Poverty in Edwardian Britain

This article introduces a newly discovered household budget data set for 1904. We use these data to estimate urban poverty among working families in the British Isles. Applying Bowley's poverty line, we estimate that at least 23 per cent of people in urban working households and 18 per cent of working households had income insufficient to meet minimum needs. This is well above Rowntree's estimate of primary poverty for York in 1899 and high in the range that Bowley found in northern towns in 1912–13. The skill gradient of poverty is steep; for instance, among labourers' households, the poverty rates are close to 50 per cent. Measures of the depth of poverty are relatively low in the data, suggesting that most poor male-headed working households were close to meeting Bowley's new standard.     

Changing Sources of Household Income,Poverty, and Sectoral Inequality in Sri Lanka, 1990–2006

Comparing dynamic changes in household income and poverty among urban, rural, and estate sectors in Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2006, this study finds that a shift of household income away from farm to nonfarm sources is accompanied by a significant improvement in household income and reduction in poverty, particularly in the rural sector. Major contributing factors are the rise in returns to labor, in general, and educated labor, in particular, due to the development of the nonfarm labor market. Persistently low income among estate households can be explained primarily by the limited availability of nonfarm employment opportunities and the low education levels of working members.     

The determinants of rural and urban household poverty in the North West province of South Africa

Based on standard poverty measures, the extent of poverty in the North West province is on average worse than in South Africa. For instance, the poverty gap ratio for North West is twice that of the South African average, and the FGT index is three times as high. This article therefore aims to identify the determinants of rural and urban poverty in the North West province of South Africa. Using data gathered from a survey of 593 black households across the province, probit model estimates suggest that the major significant determinants of household poverty in both rural and urban areas are education and household size. A difference between rural and urban poverty is, first, that extra female adults in a rural household raise the probability of poverty. Secondly, having a migrant (out) worker as head of the household in rural areas lowers the probability of poverty, while this does not apply to urban households. A sensitivity analysis for the robustness of the results over a range of poverty lines reveals that the impact of education is much stronger for poorer households than for more wealthy households.     

The role of small enterprises in the household and national economy in Kenya: A significant contribution or a last resort?

Based on a nationwide survey, this article addresses the contribution of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) to employment, national income, and household income in Kenya. One-third of all working persons are employed in MSEs and the sector contributes 13% to national income. Despite their large contribution as a whole, returns to individual MSEs vary tremendously. Among those MSEs that represent the sole source of income for the household, 72% make less than the absolute poverty line in urban areas and none of the MSEs in rural areas make above the absolute poverty line. Comparing hourly MSE returns to average earnings in the private sector, the majority make below the average earnings while a minority make significantly higher earnings.     

Analysing post-apartheid poverty trends by geo-type, 1997–2012: The understated role of urbanisation and social grants

This article investigates poverty trends in post-apartheid South Africa with an explicit focus on differences between rural and urban areas. Using nationally representative household survey data from 1997–2012, I first describe changes in population characteristics and household access to different income sources and services, by urban–rural geo-type. Income data are then used to generate poverty statistics, which cast light on divergent trends in rural and urban areas. Next, I employ a poverty decomposition method to further explore some potential reasons why the poverty trends in rural and urban areas have differed. Data from the Afrobarometer are then used to probe how subjective non-monetary welfare has changed over time across geo-types. The evidence from all surveys suggests that the dramatic increase in access to services and social grants in rural areas has played a vital role in poverty reduction.     

Trade Opening,Fiscal Reforms,Poverty, and Inequality: A CGE Analysis for Bangladesh

We assess the short‐ and long‐run impacts of tariff reform policies on Bangladeshi households' poverty and income distribution by developing an 86‐sector, four‐factor, and nine‐household‐group computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The main findings are that the complete removal of tariffs leads to a decrease in overall poverty with rich household groups in a relatively better position. In the short run poverty incidence increases for rural landless, urban illiterate, and low‐educated household groups whereas rural large farmer and urban medium household groups enjoy improvements in all poverty indicators. In terms of income distribution, trade liberalization enhances inequality slightly, but there is a tendency towards more equitable distribution in the long run. The choice of a fiscal compensatory mechanism with consumption tax is likely to play a negative role in terms of poverty and inequality in the short run; however, interestingly, the results are pro‐poor in the long run.     

Understanding urban poverty in two high-density suburbs of Harare,Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Urban communities are heterogeneous and averages mask inequities and deprivations among poor and rich urban communities. This article examines the situation of households residing in two low-income, high-density suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe. The aim of the research was to contextualise urban poverty by looking at selected urban communities and vertically analysing the patterns and determinants of poverty. A household survey was administered to 1000 households and qualitative data were collected through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The study found high levels of income poverty and also found differences in poverty experiences between the two suburbs. The major proximate determinants of poverty were large family size; low education level of the household head; lack of income from permanent employment; low cash transfers; and short length of residence in the suburb. Increasing household income consumption can be addressed through scaling-up industries, which would result in more quality employment.     

Urban working‐class food consumption and nutrition in Britain in 1904

This article re‐examines the food consumption of working‐class households in 1904 and compares the nutritional content of these diets with modern measures of adequacy. We find a fairly steep gradient of nutritional attainment relative to economic class, with high levels of vitamin and mineral deficiency among the very poorest working households. However, we conclude that the average unskilled‐headed working household was better fed and nourished than previously thought. When proper allowance is made for the likely consumption of alcohol, household energy intakes were significantly higher still. We investigate the likely impact of contemporary cultural food distribution norms and conclude on the basis of the very limited evidence available that women may have received, on average, about 80 per cent of a man's share of the available food. We adjust energy requirements for likely higher physical activity rates and smaller stature and find that except among the poorest households, early twentieth‐century diets were sufficient to provide energy for reasonably physically demanding work. These results are consistent with recent attempts to relate the available anthropometric evidence to long‐run trends in food consumption. We also find that the lower tail of the household nutrition distribution drops away very rapidly, so that few households are estimated to have suffered severe food shortages.     

Vulnerability of Vietnamese Elderly to Poverty: Determinants and Policy Implications*

We identify determinants of elderly poverty in Vietnam using household survey data from 2004. The elderly living in urban and rural areas face significantly different conditions. Some factors impact poverty in both urban and rural areas (e.g. age, marital status, region and remittance receipts), some factors are insignificant in both areas (e.g. living arrangements and household head characteristics) and some factors have a differing impact in the two areas (e.g. gender, ethnicity, and household composition and size). With these findings, we formulate policy priorities, including reducing regional disparities, promoting the rural economy and reforming social security.     

Financial permeation and rural poverty reduction Nexus: Further insights from counties in China

We investigate how financial permeation affects rural poverty reduction by matching representative county household data with the local banking market, FinTech development, and county characteristics data from China. We discover that financial permeation via bank branch expansion boosts household income and mitigates household vulnerability to poverty, and these effects are magnified on lower-income and more vulnerable households, especially in impoverished counties. Further considering the potential substitution effect of FinTech, we verify that enhancing financial permeation via bank branch expansion still matters to rural poverty reduction even in the digital era. Exploring the channels, we find that financial permeation accelerates rural poverty reduction directly through improving financial utilization and motivating investment activities and indirectly through spurring local economic growth. Notably, the more pronounced marginal effects of the channels on households in impoverished counties, to some extent, explain the poverty reduction effect of financial permeation. The results imply the necessity of financial permeation via bank branch expansion for the realization of shared prosperity.     

General Equilibrium Approach for Poverty Analysis: With an Application to Cameroon

Abstract: In this paper we use a computable general equilibrium model to study the impact of a trade shock and a tariff reform on household poverty for an archetype developing country. Unlike other studies, we present the income distribution of each household group as a Beta statistical distribution. In contrast to other studies, this paper presents the poverty lines as being endogenous. With this specification, the poverty line will change following a variation in relative prices. With the new distributions and poverty line, the poverty levels of the base year are compared with the ex‐post values. Foster, Greer and Thorbecke's (1984) poverty measures are used. We work with the Cameroon household survey data of 1995–96. We consider two scenarios. The first is a 30 percent fall in the world price of the country's export crop and the second is a reduction of 50 percent in the country's import tariffs. For the first simulation, results indicate a drop in all household incomes and a decrease in the poverty line. Unilateral trade liberalization also has negative consequences on all household incomes. As in the first simulation, the poverty line decreases with a unilateral trade liberalization. In the trade liberalization simulation, the poverty line effect counters the income effect in most cases analyzed. In the other simulation, the poverty line effect attenuates the decrease in the poverty measures.     

Firm agglomeration and local poverty reduction: evidence from an economy in transition

We examine the linkages between firm agglomeration and the welfare of households in Vietnam. We measured firm agglomeration by per capita firm output at the district level and household welfare by per capita income, expenditure, and poverty. We find that firm agglomeration helps households move from the informal sector to the formal sector. As a result, there is a positive effect of firm agglomeration on per capita income, per capita expenditure, and poverty reduction, albeit of a small and time‐decreasing magnitude. The effect of firm agglomeration on per capita expenditure tends to be higher for households with men, younger, and more educated heads than households with women, older, and less educated heads. Households in rural areas and those that do not have crop land are more likely to benefit from firm agglomeration than those living in urban areas and having crop land.     

Trade Integration with the European Union: Poverty Impacts in Ecuador

The government of Ecuador is seeking to negotiate a trade agreement with the European Union (EU). This study examines the impacts of such a trade agreement on rural and urban poverty in Ecuador by combining a household income and occupational choice model with a computable general equilibrium model. The results suggest that a trade agreement with the EU may have a significant impact on poverty. However, the nature and extent of the impact varies depending on the degree of initial tariff reduction, labor market considerations, and whether Ecuadorian bananas are granted better access to the EU market.     

Robust Estimates of Changes in Poverty and Inequality in Post‐Independence Namibia

We estimate changes in the distribution of household consumption expenditure in Namibia since independence in 1990 and the effects on poverty. To produce comparability between two household surveys, we use survey‐matching techniques, and we apply the framework of stochastic dominance to test the robustness of our results. The results reveal a significant decrease in the poverty headcount over the period and small but insignificant decreases in the country's extremely high levels of inequality. Decomposition analysis shows that poverty reduction in Namibia is largely driven by growth in mean incomes rather than redistribution. Even so, there have been important changes in inequality among different social groups especially as educational attainment has replaced ethnicity as the main determinant of between‐group inequality.     

The consequences of health shocks on households: Evidence from China

Unexpected health shocks may bring catastrophic consequences for households. This paper examines the effect of unexpected adverse health shocks on household members' physical and mental health, labor supply, household income and asset, and health behaviors in China by analyzing two nationally representative datasets and adopting a difference-in-differences method augmented with coarsened exact matching. We find that an unexpected health shock results in a discounted out-of-pocket medical expenditure of 16,943 RMB (US$ 2647) over five years for an average household, a reduction of household income per capita of 841 RMB per year (US$ 131, or 6.0% of household annual income per capita), and a loss of net household asset per capita of 13,635 RMB (US$ 2130, or 9.7% of household asset per capita). It raises the probability of an average household applying for public poverty relief allowance by 2.8 percentage points. In addition, we document a strong intra-household spillover effect of health shocks on mental health and health behaviors. A simple back-of-envelope calculation shows that the health shock induces a private cost of 34,966 RMB (US$ 5463) over 5 years for an average household, and incurs a social financial burden of 6066 RMB (US$ 948) in 5 years per household in medical reimbursement and social welfare transfers. At a national scale, the total social burden of health shocks from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases amounts to 1.1 trillion RMB (US$ 172.1 billion) over 5 years.     

经济增长与收入分布对新疆城市居民贫困变动的影响

本文采用相对贫困线方法研究新疆城市居民2000年与2003年的贫困变化程度,利用FGT(Foster-Greer-Thorbecke)贫困指数分析了新疆城市居民的贫困率、贫困差距、贫困深度的变化,通过贫困指数FGT变化的分解分析,说明经济增长提高可支配收入有助于减少贫困,收入分布差距的减少也是减少贫困程度的重要因素之一。     

The long-term evolution of national income inequality and rural poverty in China

Using the five waves of the China Household Income Project surveys conducted during 1988–2013, we investigate long-term changes in national income inequality and rural poverty in China. National income inequality rose markedly to 2007 and thereafter fell slightly. Income growth was widely shared, but inequality increased because the high-income percentiles had faster income growth than lower percentiles and because the gap between urban and rural household incomes widened. The fall in income inequality after 2007 reflects faster income growth among low-income percentiles and the impacts of newly introduced redistributive policies. The paper also finds a considerable, ongoing poverty reduction in rural China. A poverty decomposition analysis indicates that this rural poverty reduction was mostly due to income growth rather than redistribution.     

Emerging Urban Poverty and Effects of the Dibao Program on Alleviating Poverty in China

The present paper describes the current urban poverty situation,examines the factors affecting the probability of a household being in poverty and investigates how the urban minimum living standard guarantee (dibao) program helps poor people to get out of poverty. The targeting efficiency of the urban dibao program is discussed. The present study finds that the poverty rate of households with unemployed workers is much higher than that of households without unemployed workers. The urban dibao program is helpful in reducing poverty rates,but it does not reduce poverty rates too much. The government should place emphasis on helping laid-off and unemployed workers to become reemployed. The most urgent problem for the dibao program is improving the efficiency of targeting.     

The Food (In)Security Impact of Land Redistribution in South Africa: Microeconometric Evidence from National Data

The South African land-reform program has been widely criticized for its slow pace as well as its apparent lack of contribution to poverty reduction. No econometric evidence of the impact of land transfers has been provided to date and this paper attempts to fill this gap by considering the impact of receiving a land grant on households’ food insecurity. Propensity score matching and univariate probit estimates using two national household surveys indicate that, on average, land grant recipients are more food insecure than comparable non-participants. Recursive bivariate probit estimates suggest that selection bias is not driving this result.     

Food Demand Characteristics in Uganda: Estimation and Policy Relevance

Uganda was highly successful in reducing poverty over the past two decades but made little progress towards household food security. This underlines the need for designing food security interventions customised for household‐specific needs and behaviours. This study estimates Ugandan household demand behaviour with a focus on food consumption paying particular attention to household‐specific characteristics. The results show that preferences to increase calorie‐dense staple consumption, likely associated with food energy deficiency, extend far beyond the percentage of rural Ugandans officially deemed poor. Price elasticities indicate that poor rural households are largely well positioned to compensate staple price increases by substitution as long as they are not already concentrated on the cheapest foods. This flexibility applies less to urban households. The estimated demand elasticities generally vary widely between rural and urban households and depend on expenditure levels. Household‐specific characteristics have significant, sometimes pronounced, influences on demand, as do seasons and regions. The results reflect highly differentiated demand behaviour, which can be utilised to improve the design and evaluation of food security interventions.