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This paper offers an assessment of the mainstreaming of fisheries in national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers within the Asia-Pacific region. Fisheries and aquaculture in the region make a significant contribution to world fisheries production. Importantly, those directly involved in the sector are predominantly small-scale artisanal producers, a group traditionally regarded as extremely vulnerable in poverty terms. Therefore, mainstreaming - integrating a sector into every stage of the national policy process - may have important welfare implications for those drawing livelihoods from the industry. This paper examines the significance of fisheries and aquaculture to developing Asia-Pacific economies, and evaluates the extent to which the sector has been mainstreamed in national development and poverty reduction strategies using a content analysis framework. We conclude that the representation of fisheries issues, the recognition of sectoral poverty, policy responses, and stakeholder representation, is typically greater than in other fish producing regions, and there are many examples of best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid population ageing and economic transformation in Asia underline the policy challenges associated with ensuring income security in old age. This article examines the potential role of social pensions in securing old-age income security in Asia. It assesses the main policy trade-offs associated with adopting alternative social pension designs, especially around two critical policy points: the comparative advantages of social assistance and social pensions; and the integration of non-contributory transfers within advanced contributory pension schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the recent literature on finance, growth and hunger, we have examined the experience of Asian countries over the period 1960-2010 by dynamic and static panel data models. We have found evidence favouring a positive role of finance-defined as private credit by banks-on growth of GDP and agricultural value added. Private credit as well as loans from the World Bank significantly reduces undernourishment, whereas remittances and loans from microfinance institutions appear to have a negative impact on poverty. Our empirical evidence shows that growth performance was significantly lower during the recent global financial crisis than non-crisis periods, although the severity is much smaller during the recent financial crisis than Asian financial crisis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]