多维视角下农村贫困的测度与分析

近年来,学者和政策制定者逐渐将贫困的研究视角从单一的收入贫困扩展到多维贫困。文章基于CFPS的2010年基线调查数据,采取Alkire和Foster提出的双界限方法,根据《中国农村扶贫开发纲要(2011-2020)》提出的目标任务选取贫困维度,对我国农村的多维贫困进行了测度,并对测度结果进行了稳健性分析。测度结果表明,我国农村多维贫困状况比收入贫困状况恶劣。维度分解结果表明,社会保障和生活质量等维度的剥夺情况比较严重。地区分解结果显示,西部地区被剥夺状况高于中、西部地区。稳健性分析结果显示,测度结果对权重的选取是稳健的。因此,我国在此10年中,应从多维视角识别农村贫困,有针对性地提高扶贫政策的有效性。     

Smoke and mirrors? The science of poverty measurement and its application

Measures of poverty are much used, but also much criticised as having limited value in debates on public resource allocation. Some argue that the measures are too conservative and do little more than complicate important issues of inequality and injustice. However, poverty measurement can be sensitive to these concerns if grounded in the field's well-developed theoretical foundation. In South Africa, poverty measures over more than 50 years have consistently taken into account distributional issues and the causes and implications of deprivation, and most South African analyses of poverty have recognised and incorporated the multi-dimensional nature of poverty. Recognising different perceptions of aggregation, time horizon and the role of states and markets is perhaps more important than methodology when assessing what poverty measures can contribute. With proper theorisation, and attention paid to the purpose of poverty diagnostics, measurement is more than sleight-of-hand and can provide both a tool for advocacy and a means to implement policies that promote greater social justice.     

Economic liberalisation strategies and poverty reduction across Indian states

The focus of the study is the pace of poverty reduction across Indian states and its determinants. In particular, the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and industrialisation in reducing poverty is examined. Empirical evidence shows that poverty reduction did occur during the 1990s following the implementation of India's economic liberalisation program, which included mainly industrial and FDI policy reform. The empirical analysis shows that, thus far, FDI has not contributed significantly to poverty reduction, but it did influence structural changes in the economy, particularly with respect to industry, which is an important driver of poverty reduction. The analysis clearly shows that states with dominant industrial sectors have been able to reduce poverty faster than states dominated by agriculture. It is argued that targeting of FDI in India has been misplaced. Had it been in the more labour-intensive manufacturing, it would have more effectively contributed to the reduction of poverty.     

Censored Quantile Regressions of Chronic and Transient Seasonal Poverty in Rwanda

It is crucial for social policy in Less Developed Countriesto identify correlates of poverty at the household level. Thishas been done in the literature by estimating household povertyequations typically with Tobit and Probit models. However, whenthe errors in these equations are non-normal and heteroscedastic,which is usually expected, these models deliver biased estimates.Using quarterly data from Rwanda in 1983, we reject the normalityand homoscedasticity assumptions for household chronic and transientlatent poverty equations. We treat this problem by estimatingcensored quantile regressions. Our results of censored quantileregressions and of inconsistent Tobit regressions are substantiallydifferent. However, in the case of chronic poverty the signsof the apparently significant coefficients are generally inagreement, while for seasonal transient poverty different variableshave significant effects for the two estimation methods. Oursecond contribution is to study, for the first time, correlatesof poverty indicators based on quarterly consumptions. Our resultsshow that in Rwanda different correlates are significant forchronic poverty and for transient seasonal poverty. The effectsof the main inputs (land and labour) are more important forthe chronic component of poverty than for the transient one.Household location and socio-demographic characteristics playimportant roles that are consistent with usual explanationsof poverty in the literature.     

Gender, poverty and deprivation: Evidence from the Republic of Guinea

The article examines the relationship between gender and consumption poverty and between gender and deprivation in the Republic of Guinea. National household survey data reveal that women are not more likely than men to be consumption poor or to suffer greater consumption poverty. Participatory Poverty Assessment data from the village of Kamatiguia reveal that women are “worse off” than men when deprivation includes, inter alia, excessive work load and reduced decision-making authority. When consumption poverty poorly correlates with other dimensions of deprivation, it should not be the sole guide for equity-based policy intervention.     

Poverty and Vulnerability in Indonesia Before and After the Economic Crisis

It is well known that the economic crisis in Indonesia has caused the poverty rate to increase significantly. The present study finds, not only that the poverty rate increased significantly, but also that much of the increase was due to a large increase in the chronic poor category (i.e. the poor who have expected consumption below the poverty line and most likely will stay poor in the near future). Furthermore, the present study also finds that the proportion of households that have high vulnerability to poverty has more than doubled since the economic crisis. As a result, the proportion of the total vulnerable group (the current poor plus the high vulnerability group) has jumped from less than one-fifth of the population before the crisis to more than one-third after the crisis.     

Dimensions of Human Development

If human development is “multidimensional” then perhaps we need to discuss what we mean by multidimensional: what is a dimension, and what are the multiple dimensions of interest? This paper develops an account of dimensions of human development, and shows its usefulness and its limitations—both in general and in relation to Amartya Sen's capability approach. The second half of the paper surveys other major “lists” of dimensions that have been published in poverty studies, crosscultural psychology, moral philosophy, quality of life indicators, participatory development, and basic needs, and compares and contrasts them with the account sketched here.     

Rural Poverty Dynamics and Impact of Intervention Programs upon Chronic and Transitory Poverty in Northern Ethiopia*

Abstract: Using a three‐year panel data set of rural households in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, we examine the dynamics of poverty and the impact of two intervention measures—the food for work (FFW) and the food security package (FSP) programs—upon poverty by disaggregating total poverty into its transient and chronic components. Poverty in the region is predominantly chronic. Results of matching estimators indicate that the FSP program has a significant negative effect on total and chronic poverty, but not on transient poverty. Households involved in the program have on average lower levels of total and chronic poverty than households not involved in the program. The FFW on the other hand does not significantly influence any of the three forms of poverty. Tertile regressions, however, reveal that the FFW benefits households in the richest and the middle tertiles.     

Early poverty exposure predicts young adult educational outcomes in China

Comparative research suggests that poverty in childhood, and especially in the early years, impedes educational attainment. With longitudinal data from China, we estimate hazard models of dropping out of school in young adulthood with two dynamic measures of childhood poverty: poverty spell indicators that distinguish poverty in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, and poverty indices that measure the depth of poverty and distinguish chronic from transient poverty.Four main results emerge: 1) Children who experience spells in poverty leave school at a higher rate than others, even adjusting for poverty in later periods; 2) Transient poverty is more widespread, and shows a greater negative association with school-leaving, than chronic poverty; 3) Early childhood poverty shows greater negative associations with education outcomes than poverty in later periods; and 4) Girls may be more susceptible than boys to early poverty. We further test two possible mechanisms of impact: early nutrition poverty and school fees. While lower protein intake at an early stage of life is related to poorer educational outcomes in young adulthood, adjusting for nutritional deprivation does not attenuate the associations of early transient income poverty. Results do not suggest that cohorts that experienced school-fee abolishment policies experienced different poverty effects than other cohorts.     

Multidimensional Poverty and Perceived Happiness: Evidence from China,Japan and Korea*

We compare multidimensional poverty and its associations with perceived happiness in China, Japan and Korea. Using largely comparable nationwide survey data, we focus on multidimensional poverty in terms of income, schooling, health and social protection. We find multidimensional poverty to be more prevalent in China than in Japan or Korea; sex and age‐based differences are largest in Korea. We further confirm significant associations between multidimensional poverty and perceived happiness. For all three countries, the aggregated poverty dimensions could largely identify unhappy individuals, with both wider coverage and higher odds than is possible through unidimensional analyses.     

中国经济增长的减贫效果评估

本文采用Kakwani等人提出的测度方法--减贫经济增长率,定量分析了我国20世纪80年代以来经济增长对于城乡贫困的影响.结论显示,经济增长对高阶贫困指数的影响大于低阶贫困指数,表明反贫困成本(转移支付金额)相对于贫困人口而言,对经济增长更加敏感.同时,减贫经济增长率的波动幅度要明显高于实际收入增长率,这意味着贫困人口更易受宏观经济波动的冲击.因此,保持宏观经济的稳定以及改善收入分配、加强社会保障等有利于社会公正.     

Spatial Comparisons of Poverty and Inequality in Living Standards in Malawi

The paper looks at poverty and inequality across areas in Malawi. The focus is on both monetary (consumption) and non‐monetary (health and education) dimensions of well‐being. Stochastic poverty dominance tests show that rural areas are poorer in the three dimensions regardless of poverty line chosen. Stochastic inequality dominance tests find that the north and south dominate the centre in health inequality, and there is no dominance between the north and south. With respect to education inequality, dominance is declared for the south‐centre pair only. A subgroup decomposition analysis finds that the south contributes the most to consumption and education poverty, while the centre is the largest contributor to health poverty. We establish that within‐area inequalities (vertical inequalities) rather than between‐area inequalities (horizontal inequalities) are the major driver of consumption, health and education inequality in Malawi.     

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN INDONESIA'S NEW FISCAL DECENTRALISATION ARRANGEMENTS

The changes in grant allocation among regions have been less revolutionary than the 1999 decentralisation legislation envisaged because the resource-rich regions were able to force the government to modify the proposed fiscal gap formula for allocating general purpose grants so as to put more weight on the status quo. Partly for this reason, and partly because no major tax was decentralised, there has not been much increase in autonomy for the regions that have few natural resources. In addition, it is argued here that the procedures for grant allocation in 2002 created incentives for regional fragmentation and did not take account of poverty in an appropriate way.     

贫困概念的演进

自对贫困有确切的定义开始至今已有100多年的历史,其间,贫困概念从关注单一的收入因素到关注剥夺、排斥和脆弱性,经历了不断的演化过程。如何定义贫困不仅影响到使用怎样的方法来测度贫困,更重要的是决定着相应的减贫政策。对这一演进过程进行梳理,有利于更全面地理解贫困,并由此推动减贫实践的深入。     

Rural Poverty and its Measurement: A Comparative Study of Villages in Nusa Penida,Bali

This paper compares the incidence of poverty in three neighbouring rural villages in Bali, two of which have experienced the innovation of seaweed-growing and have become market dependent, while the third remains a traditional cassava-corn dependent village. Several alternative measures are used to compare the incidence of poverty in the villages, and these measures are discussed critically. All of them rate the incidence of poverty in the cassava-com village to be very high, and much greater than in the seaweed-dependent villages. Aggregative or macroeconomic studies of poverty, even at the regional level, are liable to conceal or overlook such differences. An innovation, at least in the Indonesian context, is the application of subjective or respondent-dependent methods of assessing poverty. These, it is argued, can make a valuable contribution to poverty assessment and in this case their results accord most closely with those of an average per capita expenditure method based on rural Bali, the World Bank and the KFM objective methods. Economic development and growth such as has occurred in the seaweed villages has not increased the incidence of poverty; instead it appears to have reduced it, contrary to what might have been expected if Kuznets' theory or the Neo-Marxian theory were to apply.     

Identifying income heterogeneity determinants using the method of moments quantile regression

Prior studies have typically concentrated on poverty status to determine anti-poverty measures; however, this approach cannot sufficiently detect income heterogeneity. This study employs quantile regression for panel data to investigate the Korean Labour and Income Panel Study 2003–2020. Moreover, it adopts both household- and community-level variables and separates demographic groups as working-age and older adults, considering Korea's severe old-age poverty. The findings indicate that household-level characteristics, such as householder's gender, physical health, and employment status, present heterogeneous effects across the income distribution. Second, low-income households are more vulnerable to regional economic and labour market downturns than high-income neighbours. Lastly, although the National Pension, a backbone of the public pension system, provides limited supports for retirees because it was introduced much later than other countries, it assists low-income old adults more effectively. Therefore, this study suggests more tailored redistribution measures, considering heterogeneous effects of household- and community-level environments, and a further expansion of the National Pension to mitigate old-age poverty.     

Trade openness and household welfare within a country: A microeconomic analysis of Vietnamese households

The positive effects of trade liberalisation on several dimensions of poverty have initiated studies of the trade–poverty relationship. Trade liberalisation accompanies institutional reforms that help to reduce institutional barriers against the poor. This study examines the impacts of trade openness and institutional reforms on rural household welfare at the provincial level through the analysis of the determinants of welfare of rural households in Vietnam. The study employs a model of micro-determinants of growth and tests it on the data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) of 2006 and 2010. What makes the study different from some other studies of the same vein is that it attempts to directly capture the institutional effect on welfare. The study finds that, in the provinces with high institutional reforms and trade openness, the welfare of rural households improved. Institutional reforms in Vietnam appeared to be sluggish in the late 2000s. In particular, both access to land and lower informal charges were the important determinants of welfare improvement over time. These findings suggest that Vietnam should maintain its development by accelerating the process of institutional reforms, thereby helping poor households to improve standards of living.     

Vulnerability to Poverty in Papua New Guinea in 1996

This paper uses cross‐section data from the 1996 Papua New Guinea Household Survey to assess household vulnerability to poverty in Papua New Guinea. Vulnerability varies across regions, household size, gender and level of education of households. We use a simple empirical model that permits estimation of vulnerability to poverty assuming that households have the same conditional distribution of consumption in a stationary environment. Although this approach does not capture all dimensions of vulnerability, it at least raises the policy interest that vulnerability should be considered alongside poverty.     

Aid and Poverty in Africa: Do Well‐being Measures Understate the Progress?

Abstract: In the last 15 years international aid donors to Africa have shifted their focus dramatically toward health and education; the share of social sector support in total aid rose from 33 per cent to 60 per cent from 1990–94 to 2000–2004 alone. If this aid has been effective, it is unlikely to be captured in GDP or income poverty figures. This paper uses the Demographic and Health Survey at multiple points in time to explore changes in well‐being in ten sub‐Saharan African countries. It compares the evolution of both assets and health which are considered as the two main dimensions of well‐being. These dimensions are simultaneously estimated using the structural equation models with latent variables that have been developed in the psychometric literature. The comparisons of well‐being across time in each country are based on the stochastic dominance analysis. The main results suggest that assets and health have improved during the last two decades in most of these countries. A decline in assets is observed for three countries while health deteriorates in two countries. The reduced poverty appears to be explained less by the aid than other factors in most cases.     

社会保险缓解了农村老人的多维贫困吗？——兼论“贫困恶性循环”效应

老年人贫困是中国人口老龄化背景下亟需解决的问题,社会保险则在国家反贫与脱贫方面发挥着不可或缺的作用。采用具有代表性的中国老年健康影响因素（CLHLS2011）大样本微观跟踪调查数据,构建Logit计量回归模型,将农村老人贫困分为经济贫困、健康贫困与精神贫困三个维度,从实证的角度,探讨了社会保险与农村老人贫困的关系。研究发现,养老保险与医疗保险在不同程度上缓解了农村老人多个维度的贫困。文章进一步指出农村老人贫困存在“恶性循环”,经济贫困、健康贫困与精神贫困三个维度之间存在显著的相互正向影响,但社会保险对农村老人陷入“贫困恶性循环”起到了的调节效应,即社会保险弱化了不同贫困之间相互的正向作用。这些经验发现可以为政府改善农村老龄人群的贫困状况提供可靠的政策依据。