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Can the United States dramatically reduce the number of its children living in poverty? This article summarizes key conclusions of the report issued by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years. These conclusions focus on the causal evidence linking poverty reduction and child well-being as well as a host of policy and program ideas directed toward poverty reduction. The Committee found that packages of work-oriented and income support program are able to simultaneously reduce child poverty and increase the number of adult workers in low-income families. Costs of these policies are also considered.

To design and implement effective post-COVID-19 macroeconomics policies to tackle poverty in SSA, policymakers need to understand the factors shaping poverty in the region. This paper investigates the effect of international remittances and financial development on poverty alleviation in 44 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 2010 to 2019. The instrumental variable generalised method of moment technique results indicated that while remittances increase poverty, financial development contributes significantly to poverty reduction. The results consistently revealed that remittances increase both male and female poverty rates, while financial development significantly reduces male and female poverty rates. Other factors such as economic growth, foreign direct investment, and trade openness contributed significantly to reducing poverty. In contrast, government expenditure and foreign aid were found to increase poverty rate in SSA. These results are robust to the Lewbel two-stage least squares estimator. The practical implications of these findings for post-COVID-19 macroeconomic policies for SSA are discussed.

Numerous studies in the literature have investigated the effect of financial development on poverty, and tend to report a poverty reduction effect of financial development. The present paper considers the issue the other way around, by examining the effect of poverty on financial development. In particular, it has investigated the financial development effect of poverty through the human capital channel. Additionally, it has examined whether the effect of poverty on financial development depends on countries' level of trade openness. The analysis is carried out using a sample of 136 countries (both developed and developing countries) over the period 1995–2017, and the two-step Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM). Results have shown that higher poverty rates undermine the development of the financial sector, and this effect works through the human capital development channel. In fact, higher poverty rates are associated with lower financial development in countries that accumulate less human capital. Furthermore, trade openness matters for the effect of poverty on financial development. Specially, higher poverty rates undermine the expansion of the financial sector in the context of lower levels of trade openness. Thus, greater trade openness helps to mitigate the negative financial development effect of poverty, and this negative effect may turn out to be positive for very high levels of trade openness.

This study attempts to investigate the potential role of renewable energy-based rural electrification to reduce poverty in remote non-grid villages and outermost islands, through the use of the renewable energy-based village-grids (RVGs) program in Indonesia. As the geographical characteristics of such areas are often the main inhibiting factors for electricity supply, this study assesses whether renewable-based off-grid electrification is able to reduce the number of poor and vulnerable people in the remote villages and through what intermediary mechanism it may play its role. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, this study analyzes the effect of renewable energy-based plants in 217 remote villages in Indonesia by comparing outcomes for treated and untreated villages within one sub-district where the remote villages are located. The results show that the program has significantly reduced the number of poor and vulnerable people in the treated village by 91 people. Furthermore, this study also finds that the program was able to significantly increase the number of small-scale industries in the treated village by three units, suggesting that small-scale industries could potentially be the intermediate mechanism through which electricity has a positive effect on poverty alleviation. These results highlight the importance of an off-grid renewable energy-based electrification roll-out in reducing poverty in remote areas and outer islands of Indonesia.

Propelled by urbanization, rising incomes, and changing diets, food markets have been expanding in Africa and South Asia, creating the vast potential for job and income opportunities along food supply chains and, hence, for poverty reduction. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that spread to a pandemic in early 2020 provokes enormous setbacks to this expansion. This, however, should provide lessons regarding the importance of resilient and inclusive food systems. Emergency responses to COVID-19 should consider interventions towards that end and leverage the opportunities provided by food markets growth as economies recover from the present economic recession. This paper assesses options of how this could be done by facilitating the better functioning and interconnectedness of the many small and medium-sized enterprises that are proliferating along the “hidden middle” of food value chains in storage, logistics, transportation, and wholesale and retail distribution. It also explores how policies can help smallholder farmers connect to this “hidden middle” in more gainful ways and help them climb out of poverty as well.

Irrigation system is a scare resource in most of drought-stricken Africa. How to manage and maintain the existing irrigation facilities in Africa is a debatable issue to both policy makers and beneficiaries. Irrigation facilities run by farmer cooperatives are considered ineffective, unsuccessful and dysfunctional in Tanzania by many researchers. A cooperative irrigation scheme is a mechanism that features the collective management of rural irrigation facilities by farmers’ cooperative with some government intervention and external support. There is an increasing emphasis on the roles of cooperative irrigation scheme in the development of the agriculture sector and poverty reduction of smallholder farmers. In this study, the authors investigated the management and services of this scheme and analyzed its contribution to poverty reduction of smallholder rice farmers and community development in Tanzania through both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that the scheme helped smallholder farmers increase the rice production and brought better market opportunities. The farmers’ net income was also increased. Profit generated from rice farming not only improved the livelihoods of smallholder farmers but also created more employment opportunities in the rural communities. The research also revealed that the scheme was faced with a number of challenges due to resource and institutional constraints and low-level human capacity for both management and members. The research provides a feasible approach to effective management of small-scale agricultural infrastructure for poverty reduction in Africa.

Ending poverty is a top priority of the international development agenda, and governments worldwide have attached great importance to poverty alleviation measures. However, poverty reduction policies have mostly focused on men, which has widened the gap in productivity and income between men and women and increased gender inequality. This paper aims to determine the impacts of a multi-component program on women’s empowerment and poverty reduction, and explore the role empowered women play in poverty reduction. The dataset used in this study was collected in nine poor counties of Ulanqab City in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China at the end of 2014, yielding a sample of 900 households. Recall questions were used to reconstruct the baseline data and build a panel dataset. Smaller groups of rural households were further identified to better target the women in the beneficiary group. To control the selection bias, propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting, and the difference-in-differences matching method were used to analyze the effect of the program and undertake robust checks. The results show that the program has positive effects on women’s empowerment and poverty reduction simultaneously. Empowering women also has positive effects on poverty reduction, and the women who were the beneficiaries have contributed to increasing the incomes and living standards of households. Training, microfinance, and associations are common means or strategies to empower women to address poverty. This paper provides new empirical evidence that women can benefit from a gender-focus program through portfolio intervention such as training, cooperatives, and credit. Empowered women further improve the livelihoods of poor households and help lift them out of poverty. The results suggest that researchers and policymakers need to pay more attention to poverty issues from the perspective of gender.

Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) is one of social protection programs providing unconditional financial assistance to poor women. The present study was conducted to explore the role of BISP in empowering women. This quantitative research was conducted in two districts of Punjab randomly selected out of 36 using face-to-face interviews with a sample size of 160 women beneficiaries of BISP. Research findings show that the majority of beneficiaries (78.8%) were married, with rural background (88%). A huge number (80%) of beneficiaries were illiterate. Similarly, overwhelming majority (81.9%) of respondents has labor as source of income. Most of the respondents were strongly agree (65%) and agree (95%) that the assistance should be more than Rs.5000/month or Rs.10000/month. Similarly, 69.4% and 71.3% of respondents agreed that female adults should take household decision and children should attend school regardless of gender. The government should provide appropriate assistance allowance for needy families especially for the empowerment of women. Moreover, the government should also launch massive programs to maximize girls' education with motive to empower women.

Employing data for 125 countries and spanning the 1990–2014 period, we empirically examine the impact of human rights on income distribution and poverty. We also investigate how aid and trade can influence poverty and income distribution through human rights. The results suggest that stronger human rights records contribute to greater income equality, as well as to poverty reduction. The interaction of human rights with both ODA and trade show that as aid and trade flows increase, or alternatively as human rights records increase, ODA and trade flows reduce poverty and lead to greater equality in income distribution.

We investigate the influence of an agricultural TV edutainment programme on farmers’ decisions to implement changes of agricultural practices. We use data obtained from a survey conducted to 1,572 households in Kenya across the target areas of a TV edutainment programme, Shamba-Shape-Up (SSU). A conceptual framework is developed to account for the interaction between farmers watching SSU internal factors including farmer’s and household’s characteristics, farmer’s views on farming and farmer’s trust on sources of influence and farmer’s decision to change their agricultural practices. Structural equations and probit models are used to understand how watching edutainment TV programme Shamba Shape-Up (SSU) along with farmers and household’s characteristics, famer’s views on farming and farmer’s trust on sources of information affect maize and dairy farmer’s probability to make changes to agricultural practices shown in SSU. We find that SSU has an influence on maize and dairy farmers’ decisions to implement changes of agricultural practices. Farmers who watch SSU have a higher probability to implement a greater number of agricultural practices. However, SSU influence varies depending on the agricultural practice recommended as well as on the reasons that farmers have for watching the programme. The probability of implementing agricultural practices shown on SSU was dependent the associated difficulty of making such changes. Edutainment TV can be a viable channel to nudge farmers to implement practices that contribute to face local and global challenges such as adapting and mitigating climate change, poverty reduction, increasing productivity and income of smallholders in developing countries.

Objective This paper aimed to prove that PHS positively affects agricultural poverty reduction indirectly. Method The study employed previous model of Path Analysis. Three-steps regression was run by standardizing data using Z-score method and clustering variables into exogenous, intermediate and endogenous. The research was conducted in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia by interviewing 28.20% of total farmers households in the province. Results The results show that the better access to public health services, the higher the household income will be. Thus, if PHS is nearer, the less time and money will be spent to travel, then the more household income at hand will be saved for agricultural input purchasing. In other words, distance to public health services (PHS) appears to be a crucial part of the findings. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that, the better the access to PHS, the more household income will be and in turn it will alleviate poverty of smallholders (agriculture sector, in broad sense). Conclusion It can be concluded that public health services can help agricultural poverty alleviation though indirectly.

Inclusive Business (IB) is increasingly popular as a way to address the sustainable development goals (SDG) by including the poor in business. While the IB model is commonly believed capable of making a real impact on poverty reduction, it is not without critique. With the empirical evidence still largely lacking, and with continued power imbalances and knowledge disparity among actors, the question of how much IB as a top-down business-led approach can push towards the SDG agenda remains unanswered. New inclusive business models need to be developed, based on inclusive decision-making throughout the value chain. Here, we show the untapped potential of serious gaming, that is, games for serious purposes rather than entertainment, as a ‘truly’ inclusive approach to facilitate IB. © 2019 The Authors

Studying the impact of a carbon tax on household demand can be relevant in terms of securing public acceptance of a carbon tax and clarifying the implications for policy design. This paper aims to fill a gap in the academic literature by simulating carbon tax scenarios and estimating distributional effects of the tax on household welfare, income inequality, and poverty rates based on household consumption in Thailand. The study employs a microsimulation model incorporating the economy-wide effects of the tax on prices and consumers’ behavioral responses to changes in prices. The results indicate that a carbon tax is progressive in Thailand under revenue-recycling scenarios by expanding social transfer programs. When carbon tax revenues are recycled through pensions for elderly people, the carbon tax could reduce the poverty rate and improve the welfare of households in the lowest quintile. The results imply that the distributional impacts of environmental taxes could result in favorable outcomes for income inequality and poverty reduction in developing countries.

The primary objective of the United Nations Development Programme to 2030 is to lift more than 736 million people out of extreme poverty (UN, 2019). In this sense, this paper addresses the potential contributions of transport policies to poverty reduction in the Global South. Several studies addressing this topic are qualitatively assessed through an extended version of Church et al.'s (2000) framework of transport-related exclusion. Insights on topics that pervade the interactions between transport and poverty are discussed to shed light on how transport policies can effectively tackle the intergenerational poverty transfer. Finally, this work concludes by connecting such insights and gaps of literature to propose a convergence of the reviewed studies emphasising the importance and urgency of a new standard of transport policies strongly committed to eradicating poverty.

Governmental policies that can develop advantageous endogenous livelihood transition are of great importance for anti-poverty. However, the existing research finds that in the Tibetan Plateau, there is a certain contradiction between the poverty alleviation policies and the local farmers’ needs, and thus the effect of these policies will be weakened and the goal of poverty alleviation be missed. It is therefore imperative to identify and analyze the factors influencing the livelihood choice so that policy makers and development practitioners can design policies that will tackle the poverty afflicting the majority of the local people. This paper provides a new method for anti-poverty policymaking and conducts a case study to enrich the safety net/cargo net paradigms. In this paper, household data in the YNL river region are used and a two-step clustering method is developed to classify these households into three types: hanging in (type I), stepping up (type II) and stepping out (type III). Then a multinomial logit model is adopted to identify determinants of households’ livelihood choice. The results indicate that drought poses a significant negative impact on farmers’ choice of type II, while household size, educational level of labor and medical expenditure have a significant positive impact on the choice of type II; spring frost, proportion of skilled training, borrowed money and the ratio of agricultural equipment have a significant positive impact on their choice of type III. Some anti-poverty policy implications are put forward in the last on the basis of these determinants.

How can ethnic tourism alleviate rural poverty? Due to the difficulty of simultaneously expanding tourism while promoting pro-poor tourism, most villages traverse one of two developmental pathways: 1) ensuring an inclusive structure before expanding, or 2) expanding before building an inclusive structure. This study compares four comparable cases in Southwestern China to understand the politics behind the decision to choose different pathways, and the impact each pathways has on local residents. While the first pathway requires a careful balance to maintain a pro-poor structure as tourism volume expands, the second pathway presents apparently insurmountable barriers to poverty reduction due to the lack of political will to change the structures of successful tourism industries in ways that include the poor.

Research on the role that growth in the Ocean Economy can play on poverty reduction and income inequality has been limited to date. Using a Social Accounting Matrix framework this paper examines the distributional effects of investment in the port sector on employees and households in Mauritius. Two investment scenarios (conservative, US$1089 million and optimistic, US$1332 million) are considered. The results suggest that in the short term, investment in the development of the port sector would have an overall positive impact on the Mauritian economy. Poor and lower middle-income households would receive a very small positive impact, as would employees with lower education levels. However, in the medium to long term, impacts at the household level would be uneven with wealthy households and employees with university education receiving the greatest benefit. These results suggest the need for complementary redistributive policies.

Environmental problems and health risks stemming from the household use of traditional fuels remain a significant challenge for households living in poverty in developing countries. This paper applies a logit model to analyze the driving factors of a household's decision regarding the adoption of solar energy technology. To do this, the study uses cross-sectional data collected from two kebeles in the neighborhoods of Woliso, a town of Oromia regional state in central Ethiopia. The results reveal that a great number of factors were found to have positive effect on solar energy technology adoption. The findings of this paper establish that wealthy and more educated households are more likely to adopt solar energy technology compared to poorer ones. Male-headed households are less likely to adopt solar energy technology compared to female-headed counterparts. The main implication of this study is that there is a scope for poverty reduction policies and adult education that targets household heads and spouses to promote adoption of solar energy technology. Therefore, policymakers could target appropriate measures in order to improve household wealth, education, and awareness. In this way, there is a much higher chance for them to successfully promote solar energy use by rural households.

This paper is one of three country studies of successful anti-poverty measures during upper middle-income levels, the other two being South Korea and the United States. Japan’s welfare-through-growth strategy appears to have worked through much of its development process, especially during its upper-middle income phase. But with suddenly slowing growth, higher unemployment and increased poverty among sections of Japanese society after the economy reached high income levels, the Japanese government was slow to adapt the country’s unemployment protections, labor market regulations, and social security in general. The paper describes what the Japan’s welfare-through-growth strategy entailed, why it worked through its upper-middle income growth phase and why it collapsed after the start of Japan’s high-income era. For upper middle-income countries like China, Japan represents an especially useful case study on the changes in policies and programs to reduce poverty and alleviate other social stresses that will inevitably become important in the decades ahead.

Despite making improvements in economic growth and poverty reduction in India there is little evidence of improvement in education and health indicators of human capital. We use data from various sources to construct a novel state-level measure of the Human Capital Index to highlight the shortfall in terms of human capital at sub-national levels in India. The results indicate that there is a large gap among the states Our measure of HCI for India is consistent with the country-level measure in that we find similar correlations between HCI and other indicators of economic growth. We conclude with implications for policy in a country like India, where health policy is the mandate of state governments.

Political connections have been shown to lead to corruption, favouritism and the pursuit of self-interests. They can therefore serve as an impediment to development and poverty reduction. This study examines whether having political connections is associated with post-disaster support from government authorities in the case of Vietnam. Using commune level data for the period 2012 to 2014 and a number of alternative econometric specifications, it finds that communes with higher levels of connections at the district level have a higher probability of receiving support in a post-shock period. The type of political connections is found to be important. We find a strong impact of political connections when household members are officials themselves or when households have relatives as officials. Having friends as officials does not appear to impact the likelihood of receiving assistance. The impacts are also greater when households have siblings, offspring or cousins working in government, but no evidence is found when officials are parents. Finally, having connections with district leaders is more important than connections with district officials.

This research work aims to investigate the impact of previous finances allocated to the agricultural sector has had on Nigeria’s economic development and its contributions to poverty and unemployment rate reduction. The research will also investigate based on findings, the impact future increased financing of this sector will equally have on poverty reduction, employment generation and economic development in Nigeria and also, analyse other potentials the agricultural sector has that can impact the growth and development positively and contribute to poverty reduction as well. Based on the result and findings, various development-friendly policies and recommendations will be proffered that will be implemented to contribute favourably in attracting investors both foreign and local, boost these investors’ confidence in this sector. The work will also identify and recommend other potentials the agricultural sector has that can impact positively on the country’s existing potentials.

Trends in aggregate growth and poverty reduction hide a multiplicity of development processes at the local level. The analysis reported in this paper exploits a unique panel dataset of poverty maps covering almost 2400 municipalities in Mexico and spanning 22 years, first, to test hypothesis that there is within-country income convergence. Second, through a decomposition of the poverty convergence elasticity, the analysis investigates whether this convergence, if it exists, has translated into poverty convergence. In a context of overall stagnant economic growth and poverty reduction since 1990, the analysis finds evidence of both income and poverty convergence among municipalities. As a cause of these, the results point to a combination of positive performance among the poorest municipalities and stagnant or deteriorating performance among more well-off municipalities. Redistributive programs such as cash transfers to poor households have played an important role in driving these results by bolstering income growth among the poorest municipalities, while also inducing progressive changes in the distribution of income.

Recently literature revealed that the Tanzania public debt and economic growth are growing simultaneously however the economic growth achievements do not reflect the poverty reduction initiatives in Tanzania. Despite rapid growth of the public debt and poverty for Tanzania no studies have been undertaken to investigate the impact of the public debt on economic growth and poverty in Tanzania. The present study is aiming to evaluate the impact of the public debt on economic growth and poverty during the period from 2000 to 2018 in Tanzania. With this regard the study employed the Multiple linear regression model to evaluate the impact of the public debt on economic growth and poverty during the period from 2000 to 2018 in Tanzania. Time series data from the Bank of Tanzania Annual Reports and the World Bank data indicators during the period from 2000 to 2018 for Tanzania have been used by the study. On investigating the impact of public debt on economic growth and poverty the study assumes public debt to be an independent variable while Gross domestic product (GDP) and poverty to be dependent variables of the study. The findings of the study were indeed very impressive. The study findings showed that there is a negative and insignificant correlation between the public debt and all the study’s dependent macroeconomic variables (Gross domestic product and poverty) during the period from 2000 to 2018 in Tanzania. The meaning is the public debt does not have an impact on the economic growth and poverty reduction during the period from 2000 to 2018 in Tanzania.

India has massive poverty partly due to poor policies and partly due to inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. There is a need to encourage social entrepreneurs and encourage public participation in poverty removal. A range of initiatives are required to create the right set of policies, practices and innovations.

We provide a systems-based overview of all income and social support programs provided by federal, provincial, and municipal governments that can be accessed by B.C. residents. We find that there are a number of areas for reform: the B.C. system of income and social supports is large and complex with different points of access for different programs and different programs having different eligibility rules. This makes accessing programs difficult. Furthermore, for programs that offer cash transfers, total benefit levels are low comparative to the MBM poverty Threshold, making it difficult for those experiencing poverty to exit poverty. Whether these issues of complexity, access, and benefit levels can be better addressed by a basic income is a question that should be considered. On the other hand, we also observe that, when comparing provincial programs to federal programs, the provincial and federal governments target different demographic groups and use different methods of delivery: the provincial government programs are largely in-kind programs targeted to low-income persons whereas the federal government programs are largely cash transfer programs targeted to families, veterans, and seniors. In-kind programs offered by the provincial government offer valuable supports for purposes and groups not otherwise targeted by federal government programs. Whether these in-kind programs should be replaced by a basic income is also an important question that will need to be considered.

In our efforts to better understand how policies geared towards poverty reduction may impact teen childbirth, we analyzed the impact of the 10-20-30 provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, P.L. 111-5) on teen childbirth. Our analysis showed a steeper teen childbirth reduction in persistent poverty counties compared to their non-persistent poverty counterparts. After we published our results, the coronavirus pandemic hit U.S. and the rest of the world, causing a massive recession. In the U.S., after an initial dose of fiscal stimulus, no further stimulus has been forthcoming, primarily because of disagreement as to focusing the stimulus to the most needy. Based on our observations vis-a-vis the effect of the stimulus that the 10-20-30 provision provided, we recommend that any further Covid-related stimulus can be directed at least to persistently poor counties. The 10-20-30 provision allocated at least 10% of Federal funds provided in three rural development program accounts to persistent poverty counties (i.e. counties that had poverty rates of 20% or more for the past 30 years) as measured by the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses. We used Difference-in-Difference (DD) of teen childbirth rates of the treatment and the control groups to mitigate non-treatment effects on teen childbirth. Our analysis showed a steeper teen childbirth reduction in persistent poverty counties compared to their non-persistent poverty counterparts. Therefore, antipoverty measures such as 10-20-30 provision, which intended to reduce poverty in persistent poverty counties, also helped in reducing teen childbirth rates. This suggests that directing funding to these areas can have a strong positive impact on the economy. Finally, we hypothesize that an antipoverty measure like 10-20-30 provision may not only benefit the community in general but may correlate to a reduced “culture of despair” in persistent poverty counties. As mentioned above, our conclusion recommends targeting coronavirus fiscal stimulus to persistently poor counties in order to obtain best economic outcome.

This paper is one of three papers focused on bringing a GBA+ lens to the work of the Expert Panel on Basic Income. In Cameron and Tedds (2020b), background is provided on gender and intersectional analysis and an enhanced GBA+ framework is developed based on the Status of Women Canada’s GBA+ tool. In Cameron and Tedds (2020a), a GBA+ analysis is applied to two policy reforms—basic income and basic services—to consider their potential in the context of B.C.’s poverty reduction strategy. In this paper, we apply the enhanced GBA+ analysis to the current system of income and social supports in B.C. along with the suite of proposed reforms recommended in Petit and Tedds (2020d, 2020e) using BI principles. Both of these—BI principles and GBA+/intersectionality—have transformative potential. Applying a GBA+ lens along with BI principles illuminates ways we can address structural barriers such as institutional and systemic discrimination, reducing the risk of poverty among diverse groups and promoting long-term transformative change.

We present and assess extensive statistics regarding poverty rates and depths for Vancouver, B.C., and Canada. We show that not only are single adults in B.C. the most likely to experience poverty, but they also experience the deepest level of poverty. Both single adults and single parents who are younger (i.e., ages 18–24) are more likely to be in poverty and are deeper in poverty than single older persons (i.e., 65+) or those who live as couples. These poverty rates and depths of poverty remain high for single adults and single parents as they get older (i.e., ages 26–65), at which point the depth of poverty decreases. Lastly, poverty tends to be experienced at higher levels by women than by men when conditioning on family type. For these reasons, B.C. government will have to consider these groups in reforms focused on addressing poverty reduction targets.

Developing countries often design programs that bundle poverty reduction and environment goals. One such program is the Ethiopian food-for-work program in which participants get food or cash in return for participating in environmental protection, typically, forest and soil conservation works. While the economic impacts have been well investigated, little is known about the program’s environmental impact and the willingness to participate in such programs. We elicit Ethiopian farmers’ willingness to participate in a hypothetical afforestation program that mimics the components of the Ethiopian food-for-work program. We find that introducing food incentives decreases willingness to participate in the program. The participation rate, however, increases with an increase in the proportion of individuals selected for the food incentive. Our data points to signaling as the likely channel for the non-linearity of the participation rate in response to an increase in the share of food incentive recipients. These results suggest that (1) food-for-work programs could have unintended negative environmental effects and (2) directions for design reform that could mitigate such negative effects.

China's economic development in recent decades has been tremendous, but also subject to debate. This paper uses Engel curves to identify price levels and real incomes that are comparable across both time and space. Based on these, new poverty trends are presented. We find that the urban and coastal areas that have experienced the fastest economic development have also seen smaller price increases than the poorer rural and inland areas. Our measures reveal that China has experienced substantial poverty reduction in a time with high economic growth, but compared to both the World Bank measures and those based on official CPI adjustments, our measures suggest a more moderate poverty reduction. Our findings imply that poverty was reduced by 40 and not 66 percent using the $1 dollar a day measure.

Summary Africa’s development debate is often cast as “agriculture versus non-agriculture”, with agriculture’s proponents arguing that agricultural growth is more effective at reducing poverty. This “dual economy” perspective overlooks the heterogeneity within and synergies between these two broad sectors. Recent studies decompose agriculture into subsectors and find that agricultural growth led by smallholder farmers is even more effective at reducing poverty than larger-scale estate farms. In contrast, few studies estimate subsectoral growth–poverty linkages for non-agriculture. Yet we strongly expect, for example, that growth led by informal traders or foreign-owned mining companies will have quite different implications for poverty reduction. Different perspectives on what constitutes “non-agriculture” might therefore explain divergent views on its relative importance for poverty reduction. To address this gap in our understanding, we estimate sectoral poverty–growth elasticities using economy-wide models for five African countries. While our estimated elasticities are higher for agriculture than for non-agriculture as a whole, the extent to which this is true varies considerably across nonagricultural subsectors (and across countries). We find that the poverty–growth elasticities for trade and transport services and manufacturing, especially agro-processing, are often close to, and sometimes exceed, agriculture’s. This means that growth led by these nonagricultural subsectors might be as effective as agriculture at reaching the poor. This confirms the need for a more nuanced treatment of non-agriculture in Africa’s policy debate, and may explain conflicting perspectives on agriculture’s role vis-a-vis non-agriculture.

Summary This paper examines the implications of productivity improvements in agriculture, industry, and services for global poverty. We find that, in poor countries, increases in agricultural productivity generally have a larger poverty-reduction effect than increases in industry or services. This differential declines as average incomes rise, partly because agriculture becomes smaller as a share of the economy, and partly because agricultural productivity growth becomes less effective in reducing poverty. The source of the poverty-reduction benefits from agricultural productivity growth changes as innovations are more widely adopted—moving from increases in producer returns to reductions in consumer prices.

Market systems interventions are an increasingly common approach to agricultural development. While the impacts of these interventions on poverty reduction and market participation by smallholders has been studied, little is known about their contributions to building climate resilience. This paper analyzes the compatibility of market systems and climate resilience approaches to agricultural development, using the United States government’s Feed the Future program as an empirical case study. Drawing on case studies in Ethiopia and Honduras, the paper examines the synergies and tensions between market systems and climate resilience approaches. The study finds that the market systems interventions have contributed to climate resilience, but also evidence of significant limitations due to fundamental tensions between market system and resilience approaches in terms of what their goals are, who they target, and how they approach their objectives. This study has important implications for the design and implementation of climate resilience programs and policies, as well as the expectations that agricultural development programs will be able to build climate resilience. Recognizing the inherent tensions that exist between market systems approaches and resilience approaches and explicitly discussing the trade-offs between the goals, target audiences, and primary mechanisms of each approach would represent an important step forward if market systems programs are going to contribute to climate resilience.

We empirically analyze the interaction effects of financial development and remittances on poverty conditions in developing countries. By applying the generalized method of moments to panel data from 120 developing countries during 1980–2013, we find that financial development and remittance inflows help ameliorate poverty conditions in developing countries. In addition, we find that remittances substitute for financial development in the poverty-alleviating process. Therefore, developing countries should leverage either the domestic or external financial sources for their poverty reduction strategies, depending on their respective situations.

Groundwater based irrigation in sub-Saharan African is believed to hold the key for economic growth and poverty reduction. However, the associated consequences of the groundwater levels decline are not clearly understood due to lack of dedicated monitoring and scientific studies. In this study, we present, the first direct attempt to use non parametric tool to study trends in rainfall, temperature and groundwater levels from 2005 to 2014 using Mann-Kendall test, Sen's slope estimator and ARIMA models in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The results showed a seasonal variation with no trends in rainfall and temperature. The mean groundwater levels (depth below the ground surface) ranged from 1.24 to 5.46 m with Gowrie, Bawku and Kabingo showing a narrow variation in groundwater levels as compared to Datoku and Bongo. On the seasonal scale, both the Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope estimator have shown rising seasonal trends in all the wells except Kabingo which showed a declining seasonal trend of 0.312–0.097 m/year. However, on the annual scale, neither significant positive nor negative trends were observed in the groundwater levels in all the monitoring wells. Forecast for rainfall and groundwater levels using ARIMA models indicates that there will be a significant decline in rainfall at a rate of 4.779 mm/year by 2020. The groundwater levels, however, showed a relatively stable trend to slight increase in most of the wells varying in magnitude across the study area and ranging from 0.000 to 0.006 m/yr. The forecasted result showed an average rate of decline of 1.008 m/yr at Kabingo where the groundwater level are expected to decline to about 12 m by 2020. Implications for groundwater utilization in the area and future research needs have been highlighted and discussed.

We test if the establishment of salmon farms in remote coastal areas had a significant impact on poverty reduction in the period 1992–2002 in Los Lagos Region, Chile. We employ impact assessment techniques using as control group people residing in geographic areas where no salmon farms were established during the period studied. Poverty incidence is estimated using small-area models at the household level that combines socioeconomic surveys with census data. Our results show that poverty decreased considerably more in localities where salmon farms were installed than in localities without salmon farms. We identify the distances between localities and salmon farms where this impact was significant. Our findings contribute to the debate on the socioeconomic effects of aquaculture for capital-intensive, international market-oriented industries.

In the neoliberal globalization era, urban economic development (UED) has become topical issue in several sub-Saharan African cities. This paper investigates economic impact of shopping malls, and the role traditional rulers could play in enhancing poverty reduction through mall development. Using a case study methodology involving two of Accra's (Ghana) malls and relying on poverty reduction/wealth creation conceptual framework, the paper finds that the impact of (an informal) decision arrived with traditional chiefs has a more demonstrable impact on West Hills’ local communities and better enhances poverty alleviation than Accra Mall where no such decision was made. Concurrently, the paper finds that local participation in malls, related to wealth creation for citizens, is low. The paper, therefore, argues that the involvement of traditional authority typifies organic form of UED and that while the malls may be enhancing poverty reduction, they may not be enhancing wealth creation to any substantial degree. The paper, therefore, recommends a national policy on malls to optimize malls’ economic benefits.

This study investigates the link between industry reliance on external finance, real activity, and foreign bank entry to poverty reduction. Results show that foreign bank entry widens Africa's poverty gap, notably when financing to high value-added industry sectors remains low. Results are consistent with the cream-skimming intermediation hypothesis, occasioning a contraction of credit. By tendering credit to a broader set of firms in industries disproportionately reliant on external finance to grow, foreign banks may partially offset the welfare-reducing effect. However, foreign banks' role in driving down poverty rates is conditional to the host country's institutional quality – an institutional threshold beyond which foreign banks' entry may induce poverty-reducing effects, necessitating a minimum level enabling institutional environment in the host country.

Summary Cash transfer programs have been successful in helping millions of people afford better livelihoods. While this is well known, little research has yet been conducted to examine the power of such programs to influence outcomes in times of conflict, especially in countries where anti-poverty programs are implemented amidst disputes against illegal armed groups. This paper focuses on the implementation of Familias en Accion, a flagship anti-poverty cash transfer program in Colombia, during the early 2000s when the country was still experiencing its long-lasting internal conflict. Impact evaluations have already shown the important effects of this program on household poverty levels and children’s time allocation, including a higher incidence of school attendance and a lower incidence of child labor. Our hypothesis here is that such outcomes imply changes in the dynamics of the civil conflict, since 50% of the demobilised combatants are children mostly eligible for the transfers. We take advantage of a natural experiment that occurred during the first stage of implementation of the program in the period 2001–04 when the transfers were gradually rolled out across eligible municipalities. By setting out a difference-in-differences approach, our results indicate that the program had positive effects on the demobilisation of combatants. These findings are observed for a length of three years since the program started.

We study a policy, mandated by Cambodia’s decentralization laws, that provides central funding to the lowest tier of subnational administration, the 2002 Commune Sangkat Fund (or CSF). A large interdisciplinary literature points to the difficult path from decentralization to poverty reduction. For example, fiscal capacity - the ability to raise taxes locally – is deemed necessary for local public goods to be reliably provided. But in poor countries local fiscal capacity simply cannot be built unless there is an income base to tax, which, in turn, requires poverty to be eradicated. Using three separate data sets we find three distinct pieces of evidence about the program’s impact. First, the program reduced poverty at the initial as well as subsequent stages. Second, we find evidence that investment into rural infrastructure can be pro-poor. Third, the program, which amounted to a mere 3% of the national budget, created substantial capital stock over the years in communes and villages and delivered large returns measured in poverty reduction. A message from this study is that when the choice and design of projects are informed by local knowledge and local representation, investment can reduce poverty.

Women's empowerment and varietal replacement of crops are often unconnected domains in agricultural development; an experience connecting both in India has global potential. Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana, a women's empowerment and poverty reduction program in Uttar Pradesh, embedded seed practices within the collective structure of women's self-help groups. Through collective efforts, women became successful in the production and dissemination of quality seed of new rice and wheat varieties, reaching more than 30,000 small-scale farmers. They appropriated several components of the seed value chain; their social capital became instrumental in varietal replacement. The self-perception of women as knowledgeable farmers changed, as did the perception of household and community members; therefore, seed activities contributed to intrinsic women's empowerment.

We study the tax schemes that maximize social welfare functions built on axioms of responsibility for one’s preferences (the requirement that the social welfare function should treat identically agents with the same wage, independently of their preferences) and poverty reduction. We find zero and negative marginal tax rates on low incomes at the optimum and bunching at the income level of the most hardworking minimum wage households. When preferences are iso-elastic, we derive the optimal tax formula, which we calibrate to the US economy. Our formula approximates the shape of the current US tax function for households with at least one child. This result suggests that a fairness-based approach, and these axioms in particular, can help close the gap between the recommendations of optimal tax theory and actual policies.

Using environmentally augmented panel dataset of 2009 and 2012 from four districts in Nepal, we assess environmental reliance of households in different livelihood strategies and dynamic transition groups. We employ a latent class cluster analysis to determine the optimal number of livelihood clusters and assign individual households to particular cluster; and regression models were used to examine the covariates of change in environmental income and reliance. The analysis identifies six distinct livelihood clusters in terms of asset investment in different livelihood activities. Results show that majority of households persist in the relatively lower remunerative livelihood strategies between 2009 and 2012. Environmental income is important to all livelihood strategies. However, households in the least remunerative strategy and downward transition group have higher environmental reliance. It is also found that households with upward transition are likely to have reduced environmental dependency. Hence, enhancement of poverty reduction strategies in supporting poorer household in asset accumulation and undertake alternative higher remunerative livelihood strategies will eventually reduce the pressure and dependency on environment. Furthermore, conservation policies and natural resource management are critical in the study areas to sustain the increased demands on environmental products and services.

Labor-intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low-income settings, intended to supplement the income of poor households and improve public infrastructure. In this evaluation of the Malawi Social Action Fund, an at-scale, government-operated program, across- and within-village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer. There is no evidence that the program improves food security and suggestive evidence of negative spillovers to untreated households. These disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments. These findings stand in contrast to those from large public works programs in India and Ethiopia, and serves as a reminder that public works programs will not always have significant and measurable welfare effects.

The dissemination of improved rice varieties could contribute significantly to achieving food security and reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study assesses the number of households and individuals lifted out of poverty and food insecurity. Metadata and primary data collected from sixteen countries were analyzed. A positive impact of improved varieties on food security and poverty reduction was observed over the period 2000–2014. In addition, the rate of adoption of these varieties increased over these years and this increase was more significant after the 2008 food crisis. Average income also increased from US$ 25 capita –1 to US$ 58 capita –1 for NERICA adopters. These trends could be enhanced by addressing production constraints and certified seed bottlenecks.

Many people in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) work for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Oftentimes, these SMEs have limited access to finance. Interventions to promote financial access for SMEs are therefore an integral part of the development strategy of many governments and donors. To provide an overview of the effectiveness of these interventions, we conduct a systematic review and multivariate meta-analysis. This yields three results. Firstly, few evaluations of SME finance programs apply the same rigorous experimental methods that are more commonly used in studies of microfinance. Secondly, most evaluations of SME finance programs consider neither spillover effects to other enterprises nor effects on the employee level. Thirdly, we find a positive significant effect of SME finance on capital investment, firm performance, and employment within the supported firm, whereas the summary effect on profitability and wages is insignificant. In sum, it remains unclear to what extent SME finance contributes to economic development and poverty reduction. We discuss the main policy implications of these findings as well as the limitations and suggestions for future research on SME finance.

China has achieved significant achievements in poverty reduction since the launch of its reform and opening policy in 1978. The rural poor population decreased by nearly 67 million from 2010 to 2012. Analysing and understanding the spatio-temporal variation of poverty alleviation performance in contiguous poverty-stricken regions can provide a reference for Chinese policymakers. In this paper, based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), we build an evaluation index system of poverty alleviation performance and then establish a Bayesian spatio-temporal model to explore the space–time variability of poverty alleviation performance in poor areas. The spatial distribution indicates the eastern region’s higher performance in poverty alleviation compared to the western region. The spatial–temporal feature shows that the increasing trend of poverty alleviation performance presents a pattern of “high in the central, low in the east–west” and most poor counties’ development of poverty alleviation performance are consistent with overall trend. These findings suggest that the government could pay more attention to the development in the western region and vigorously carry out precise poverty alleviation measures.

In the paper we discuss the concept of pro-poor growth and apply it to the East African countries. We examine the interlinkages between three development concepts–poverty, inequality, and growth. We use four operationalizations of the pro-poor growth concept: pro-poor growth index ( Kakwani & Pernia, 2000 ), poverty equivalent growth rate ( Kakwani & Son, 2008 ), poverty growth curve ( Son, 2004 ), and rate of pro-poor growth ( Ravallion & Chen, 2003 ). Applying these methods to the latest available data (from the World Bank's PovcalNet), we calculate and compare the degree of pro-poor growth in five East African countries (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda). According to our results, for most of the cases (time periods by countries) the growth was not pro-poor in the relative sense, yet still poverty reducing. While the poor benefited from growth more than the non-poor only in Rwanda, the greatest poverty reduction was achieved in Tanzania.

This paper analyses the relationship between local poverty and food manufacture growth in Chile and Mexico using propensity score matching, differences in differences and spatial econometrics methods. We focus on food manufacture as a sector with a number of characteristics that make it potentially pro-poor, and whose incentives for spatial distribution may either strengthen or dampen its poverty reduction potential. The overall results indicate that i) geographically, food manufacture locates in relatively poor areas, but not in the poorest; ii) food manufacture tends to locate in municipalities with more availability of labor and raw materials and with better infrastructure; iii) controlling for other factors, food manufacture growth contributes to local poverty reduction both in terms of magnitude and speed.