The determinants of peasants' family income in China's west underdeveloped area: effects of working away from home village

There are more than one hundred million peasants working in non-agricultural industries away from their home villages in China. Using survey data of 2004 from Chongqing, the authors intend to research on the poverty of China's west economically backward area through investigating the peasants' family income and the out-of-rural workers' income, and have found out that working away from home village is the main source of peasants' income growth in China's economically backward area. Working away from home village gives peasants a chance to get directly engaged in the process of industrialization and urbanization, reducing the east–west inequality and rural–urban income disparity.     

GROWTH, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA: A CAUSAL ANALYSIS, 1970–94

Taking advantage of consistent poverty and income inequality data for 12 Latin American countries between 1970 and 1994, we analyze the determinants of changes in the incidence of urban and rural poverty and in Gini coefficients over spells of years, stressing in particular the role of aggregate income growth. We find that income growth reduces urban and rural poverty but not inequality. We also find that income growth is more effective in reducing urban poverty if the levels of inequality and poverty are lower, and the levels of secondary education higher. We show that there is an asymmetry in the impact of growth on poverty and inequality, with recession having strong negative effects on both poverty and inequality. Since growth does not reduce inequality, economic cycles create ratchet effects on the level of inequality. However, post-structural adjustment growth is quite effective at reducing poverty, particularly if inequality is low.     

Growth,inequality, and poverty reduction in developing countries: Recent global evidence

The study presents comparative global evidence on the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the role of income inequality. The focus is on the period since the early-mid-1990s when growth in these countries as a group has been relatively strong, surpassing that of the advanced economies. Both regional and country-specific data are analyzed for the $1.25 and $2.50-level poverty headcount ratios using World Bank Povcalnet data. The study finds that on average income growth has been the major driving force behind both the declines and increases in poverty. The study, however, documents substantial regional and country differences that are masked by this ‘average’ dominant-growth story. While in the majority of countries, growth was the major factor behind falling or increasing poverty, inequality, nevertheless, played the crucial role in poverty behavior in a large number of countries. And, even in those countries where growth has been the main driver of poverty-reduction, further progress could have occurred under relatively favorable income distribution. For more efficient policymaking, therefore, idiosyncratic attributes of countries should be emphasized. In general, high initial levels of inequality limit the effectiveness of growth in reducing poverty while growing inequality increases poverty directly for a given level of growth. It would seem judicious, therefore, to accord special attention to reducing inequality in certain countries where income distribution is especially unfavorable. Unfortunately, the present study also points to the limited effects of growth and inequality-reducing policies in low-income countries.     

经济增长、收入差距与农村贫困

我国经济转型过程中同时发生的居民收入增长和收入差距扩大对农村贫困减缓具有不同的影响。本文在住户调查数据的基础上,讨论了不同时期经济增长和收入差距对于农村贫困减缓的作用大小,估算了不同年份经济增长和收入差距的贫困减缓弹性,并根据Shapley分解讨论了分项收入对贫困程度的影响以及分项收入不均等性的贫困减缓弹性。     

经济增长对贫困变动的影响及影响途径分析——以新疆农村为例

以农村居民人均纯收入的增长作为经济增长,运用1988～2010年新疆农村人均纯收入分组数据,研究新疆经济增长与农村贫困变动之间的关系,并且对经济增长影响贫困变动的途径进行分析。研究结果表明,经济增长对新疆农村贫困的减少起到了显著的作用,而农业的发展和非农就业的增长是提高农民收入从而减缓农村贫困的主要途径。因此,推动农村经济增长仍然是新疆今后扶贫工作的重点。     

贫困、不平等和农村非农产业的发展

本文利用农村家庭户的调查数据，从微观经济学的角度出发，研究了中国农村非农产业对农村地区收入不平等和贫困的影响。我们首先利用计量经济学方法，模拟家庭在不参与非农业活动情况下的收入水平，然后比较参与和不参与非农业活动两种情况下的收入分布。结果表明，非农业生产活动一方面缓解了农村地区的收入不平等状况，另一方面显著降低了农村的贫困化程度。缩小了贫困户间的收入差距，改善了最贫困户的收入水平。     

Gender,entrepreneurship and food security in Niger

In many African countries, the income generated from the informal sector and the entrepreneurship is particularly important for reducing poverty. Previous studies have not found clear evidence on the relationship between self‐employment by gender and food security. We argue that this may be a result of the gender inequality in resource accessibility. In this paper, we analyze the implication of household entrepreneurship on food security in Niger, where gender disparities in resource accessibility are reduced. We find that owning female‐managed non‐agricultural enterprises is positively related to food accessibility and food availability within female‐headed households. The results draw the attention on reducing gender differences in resource accessibility in entrepreneurship for improving food security.     

Rural labour market policies in Croatia,FYR of Macedonia and Turkey

Considerable differences are found among countries regarding the importance of the agricultural labour force, between rural and urban labour, and in poverty and living conditions in rural areas. Declines in the agricultural labour force and rural population are foreseen for each of the countries, but with significant variations between them. Showing different patterns over time, labour market developments in the sector and in rural areas have been shaped by the overall labour market institutions, conditions and factors in each country, such as the legal basis, educational attainment and migration flows, and the presence of non-agricultural activities in rural areas.     

影响我国农村居民收入差距的主要因素:从收入构成角度的分解分析

This paper attempts to explore the causes behind the change of the inequality in China rural areas at the very beginning of this century by decomposing the inequality of the total per capita income into the contributions from different income components. Furthermore, we develop the decomposition method of Gini coefficients from the income components and use it not only in the static analysis but also in comparative static analysis. Namely it can be used to explore the change of the overall inequality by decomposing the change of Gini Coefficient from income components. The empirical results show that the wage from local employment, the income from agricultural household business and the incomes from non-agricultural household business are the three income components that made the largest contributions to the inequality of the total per capita income. The total contribution to the overall inequality of non-agricultural incomes was much more than that of agricultural incomes. The incomes from agricultural household business, the incomes from non-agricultural household business and the wages from migration made the positive impact on the increase of the overall inequality. The incomes donated by relatives and friends made the most important negative impact on the increase of the overall inequality.     

The Pro‐Poorness,Growth and Inequality Nexus: Some Findings From a Simulation Study

An income growth pattern is pro‐poor if it reduces a (chosen) measure of poverty by more than if all incomes were growing equiproportionately. Inequality reduction is not sufficient for pro‐poorness. In this paper, we explore the nexus between pro‐poorness, growth, and inequality in some detail using simulations involving the displaced lognormal, Singh–Maddala, and Dagum distributions. For empirically relevant parameter estimates, distributional change preserving the functional form of each of these three‐parameter distributions is often either pro‐poor and inequality reducing, or pro‐rich and inequality exacerbating, but it is also possible for pro‐rich growth to be inequality reducing. There is some capacity for each of these distributions to show trickle effects (weak pro‐richness) along with inequality‐reducing growth, but virtually no possibility of pro‐poorness for growth which increases overall inequality. Implications are considered.     

LOCAL DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT CASH TRANSFERS IN CHILE

Despite rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained high and remarkably constant over the last 20 years, prompting academic and public interest in the subject. Due to data limitations, however, research on inequality in Chile has concentrated on the national and regional levels. The impact of cash subsidies to poor households on local inequality is thus not well understood. Using poverty‐mapping methods to asses this impact, we find heterogeneity in the effectiveness of regional and municipal governments in reducing inequality via poverty‐reduction transfers, suggesting that alternative targeting regimes may complement current practice in aiding the poor.     

Changing patterns of UK poverty, 1997 2004

It has been noted that the failure to meet the target set bythe government for reducing the head count ratio of child povertyin Britain is partly due to the success of government policyin generating economic growth. Apart from ignoring the argumentthat absolute poverty is not a meaningful idea, this apologyfor the failure of government to meet poverty targets also misseswider problems embedded in recent trends in the household incomedistribution. For example, inequality measures sensitive tothe distribution of income amongst the poor suggest that theexperience of those who remained poor may have worsened.     

Linkages between poverty and income inequality of urban–rural sector: a time series analysis of India’s urban-based aspirations from 1951 to 1994

This study examines the impact of urban and rural development on poverty and inequality in India before economic reform. The methodology comprises two dimensions. Modern time series methods are used to uncover the dynamic patterns of urban–rural poverty and income inequality. A machine-learning algorithm is used to determine the causal structure among the development indicators. Our results show that reductions in rural poverty appear to be a more effective in reducing both urban and rural poverty, although the costs of achieving these reductions have not been considered.     

Poverty among ethnic minorities: the transition process,inequality and economic growth

This article investigates the process of reducing poverty in ethnic minority households. Using two recent Vietnam household surveys, we find that ethnic minority households are more likely to be persistently poor and less likely to be persistently non-poor than ethnic majority households. The within-group component generated by the variation in income within each ethnicity group explains more than 90% of the change in total inequality. Income redistribution plays an important role in decreasing the poverty gap and decreasing poverty severity. Different ethnic groups have different poverty patterns, which should be noted when designing policies to alleviate poverty and inequality.     

Unfair inequality and growth*

Fighting against economic inequality is one fundamental social goal in the agendas of most governments. However, recent studies highlight that people actually prefer unequal societies, as they accept inequality generated by an individual's effort and wish to reduce only unfair inequality (generated by factors beyond an individual's control). This distinction might help to explain the fundamental unsolved question about whether inequality is good or bad for growth: unfair inequality (UI) could be growth-deterring, while fair inequality (FI) might be growth-enhancing. We derive a reduced-form growth equation from a stylized overlapping-generations model with human capital that includes FI, UI, and poverty. Then, using an instrumental variable approach, we show for alternative samples and inequality measures at the worldwide level that the estimated coefficient associated with UI is always negative, while the coefficient of total inequality increases when UI is included in the regression. Moreover, we find that poverty mediates this relationship because the higher the poverty rate, the smaller the impact of either type of inequality on growth.     

中国的政府公共支出与减贫政策

在中国 ,尽管农村经济增长和贫困减少取得了长足进展 ,但很少有研究对农村经济的动力源进行分析 ,而把公共投资作为农村发展和消除贫困的直接动力源的研究尤其缺乏。本文旨在弥补以前研究的空白 ,并指出各类公共投资对农村经济增长、贫困减少和地区不均等的边际效应在各地区和各时期差别很大。根据实证结果和对历史上公共支出方式的分析可知 ,农村公共支出再分配可以带来很大的潜在收益。     

Do inward looking trade policies affect poverty and income inequality? Evidence from Indonesia's recent wave of rising protectionism

Unlike previous studies which often focus on trade liberalisation, this paper examines the impact of protectionism in the form of import tariffs and mineral export taxes on rural and urban poverty and income inequality for the first time. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model on Indonesia, mineral export taxes were found to adversely affect urban and rural poverty but income inequality hardly changed as the decline in income in the higher income group is not significantly different to the decline in low income groups. However, if smelters for mineral ore are developed, then there is not only a fall in poverty, more so for the rural than urban, but there is some decline in income inequality. On the other hand, although the current imposed import tariffs do not affect poverty or income inequality, any further increases from the current low average MFN applied rates, will see a rise in rural and urban poverty and income inequality. By and large, any small improvements in the trade balance brought upon by the mineral tax and import tariffs are more than outweighed by the substantial decline in real household consumption expenditure due to falls in employment and wages, thereby leading to a fall in GDP growth.     

The impact of financial development,economic growth,income inequality on poverty: evidence from India

This paper examines the impact of financial development, economic growth and income inequality on poverty in India from 1970 to 2015 by employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure. The findings reveal a robust long-run relationship between financial development, economic growth, inequality and poverty. Results show that financial development and economic growth help in poverty reduction in India, whereas income inequality and inflation aggravate poverty. Empirical evidence of the Granger-causality test supports the presence of unidirectional causality from financial development and economic growth to poverty. Moreover, bidirectional causality exists between inequality and poverty. The present study provides evidence on which the policymakers may proceed with detailed investigation of how specific financial sector policies and interventions can be deployed as effective instruments for achieving favorable economic growth and income distribution. The study recommends that policies geared toward increasing financial development and economic growth should be adopted to reduce the high level of poverty and inequality currently prevailing in India.     

Inequality at Low Levels of Aggregation in Chile

Despite success in poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged over the last 20 years. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth, and local inequality has been shown to affect such outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic wellbeing of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census data to generate estimates of inequality that are robust at disaggregated geographic levels. We employ this methodology to produce consistent and precise estimates of inequality for every county in Chile. We find considerable heterogeneity in county‐level estimates of inequality, with Gini coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.64.