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12. Resource-Poor Farmers in South India: On the Margins or Frontiers of Globalization?
- Author:
- Rimjhim M. Aggarwal
- Publication Date:
- 09-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- It is often argued that an important reason why globalization may lead to GDP growth but fail to reduce poverty is because the poor are unable to participate in the new market opportunities and are marginalized. In this paper we examine the experience of resource-poor farmers in south India, who participated aggressively in the new market opportunities that opened up with trade reforms. However, these expanded market opportunities failed to improve their welfare. The paper examines why and how this happened.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Globalization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
13. The Impacts of Growth and Inequality on Rural Poverty in China
- Author:
- Guanghua Wan and Yin Zhang
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes the evolution of poverty in China from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, employing a version of Shapley decomposition tailored to unit-record household survey data. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate causes— income growth and shifts in income distribution. Different datasets, poverty lines, poverty measures, and equivalence scales are used to examine the robustness of the results. Potential biases arising from ignoring differential regional prices and inflation are also investigated. Notwithstanding some ambiguities in the results, it is consistently found that rural poverty increased in the second half of the 1990s and adverse distributional changes are the main cause.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
14. Widening Gap of Educational Opportunity? A Longitudinal Study of Educational Inequality in China
- Author:
- Min-Dong Paul Lee
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This study attempts to convey an accurate and dynamic account of educational inequality in China during the last decade. The study finds that there is clear evidence of rapid expansion of education, and younger students all over China are benefiting from the expansion. One of the most notable achievements is the virtual elimination of gender bias against girls in educational attainment. However, analysis of province-level school enrolment data over the last decade shows evidence of persistent regional inequality of educational attainment. Students from inland provinces continue to face strong structural inequality in educational opportunity, and this structural inequality becomes more pronounced as they progress to higher grades. Moreover, inter-cohort analysis reveals that the inter-provincial inequality in upper grades is increasing for younger cohort of students, meaning that educational inequality in China is deteriorating further. Lastly, a decomposition analysis shows that the causes of inter-provincial educational inequality are quite complex and cannot simply be explained by the urban-bias hypothesis that is often suggested as the main source of income inequality.
- Topic:
- Education, Human Rights, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
15. How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?
- Author:
- Kuan Xu and Lars Osberg
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning. This paper asks whether the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is a good measure of trends in global poverty. We argue that the answer depends on two important issues in the measurement of poverty—the definition of the poverty line, and how best to summarize the level of poverty In this paper, we survey the literature on poverty measurement, demonstrate the importance of considering poverty incidence, depth and inequality jointly, present a simple but powerful graphical representation of the Sen and SST indices of poverty intensity (the poverty box) which is the FGT index of order 1 and extend our empirical work to China using the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median equivalent income.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
16. Poverty Accounting by Factor Components: With an Empirical Illustration Using Chinese Data
- Author:
- Guanghua Wan
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The purpose of this paper is to develop two poverty decomposition frameworks and to illustrate their applicability. A given level of poverty is broadly decomposed into an overall inequality component and an overall endowment component in terms of income or consumption determinants or input factors. These components are further decomposed into finer components associated with individual inputs. Also, a change in poverty is decomposed into components attributable to the growth and redistributions of factor inputs. An empirical illustration using Chinese data highlights the importance of factor redistributions in determining poverty levels and poverty changes in rural China.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
17. Asia's Labour-Driven Economic Development, Flying-Geese Style: An Unprecedented Opportunity for the Poor to Rise?
- Author:
- Terutomo Ozawa
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The notion of 'shared growth' was introduced by the World Bank in recognition of East Asia's rapid growth accompanied by poverty reduction. It emphasizes the criticality of pro-poor policies and institutional setups in the fast-developing East Asian economies. The efforts of these individual countries are, however, a necessary but not sufficient condition (explanation). There is a more essential, underlying region-wide mechanism that simultaneously promotes regionalized growth and specifically favours Asia's working mass of unskilled labour. Such an efficacious mechanism is posited in the 'flying-geese paradigm of comparative advantage recycling in labour-intensive goods'. The paper argues that a number of favourable factors have fortuitously coalesced to engender a considerably favourable condition for Asia's rapid catch-up growth in which unskilled labour (the poor) can participate as their countries' most vital input in labour-driven development.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- East Asia and Asia
18. Threshold Estimation on the Globalization-Poverty Nexus: Evidence from China
- Author:
- Zhicheng Liang
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- China has experienced rapid integration into the global economy and achieved remarkable progress in poverty reduction over the last two decades. In this paper, by employing panel data covering twenty-five Chinese provinces over the period of 1986- 2002, and applying the endogenous threshold regression techniques, we empirically investigate the globalization-poverty nexus in China, paying particular attention to the nonlinearity of the impact of globalization on the poor. Estimation results provide strong evidence to suggest that there exists a threshold in the relationship between globalization and poverty: globalization is good for the poor only after the economy has reached a certain threshold level of globalization.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
19. Pro-Poor Growth: The Asian Experience
- Author:
- Hyun H. Son and Nanak Kakwani
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, this study examines to what extent the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring pro-poor growth are scrutinized using a variety of criteria. It is argued that the satisfaction of a monotonicity axiom is a key criterion for measuring pro-poor growth. The monotonicity axiom sets out a condition that the proportional reduction in poverty is monotonically an increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. This paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called the 'poverty equivalent growth rate', which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of the growth are distributed to the poor and the non-poor. As the new measure satisfies the criterion of monotonicity, it is indicative that to achieve a rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate ought to be maximized rather than the actual growth rate. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Asia, Vietnam, Korea, and Thailand
20. Trade Liberalization, Environment and Poverty: A Developing Country Perspective
- Author:
- M.S. Quresh
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper revisits the pollution haven hypothesis in the context of Pakistan by offering a systematic analysis of its trade and production patterns. Using bilateral trade statistics from 1975-2003, we test the hypotheses that Pakistan's net exports of pollutionintensive products have increased to the OECD countries. We also investigate if the stringency of environmental governance in the importing countries plays a role in determining Pakistan's exports of pollution-intensive products. The results reveal that there has been a change in the composition of output and exports towards pollutionintensive manufacturing that parallels the opening of the economy. Overall, the findings appear to be in favour of the pollution haven hypothesis and call for effective environmental policy response for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
- Topic:
- Development, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan and Asia
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