Search

This paper studies the effects of mining intensity and presence on Peru's mining districts' welfare from 2004 to 2019. A pooled cross-section regression is used which is constructed from different sources and two sets of comparisons are made: the first compare districts with and without mining presence within mining provinces, and the second compares districts with and without mining presence without the constraint of being within mining provinces. The primary dependent variables included in the model are income inequality, labor income, and poverty rate. In mining districts, inequality has increased, but labor income has increased, and poverty has decreased compared to non-mining districts. However, once control for province-fixed effects and clustered by standard errors at the district level, the significance of inequality is lost, while the impacts on labor income and poverty remain. The transmission mechanisms are human capital, employment, and redistributive policies. Also the mining presence has had positive effects on labor income in other sectors such as construction and commerce; Finally, the labor incomes of unskilled workers increases but not the labor incomes of skilled workers, and it has negatively impacted informal employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peru is an emerging nation with a nonuniform development where the growth is focused on some specific cities and districts, as a result there is serious economic inequalities across the country. Despite the poverty in Peru has declined in the last decades, there is still poor districts in risk to become extremely poor, even in its capital, Lima. In this context, it is relevant to study the incidence of extreme poverty at district levels. In this paper, we propose to estimate the quantiles of the incidence of extreme poverty of districts in Lima by using spatial quantile models based on the Kumaraswamy distribution and spatial random effects for areal data. Furthermore, in order to deal with spatial confounding random effects we used the Spatial Orthogonal Centroid "K"orrection approach. Bayesian inference for these hierarchical models is conveniently performed based on the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method. Our modeling is flexible and able to describe the quantiles of incidence of extreme poverty in Lima. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Latin America, approximately 70 million individuals live with a disability. Although global evidence suggests that people with disabilities are one of the poorest groups and present lower employment rates, the evidence for Latin America is still weak. This article aims to contribute to the literature by estimating and analysing the levels of employment opportunity for persons with disabilities in six countries in Latin America (Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica). Using household survey data, we measure inequality of opportunities using the Paes de Barros approach and compare the probability distributions of being employed for people with disabilities according to different individual characteristics. This research makes several contributions to the literature. First, it analyses and compares the characteristics of persons with disabilities in six countries of the region. Second, it is the first paper in the region that computes and compares the levels of employment opportunities for persons with disabilities, using the Human Opportunity Index. Third, it analyses which are the main aspects contributing to the levels of employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in each of the countries. The main results of the study reveal that people with disabilities face high levels of inequality of employment opportunity compared with people without disabilities in the six countries. Peru shows the lowest disadvantage, with higher coverage of opportunities for people with disabilities. Colombia and Costa Rica were the countries where this group presents the largest disadvantages to be employed. In addition, women with disabilities and people with disabilities living in rural areas have a lower probability of being employed compared with people without disabilities. These findings reveal that policies in the region aiming to include this group in the labour market have not been effective, and there is a necessity to guarantee the proper labour inclusion of this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the potential association between two geographic indicators, distance and altitude, with the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for 1,874 district in Peru by using the National Census of 2017. We investigate whether higher altitude or longer distance is associated with higher MPI values. For this purpose, we use the distance of each district to three different potential spaces of reference. First, we use the shortest distance to the metropolitan area of Lima; second, the shortest distance to the capitals of coastal departments; third, and finally, the shortest distance to the sea. We obtain three relevant results. First, we find evidence that altitude is statistically significant and positive associated with variation of MPI among districts. Second, the distance with respect to the sea appears to be more relevant to explaining differences in MPI than the distance to the Metropolitan area or coastal departmental capitals. Finally, we find evidence of spatial externalities of MPI across districts which also seem to be stronger than the direct effect of altitude and distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global narratives underscore that economic growth can often coincide with reductions in poverty and inequality. However, the experiences of several countries over recent decades confirm that inequality can widen or narrow in response to policy choices and independent of economic growth. This paper analyses five country cases, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Peru and Tanzania. These countries are the most successful in reducing inequality and poverty while growing robustly for at least a decade since the early 2000 s. The paper assesses how good macroeconomic management, sectoral reform, the strengthening of safety nets, responses to external shocks, and initial conditions all chip away at inequality and support broad growth. Sustained and robust economic growth with strong poverty and inequality reductions are possible across very different contexts and policy choices. The comparative analysis also identifies common building blocks toward success and warns that hard-earned achievements can be easily overturned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers making up this Special Section reveal important findings and begin to fill gaps in existing literature about children's and young people's understanding and developing beliefs about socioeconomic inequality and poverty. We draw on our research experience with children growing up in poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam (Young Lives) from the perspective of sociology of childhood and social anthropology. The commentary discusses the papers in the Special Section and calls for policies and practices that argue for social justice for children and young people in political and economic terms and emphasizes the importance of including children's views and descriptions of their experiences in research about poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Beatitudes, the promise of happiness to the poor is polemic since it is obvious that they face very hard living conditions. This paper focus on the relationship between happiness, religiousness and economic situation, poverty or wealth, in two groups of districts in Peru: the poorest and the richest ones, ie the opposite. While Luke's statement «Happy are the poor" seems to be incorrect in an empiric sense --real poor people are often less happy than rich ones--, Matthew's statement «Happy are the poor in spirit" seems to find empirical support, at least if it is understood as Gustavo Gutiérrez does. In summary, fieldwork made on surveys endorses Gutiérrez interpretation on the happiness of those who identified themselves as spiritual poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper studies the impact of mining activity on socioeconomic outcomes in local communities in Peru. In the 1990s and 2000s, the value of Peruvian mining exports grew by 15 times; and since the early 2000s, one-half of fiscal revenues from mining have been devolved to local governments. Has this boom benefitted people in local communities? Using the district-level “poverty map” of 2007 (the latest available with accurate data on consumption, poverty, and inequality) together with district-level data on mining production and fiscal transfers to local governments, we present some evidence to answer this question. We find that mining districts have larger average consumption per capita and lower poverty rates than otherwise similar districts. These positive impacts, however, decrease drastically with administrative and geographic distance from mining centers. Moreover, consumption inequality within mining districts is higher than in comparable nonproducing districts. This dual effect of mining is accounted for by, first, the better educated immigrants required and attracted by mining activity and, second, the jobs that some community natives obtain in industries and services related to mining. The inequalizing impact of mining, both across and within districts, may help explain the social discontent with mining in Peru, despite its enormous revenues. An area for future research highlighted in the paper regards the usefulness of fiscal transfers to local governments (the Mining Canon ), a key component of the fiscal decentralization reform of 2002. We find neither a detrimental nor a beneficial effect from the Mining Canon in Peru. Whether this is explained by our early measurement of results (5 years into the decentralization program) or by the lack of implementation capacity of local governments remains to be answered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumption of food away from home is rapidly growing across the developing world, and will continue to do so as GDP per person grows and food systems evolve. Surprisingly, the majority of household surveys have not kept up with its pace and still collect limited information on it. The implications for poverty and inequality measurement are far from clear, and the direction of the impact cannot be established a priori. This paper exploits rich data on food away from home collected as part of the National Household Survey in Peru, to shed light on the extent to which welfare measures differ depending on whether food away from home is accounted for or not. Peru is a relevant context, with the average Peruvian household spending over a quarter of their food budget on food away from home since 2010. The analysis indicates that failure to account for this consumption has important implications for poverty and inequality measures as well as the understanding of who the poor are. First, accounting for food away from home results in extreme poverty rates that are 18 percent higher and moderate poverty rates that are 16 percent lower. These results are also consistent, in fact more pronounced, with poverty gap and severity measures. Second, consumption inequality measured by the Gini coefficient decreases by 1.3 points when food away from home is included – a significant reduction. Finally, the inclusion of food away from home results in a reclassification of households across poor/non-poor status – 20 percent of the poor are different, resulting in small but significant differences in the profile of the poor in dimensions such as demographics, education, and labor market characteristics. Taken together, the results indicate that a serious rethinking of how to deal with the consumption of food away from home in measuring well-being is urgently needed to properly estimate and understand poverty around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet little is known about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities. This paper assesses whether “win–win” scenarios are possible—that is, whether protected areas can both stem forest cover change and alleviate poverty. We examine protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon during the early 2000s. We find that protected areas reduce deforestation. We do not find a robust effect on poverty. Protected areas that allow sustainable extractive activities are more effective in reducing deforestation but less effective in reducing poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an account of the issues discussed at the full calendar quarter related to Eviction casatorio Precarious, their problematic situations and is pending problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peruvian development and government analysts criticize communities for irrationally using local development funds deriving from recently instituted political decentralization to beautify their villages rather than to improve infrastructural services, education and health, or to alleviate poverty. This paper challenges this critique by explaining why such cosmetic improvements are of interest to rural people. Using a case study of the peasant community of Allpachico, I argue that these projects encourage the return of pensioners and visits from migrants. Residents and migrants are mutually dependent as a result of livelihood strategies based on agriculture and the foreign-controlled resource extraction sector over the past 80 years. The relative position of these two groups in the social reproduction of the vernacular community has changed with the Peruvian political economy. Currently, in the neoliberal resource extraction economy, residents pragmatically opt to maintain relations with those who have stable wage or pension incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]