targeting assistance to the poor efficient allocation of transfers when household income is not observed abstract this paper examines the problem of how to transfer money or other forms of assistance to poor households when one observes some characteristics of households but not their incomes this and related issues are often referred to as the targeting problem the paper first sets out the problem formally as one of minimizing a poverty index given a fixed amount of money available for transfers assuming that household survey data are available which include accurate income and or expenditure information the solution for the problem is formulated as a non linear mathematical programming exercise using household survey data from cote d ivoire the technique is applied to both urban and rural areas separately the paper concludes with a general discussion and suggestions for future research

the hidden economy as an unobserved variable abstract the technique of unobserved variables is used to estimate the relative size and development time of the hidden economy of oecd countries the burdens of taxation and regulations and the tax morality turn out to be statistically significant determinants at the end of the scandinavian and benc lux countries are expected to have a relatively large and japan and switzerland a relatively small hidden economy canada and the united states are rank in the middle the size of all hidden sectors is estimated to have increased in the period 1960 1973 relative to officially measured gnp

a methodology for measuring food poverty applied to kenya abstract this paper proposes a new way of establishing a food poverty line taking into account regional food preferences and prices it uses this poverty line to derive a food poverty measure which satisfies the desirable fundamental properties of such measures and has the additional advantage of being additively decomposable the measurement of food poverty is further generalized to heterogeneous groups of households facing different sets of relative prices and exhibiting different food preferences finally the above methodology is applied to the empirical estimation of food poverty among kenyan smallholders and the results contrasted with those obtained by two other methods

targeting the poor using roc curves abstract this paper compares the performance of targeting indicators to identify the poor if the roc curve of one indicator lies above that of another the first indicator dominates the second for all social welfare functions based on the two types of errors involved in targeting the method is applied to bangladesh fifteen indicators are used including location land ownership education occupation demographics age family structure and housing the analysis is applied at the national urban and rural levels with two poverty lines education dominates land ownership in urban areas the ranking is reversed in most cases in rural areas

alleviating rural poverty through agricultural growth the article examines the role of agricultural gdp growth in alleviating rural poverty in ldcs cross sectional regression analysis indicates that gdp growth by itself takes a very long time to reduce poverty significantly it suggests that decreases in land concentration could have a more immediate impact on reducing rural poverty the budgetary and other costs of implementing such changes are not however considered the preferred approach is a combination of equitable growth and redistributive measures

robustness of subjective welfare analysis in a poor developing country madagascar 2001 the authors analyze the subjective perceptions of poverty in madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators they base their analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions the authors extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty lines on the basis of categorical consumption adequacy questions based on this methodology they calculate the household specific subjective poverty lines and compare the poverty profiles derived from different subjective welfare questions the results show that the aggregate poverty measures derived from consumption adequacy questions accord quite well with the poverty measures based on objective poverty lines the subjective welfare analysis can be used in poor developing countries for evaluating socioeconomic and distributional impacts of various policy interventions

land contingent poverty alleviation schemes abstract target groups for rural poverty alleviation schemes in south asia and elsewhere have often been identified in terms of their landholding class with landless or near landless households being the intended beneficiaries this paper offers a quantitative approach to the analysis and design of land contingent poverty alleviation schemes an application to bangladesh suggests that when income is generally unobserved landholding class is a good instrument for targeting poverty relief in that it is strongly correlated with the informationally feasible allocations which minimize aggregate poverty for a given budget it is however far from being a perfect instrument even under otherwise ideal conditions the maximum feasible reduction in poverty which is attainable by relying solely on land based targeting is substantially less than that attainable with perfect income information indeed the poverty alleviation impact of domestically financed and revenue neutral transfers across 10 landholding classes in rural bangladesh could also be achieved without targeting by simply giving every household a lump sum payment equivalent to 10 of mean rural income political restrictions on tax powers or errors made in administration will further reduce the gains from land contingent targeting greater impact on poverty for a given budgetary cost will require more precise targeting within landholding classes

approaches to uprooting poverty in africa abstract poverty in africa is primarily a rural phenomenon its growing incidence is partly due to slow growth in gdp induced by economic policies that discriminated against agriculture urban bias in social spending has left the rural poor with little or no access to basic needs technological change improved rural infrastructure and an efficient marketing environment are needed to enhance agricultural growth and maximize returns to the rural producer improving the human capital of the rural poor will expand their employment opportunities cost effective transfer programmes would provide a safety net for the vulnerable poor

food energy intake and cost of basic needs measuring poverty in bangladesh past estimates of poverty in bangladesh based on the food energy intake method found decreasing poverty over time and similar poverty in urban and rural areas using the cost of basic needs method we find increasing poverty for 1984 92 and higher poverty in rural than urban areas examples of lack of consistency in past estimates are highlighted a method is introduced to assess the gap narrowing and re ranking impacts on poverty measures of changes in poverty lines the article also estimates the marginal impact of household characteristics such as household size education occupation and land ownership on the probability of being poor

how well do static indicators identify the chronically poor abstract we investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor we propose a normative measure of performance the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator using longitudinal household data from rural india we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income both however perform much better than other common indicators such as food share and access to land

an expenditure based estimate of britain s black economy abstract we estimate the size of britain s black economy defined narrowly as unreported taxable income by using income and expenditure data drawn from the 1982 family expenditure survey our working assumptions are that all income groups report expenditure on food correctly employees in employment report income correctly and that the self employed under report their income we estimate food exependiture equations for all groups and then invert them to arrive at the conclusion that on average true self employment income is 1 55 times as much as reported self employment income this implies that the size of the black economy is about 5 5 percent of gdp

the welfare cost of means testing pensioner participation in income support we estimate parametric and semi parametric binary choice models of benefit take up by british pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process these implicit costs turn out to be relatively small averaging about 3 4 per week across income support recipients using the foster greer thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13 copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

intrahousehold inequality and the theory of targeting the two literatures on targeting and on intrahousehold inequality have developed rapidly over the past 15 years but largely independent of each other the literature on targeting concerns itself with the design of tax and transfer programs for poverty alleviation in the presence of limited information on who the poor are the literature on intrahousehold inequality arose out of a dissatisfaction with unitary models of the household especially in explaining inequality in consumption and achievements of different household members even after allowing for relevant differences among them the authors begin to forge the link between the two literatures so they can address issues policymakers face around the world after a brief reprise of the key features of the two literatures they indicate how the presence of intrahousehold inequality and allocation mechanisms could affect the standard analysis of targeting theory they conclude with a list of policy questions for further research this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

measuring energy poverty in japan 2004 2013 abstract this paper first examines energy or fuel poverty in japan from 2004 to 2013 especially around the time of the 2011 great east japan earthquake geje to analyze the issue the paper employs various poverty and vulnerability measures with the assistance of our unique dataset the results indicate the aggravation of energy poverty among lower income and vulnerable households during the past decade resulting from both the escalation of energy prices and lowering of income the analysis also employs a new decomposition technique and identifies the explanatory factors associated with the increase in energy poverty these results suggest there were major changes in the forces driving the increase in energy poverty before and after the geje after 2011 income alleviates energy poverty in japan with energy prices becoming the main driving factor

combining light monitoring surveys with integrated surveys to improve targeting for poverty reduction the case of ghana policymakers use poverty maps to design and assess poverty programs the accuracy of these maps which is critical for targeting depends largely on the nature of the instrument used to construct them recently in response to tight budget constraints many countries have begun to construct poverty maps based on light monitoring surveys that rely on short questionnaires this article shows that poverty maps constructed from such surveys are not accurate and could result in substantial leakage light monitoring surveys do include large samples that can help to target poverty programs at sub regional levels combining these surveys with more detailed integrated surveys can help researchers reduce targeting errors significantly and build improved poverty maps with finer levels of disaggregation

the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the distribution of household welfare and poverty in rural kenya1 this study estimates the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the welfare of a sample of rural kenyan households the usual first order welfare approximation formula is extended to a second order formula that allows for supply and demand responses to the price change results show that many rural households are not affected greatly by the price change and there are about as many gainers as losers however these full sample results mask important differences across regions welfare gains generally take place in major production areas while losses are in areas where most households are net buyers of maize semiparametric methods are used to investigate the relationship between income and the size of the welfare effect and poverty dominance techniques are applied to study the impacts of the maize price increase on rural poverty

microdeterminants of consumption poverty growth and inequality in bangladesh using household data from five successive national surveys the author analyzes the microdeterminants of and changes in consumption poverty growth and inequality in bangladesh from 1983 to 1996 education demographics land ownership occupation and geographic location all affect consumption and poverty the gains in per capita consumption associated with many of these household characteristics tend to be stable over time returns to demographics variables in household size have the greatest impact on growth perhaps because of improving employment opportunities for women education in urban areas and land in rural areas contribute most to measures of between group inequality location takes second place in both urban and rural areas the author introduces the concept of conditional between group inequality existing group decompositions of the gini index along one variable do not control for other characteristics correlated with that variable conditional between group ginis avoid this pitfall he also shows how to use unconditional and conditional between group ginis for simulating policies

estimating utility consistent poverty lines with applications to egypt and mozambique abstract a fundamental premise of absolute poverty lines is that they represent the same level of utility through time and space disturbingly a series of recent studies in middle and low income economies show that even carefully derived poverty lines rarely satisfy this premise this article proposes an information theoretic approach to estimating cost of basic needs cbn poverty lines that are utility consistent applications to date illustrate that utility consistent poverty measurements derived from the proposed approach and those derived from current cbn best practices often differ substantially with the current approach tending to systematically overestimate underestimate poverty in urban rural zones

on the coverage of public employment schemes for poverty alleviation abstract the cost effectiveness of public employment as a means of poverty alleviation depends on policy design choices concerning coverage and wage rates the choice is between schemes which aim for wide coverage at potentially low wages and schemes which ration participation so that more beneficiaries can escape poverty conditions are derived for ranking stylized policy alternatives in terms of a broad class of poverty measures the preferred policy is shown to depend on the budget level administrative cost the initial wage distribution and the policy maker s aversion to poverty empirical simulations for bangladesh data generally support wide coverage for distributionally sensitivity poverty measures but limited coverage for other measures

consistent poverty comparisons and inference building upon the cost of basic needs cbn approach an integrated approach to making consumption based poverty comparisons is presented this approach contains two principal modifications to the standard cbn approach the first permits the development of multiple poverty bundles that are utility consistent the second recognizes that the poverty line itself is a random variable whose variation influences the degree of confidence in poverty measures we illustrate the empirical importance of these two methodological changes for the case of mozambique with utility consistency imposed estimated poverty rates tend to be systematically higher in rural areas and lower in urban areas we also find that the true confidence intervals on the poverty estimates those incorporating poverty line variance tend to be considerably larger than those that ignore poverty line variance finally we show that these two methodological changes interact specifically we find that imposing utility consistency on poverty bundles tends to tighten confidence intervals sometimes dramatically on provincial poverty estimates we conclude that this revised approach represents an important advance in poverty analysis the revised approach is straightforward and directly applicable in empirical work

optimal non linear income taxation for the alleviation of income poverty there has been much discussion recently of structuring tax and transfer programs to ensure that resources go to the poor with minimal leaks to the nonpoor the poor have no incentive to earn income with 100 percent marginal tax rates but how high or low the marginal rate of taxation should be and how they should vary with income is a complex issue and opinions vary social security schemes that withdraw benefits represent an extremely high effective marginal tax rate other schemes call for relatively low marginal tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution which tax transfer schedule does most to reduce poverty the issue is one of optimal nonlinear income taxation the authors show that one of the key theoretical results of the welfarist literature is overturned if it is desirable for everybody to work the optimal marginal tax rate on the very poorest individuals is strictly negative they argue that the nonwelfarist perspective points toward lower marginal tax rates in the lower part of the income distribution than does the welfarist perspective but numerical simulations suggest that the effect is of limited quantitative significance using conventional functional forms and parameter values optimal marginal tax rates on the poor are in the 60 70 percent range

uncertainty in labor productivity and specific human capital investment uncertainty in labor productivity ulp is affected by many factors such as worker employer matching technology and macroeconomic conditions not surprisingly ulp varies across firms industries and economies how do variations in ulp affect specific human capital shc investment wage and labor turnover a fixed wage model is used to show that the answer depends critically on the initial level of ulp the model is also used to show that wage and shc are always positively correlated but shc investment and labor turnover do not have a monotonic relationship these results have implications for empirical studies and public policies affecting ulp

are the welfare losses from imperfect targeting important we quantify and compare the size of the welfare losses arising from the use of alternative imperfect welfare indicators as substitutes for the conventionally preferred consumption indicator we find that the size of the welfare losses associated with different indicators varies considerably an asset based index and the share of food as targeting indicators were found to have the highest welfare losses relative to all other targeting indicators examined our preferred welfare index implies that the losses from the two best targeting indicators i e reported expenditures and reported income are statistically significant but very low less than 5

seeking guidelines for poverty reduction in rural zambia abstract poverty profiles typically provide policy makers with information about the characteristics of the poor without giving guidance as to the types of programs best suited for reducing poverty a method is described in this paper for extending the typical poverty profile to analyze and quantify the constraints faced by poor smallholders in rural areas the method is applied to rural zambia where poverty is widespread and deep the extension provides timely information for the design of poverty reducing policies

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

measurement and determinants of rural poverty household consumption patterns and food poverty in rural sudan abstract a logit model and engel curves are used to study the determinants of food poverty and composition of household consumption among the tenant farmers of the rahad scheme in sudan where land is equally distributed the data support the permanent income hypothesis whereas engel s assumption of declining food shares with increased total spending did not hold for the present sample the logit analysis provides strong evidence for the important influences of better access to productive assets other than land smallersized families higher non farm earnings and farming experience on reducing the probability of food poverty on the scheme policies directed towards the provision of better family planning education extension increased on and off farm employment and improved infrastructure for higher labour mobility can make for effective poverty alleviation programmes in this sector

food poverty profile applied to kenyan smallholders that can be used to test conflicting hypotheses this paper analyzes data from the first kenyan integrated rural survey irs i household expenditure data collected by the central bureau of statistics to estimate the magnitude distribution of and factors associated with food poverty among kenyan small farmers the analysis uses a new methodology with three improvements over previous empirical studies 1 food poverty is estimated using an additively decomposable measure that allows poverty to be distributed among population subgroups 2 the food poverty line is based on observed dietary preferences in response to regional food prices and 3 the food poverty measure is adjusted to use regional food poverty lines without sacrificing its theoretical properties or decomposability this paper consists of two main parts section ii reviews the methodology underlying the setting of the regional food poverty line on the basis of a detailed integrated rural survey of kenyan smallholders the cost of food consumption corresponding to the recommended dietary allowance rda of calories is computed since this food poverty line was calculated on the basis of the observed diet consumed it presumably reflects the prevailing regional food preferences and prices faced by households consuming around the calorie rda level the next part of section ii presents a food poverty measure that in addition to satisfying the major fundamental properties of such measuresis decomposable and allows regional food poverty deprivation to be estimated

food poverty profile and decomposition applied to ghana abstract a new procedure for deriving a food poverty line and estimating a decomposable poverty measure is applied to the 1974 1975 ghana household budget survey a food poverty profile is constructed which estimates the relative contributions of regional and socioeconomic variables to overall food poverty the incidence of food poverty is found to be more prevalent in 1 rural areas and locations close to the sahel and 2 households with many members and illiterate female or self employed heads comparisons of least cost diets and observed diets incorporating tastes suggest that households exercise food preferences which have relatively high costs

labor supply and targeting in poverty alleviation programs the introduction of variable labor supply raises some fundamental issues in analyzing the targeting of poverty alleviation programs in developing countries it forces a reconsideration of the standard objective function which is based on income or expenditure and so makes no allowance for the effort made in earning that income the authors show that alternative views on the appropriate valuation of effort have very different implications for commodity based targeting rules they also establish a benchmark for marginal effective tax rates inclusive of benefit withdrawal in income tested schemes and show that indicator targeting rules may also have to be modified significantly when labor supply responses are recognized

direct measurement of hidden labour the hidden economy suddenly appeared in economic research in 1977 and has since attracted much attention from economists the central problems are how to assess the scale and causes of this illicit phenomenon many different methods of measurement have been applied to different western countries unfortunately these methods yield extremely different size estimates they also appear to measure different things this paper reviews the methods used and makes a strong case for direct methods an example of a direct method used in the netherlands is presented the results are used to analyse the relation between hidden and regular activities

structural adjustment macroeconomic adjustment and poverty a methodology for analysis abstract the object of this paper is to set out a methodology for analyzing the impact on the poor in less developed countries ldcs of adjustment to disturbances arising in the international sectors sectors of these economies the methodology is not based on a detailed general equilibrium model of the whole economy but instead focuses on the effects of the adjustment process on the sectoral composition of national output and expenditure the paper provides a framework for the calculation of quantitative estimates of the impact of adjustment on poverty using household income and expenditure surveys currently available in ldcs it is proposes the use of decomposable poverty indices as a tractable vehicle for calculating the impact of adjustment on overall poverty this framework does require however reasonably disaggregated data on income distribution

expected poverty under risk induced welfare variability two of the most widely accepted stylised facts about agriculture in south asia sub saharan africa and elsewhere are that income is highly uncertain from one year to another and that deep and widespread poverty exists and yet there has been very little analysis of the joint problems of poverty and risk this paper offers a methodological approach to the issue of how risk affects poverty and applies it to household level data for dry areas of rural india the following questions are addressed under what conditions can one expect an increase in the riskiness of an income or consumption stream to increase poverty how should one measure the contribution of risk to poverty and what long term benefits in terms of reduced poverty can be expected from policies aimed at stabilising incomes of the poor such policies have been widely discussed in the indian subcontinent of late and their effect on rural

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

how robust is a poverty profile comparison of poverty such as when poverty is greatest typically matter far more for policy choices than do aggregate measures of poverty such as how many people are deemed poor the authors examine alternative methods for constructing poverty profiles focusing on their internal consistency and appropriateness for guiding policy none is perfect but some methods appear to be preferable to others when the aim is to inform policies for fighting absolute consumption poverty a case study on indonesia reveals that the country s regional and sectoral poverty profile is highly sensitive to some aspects of measurement but quite robust to others

effects of irrigation induced technological change in bangladesh rice production this paper evaluates the welfare implications of the irrigation induced technological change in rice production based on the conceptual framework of hayami and herdt and using a modified formulation of the problem the analytical model used incorporates demand and supply shifts provides exact measures of changes in consumers and producers surpluses and examines the implications for distributive justice in terms of impacts on incidence and severity of poverty and inequality in income distribution the results of the analysis suggest that irrigation induced technological change would significantly promote distributive justice

the robustness of poverty profiles reconsidered poverty measures and profiles are used increasingly to guide antipoverty policies in low income countries an essential element in these analyses is the specification of a poverty line however there are many different methods for setting poverty lines and different methods can yield strikingly different results with correspondingly different policy implications using recent household survey data from mozambique this paper explores the differences that occur using the most common poverty line methodologies the food energy intake fei and the cost of basic needs cbn methods over different levels of geographic specificity we find that regional and provincial rankings of foster greer and thorbecke poverty indices are not robust to the method of poverty line determination but that the characteristics of the poor are reasonably similar under all methods the fei poverty lines often yield counterintuitive results whereas the family of cbn poverty lines was more robust food consumption patterns of the poor show a high degree of substitution among basic staples from one region to another which is consistent with observed differences in relative food prices indicating that cbn poverty lines that allow for regional variation in the food consumption bundle may be most appropriate in these settings

the impact of coffee certification on small scale producers livelihoods a case study from the jimma zone ethiopia what is the impact of product certification on small scale farmers livelihoods to what extent does the participation of ethiopian small scale coffee farmers in certified local cooperative structures improve their socioeconomic situation to answer these questions this article employs household data of 249 coffee farmers from six different cooperatives collected in the jimma zone of southwestern ethiopia in 2009 findings show that the certification of coffee cooperatives has in total a low impact on small scale coffee producers livelihoods mainly due to 1 low productivity 2 insignificant price premium and 3 poor access to credit and information from the cooperative differences in production and organizational capacities between the local cooperatives are mirrored in the extent of the certification benefits for the smallholders good cooperatives have reaped the benefits of certification whereas bad ones did not fare well in this regard the cooperative effect overlies the certification effect

sectoral growth and poverty alleviation a multiplier decomposition technique applied to south africa abstract how does an increase in a sector s output affect poverty alleviation in this paper a multiplier decomposition for a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam is used to study this linkage the decomposition applied to south africa reveals that growth in agriculture services and some manufacturing sectors can alleviate poverty for the black african population for sectoral growth to be effective however the need for appropriate skill acquisition for the poor must be addressed directly only long term policies geared towards improving both economic growth and the human capital stock of the poor can lead to significant poverty alleviation

poverty alleviation in mozambique a multi market analysis of the role of food aid abstract the use of food aid in poverty alleviation programs has been hampered by two problems the inability to target to households in need and the disincentive effects on agriculture in this paper we present econometric estimates of in almost ideal demand system aids for households in maputo mozambique and develop a multi market model to show that in maputo imported yellow maize is not only self targeting but that owing to a combination of the low cross price elasticity with locally produced staples particularly white maize and cross border trade in food products the disincentive effects on domestic agriculture have been negligible

from high school to work market and institutional mechanisms in japan market models posit that institutional linkages interfere with efficient labor markets many japanese high schools have agreements with employers to hire their students and this article examines the ties between japanese schools and employers the reasons they make these ties and the criteria they use to select students interviews with teachers and recruiters indicate that the japanese system shifts the competition for jobs from the labor market into schools and among schools and employers also compete for dependable sources of labor multivariate analyses of surveys of 1 408 high schools and 964 seniors indicate that desirable jobs are allocated more on the basis of academic than nonacademic criteria contrary to the predictions of some models moreover contrary to a hypothesis that institutional linkages reduce achievement effects achievement has greater effects on jobs with linked employers than on jobs with nonlinked employers institutional linkages differ from both economic market models and f

poverty in bangladesh measurement decomposition and intertemporal comparison this article using the methodology developed by foster greer and thorbecke to measure and decompose poverty provides estimates of the levels of poverty in rural and urban areas in bangladesh it investigates in the context of bangladesh the most powerful effect of poverty in terms of a shortfall in food for daily calorie intake by the poor it provides intertemporal comparison of poverty and its decomposition among subgroups it also makes comparisons between the results obtained in this study with those currently available the results of the study show a significant improvement in poverty situations in rural areas from 1982 to 1986 the article also discusses the policy implications of its findings

urban bias and the political economy of agricultural price reform abstract this paper is an exercise in the incorporation of political economy constraints into the analysis of policy reform it is an illustrative exercise focusing on the potential distributional consequences of agricultural price reform in the stylized model discussed in the paper urban bias is reflected in the ability of the urban sector to maintain its standard of living in the face of price reform through the channel of increased government expenditure on the output of the sector it is shown that in such a setting price reform may have completely unintended effects the paper appears in a somewhat unusual format the first half of the paper presents the arguments in an entirely non technical verbal manner the second half of the paper presents a formal mathematical development which makes precise the heuristic and intuitive discussions of the first half

consumption and poverty in tanzania in 1976 and 1991 a comparison using survey data abstract the paper tests the hypothesis that given the significant decline of the tanzanian economy in the early 1980s and the mediocre performance in the post 1986 adjustment period household real incomes should be lower and the level of poverty should be higher in the early 1990s compared to the precrisis boom period of the mid 1970s the analysis is done by comparing real household expenditures from two national surveys in 1976 and 1991 the results suggest that real per capita expenditures in both rural and urban areas are higher in 1991 compared to 1976 furthermore the level of poverty in both rural and urban areas is lower in 1991 the results which refute the stated hypothesis are tested under alternative assumptions and are found robust

impacts on rural poverty of land based targeting further results for bangladesh abstract landholding class has been widely advocated as a targeting indicator for fighting rural poverty in south asia and elsewhere supporters have pointed to the correlation between poverty and lack of land and have also claimed that land based targeting raises output the paper tries to assess the impact on rural poverty in bangladesh of a benchmark policy under seemingly ideal conditions generalizing earlier results of ravallion 1989 on improved data poverty is reduced though the maximum gains turn out to be small even allowing for pro poor productivity effects consistent with the farm size productivity relationship in bangladesh the gains are likely to be even smaller under real world incentive and political economy constraints

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity