forest dependence and income distribution in a subsistence economy evidence from india abstract we examine an area of northern india where forestry acts to ameliorate the incidence of poverty and destitution though it does not otherwise contribute significantly to the reduction of income inequality the poor would be doubly disadvantaged without common property access to forest products conservation measures entailing curtailment in the right to common access pose a dilemma this issue is explored here

capitalization of government support in agricultural land prices what do we know abstract the objective of this paper is to provide an overview of existing literature both theoretically and empirically on the extent to which agricultural subsidies do translate into higher land values and rents and finally benefit landowners instead of agricultural producers our review shows that agricultural support policy instruments contribute to increasing the rental price of farmland and that the extent of this increase closely depends on the level of the supply price elasticity of farmland relative to those of other factors inputs on the one hand and on the range of the possibilities of factor input substitution in agricultural production on the other hand the empirical literature shows that land prices and rents have in general a significant positive and inelastic response to government support such inelastic response is thought to reflect the uncertain future of the farm programmes and in general studies have indicated that land prices are more responsive to government based returns than to market based returns

does microfinance change informal lending in village economies evidence from bangladesh this paper examines how availability of microfinance influences households borrowing from informal sources in village economies it uses a unique household level panel data set which spans more than two decades 1987 2008 from rural bangladesh we find that households access to microfinance reduces the incidence of borrowing from informal sources but not the amount of borrowing we find that less poor households benefit more in terms of reducing their reliance on informal borrowing and that the benefit accrues over time we also find that having access to microfinance increases women s informal borrowing for small consumption usage without facilitating access to new business opportunities

formally testing the present value model of farmland prices this paper applies recent statistical developments in the study of stock market price movements to study the plausibility of the constant expected returns version of the present value model as an explanation of farmland prices using iowa farmland price and rent data over the 1921 86 sample period formal test results indicate that although farmland price and rent movements are highly correlated price movements are not consistent with the implications of this model there appear to be persistent predictable excess positive and or negative returns in the iowa farmland market

seasonal poverty in madagascar magnitude and solutions abstract seasonal reductions in food consumption pull about one million malagasy below the poverty line during the lean season there they join the nine million more who remain chronically undernourished throughout the year because the seasonality of food shortages coincides with the increased prevalence of diarrhea and other diseases during the rainy season the resulting lean season exacts a heavy toll in the form of increased rates of malnutrition and child mortality combining the results of recent field studies with a seasonal multi market model this paper measures the probable impacts of three common interventions aimed at combatting seasonal food insecurity we find the most promising interventions to be those that increase agricultural productivity of the secondary food crops such as cassava other roots and tubers and maize

can foreign aid reduce income inequality and poverty this paper s goal is to examine the effect of foreign aid on income inequality and poverty reduction for the period 1971 2002 since simple cross country regressions cannot be taken as true time series findings we focus on dynamic panel data techniques which allow accounting for potential simultaneity and heterogeneity problems we find some weak evidence that foreign aid is conducive to the improvement of the distribution of income when the quality of institutions is taken into account however this result is not robust this finding is consistent with recent empirical research on aid ineffectiveness in achieving economic growth or promoting democratic institutions

does size matter reassessing the relationship between aquaculture and poverty in bangladesh abstract aquaculture has long been promoted by development institutions in bangladesh on the understanding that it can alleviate poverty most of this attention has focused on forms of the activity commonly referred to as small scale this article draws on concepts from the literature on agricultural growth and elaborates a typology of aquaculture based on relations of production which suggests that in bangladesh quasi capitalist forms of aquaculture may possess greater potential to reduce poverty and enhance food security than the quasi peasant modes of production generally assumed to do so the implications of this conclusion are explored

inequality and the impact of growth on poverty comparative evidence for sub saharan africa abstract this study explores the extent to which inequality affects the impact of income growth on the rates of poverty changes in sub saharan africa ssa compared to non ssa based on an unbalanced panel of 86 countries over 1977 2004 for all three measures of poverty headcount gap and squared gap the impact of gdp growth on poverty reduction is a decreasing function of initial inequality the impacts are similar in direction for ssa and non ssa so that within both regions there are considerable disparities in the responsiveness of poverty to income growth depending on inequality nevertheless the income growth elasticity is substantially less for ssa implying relatively small poverty reduction response to growth

employment dynamics in the rural nonfarm sector in ethiopia do the poor have time on their side abstract we study rural employment transitions in ethiopia between farming and both low and high return nonfarm employment we find that initial asset holdings and access to saving and credit are important factors for transition into high return rural nonfarm employment and that households participation in high return rural nonfarm activities is robust to their experience of health shocks however shocks that affect their wealth or liquidity may trigger descents into low return nonfarm employment on the other hand shocks that reduce agricultural income motivate transitions into high return rural nonfarm employment

did the commodity price spike increase rural poverty evidence from a long run panel in bangladesh we assess the effects of the dramatic rise in agricultural commodity prices during 2007 2008 on income dynamics and poverty among rural households in bangladesh a unique panel data set allows us to put the effects of recent events in the context of long run trends in income and poverty we use data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in bangladesh collected in four waves in 1988 2000 2004 and 2008 nargis and hossain nargis n hossain m 2006 income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in bangladesh 1988 2004 agric econ 35 425 435 analysed income dynamics and poverty incidence for the first three waves finding a declining trend in both the incidence and severity of poverty aided in particular by human capital development and off farm employment opportunities we update and extend the analysis to include data collected in 2008 at the height of a spike in agricultural prices we find that the price of a balanced food basket increased by more than 50 during 2000 2008 while household income rose only 15 as a result the incidence and severity of rural poverty in bangladesh sunk to pre 2000 levels during 2004 2008 thus the price spikes in 2007 2008 helped push an additional 13 million people into poverty in rural bangladesh moreover we find that the determinants of poverty have not been time invariant in particular agricultural production which had previously been associated with a higher incidence of poverty served as a hedge against higher food prices during 2004 2008

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

chronic poverty in the united states this paper proposes a method of measuring chronic and transitory poverty using an axiomatically sound additively decomposable index of aggregate poverty our approach is contrasted with alternative methods of measuring poverty persistence we use our method to measure chronic and transitory poverty in the united states during the 1980s and late 1970s and find that chronic poverty is a more serious problem than previously thought between the late 1970s and mid 1980s poverty not only increased it became more chronic and less transitory in nature this is true for the population as a whole and for some but not all of the subpopulations we considered the latter were defined according to race type of social unit and educational qualifications of the head of the social unit all empirical analyses are based on data from the panel study of income dynamics

the impact of the 2005 2010 rice price increase on consumption in rural bangladesh this article studies the impact of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on consumption in rural bangladesh using the household income and expenditure survey hies data we compare net rice buyers and sellers to self sufficient households to identify the effect of rice price changes on household consumption of rice nonrice food and nonfood items we employ a difference in differences did technique our findings indicate that the surge in domestic rice prices between 2005 and 2010 reduced the nonrice food consumption of net rice buyer households by 7 compared to the households who are self sufficient in rice production however it did neither affect their rice nor their nonfood consumption in contrast while we find no significant effect of rice price increases on the rice consumption of net rice sellers we observe a 9 increase in their nonrice food consumption in such situation a subsidy on low quality rice may be effective in fulfilling the nutritional requirement of low income households

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

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

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

microfinance and poverty a macro perspective we test the hypothesis that microfinance reduces poverty at the macro level using cross country and panel data which are constructed by the microfinance information exchange data on microfinance institutions mfis and the world bank data taking account of the endogeneity associated with mfis loans we show that a country with higher mfis gross loan portfolio per capita tends to have lower levels of poverty indices contrary to recent micro evidence our results suggest that microfinance significantly reduces poverty at macro level and thus reinforce the case for channeling funds from development finance institutions and governments of developing countries into mfis

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

why have urban poverty and income inequality increased so much argentina 1991 2001 abstract this article analyzes the trends in income inequality and poverty among argentine households during the nineties we assess the effect of changes in labor force participation unemployment educational levels and returns to individual characteristics on income inequality and poverty by using a microsimulation approach we found that unemployment accounts for a large part of the increase in income inequality and poverty experienced in the past decade changes in labor force participation had an equalizing effect over the whole period while changes in the returns to workers sociodemographic characteristics could be associated with a small increase in income inequality with respect to poverty unemployment affected negatively the proportion of households below the poverty line amplified the poverty gap and increased the severity of poverty in contrast changes in labor force participation are associated with a reduction in the poverty rate

a macro micro analysis of the effects of electricity reform in senegal on poverty and distribution abstract this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge macro micro model to explore the distributional effects of price reform in the electricity sector of senegal in the first part of the paper we analyse the distribution of electricity in senegal by income quintiles between 1995 and 2001 the analysis demonstrates that poor and rural households are not the main beneficiaries of the expanded network the results of the cge model show that direct price effects are weaker than general equilibrium effects on poverty and inequality moreover compensatory policies tested can help attenuate some adverse effects

profitability in india s organized manufacturing sector the role of technology distribution and demand using aggregate data from the annual survey of industries we analyze profitability in india s organized manufacturing sector from 1982 83 to 2012 13 over the whole period of analysis the rate of profit grew at about 1 per annum primarily driven by a rising share of profits we use visual inspection to identify five shorter run profitability regimes 1982 91 1991 96 1996 2001 2001 07 and 2007 12 profit rate decomposition analysis shows that both technological factors and aggregate demand have been important determinants of changes in profitability in these shorter periods

the dynamic effects of aggregate demand and supply disturbances we interpret fluctuations in gnp and unemployment as due to two types of disturbances disturbances that have a permanent effect on output and disturbances that do not we interpret the first as supply disturbances the second as demand disturbances demand disturbances have a hump shaped mirror image effect on output and unemployment the effect of supply disturbances on output increases steadily over time peaking after two years and reaching a plateau after five years

income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in bangladesh 1988 2004 bangladesh has made considerable progress in alleviating poverty in the recent past using data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in bangladesh conducted in three waves in 1988 2000 and 2004 this article relates the dynamics of rural poverty reduction to the structural shift in income generation mechanism from farm to nonfarm activities changing household factor endowments and the adoption of improved agricultural technologies over time 1 the findings show that the occupational shift from the farm to the nonfarm sector such as trade business and services as well as the expansion of cultivated areas through tenancy enhance income growth geographic mobility overseas migration in particular makes a significant contribution to income growth as well the reduction in poverty appears to be vitally dependent on the enhancement of the endowment of human and physical capital that augments the poor households capability to better exploit income generating opportunities and place the households on a sustainable route out of poverty

equivalence scale relativities and the extent of inequality and poverty most inequality and poverty theory analyzes equivalent income distributions for homogeneous populations incomes are assumed to be deflated by an equivalence scale that accounts for differences in needs between households yet in practice there is no consensus about what the appropriate equivalence scale is the authors analyze how the choice of equivalence scale affects inequality and poverty measures and show that there is a systematic relationship between equivalence scale generosity and the extent of inequality and poverty they consider most of the measures in common use and provide some empirical illustrations copyright 1992 by royal economic society

budgetary rules to minimize societal poverty in a general equilibrium context abstract this paper derives budgetary rules for the allocation of an exogenously supplied budget to mutually exclusive socioeconomic groups so that the maximum reduction of poverty for society as a whole is attained budgetary rules are derived for two mechanisms of intra group benefit distribution and for the cases where the effects of economic interaction within and between groups is considered and where it is not a computer simulation of the budgetary rules on a hypothetical economy demonstrates the importance of economic interaction both to the optimal allocation of benefits and to the resulting reduction in poverty

does the nonfarm economy offer pathways for upward mobility evidence from a panel data study in ethiopia summary empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households wealth or income this paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in ethiopia we find that 1 households consumption expenditure growth is positively correlated with the initial share of nonfarm income 2 the growth elasticity of nonfarm income share is higher for wealthier households and 3 the main source of growth for nonfarm participants comes from the higher rates of return participants enjoy on their human and physical capital

hunger inequality ethics and aid abstractthis article considers the inequality in the cross country distribution of hunger using multiple ethical underpinnings under sovereign equality each nation state receives equal weighting leading to the conclusion that hunger should be concentrated in a few large countries under the democratic ethic individuals receive equal weighting and the global distribution of hungry people is irrelevant inequality aversion deliberately prefers equal levels of hunger across countries these ideals are presented in a general social welfare function and compared to the actual changes in hunger during 1991 2001 the distribution of food aid to reduce both hunger and hunger inequality are considered

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

the economics of the profit rate competition crises and historical tendencies in capitalism part 1 the profit rate the economics of the profit rate a summary definitions and measures of the profit rate part 2 competition and prices of production prices of production long term equilibrium in classical and walrasian models the classical analysis of competition convergence part 3 general disequilibrium a general disequilibrium model development of the basic model proportions and dimension in the short and long terms out of the mainstream part 4 stability and business fluctuations the real and monetary determinants of macro in stability the impact of the profit rate on the macroeconomy business fluctuations in other paradigms part 5 technology and distribution a historical perspective the historical profile of the profit rate historical tendencies accumulation and growth profitability trends part 6 history profitability and management a chronological overview the historical dynamics of capitalism

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

technology and distribution historical trajectories a la marx abstract in capital marx introduces a system of historical tendencies accounting for the trends of the major technological and distributional variables notably the profit rate quite distinct from the usual steady states marx s main insight is that of a difficulty to innovate it is difficult to find new processes allowing for the growth of labor productivity while not considerably reducing the productivity of capital the growth of the wage rate is stimulated by the rise of employment but the stabilization of the share of wages forbids a direct imputation of the decline of the profit rate to the excessive growth of the wage rate

cash crop choice and income dynamics in rural areas evidence for post crisis indonesia in this article we investigate the factors affecting levels and growth of incomes in rural indonesia following the crisis of 1997 1998 in particular we investigate the relative roles of nonfarm incomes and productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus improvements on the same crops on income dynamics framing the article in the context of an optimal labor allocation model relying on unique household panel data from central sulawesi and using advanced panel econometric methods we find that local innovations related to the adoption and intensification of new cash crop varieties more specifically the shift from coffee to cocoa production can explain a substantial part of the observed post crisis developments causal estimates of the effect of growing cocoa suggest that households were on average able to achieve about 14 higher income levels during the post crisis period compared to the planting of other crops most notably coffee also our results demonstrate the importance of engagement in nonfarm activities for household income growth comparative analyses using a nationally representative survey suggest that similar processes are at play in other parts of indonesia

effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values this article seeks to more accurately estimate the size and distance of the effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values the econometric model lets the size and distance of the effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values vary by population real income and time the changes in the effect of urban proximity over time can be largely explained by population and income thus there does not appear to be a shift in preferences toward living further from the city center

econometric modelling in the presence of evolutionary change a methodology is offered which can be used to construct an econometric model in the presence of structural change of an evolutionary type the theoretical basis for such modelling is drawn from the self organisation approach and operationalised in the context of the logistic diffusion growth model the latter is augmented to allow for the impact of exogenous effects upon both the diffusion rate and boundary limit we show how the hypothesis of augmented logistic diffusion can be falsified using econometric methods an illustrative case study is used namely the growth and decline of australian building society deposits with the aid of this example it is shown how the approach could be of use to both economic forecasters and regulators in conditions of structural change where conventional econometric methods are often inappropriate jel classification c51 c53 e42 e47 g18 o31

does child undernutrition persist despite poverty reduction in developing countries quantile regression results abstract the eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions but not always at the same rate using quantile regression we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity in contrast while the prevalence of child wasting declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread the elasticity becomes smaller as wasting becomes less prevalent this finding suggests a greater need for increasingly targeted interventions to achieve a given reduction in undernutrition as its prevalence declines

poverty and basic needs fulfilment in africa during structural change evidence from cote d ivoire abstract much attention is given in the literature to the evolution of social indicators during periods of structural adjustment and economic reform this paper argues that these processes are not distribution neutral from the point of view of basic needs fulfilment and that hence the focus should not be on aggregate indicators but on the distribution of beneficiaries of social services and changes in this distribution evidence is presented for cote d ivoire during the second half of the 1980s a period of intense structural change which shows that the poorest absorbed the bulk of the decline in basic needs fulfilment as a result of structural change this was the case for almost all aspects of basic needs and occurred regardless of the overall trend in the social indicators

measuring changes in poverty a methodological case study of indonesia during an adjustment period analysis of the effects of policy changes on the poor is often hindered by the difficulties inherent in measuring poverty and comparing levels of poverty before and after policy changes this article outlines two techniques which can overcome many of these measurement problems stochastic dominance conditions which can facilitate a robust poverty ranking of distributions of living standards and a decomposable poverty index which allows measured changes in aggregate poverty to be disaggregated into their various components such as the changes among population subgroups and growth and redistributive components these techniques can be applied to a wide range of indicators of economic well being and poverty lines and to assumptions about the poor the approaches are illustrated using household survey data from indonesia before and after external shocks and the subsequent structural adjustment program in the mid 1980s the study finds that favorable initial conditions and pro poor pattern of growth enabled indonesia to maintain its momentum in poverty alleviation during the period

fads versus fundamentals in farmland prices comment a trivariate vector autoregression time series process based on a present value land price model is used to decompose iowa farmland prices into fundamental and non fundamental components a recent study by falk and lee 1998 found that non fundamental shocks are an important source of volatility in farmland prices and it was interpreted that these price movements were due to fads not speculative bubbles we argue to the contrary and use a regime switching model to provide evidence that supports a partially collapsing bubble story of the dynamics of iowa farmland prices

concepts of poverty and the poverty line abstract various approaches adopted in developed economies to distinguishing between the poor and non poor to setting a poverty line are reviewed these include the budget standard food ratio official subjective and relative poverty line methods as well as the analysis of indicators of deprivation there has been significant progress in recent years in the degree of sophistication involved and a movement away from approaches with a quasi absolute background however all the methods face formidable problems at conceptual and empirical levels and no single approach is likely to dominate

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

the effect of transfers on household expenditure patterns and poverty in south africa abstract this paper uses household level unit record data from south africa to examine the behavioural and welfare impacts of private and public transfers we allow for joint endogeneity of resource variables and the expenditure shares our results show that crowding out of private transfers as a result of the introduction of public pensions holds only for poor households and not for the non poor both private transfers and public pensions significantly reduce poverty but private transfers have a larger impact on expenditure patterns the results also reject the hypothesis of income pooling underlying the conventional unitary model by finding that the marginal impact on expenditures are different for public pension received private transfer received and other resources flowing into the household the principal conclusions are robust to changes in specification

fads versus fundamentals in farmland prices we develop an approach to decompose farmland price time series into three uncorrelated components permanent fundamental component temporary fundamental component and nonfundamental component this decomposition is useful for studying the importance of fundamental versus nonfundamental factors in explaining farmland price behavior and the dynamic response of farmland prices to shocks to each of these components the approach is applied to annual iowa farmland prices over the 1922 94 sample period we find that fads and overreactions play important roles in explaining short run price behavior while long run price movements are explainable by permanent fundamental shocks

a note on pro poor growth this paper proposes a poverty growth curve that measures whether economic growth is pro poor or not propoor our methodology is developed based on atkinson s theorem linking the generalized lorenz curve and changes in poverty this methodology is applied to both thailand s unit record household surveys and international cross country data empirical study illustrates that our approach to measuring pro poor growth provides conclusive results in the majority of cases d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

introduction to the special issue on the role of nonfarm income in poverty reduction evidence from asia and east africa in this special issue we present seven studies that collectively attempt to investigate the role of non farm income in long term and short term poverty reduction in asia and africa the first four studies out of the seven use long term panel data over two decades in the philippines thailand bangladesh and india these studies show drastic increases in non farm income shares and corresponding declines in poverty levels over time especially in the philippines and thailand education levels of household members and returns to education also increased significantly in these countries the remaining three studies use cross sectional and short term panel data from ethiopia kenya and uganda these african studies show high proportions of poor households and low shares of non farm income that are somewhat comparable to the situation in the 1980s described in the asian studies without the green revolution that provided stable farm income and potential financial resources to invest in children education in asia it is not clear if african farm households can follow the asian examples

poverty and inequality in java examining the impact of the changing age educational and industrial structure abstract this paper uses the method of dinardo et al dinardo j fortin n m lemieux t 1996 labor market institutions and the distribution of wages 1973 1992 a semiparametric approach econometrica 64 5 sept 1001 1044 to examine the distribution of the benefits of growth in java dinardo et al s method presents the decompositions visually rather than in the form of opaque summary statistics in this paper it was modified so that changes in the cumulative distribution functions lorenz curves and generalized lorenz curves are decomposed the change in the distribution of per capita income between 1984 and 1990 is related to the aging of the population decreased reliance on agriculture increased educational attainment and changes in incomes within industry and age education categories

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

why have some indian states done better than others at reducing rural poverty the unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of india since the 1950s allowed the authors to study the causes of poverty they modeled the evolution of average consumption and various poverty measures using pooled state level data for 1957 91 they found that poverty was reduced by higher agricultural yields above trend growth in nonfarm output and lower inflation rates but these factors only partly explain relative success and failure in reducing poverty initial conditions also mattered states that started the period with better infrastructure and human resources with more intense irrigation greater literacy and lower infant mortality rates had significantly greater long term rates of consumption growth and poverty reduction by and large the same variables that promoted growth in average consumption also helped reduce poverty the effects on poverty measures were partly redistributive in nature after controlling for inflation the authors found that some of the factors that helped reduce absolute poverty also improved distribution and none of the factors that reduced absolute poverty had adverse impacts on distribution in other words there was no sign of tradeoffs between growth and pro poor distribution

poverty transition and persistence in ethiopia 1994 2004 summary this study analyzes the persistence of poverty in both rural and urban areas in ethiopia during 1994 2004 the key finding is that households move frequently in and out of poverty but the difficulty of exiting from poverty like the chance of avoiding slipping back increases with the time spent in that state and varies considerably between male and female headed households our results imply that it is important to design anti poverty policies both to hinder households from slipping into extreme poverty and to minimize the length of the poverty spell for households once they have fallen into it

one kind of freedom poverty dynamics in post apartheid south africa abstract a 1993 south african living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity drawing on a 1998 re survey of households in the 1993 study this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded or whether apartheid s end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape after proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the south african poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time

measuring welfare poverty and inequality a class of poverty measures is identified the members of which satisfy strong monotonicity and transfer conditions these measures are closely related to indices of income inequality based on the notion of a mean equivalent income a restriction on the class of admissible measures allows poverty to be interpreted in terms of the loss in mean equivalent income resulting from the fact that some people are poor copyright 1987 by royal economic society

equity regarding poverty measures differences in needs and the role of equivalence scales the paper investigates the definition of equity regarding poverty measures when there are different household types in the population it demonstrates the implications of a between type regressive transfer principle for poverty measures for the choice of poverty lines and for the measurement of living standard the role of equivalence scales which are popular in empirical work on poverty measurement is clarified ce memoire examine la definition de mesures de pauvrete fondees sur l equite quand existent differents types de menages dans la population on montre les implications d un principe de transfert regressif entre types de menages pour les mesures de pauvrete pour la definition des seuils de pauvrete et pour la mesure du niveau de vie on clarifie le role des echelles d equivalence qui sont d un usage generalise dans les travaux sur la mesure de la pauvrete

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

the joint influence of agricultural and nonfarm factors on real estate values an application to the mid atlantic region county level farmland and residential housing values are estimated for the mid atlantic region as a function of farm returns developed land values household incomes population densities and location results are based on the hypothesis that farmland owners anticipate land development and that nonfarm factors are important determinants of farmland prices response of farmland prices to change in farm returns is found to be inelastic and relatively uniform in rural and urban counties response to nonfarm factors is found to be more elastic and substantially greater in rural counties copyright 2001 oxford university press

food standards certification and poverty among coffee farmers in uganda summary voluntary standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods we analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards fairtrade organic and utz on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in uganda using survey data and propensity score matching with multiple treatments we find that fairtrade certification increases household living standards by 30 and reduces the prevalence and depth of poverty for the other two certification schemes no significant impacts are found several factors that can explain differential impacts are discussed overly general statements about the effects of sustainability standards on smallholder livelihoods may be misleading

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

agricultural wages in bangladesh what do the figures really show using new data and a different model palmer jones 1993 has questioned the conclusions of boyce and ravallion 1991 concerning the evolution over time of agricultural wages in bangladesh i argue that palmer jones s model is unconvincing and that the main conclusions of boyce and ravallion are far more robust than he suggests wages respond sluggishly to rice prices bangladesh s limited agricultural growth has not raised the real wage rate which was on a downward trend for most of the 1960s and 1970s the mid 1980s saw higher real wages though this cannot yet be deemed a reversal of the previous trend

steady change the 200 largest us manufacturing firms throughout the 20th century this paper discusses the existence of structural change in business activity and technological competence among the 200 largest us manufacturing companies throughout the 20th century the data were taken from chandler scale and scope 1990 and fortune magazine the analysis of corporate evolution in used to assess continuity versus turbulence of business organizations in the context of the neo schumpeterian long wave hypothesis the empirical results show that the giants of the late 20th century are not the same as those at the beginning of that period persistence in the sample is very limited moreover turbulence is not smooth but rather occurs by impulses that affect specific industries and it has increased over time overall the pattern of corporate entry and industry development is very indicative of the new opportunities emerging with information and communication technologies this process of open ended continuous transformation supports the case for putting change at the centre of economic analysis

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 political economy of farmland ownership regulations and land prices one of the most ubiquitous forms of agricultural regulation is a restriction on farmland ownership one canadian example of a farmland ownership restriction is the saskatchewan farm security act fsa passed in 1974 the purpose of this article is to explain using a political economy framework why the fsa was implemented and to estimate the effect of the fsa on saskatchewan farmland values a present value pv model is used to estimate the relationship between land values rents and the regulation the hausman endogeneity test reveals that the regulation variable is endogenous with the land price the sign of the regulation variable is negative which fits with the theory i e the more stringent the regulation the lower the land value we estimate that the regulation lowered saskatchewan farmland prices by an average of 4 to 34 us acre depending on whether ordinary least squares ols or two stage least squares tsls is employed in the estimation over the period of 1974 2001

econometric modeling of the capitalization formula for farmland prices an econometric model is formulated to explain the dynamic behavior in farmland prices a second order rational distributed lag on net crop share rents received by landlords captures the dynamic movements of prices and performs well in conditional post sample forecasts the adjustment path of land prices in response to a perturbation in rents is a protracted dampened cycle the implicitly estimated tax free capitalization rate on rent associated with equilibrium land price is 4 0 neither the expected rate of inflation nor an exponential trend on rent expectations has a significant effect on land prices