Escaping poverty and becoming poor in 36 villages of Central and Western Uganda

Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions.     

Why growth is not enough: Household poverty dynamics in Northeast Gujarat,India

Despite high growth rates in Gujarat, exceeding 9 per cent per year over the decade of the 1990s, poverty in 36 villages located in the northeastern part of this state has changed hardly at all. In these villages, 9.5 per cent of households escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but 6.3 per cent of households became poor at the same time. Escape and descent are not symmetric: different reasons account for escaping poverty than those for declining into poverty. Growth alone is hardly sufficient to achieve poverty reduction on any significant scale. Public policies will be needed to address directly the separate causes for descent into poverty.     

Standard of Living and Disability in Cambodia

Little is known about the extra costs faced by households with disabled members in low resource settings and the impact of these costs on living standards. In this paper we estimate the direct cost associated with disability for households in Cambodia. Using the Standard of Living approach, the direct cost associated with having a member with disabilities is estimated to be 19 per cent of monthly household consumption expenditure. Accounting for the direct cost of disability doubles the poverty rate amongst households with disabled members from 18 per cent to 37 per cent, and increases the poverty gap from 3 to 8 per cent. A comparison of the direct cost associated with disability and income support received from government and family sources reveals that only 7 per cent of the costs of disability are met. Our findings suggest that, in the absence of increased coverage of public income support, households with disabled members will continue to experience a lower standard of living compared to households without disability in Cambodia.     

Rice Land Designation Policy in Vietnam and the Implications of Policy Reform for Food Security and Economic Welfare

With the aim of promoting national food security, the Vietnamese government enforces the designation of around 35 per cent of agricultural land strictly for paddy rice cultivation. We investigate the economic effects of adjusting this policy, using an economy-wide model of Vietnam with detailed modelling of region-specific land use, agricultural activity, poverty and food security measures. Our results show that the removal of the rice land designation policy increases real private consumption by an average of 0.35 per cent per annum over 2011–2030, while also reducing poverty, improving food security and contributing to more nutritionally balanced diets among Vietnamese households.     

Level of living and fertility among a rural population of the Philippines

This study examines the issue of whether the relationship of fertility to measures of economic resources is different at lower income levels than at higher levels. Testing was done in a rural Philippine setting in 1978-79. 3 measures of economic resources were utilized -- income, quality of housing, and provision of schooling for children. The data were drawn from a survey of rural families residing in 5 muncipalities of Iloilo province, on Panay Island in the central Philippines. In the study design, villages (or barangays) were selected from the 5 municipalities to obtain equal numbers of 3 agricultural types -- upland, rainfed lowland, and irrigated lowland farms. Interviews were conducted during a 4-month period in late 1978 and early 1979. Completed interviews of 1077 married women were obtained from 1066 households in 46 villages. These women were under age 50. The number of children ever born was used as the measure of fertility. To derive household income for the families in the survey both farm production and nonfarm income were converted into Philippine pesos. For a measure of housing quality, an index was formed based on 7 household items which could be considered amenities for the family and on the reported construction materials for 5 parts of the dwelling. This sample of households in the rural villages of Iloilo Province exhibited evidence of a threshold in the relationship between housing quality and fertility and between per capita income and fertility. For those families with per capita income less than 200 pesos per year, there was a strong positive relationship between 2 of the economic resource measures and fertility. This threshold for families of very low income showed support for the presence of limiting factors other than contraception. When the contracepting women of low income were removed from the analysis, the slope below the threshold became steeper. The poor nutrition and poor health that are associated with very low income can result in lower fecundity, thus biologically or nonvolitionally limiting fertility from what it could be with conditions of good health and nutrition. Among the families with higher per capita income, there was a negative relationship between per capita income and fertility. Housing quality yielded the strongest evidence of the threshold effect. Education of the children was not related to fertility in this model. Study findings indicate that for about 1/3 of this rural population initial increases in their economic level or living standard could result in increasing fertility up to a threshold level.     

Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Rural Peru

We estimate the effects of mobile phone coverage on different measures of economic development. We exploit the timing of mobile coverage at the village level merging it with a village-level panel dataset for rural Peru. The main findings suggest that mobile phone expansion has increased household real consumption by 11 per cent, reduced poverty incidence by 8 percentage points and decreased extreme poverty by 5.4 percentage points. Moreover, those benefits appear to be shared by all covered households regardless of mobile ownership.     

Noncomparable Poverty Comparisons

Poverty estimates based on enumeration from a single point in time form the basis for most country-level analysis of poverty. Cross-country comparisons of poverty, and global counts of the poor, implicitly assume that country-level poverty headcounts are comparable. This paper illustrates that the assumption of comparability is potentially invalid when households are interviewed multiple times throughout the year, as opposed to a single-visit interview. An example from Jordan illustrates how the internationally comparable approach of handling data from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 per cent greater than the rate that is currently reported as the official estimate.     

Environmental Income as a Pathway Out of Poverty? Empirical Evidence on Asset Accumulation in Nepal

Using unique, environmentally augmented household panel data reflecting households’ annual cash and subsistence income portfolios, we model change over time in the value of four assets – livestock, implements, savings, and jewellery. A seemingly unrelated regression model reveals that although environmental resources on average contribute 16 per cent of the total household income, the contribution to asset accumulation is limited. Hence, environmental income does not constitute a pathway out of poverty in Nepal under the current set of regulations and tenure regimes. Asset accumulation was instead associated (both negatively and positively) with agricultural income (particularly as subsistence income), wage and business income. Most environmental income was obtained as subsistence income indicating that the environmental resources that households have access to present little opportunity for cash generation. Securing access of the poor to environmental resources may increase its role in poverty alleviation.     

The impact of the gender composition of households on inequality and poverty: a comparison across Russia and Eastern Europe

This study compares poverty and income distribution among gender subgroups in Russia and four East European countries—Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland—in 2000. Does the gender poverty gap exist in these countries and if yes, how big is it? How much does the level of gender inequality contribute to explaining the level of aggregate inequality and poverty within each country? To what extent may the differences emerging in cross-country comparisons of poverty and inequality be explained by differences in the gender composition of households, e.g., the prevalence of female-dominated households? These are the questions I seek to answer in this paper.Equivalent expenditure is adopted as a measure of economic welfare of households with different gender ratios. The gender gap is defined as the degree of distance between the economic welfare of households dominated by women and households dominated by men. Headcount poverty and average poverty shortfalls are calculated using relative poverty lines. Inequality is measured by Gini and Theil L coefficients.     

An Exploratory Analysis of Fertility Differentials in India

The association between improving economic conditions and declining growth of population has led economists and demographers to hypothesise a direct relationship between indicators of economic development and fertility rates. Using recent National Family Health Survey data and the 1991 Census to explore factors contributing to fertility rates in India, we found that economic variables explain 70 per cent of the interstate variations in India's fertility rates. However, several non-economic variables explain an even greater proportion, for example, indicators of female autonomy explain 84 per cent of the variations. Our analysis demonstrates that to successfully explain Indian fertility rates, models must rely heavily on non-economic variables.     

Poverty and Survival

A recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival. But equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant. Using state-level panel data for India, we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival. We identify a significant within-state relationship which persists conditional upon state income, indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line. The poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981. It is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education, fertility and state health expenditure, and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends.     

Economic Benefits of Rural Feeder Roads: Evidence from Ethiopia

We estimate households’ willingness-to-pay for rural feeder roads in Ethiopia. Using purposefully collected data, we compare the economic behaviour of households by remoteness to estimate the benefits of access to feeder roads. Although we cannot definitively assert a causal relationship, we cautiously estimate that gravel roads have internal rates of return of 12–35 per cent. These results suggest that rural feeder roads may have relatively high rates of return even in unfavourable settings where (a) small-scale farmers have low levels of marketed agricultural surplus, (b) non-farm earning opportunities are negligible, and (c) motorised transport services are not guaranteed.     

Can Education Subsidy Reverse Falling Fertility? The Case of Taiwan

The education subsidy in Taiwan is available for government employees only. In 1996, the government ceased to index the education subsidy for inflation, which created a natural experiment ideal for studying the effect of the education subsidy on fertility. Using the difference-in-differences approach, we find that the reform reduced the fertility probability for public-sector households by 17 per cent and this negative response appears to be permanent. The estimated probability elasticity of fertility is 0.05, which is smaller than that of personal tax exemption (0.8). The results also suggest that the education subsidy has a heterogeneous effect on fertility across income groups.     

Contract Farming and Vulnerability to Poverty among Oil Palm Smallholders in Indonesia

This article addresses smallholder oil palm farming in Indonesia and the risk of falling into poverty by comparing contract and non-contract smallholders. We use an asset-based approach to define vulnerability and apply propensity score matching analysis to assess the impact of contract farming. Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2010 of 245 oil palm smallholder households, 126 of which were contract smallholders. The study finds that approximately 40 per cent of oil palm smallholders can be classified as stochastic-transient poor. We also show that while contract participation reduces the negative impact of oil palm price shocks, this is not the case for production shocks. The study concludes that despite positive income effects, contract smallholders also remain vulnerable to poverty.     

How Infrastructure and Financial Institutions Affect Rural Income and Poverty: Evidence from Bangladesh

The mechanisms by which the poor benefit from economic growth remain a topic of debate in development literature. We address this issue in the context of rural Bangladesh, using a pooled dataset of three household panels between 1991–2001. Expansion of irrigation, paved roads, electricity, and access to formal and informal credit have (through different veins) led to higher rural farm and non-farm incomes, accounting for exogenous local agroclimatic endowments that explain a large part of the variation in the growth of infrastructure and credit programmes. However, this has not translated into substantial reductions in poverty for the poorest households.     

Agricultural Production,Dietary Diversity and Climate Variability

Abstract

Nonseparable household modelsoutline the interlinkage between agricultural production and household consumption, yet empirical extensions to investigate the effect of production on dietary diversity and diet composition are limited. While a significant literature has investigated the calorie-income elasticity abstracting from production, this paper provides an empirical application of the nonseparable household model linking the effect of exogenous variation in planting season production decisions via climate variability on household dietary diversity. Using degree days, rainfall and agricultural capital stocks as instruments, the effect of production on household dietary diversity at harvest is estimated. The empirical specifications estimate production effects on dietary diversity using both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity. Significant effects of both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity on dietary diversity are estimated. The dietary diversity-production elasticities imply that a 10 per cent increase in agricultural revenue or crop diversity result in a 1.8 per cent or 2.4 per cent increase in dietary diversity respectively. These results illustrate that agricultural income growth or increased crop diversity may not be sufficient to ensure improved dietary diversity. Increases in agricultural revenue do change diet composition. Estimates of the effect of agricultural income on share of calories by food groups indicate relatively large changes in diet composition. On average, a 10 per cent increase in agricultural revenue makes households 7.2 per cent more likely to consume vegetables, 3.5 per cent more likely to consume fish, and increases the share of tubers consumed by 5.2 per cent.     

Poverty in African Households: the Limits of Survey and Census Representations

Abstract

African poverty statistics depend on household-level measurements from survey data, making the definition of household of critical importance. Detailed case studies from Tanzania and Burkina Faso explore (1) understandings of household membership and ambiguities, and (2) how well survey definitions capture households as economic units, and the implications for household size and responses to and mitigation of poverty. We develop an analytic framework of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ households. ‘Open’ households cope with poverty using flexibility, movement and extra-household networks, but are poorly represented by survey data. Closed households are likely to be better described by survey data.     

Income and Asset Poverty among Pastoralists in Northern Kenya

In this study we use household panel data collected in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya, to analyse the patterns of livelihood sources and poverty among pastoralists in that area. We estimate income poverty using imputed household income relative to the adjusted poverty line and asset poverty using a regression-based asset index and tropical livestock units (TLU) per capita. Our results indicate that keeping livestock is still the pastoralists’ main source of livelihood, although there is a notable trend of increasing livelihood diversification, especially among livestock-poor households. The majority of households (over 70%) are both income and livestock-poor with few having escaped poverty within the five-year study period. Disaggregating income and asset poverty also reveals an increasing trend of both structurally poor and stochastically nonpoor households. The findings show that the TLU-based asset poverty is a more appropriate measure of asset poverty in a pastoral setting.     

Vulnerability to Multi-Dimensional Poverty: An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Measurement Approaches

This paper investigates whether different measures of ex-post poverty and ex-ante vulnerability to poverty provide consistent estimates of poverty and vulnerability to poverty across households. Moreover, if there is some heterogeneity in the identification of households as poor and vulnerable, it investigates the degree of mismatch between measures? The ex-post monetary poverty (MP) and multidimensional poverty (MDP) measures are used to identify poor households. Likewise, the ex-ante vulnerability to monetary poverty (VMP) and vulnerability to multidimensional poverty (VMDP) measures are used to identify vulnerable households. Using a large household survey data-set of about 90,000 households from the Punjab province of Pakistan, we find that most of the vulnerable households are accurately identified by the ex-ante measures of vulnerability to poverty. However, the ex-post measures of poverty identify different households as poor. Our results show that 18 percent households experiencing MDP are not captured by the one-dimensional measure of MP. The important implication of this study is that the choice of measures does matter in ex-post poverty identification, but not as much in the identification of ex-ante vulnerability to poverty.     

Returning Home after Civil War: Food Security and Nutrition among Burundian Households

This paper investigates the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households (HHs). Using the 2006 Core Welfare Indicator Survey for Burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non-displaced neighbours. We test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning home. We use log-linear as well as propensity score matching and an instrumental variable-approach to control for self-selection bias. We find that the individuals and HHs who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier. On average, the formerly displaced have 5 per cent lower food expenses and 6 per cent lower calorie intake. Moreover, we find evidence in favour of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affects HH welfare. Results are robust after controlling for self-selection bias. Despite international, government and NGO assistance, the welfare of recent returnees is lagging seriously behind in comparison with the local non-displaced populations.