a need for multilevel and multinational partnership in the fight against corruption and social conflict to attract foreign direct investment. Investment in social security programmes will also assist the poor and vulnerable people in the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international remittances sent back home by migrant workers have a profound impact on the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to World Bank, official international remittances sent home by migrant workers represent the second most important source of external funding in developing countries. Estimated official international remittances are around $440 billion in 2015 and are about twice as large as the level of official aid-related inflows to developing countries. While estimating the effects of remittances on economic growth tend to be rather difficult and controversial, measuring their welfare effects are less so. Remittances have been found to have poverty reducing impact in many studies. The usual methods used in these studies to gauge the effect of remittances on poverty have been OLS or instrumental variable (IV) regression. While these are valid approaches, one of their shortcomings is to overlook that remittances and poverty are both endogenous and jointly determined in a system. This paper estimates the effect of remittances on poverty in an unbalanced panel of 37 economies using a system of equations framework. Although there are some earlier studies that recommend the use of system approach, they tend to impose i.i.d condition on the error term. This paper relaxes the i.i.d. error assumption and adopts the multiple equation generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator because it produces consistent and efficient estimates when non-i.i.d. errors are present. The obtained results show that remittances significantly reduce poverty in the sample of a remittances dependent countries. The point estimates provide a robust estimation of remittances-poverty nexus and are consistent with those found in the literature. Furthermore, since it is likely that poverty itself can be a significant determinant of remittances flows, the estimated elasticities are measured on the basis when both remittances and poverty are jointly determined. The results also suggest that the dynamics of remittances is related to the overall level of human capital of the general population as well as to those living under poverty. Specifically, we find that the flows of remittances decline with improvement in the health factor of the general population but increase as health conditions of the poor people tend to improve. Likewise, there is also some evidence that remittances tend to rise with increases in educational attainments of the general population, but more likely to fall as the poor people become more educated. As a poverty reduction strategy, a stable macroeconomic environment is required so that the migrants are assured of the safety of the use of their money sent back home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multidimensional approach in poverty research is dominating over the monetary based poverty approaches worldwide. The failure in millennium development goal in terms of reducing absolute poverty by its half lead United Nation Development Program to adopt Sustainable Development Goal. Social business is a new form of business concept put into practice firstly in Bangladesh to trigger poverty in such a multidimensional approach. Similarly, Sustainable livelihood, is a popular model of intervening poverty to the development agencies due to its design of participating people in the project policies, supports the multidimensionality too. The purpose of this study is to discuss about the conceptual explanation of social business and sustainable livelihood. Besides, this paper also portrays the conceptual linkages of social business with the sustainable livelihood framework. The present study is of qualitative in nature where extensive literature review has been conducted adopting an intensive desk research method using secondary data sources like published articles, working papers, brochures and companies official websites via internet. The study found that social business, in general, possess the feature of reducing vulnerability of people directly providing with an array of products and indirectly, with its innovative policy of making involve deprived people in the entire value chain as active participants. In addition, its integrative business approach helps in searching people's deficiencies like knowledge, skills, affordability and taking remedial measures in the form of training, financial support, frequent surveillance and accumulation of resources. The study concluded that social business, driven by problems and pro-poor approach, could be a complementary model for superseding poverty via sustainable livelihood approach. As implication of the study, it will help policy makers to adopt or adjust their policy regarding bringing sustainability of people's life with a new tools other than the existing state-run or philanthropy based programs. Besides, it will also broaden the interest of researchers for further empirical tests relevant to this sort of business and effectiveness of it in alleviating poverty and ensuring sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income risks and expectation about future income play a fundamental role in the decision making of households. The analysis of income risk is particularly important for developing countries, where incomes are more volatile than developed countries, and credit and insurance markets are inadequately developed, limiting opportunities available to households to diversify their risks. When households have inadequate opportunities to diversify their risks, income risks may lead to relatively high fluctuations in consumption and thus greater levels of transient poverty. This may also lead to a poverty trap, as poor households may enter low-risk, low-return activities, and low-return and less capital-intensive activities. This paper analyses the pattern and determinants of (perceived) expected income and income risk in rural India. It uses unique primary survey data eliciting subjective income distribution from households in twelve villages in Bihar. The sample consists of 659 households with approximately 4,100 household members. The survey was designed to elicit the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of future household income. Using this information, it constructs household-specific subjective expected future income, its variance and coefficient of variation. It finds that both expected future income and income risks (variance and coefficient of variation) differ substantially across households. Both expected future income and its variance increase with current income, however, there is a significant negative association between the coefficient of variation of future income and current income, suggesting that low-income households face greater variability in their income. Upper caste households and households reliant on non-agricultural income have significantly higher expected future income and variance. To the extent income risks lead poor households to choose low income and low risk activities, public policies designed to reduce these risks, such as provision of insurance (e.g. rainfall insurance) and easier availability of consumer credit are likely to have a significant effect on poverty and inequality. Microfinance institutions and nongovernmental organizations can play an important role in the provision of insurance and labour market information. Public investment in irrigation, better weather information, and employment guarantee schemes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, can reduce income and consumption risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multidimensional approach in poverty research is dominating over the monetary based poverty approaches worldwide. The failure in millennium development goal in terms of reducing absolute poverty by its half lead United Nation Development Program to adopt Sustainable Development Goal. Social business is a new form of business concept put into practice firstly in Bangladesh to trigger poverty in such a multidimensional approach. Similarly, Sustainable livelihood, is a popular model of intervening poverty to the development agencies due to its design of participating people in the project policies, supports the multidimensionality too. The purpose of this study is to discuss about the conceptual explanation of social business and sustainable livelihood. Besides, this paper also portrays the conceptual linkages of social business with the sustainable livelihood framework. The present study is of qualitative in nature where extensive literature review has been conducted adopting an intensive desk research method using secondary data sources like published articles, working papers, brochures and companies official websites via internet. The study found that social business, in general, possess the feature of reducing vulnerability of people directly providing with an array of products and indirectly, with its innovative policy of making involve deprived people in the entire value chain as active participants. In addition, its integrative business approach helps in searching people's deficiencies like knowledge, skills, affordability and taking remedial measures in the form of training, financial support, frequent surveillance and accumulation of resources. The study concluded that social business, driven by problems and pro-poor approach, could be a complementary model for superseding poverty via sustainable livelihood approach. As implication of the study, it will help policy makers to adopt or adjust their policy regarding bringing sustainability of people's life with a new tools other than the existing state-run or philanthropy based programs. Besides, it will also broaden the interest of researchers for further empirical tests relevant to this sort of business and effectiveness of it in alleviating poverty and ensuring sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty eradication will remain United Nations highest priority after the Millennium Development Goals-2015 deadline. Moreover, although impressive achievements in poverty cutting have been reached in the last decade, progress has been uneven, as inequality has been increasing. Hence, future poverty reduction strategies should be designed taking into account the nexus between economic development, inequality and the so-called "pro-poor factors", which represent the set of policies able to make economic growth beneficial for the poor. The aim of this paper is to provide a quantitative answer to the following questions: Does economic growth reduce poverty? If so, by how much? How economic inequality affects poverty? Does the responsiveness of poverty to growth and inequality depend on initial poverty and inequality? How do pro-poor policies influence the poverty-growth-inequality nexus? Although these questions have received a great deal of attention along the years, this paper makes use of the most complete and up-to-date comparable data on growth, poverty and inequality, as compiled by the World Bank PovcalNet. Moreover, it originally employs the System Generalised Method of Moments estimator. In particular, the present empirical exercise is built on an original unbalanced panel dataset, which comprises 109 developing countries observed between 1981 and 2008, in 8 different three-year growth spells. As for the econometric technique, System GMM has been proved to be the most efficient and best suited in the context of dynamic unbalanced panels. Our main results are in line with the existing literature. First, we find that the poverty elasticity to growth and inequality is, respectively, around -2% and 2%. Second, the poverty elasticity to growth is higher the more favorable the initial conditions (i.e. -0.89% and -2.5% for, respectively, high and low initial poverty and inequality). Third, the poverty elasticity to inequality is higher in relatively richer and more equal countries (i.e. 2.6%) than in poorer and more unequal countries (i.e. 0.39%). And, finally, we show that human capital, as measured as health and education, facilitates the effect of economic growth on poverty reduction (i.e. poverty elasticity of -0.89% and -2.5% for, respectively, high and low infant mortality). Our analysis suggests that, in designing policy reduction strategies, policy makers should carefully take into considerations initial poverty and the initial income distribution. Moreover, as for the fundamental importance of pro-poor policies, and human capital in particular, economic policies should go beyond the mere growth stimulus., economic policies should go beyond the mere growth stimulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continent of Africa is blessed with natural resources and most especially large expanse of land area suitable for agricultural production. But despite this huge deposit of untapped resources and opportunities in the continent, it is very appalling to know that many of the countries in Africa are homes to the poorest of the poor and vulnerable people across the globe. The continent is faced with multi-faceted problems of insecurity arising from the activities of violent extremists and marginalized sect, decaying infrastructural facilities exacerbated by corruption and prolonged neglect, rising youth unemployment occasioned by bad governance and inadequate planning coupled with dwindling income resulting from poor and inadequate production technologies. However, in spite of the worsening food crisis situation and constraints to agricultural transformation in Africa, agriculture, which is the main source of livelihood for most Africans (especially those residing in the rural areas) remains the economic nerve centre considering its contribution to the African economy in terms of labor employment and share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Thus, the task of poverty reduction in Africa portends a moving target as the number of poor and undernourished people keeps increasing. This paper therefore examined the link between agriculture and poverty in Africa. The problems and prospects of African agriculture were x-rayed, the poverty situation in Africa and the likely causes were also highlighted. The paper suggests a bottom-up (also called community-driven development) approach to policy formulation through involvement of farmers in policy discussions at both national and international levels starting from project/problem identification to evaluation. There is the need for partnerships between government and private sector in the area of input and infrastructure provision. This is very important considering the fact that government alone can no longer shoulder the responsibility of providing and maintaining infrastructures due to declining revenue. Farm level processing and value addition should be encouraged by government through the provision of enabling environment and farmers should endeavour to join and participate in cooperative activities so as to enhance their access to credit, markets and benefit from collective bargaining power in terms of input acquisition and getting support from government and prospective funders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics literature has paid relatively little attention to the study of underemployment, which is defined as the situation of an individual who works less than 35 hours a week, but wants to work more hours. This can be explained by the scarcity of data on underemployment, and by the fact that labor statistics treat it as employment, and thus its numbers may not create so much expectation as those of unemployment. The study of underemployment is important in view of its relation to poverty, especially as it affects women, and because of the psychological damages that result to underemployed individuals, particularly young people. This paper analyzes the behavior of underemployment in a sample of five Latin American countries by means of the estimation of an unrestricted vector auto-regressive (VAR) model using 2000-2008 panel data from five Latin American countries. The variables included in the VAR are: the unemployment and underemployment rates, female and male participation rates, and the indexes of formal employment and the real wage. Impulse response functions are analyzed to make inferences about the behavior of the variables in response to shocks to one of them. In addition, the paper develops models to represent the existence of participation and poverty traps, which, respectively, result from the interaction between unemployment, economic growth, inequality and participation and from the interplay between underemployment, poverty and children's school desertion. The main results show that there exists an inverse relationship between formal employment and underemployment; that underemployment and female participation have persistent responses to shocks to unemployment; female and male participation decrease in response to a shock to the real wage; and underemployment and unemployment have persistent response to shocks to female participation. In general terms, the results show different responses along gender lines. Another result was that underemployment is the initial means of adjustment to recessionary periods and as such it is an early warning indicator of rising unemployment. The results show the prevalence of the discouraged and additional worker phenomena in the sample countries. The results have shown that underemployment can lead to persistent poverty and that it acts as a break on economic growth, which indicate the necessity of eliminating labor market segmentation by gender and directing attention to the particular needs of women (as well as those of young people, the elderly, the disabled, and ethnic minorities) with respect to their labor market participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recurring storm of poverty and food insecurity in the sub-Sahara Africa has continually posed major challenge to the global community. This signals an alarming threat to the region's ability to fully achieve the desired sustainable development. In this regard, this study based its assessment on farming households' poverty and food insecurity relationship in some selected states of Nigeria. The emperical findings presented here relied on data collected with a structured questionnaire through a multistage sampling from 420 rural farming households from 18 rural communities of the Southwest Nigeria. Specifically, the research paper examined the socio-economic characteristics of the farming households in the study area and empirically analyzed the effect of poverty on their food security level. Data were analyzed using linear regression with endogenous treatment effect. The Chi-square value of 1276.33, which was significant at (p<0.01) gave an indication that the chosen model well fitted while, the multicollinearity test among the variables was carried out with variance inflation factor (VIF), with a the mean VIF of 1.27 .In the same vein, independent variables that significantly affect the households' food security status in the Linear regression with endogenous treatment model were gender (p<0.05), age (p<0.01), educational status (p<0.10), household size (p<0.01), marital status of the households' head (p<0.01) and households' poverty status (p<0.01). It was concluded that poverty among the rural farming households was a key contributor to the households' food insecurity. The empirical findings of the study therefore, recommends among others that considerable investment in human capital should be encouraged since that could help in reducing poverty and food insecurity in the study area. Also, there should be intensification of enlightenment campaigns and programs on birth control measures and on the benefits of small household size as increase in households size increases the odd food insecurity among the rural dwellers. Finally, workable strategy at encouraging the teeming unemployed youths to participate in agriculture should be intensified and articulated by the government of the day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although South Africa is regarded as Africa's second largest economy, (also ranked as an uppermiddle-income economy), the incidence of poverty remains stubbornly high by the standard of other similar countries. Using a baseline poverty line of R450 per capita per month, Tregenna (2012) found a poverty incidence of 52.45% (using expenditure) and 49.56% (using income) in 2006. Employing the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) dataset and an appropriate poverty line, Biyase (2014) obtained estimates of 46% for 2008 consistent with those of Finn (2013). This paper contributes to the literature by using data drawn from the first four waves of the National Income Dynamic Study to determine the factors that influence poverty and household welfare in South Africa. Contrary to most existing studies in this field, which have applied ordinary least squares and probit/logit models on cross-sectional data, this analysis attempts to capture unobserved individual heterogeneity and endogeneity, both via fixed effect, and via a robust alternative based on random effect probit estimation. The results from fixed effect and random effect probit indicate that levels of education of the household head, some province dummies, race of the household head, dependency ratio, gender of the household head, employment status of the household head and marital status of the household head are statistically significant determinants of household welfare. Specifically, we found that compared to traditional rural areas (used as reference category), households living in urban and farms are less likely to be poverty stricken and that the probability of being poor for households in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape provinces/regions, is significantly higher than Western Cape province/region. Moreover, we found that, educational levels (primary, secondary, matric and tertiary) of the household head reduce the probability of being poor. These results suggest that investing in education and improving the economic conditions of the rural dwellers (traditional rural areas) should continue to be a major focus of poverty alleviation efforts in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the dampening effect of rising inequality on growth effects on poverty rates using the U.S. county level data. According to the "growth elasticity" argument, rising inequality weakens the magnitudes of the growth effects on poverty reduction. The dampening effect is defined as the negative effect of rising inequality on the growth elasticity of poverty and is decomposed into the direct and the indirect dampening effects. Where the direct dampening effect is equal to the estimate of inequality elasticity of poverty. The indirect dampening effect is calculated as the difference between the estimate of a benchmark growth elasticity of poverty and the estimate of growth elasticity of poverty while allowing inequality to change. The benchmark growth elasticity of poverty is estimated from a model which assumes inequality as constant. This study analyzes data on poverty rates, real median household income and inequality from 731 counties of the United States. Data are compiled from two programs of the U.S. Census Bureau and converted into annualized percent changes. Unlike previous studies analyzing survey data from developing countries, U.S. county data are comparable across counties and more reliable. The dampening effects are estimated using the ordinary least square technique applied to five models of poverty. The study finds that income growth does alleviate poverty, but growing inequality directly and indirectly dampens the growth effects on poverty rates. Estimate of the total dampening effect of inequality indicates that the rising inequality is likely to lift 129,405 fewer people out of poverty annually. The growth effect on poverty rates is estimated to be weaker in counties with growing inequality than that in counties with declining and unchanged inequality, confirming the dampening effect of rising inequality. Estimates of the regional effects captured by regional dummy variables suggest that regional specific factors do also dampen growth effect on poverty rates. One reason for such dampening is likely to be tightened-budgetary conditions emanating from cuts in social safety net programs across the United States during 2006-10. Overall, the results from this study indicate that merely pro-growth policies are unlikely to ensure faster poverty reduction in the United States. The policy intervention must also focus on pro-poor growth strategies targeting the incomes of the lower quintiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty being multi-dimensional in nature is the product of various interactive socioeconomic factors. Some of the factors shaping economic status of the household may be cited as widowhood, disability, illiteracy, ageing, household size, household status, dependency, low wages of the female workers, household responsibilities etc. Theory suggests that the ability of a household to earn a given level of income is to a great extent determined by the characteristics internal to the household. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that explain their relative effect on poverty of the household. Poverty thus captured at micro level is expected to provide insights for polices to alleviate poverty at national level. The standard econometric method of logistic regression technique has been used to determine the extent to which the factors influence the probability of a household being poor. The paper is based on data obtained from a sample survey conducted in Bangladesh during 2008-09. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction has long been researched in numerous studies around the world; yet, the results are far from being conclusive. Although it is now widely recognised that economic growth is good for poverty reduction through the trickle-down effect, alternative views still exist. This paper, therefore, investigates the dynamic causal linkage between poverty reduction and economic growth in Ethiopia during the period from 1970 to 2014. To address the omission of variable bias, the study includes financial development and investment as intermittent variables -- thereby creating a multivariate Granger-causality model. The study uses two proxies to measure the level of poverty in Ethiopia, namely: household consumption expenditure and the infant mortality rate. The study further uses the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and the ECM-based Granger-causality test to examine this linkage. The study finds that there is a short-run bi-directional causality between economic growth and poverty reduction -- irrespective of which variable is used as a proxy for poverty reduction. However, in the long run, the study finds unidirectional causality from economic growth to poverty reduction (proxied by infant mortality rate); but it fails to find any causal relationship between household consumption expenditure and economic growth. The study, therefore, concludes that while poverty reduction and economic growth are mutually beneficial in the short run; in the long run, it is economic growth that leads to poverty reduction when the infant mortality rate is used as a proxy for poverty reduction. The study recommends that policy makers in Ethiopia should pursue both pro-poor policies and pro-economic-growth strategies in the short run; since poverty reduction and economic growth have been found to have a mutual causal relationship in the short run. It is further recommended that such policies should be complementary and mutually reinforcing. If the economic growth and poverty reduction policies are well crafted and co-ordinated; in the short run, a reduction in poverty could lead to an increase in economic growth -- in a way that reinforces further reduction in poverty and inequality and benefits the population at large, while promoting higher economic growth in turn. However, in the long run, progrowth policies should be prioritised; since economic growth has been found to Grangercause poverty reduction in the long run. This would ensure that poverty in all its forms is reduced as far as is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature that relates average income rise of the economy with increase in average income of the poorest population is well established. However poverty continues to be predominant in Africa indicating that income rise is not sufficient to decrease poverty. As a middle-income country, South Africa has consistently held the unappealing record of the country with the most unequal income distribution in the world. The increasing inequality in South Africa represents a substantial policy challenge to policymakers as it affects socio-political stability and economic development. This paper investigates the relation between growth, poverty and inequality in South Africa at the regional level using data over the annual period of 1996-2013.We adopt a spatial econometric model motivated by two noteworthy facts: (i) the high rate of poverty in South Africa and (ii) the high levels of poverty and inequality in the studied regions. In addition we account for the spatial dependence between regions which might affect the relationship between growth and poverty. Also, we develop and test five hypotheses and account for the possible endogeneity in specified model. The results reveal that the autoregressive parameter, lagged poverty is positive and statistically significant in all cases, which supports the use of a dynamic panel data model. Furthermore it reveals poverty increases along the period and the autocorrelation poverty variable is also found to be positive and statistically significant. The trend also reveals that poverty increases but at a decreasing rate, with the latter indicated by the square trend term. Log per capita income increases poverty and is statistically significant. Log GDP Growth is also statistically significant but only in the Arellano-Bond model, signifying that it is an endogenous variable. Log Employment increases poverty and is statistically significant. The Gini indicator (a measure of inequality) is found to increase poverty; signifying that poverty and inequality are affecting each other. This result signifies that poverty is increasing in South Africa at decreasing rate. Moreover the economic variables (for example, income per capita, GDP growth and employment) are also decreasing poverty. Therefore it appears that South Africa is on the right road to decrease poverty, but the spatial slipovers on poverty implies that the government needs an active anti-poverty policy to attack this persistent problem, since it cannot rely on economy growth to overcome it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's economic participation has recently been at the centre of the debate on sustainable development. It is a widely held view that women have a strategic role in poverty reduction dynamics. The argument is that when women have equal access to education and full participation in business and economic decision-making, they are a significant driving force against poverty. Women economic empowerment increases earning power which in its turn raises household incomes while reducing fertility rates that triggers the population transition dynamics. This is eventually translated into well-being of children, reducing poverty of future generations. In fact currently World Bank Strategy to empower women among others includes the need to increase investment in women's health. Recognising this issue, SADC region has developed a number of gender based health polices which are in line with regional and international commitments. As a result one of the key indicators of development in the region is now the state of women's health. However overall health status has been an issue in SADC region, mostly due to HIV/AIDS infections and Tuberculosis. Globally SADC has the highest level of HIV prevalence and the most affected social group is women, between 15 and 24 years of age. Furthermore the review of literature indicates that much of what is known about the effects of health by gender in this region has been descriptive in nature. No previous study has empirically investigated the nature of these effects in this region. This chapter aims to fill this gap. This paper empirically investigates the link between improvements on health disaggregated by gender on productivity and hence economic growth in the SADC region between 1970 and 2010. Health improvement is measured by life expectancy and economic growth is measured by real GDP per capita at 2005 constant prices and data is taken from the WDI and PWT. Using Fixed Effect (FE) the findings presented in this analysis suggests that improvements in both female and male health can significantly improve economic growth in this region. However an increase in male health significantly raises economic growth greater than that of females. These effects are robust to changes in model specification. These findings may reflect women's higher morbidity rates in the region compared to men in this region that might affect productivity. They also may reflect inequalities in accessing education or formal paid work that is required to trigger the population transition dynamics and eventually economic growth. These results imply the need of some policy adjustment in order to align all SADC gender policies particularly in education, employment and improvements in health in order to capitalize on the benefits of improvements on female health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of studies have attempted to discern the causes of low productivity and slow growth in developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The effects of global economic integration, corruption, geography, financial aid and human capital indicators such as education have been widely explored. Despite the significant contribution of common mental disorders (CMDs) to poverty and to the burden of disease, mainstream growth analyses have not yet integrated the body of scholarship that identifies the linkages between CMDs and growth. There are potential benefits of prioritising CMDs in development strategies but there are several challenges. Among the greatest challenges is patchy mental health record. Poor data hinders the conceptualisation and the analyses of the effect of common mental disorders on economic growth and development. This paper explores the theoretical and empirical macro-growth effects of CMDs in sub-Saharan Africa. Preliminary theorizing and evidence suggest that improvement in CMDs is likely to be a stimulus to growth in SSA. We explore further the performance of a non-psychometric instrument known as the K-6 as a cost-effective instrument with which to measure community mental health in household surveys across populations that have various levels of infrastructure and literacy. The K-6 instrument which is a semi-structured questionnaire includes six non-specific psychometric items measuring negative affective states or psychological distress. We also collect socioeconomic data during the survey which enabled us to study the determinants of common mental health conditions among urban and rural households in Ghana. Urban and rural communities were analysed separately because they may demonstrate different determinants of CMDs. We report the outcome of the simple non-psychometric survey as well as the results from logistic regressions showing the factors that affect common mental disorders among the survey respondents. The results show that both urban and rural groups experienced diminished mental health during the food and fuel price hikes of 2008 and 2009, and from the global financial crises over the same period, compared with those who reported no mental distress. The coefficients from the logistic regression estimated by the maximum likelihood show spatial variations in mental health indicators by age, education, and per capita income. For this study, gender did not appear to be a good predictor of any of the specific psychological distress measures assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of studies have attempted to discern the causes of low productivity and slow growth in developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The effects of global economic integration, corruption, geography, financial aid and human capital indicators such as education have been widely explored. Despite the significant contribution of common mental disorders (CMDs) to poverty and to the burden of disease, mainstream growth analyses have not yet integrated the body of scholarship that identifies the linkages between CMDs and growth. There are potential benefits of prioritising CMDs in development strategies but there are several challenges. Among the greatest challenges is patchy mental health record. Poor data hinders the conceptualisation and the analyses of the effect of common mental disorders on economic growth and development. This paper explores the theoretical and empirical macro-growth effects of CMDs in sub-Saharan Africa. Preliminary theorizing and evidence suggest that improvement in CMDs is likely to be a stimulus to growth in SSA. We explore further the performance of a non-psychometric instrument known as the K-6 as a cost-effective instrument with which to measure community mental health in household surveys across populations that have various levels of infrastructure and literacy. The K-6 instrument which is a semi-structured questionnaire includes six non-specific psychometric items measuring negative affective states or psychological distress. We also collect socioeconomic data during the survey which enabled us to study the determinants of common mental health conditions among urban and rural households in Ghana. Urban and rural communities were analysed separately because they may demonstrate different determinants of CMDs. We report the outcome of the simple non-psychometric survey as well as the results from logistic regressions showing the factors that affect common mental disorders among the survey respondents. The results show that both urban and rural groups experienced diminished mental health during the food and fuel price hikes of 2008 and 2009, and from the global financial crises over the same period, compared with those who reported no mental distress. The coefficients from the logistic regression estimated by the maximum likelihood show spatial variations in mental health indicators by age, education, and per capita income. For this study, gender did not appear to be a good predictor of any of the specific psychological distress measures assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the extent to which productivity-driven growth in agricultural subsectors might contribute to accelerating economywide growth, raising household incomes, and affecting household income distribution. The findings show that raising agricultural productivity according to the Iraqi National Development Plan could more than double the average agricultural growth rates and add an average of 0.7 percent each year to economywide GDP in the period 2013-2017. As a consequence, the economy would not only diversify into agriculture, but agricultural growth would also lift growth in the food processing and service sectors. Household incomes could rise by an additional 3.3 percent on average during the simulation period, compared with a situation in which the yield targets are not achieved. This rise in household incomes would benefit the poorest households and female-headed urban households the most. The following policy priorities to ensure that such positive outcomes materialize: First, achieving the yield targets for wheat and for fruits and vegetables will provide the most growth and income enhancement. Therefore, increasing agricultural productivity in these sectors should be a priority. To achieve sustainable yield improvements would involve improved agricultural technology and management, including improved soil watering and nutrient management practices, new agricultural technology for harvesting and postharvest processing, and improved seed varieties. They also include improved water harvesting, greater irrigation efficiency, and expanded implementation of modern irrigation projects--with particular emphasis on modern drip and spray irrigation systems that rely on solar power. These steps would be part of an overall effort to optimally exploit water resources and address issues of water. Second, the success of efforts to rapidly accelerate agricultural growth will critically depend on whether or not additional agricultural produce can be marketed efficiently domestically and compete with imports. The results of this study show that this will be particularly important for fruits and vegetables. To support farmers and traders in this process, improving infrastructure and market information systems will be important for market access and to provide actors along the supply chain with useful information about prices and marketing opportunities. Another type of policy that would support a rapid increase in agricultural production is trade facilitation. This category includes measures to reduce the transaction costs related to international trade, including excessive documentation requirements, authorizations from multiple agencies, unclear or subjective criteria for the application of duties, and delays and uncertainties related to customs clearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farm households in rural areas of Nigeria are naturally prone to various forms of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks. The frequent occurrence of shocks among the households coupled with lack of effective shock coping mechanisms in the region has made the households vulnerable to poverty. Idiosyncratic shocks affects only an individual household, for example illness or death of a household member. On the other hand, covariate shocks impinge an impact on a larger group of population in the same area at the same time, for instance adverse weather condition. In the absence of functioning formal coping mechanisms, the households resort to borrowing, adjustment in food intake, sale of goods or removing children from formal school. However, little is known about the impact of shocks on household consumption. To contribute to literature, this paper used the nationally representative survey data of rural farm household in Nigeria to empirically examine the effect of both idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on their consumption expenditure, using ordinary least square method. The least square method deemed to be appropriate for the analysis because of the exogeneity nature of shocks to consumption. In contrast to the existing works, the study measures shock as a continuous variable and also disaggregated the sample into and non-poor households on the basis of world poverty line of $ 1.20 per day with a view to recommend possible social protection measures to cope with adverse effect of shocks on household consumption. The framework of the study was developed from Permanent income hypothesis which postulates that any transitory changes in income will not have no any effect on permanent income and hence on actual consumption. The result of the ordinary least square regression used in the analysis revealed that whilst idiosyncratic and climatic shocks have no significant effect on household consumption, price shock is having a significant negative impact on household consumption. Further, the result of disaggregated sample suggests that that the non-poor households are able to adequately insure against the effect of idiosyncratic shocks as well as the climatic shock on their consumption while the poorer ones had not been able to insure against the effect of shocks related to death, livestock loss, climate change and price changes on their consumption. This implies that both poor and non-poor farm households should be provided with an adequate and effective social protection measures that would mitigate the effect of shocks on their consumption and welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a multidimensional livelihoods asset model customized to local priorities in rural Bangladesh, and so advances the DFID's livelihoods model. The model enables measurement of relative livelihoods asset achievements of poor men and women living in ameliorating poverty. The study is based on primary data collected from 30 villages in Bangladesh. It has been observed that women have better record in achieving social capital (such as vote casting, decision making at jobs, etc.) whereas, men are better off in gaining financial capital (such as higher savings). Significantly less achievement in the indicators of human capital (such as more sick days, and high morbidity) in the rural areas is alarming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the aid-growth-poverty relation by using quantile regression, which enables us to estimate the impact of growth and growth enhancing policies at different quantiles in the conditional distribution of poverty. The coefficient estimates in a quantile regression capture the marginal impact of a change in the explanatory variable observed at the τth quantile of the dependent variable. We find that growth in average income and other growth enhancing policies have heterogeneous impact on poverty, specifically that the marginal effect of growth and growth enhancing policies decreases at higher levels of poverty. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity of aid and use of alternative measures of poverty--poverty gap and squared poverty gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to analyze the spatial variations in the incidence of poverty and level of deprivation in India. The causal relationship between poverty rate (dependent variable) and twenty five selected socio-economic variables (independent variables) of deprivation has been also taken into account. The state/union territory has been taken as the smallest unit of study. The entire research work is based on secondary sources of data. The study reveals that the level of poverty is low in northern and southern states of India, and it is high in central-eastern states extending from the state of Maharashtra in the west to the state of Bihar in the east. The level of deprivation is high in the states extending from Rajasthan in the west to Orissa in the east, medium level in the southern, north-western and north-eastern states and it is low in the northern and southern most states of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous child health evidence in Kenya has been based on uni-dimensional poverty analysis. Assessing the multiple aspects of child well-being can help, however, reveal complexities and ambiguities in the distribution of child well-being. This paper analyses multidimensional aspects of child poverty and well-being. Stochastic dominance approaches are used to contrast unidimensional and multidimensional poverty over health and assets. The results show that children with the lowest probability of survival are from households with the lowest level of assets, and that poverty assessments for child survival and assets are robust to the choice of poverty lines and to measures of well-being. The results suggest that analyzing poverty and well-being in a multidimensional context can generate a relatively rich understanding of both absolute and relative deprivation, especially where regional disparities are important. Provision of basic health care services and social protection schemes could help improve the multidimensional distribution of well-being for Kenya's children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Growth is good for the poor" is a ubiquitous statement and one generally backed by theory, research and history. In the long-run, growth reduces poverty. Yet, growth in output - per se - is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poverty reduction in the short-term. The paper uses a number of parametric and non-parametric methodologies to assess the relation between growth and poverty in Kazakhstan, a country that experienced rapid growth and poverty reduction in the short-term. Combining macro and micro regional data, we find a very small trickle down effect of output growth on household incomes and no evidence that output growth is correlated with poverty reduction. We find instead that pro-poor growth in household income explains well poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban-rural disparity is a common phenomenon in most developing economies. In particular, this disparity is strengthened by the household registration (Hukou) system in China. Chinese economy, as well as its income inequality, rose dramatically in last decades. Most researches show that urban-rural disparity is an important source of income inequality. In this paper we study the impact of this disparity on innovation through the demand for quality goods. For simplicity, we assume that there are two types of consumers: rich people living in the urban and poor people living in the rural area. The income distribution is measured by the population share of the poor and the relative income of the poor. The larger the income difference between the rural and the urban area, the more individuals migrate to the city in order to improve their income. Firms first invent quality goods, and then produce them in an oligopolistic market. Rich consumers have a higher willingness to pay for the better quality than the poor. Hence, the firms' profit depends on the income distribution of consumers. We focus on the separating equilibrium, where goods of different qualities are sold to different consumers. In this equilibrium, a lower relative income of the poor is good for innovation, while a larger population share of the poor is bad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper jointly and separately examines the redistributive and poverty effects of tax and public expenditures (education and health) in Cameroon. The tax system is generally progressive but less so than the benefits of public expenditure. While overall public spending is mostly progressive in rural areas, followed by semi-urban and urban areas, the opposite is true for tax incidence. Tax burden weighs more on the urban, followed by rural and semi-urban population. Putting the two sets of policies together, they are found to mainly reflect fiscal policies in that they are more progressive and poverty-reducing when we use relative poverty lines, in rural areas, followed by semi-urban and urban areas, respectively. Though we also realized a poverty- increasing effect of the net tax system using absolute poverty lines, the poverty impact still remains minimal in the rural areas where poverty is high and inequality actually increased between 1996 and 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on ways to reduce poverty while highlighting the increase of agricultural productivity and improved management of natural resources in Latin America. Experience gained from the Green Revolution in parts of Asia; Purpose of the paper; Arguments pertaining to the effects of the improvement in the management of natural resources among farmers; Description of the problems of poverty, food insecurity and natural resource degradation.