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This article considers the implications of the strong poverty focus in the new White Paper for advancing gender equality. Recognizing that there are efficiency arguments in its focus on poor women and some dangers in too rigid a link being made between gender and poverty, it is argued that an equity and empowerment focus nevertheless inform the gender and poverty nexus. This does not necessarily imply that women's subordination is adequately dealt with. Making gender a cross-cutting issue in human rights goes some way towards escaping an anti-poverty approach to women. However, this does not automatically address gender relations and there are some contradictions even within the human rights focus itself. Beyond the principles of the White Paper, the real potential for promoting women's empowerment and advancing gender equity lies in its practice. The commitment to building partnerships needs to be extended to gender equitable partnerships which imply developing skills and new forms of practice among all partners to accommodate the participation of poor women, and recognising that accountability is a two-way street. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the pattern of poverty, growth and inequality in Ethiopia in the recent decade. The result shows that growth, to a large extent depends on structural factors such as initial conditions, vagaries of nature, external shocks and peace and stability both in Ethiopia and in the region. Using a rich household panel data, the paper also shows that there is a strong correlation between growth and inequality. In such set up, the effect of implementing a pro-poor growth strategy, compared to allowing the status quo to prevail, can be quite dramatic. On the basis of realistic assumptions, the paper shows that from a baseline in 2000 of a 30 per cent poverty share, over 10 years at growth of 4 per cent per capita, poverty would decline from 44 to 26 per cent for distribution neutral growth (DNG) (i.e. no change in the aggregate income distribution). In contrast, were the growth increment distributed equally across percentiles (equally distributed gains of growth, EDG), the poverty would decline by over half, to 15 per cent, a difference of almost eleven percentage points. Thus, ‘distribution matters’, even, or especially in a poor country like Ethiopia. On the basis of these results the paper outlines policies that could help to design a sustainable pro-poor growth strategy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who benefits from economic growth? This paper analyses the distributional impact of different types of growth within a two-sector model. The paper first presents necessary and sufficient conditions for unambiguous changes in wage inequality in a dual economy, based on analysis of the entire Lorenz curve. These conditions are then applied to the Harris–Todaro model with an urban non-agricultural sector and rural agriculture. It is shown that capital accumulation or technical progress in agriculture can shift the Lorenz curve inwards and reduce wage inequality, while the effects of development in non-agriculture are typically ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of fast growth and increasing average income levels, China's development has been uneven across various sectors and regions. This uneven development has reduced the life satisfaction of many people and has caused social tensions. Using four rounds of the Chinese Household Income Project data, this paper investigates social tensions caused by inequality, poverty and polarization across rural and urban areas, and across the Eastern, Central and Western regions, and between the emerging super provinces/megacities and the rest. It shows that although tensions have been significantly alleviated by fast economic growth, the impact of growth imbalances is still very severe. China should focus on more balanced growth in addition to a high rate of growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel analysis about the capabilities of academic researchers and academic poverty. Adopting the capability approach, which Amartya Sen developed to address concerns such as poverty, inequality and development, we shift the focus of analysis and discussion around evaluating academic research and academics in the social sciences from measures of so-called 'quality', 'impact' or 'excellence' to the capabilities of academics. For us, the conceptualization and evaluation of academic research is a question about what academics have reasons to value, and about their ability to achieve valuable beings and doings. It is also about determining what might constitute academic poverty, and what academics are required to do in order to avoid that poverty. Relating our analysis to debates around universities, in particular about quasi-market pressures, we identify the possibility of basic capabilities in academic research, namely: the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill basic academic needs. Our proposition is that there is academic poverty when an academic researcher is not capable of fulfilling basic academic needs, such as: adhering to standards of coherence, robustness and rigour; searching for and disseminating the spirit of the truth. Moreover, if the academic has the capabilities to fulfill those basic academic needs and yet chooses not to do so, she renders herself in a state akin to academic poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute poverty reduction and lower inequality. But policy action needs to be better served by analysis and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the distribution of well-being and, specifically, the degree of poverty and deprivation in Albania, in the years 2002 and 2005, using Living Standard Measurement Surveys ( LSMS). The distribution analysis is performed by applying both one-dimensional and multidimensional approaches, in particular to better examine the link between economic growth, inequality and poverty in Albania. Furthermore, by estimating a non-monetary indicator, as proposed by Bossert et al. (), and a nonlinear principal component model together with a probit model, the paper focuses on the multidimensional measures of poverty to address the relationship between poverty and socio-economic factors. Our evidence shows that absolute poverty decreased from 2002 to 2005 while national relative poverty increased; economic growth reduced poverty in Albania over the observed period; and living in rural and mountain areas, being female, poorly educated and with a large family increased the probability of suffering from deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper analyses policies designed to counter poverty and income inequality within a two period overlapping generations model. The baseline is provided by a laissez-faire regime where income in the second period is determined by the human capital of the agent together with the investment in education in the first period. Within the framework of a balanced budget, two policies are examined; the provision of income support alone and then when this is supplemented by additional education for the poor. The latter policy can lead to greater mean income and less poverty and income inequality compared to laissez-faire when income is responsive to educational outlay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the factors that are important in determining poverty and inequality is one of the steps in the fight to eradicate poverty in the world. In this paper we examine the effect of financial development on poverty and inequality in African countries. The empirical results indicate that financial development has not had a significant effect on poverty and inequality in African countries. Our results confirm the deficiencies in African financial systems and highlight the fact that more efforts need to be done to improve access of poor households and small and medium enterprises to financial services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate changes in the distribution of household consumption expenditure in Namibia since independence in 1990 and the effects on poverty. To produce comparability between two household surveys, we use survey-matching techniques, and we apply the framework of stochastic dominance to test the robustness of our results. The results reveal a significant decrease in the poverty headcount over the period and small but insignificant decreases in the country's extremely high levels of inequality. Decomposition analysis shows that poverty reduction in Namibia is largely driven by growth in mean incomes rather than redistribution. Even so, there have been important changes in inequality among different social groups especially as educational attainment has replaced ethnicity as the main determinant of between-group inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the relationship of poverty, inequality and economic growth. Income level used to define absolute poverty; Effect of inequality on economic growth and of economic growth on poverty; Impact of inequality on poverty; Determinant of economic growth.

The article discusses poverty and inequality in Latin America as of 2014. Latin America is the world's second most unequal region on the plant according to the Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales and World Bank. Inequality is considered as one of the main challenges to combat poverty, affirm democracy and sustain sovereign economic growth in the region. Also examined is the evolution of poverty and inequality in the region since the 1980s.

We provide a comprehensive approach for analyzing the evolution of poverty using Mozambique as a case study. Bringing together data from disparate sources, we develop a novel “back-casting” framework that links a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to a micro-simulation poverty module. This framework provides a new approach to explaining and decomposing the evolution of poverty, as well as to examining rigorously the coherence between poverty, economic growth, and inequality outcomes. Finally, various simple but useful and rarely-applied approaches to considering regional changes in poverty rates are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period between 1980 and 2005 registered declining poverty, especially in its extreme form, and increasing economic inequality with implications for the economic footing of the global poor- and low-income groups. Disentangling the roles of economic growth, openness and political institutions in determining poverty and inequality using cross-national data faces enormous methodological challenges. Nevertheless, panel data regressions estimated here suggest that the poor- and low-income groups do not benefit much from economic openness and political democracy. While economic growth and government expenditures do not significantly affect poverty, they prove somewhat effective at containing inequality. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widespread trade liberalization and economic integration characterize the current era of globalization. While this approach has resulted in significant job creation, improved living standards, and a wider variety of cheaper consumer goods and services, opponents question if globalization's benefits outweigh the dislocations and downsides that it causes. Protestors are intent on stalling or rolling back globalization's progression and our review of the history of globalization reveals that a backlash is not without precedent. The article carefully examines the myth and reality of these two opposing positions on four key areas of the globalization debate: jobs; inequality and poverty; national sovereignty and cultural diversity; and the natural environment. This information is then utilized to derive a broad set of feasible policy recommendations that could help bring about a more sustainable form of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Development Report 2000/01 builds a complex picture of poverty, and a comprehensive approach to its reduction, which challenges the still dominant neo-liberal paradigm. The significance of inequality in determining the outcomes of economic growth, of vulnerability and the need for an agenda of social security or social protection represent advances in the discourse of international agencies. The uniform and simplistic solutions of the past are dismissed with recognition of the fragility of markets and the problems of privatization. The diversity of poverty is met by emphasis on country strategies, which need to address the issues faced by the losers from the process of economic growth. Diversity has been identified — it now needs analysis. The comprehensive approach advocated should help to stabilize development thinking, to move away from the pendulum swings of policy fashion. The constraints to poverty reduction are under-emphasised — resources to provide safety nets; the problems of preventing or resolving conflict, and the potential political resistance from elites unconvinced that poverty is their problem. Nevertheless, the report provides a basis for building a new international coalition against poverty, with the Bank as one among several agencies, a situation in which it will need to clarify its role. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares income distribution and economic progress to neo-classical and neo-Keynesian schools. It aims to determine empirically whether there is a strong relationship between income distribution and economic progress. Its first section briefly examines the economic theories on the relationship between income inequality and economic progress within the framework of institutional economics. The second section contains the empirical analysis of the hypothesized relationship which involves construction of a model, description of the variables and data, and interpretation of the estimated results. A cross- national study with a sample of 65 countries is carried out. In the final section, conclusions and suggestions for further study are made. The analysis of income distribution and economic progress (or growth) in the past was largely dominated by the conventional approaches such as neo-classical and neo-Keynesian schools. However, institutionalism offers an alternative explanation, particularly on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth.

The achievement of economic growth and social equity in developing nations, whatever path they pursue, has been hampered by uncertainty, instability, and uncontrollability in budgeting. It appears likely that left to themselves, these budget systems will continue largely unchanged, with little or no progress toward eliminating poverty and advancing development. However, several options are available for restructuring budget systems through implementation of carefully devised systematic action plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auszug Die Effizienz des Sozialschutzes im Kampf gegen Armut und Bedürftigkeit, bei der Abfederung von Schocks, der Verringerung sozialer Ungleichheit und der Förderung von langfristigem Wachstum ist bewiesen, doch effiziente Systeme der sozialen Sicherung sind in vielen Entwicklungsländern sowie in Ländern mit geringem Einkommen seit geraumer Zeit ein unbezahlbarer Luxus. Das Konzept eines Sockels der sozialen Sicherung besteht in der Einrichtung eines garantierten Minimums an sozialer Sicherheit zu einem vernünftigen Preis, auch in einem Umfeld knapper Ressourcen; ein Sockel, der als Plattform für die graduelle Einführung eines umfassenden Systems der sozialen Sicherheit dient. Die Einführung und Aufrechterhaltung eines solchen Sockels bzw. seine Ausdehnung setzt die gegenwärtige und zukünftige Mobilisierung von Haushaltsmitteln voraus. Der vorliegende Artikel argumentiert, dass bei der Schaffung des dafür notwendigen finanzpolitischen Spielraums zunächst die Vorhersehbarkeit sorgfältig analysiert werden muss, ferner auch die Auswirkungen gegenwärtiger Finanzierungsentscheidungen auf die längerfristige finanzielle Tragfähigkeit von Steuern und Schulden, die gesamtwirtschaftliche Stabilität, Ungleichheit, Armutsminderung und das Wachstum und somit auf den zukünftigen finanziellen Spielraum. Aus dieser Perspektive untersucht der Artikel die Auswirkungen der Schaffung von Haushaltsmitteln durch die zusätzliche Bereitstellung von Ressourcen innerhalb des Landes, ferner durch Neuzuweisung von Ausgaben oder Effizienzsteigerung, Reduzierung des Schuldendienstes oder externe Finanzierungsquellen. Er präsentiert auch eine breite Palette von Maßnahmen zu einem vernünftigen Preis, die auf langfristig tragbare Art und Weise in Ländern mit unterschiedlichen Einkommens- und Entwicklungsniveaus getroffen worden sind, sowohl mit eigenen Ressourcen als auch mit externer Finanzierung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]