Government Spending, Growth and Poverty in Rural India

Using state-level data for 1970–93, a simultaneous equation model was developed to estimate the direct and indirect effects of different types of government expenditure on rural poverty and productivity growth in India. The results show that in order to reduce rural poverty, the Indian government should give highest priority to additional investments in rural roads and agricultural research. These types of investment not only have much larger poverty impacts per rupee spent than any other government investment, but also generate higher productivity growth. Apart from government spending on education, which has the third largest marginal impact on rural poverty and productivity growth, other investments (including irrigation, soil and water conservation, health, and rural and community development) have only modest impacts on growth and poverty per additional rupee spent.     

Books Reviewed

Books reviewed:
Peter J. Barry, Paul N. Ellinger, John A. Hopkin, and C.B. Baker, Financial Management in Agriculture
Barbara Harriss-White, (ed.) Agricultural Markets From Theory to Practice: Field Experience in Developing Countries
Jon Conrad, Resource Economics
Keith O.Fuglie, and David E. Schimmelpfennig, (eds.) Public-Private Collaboration in Agricultural Research: New Institutional Arrangements and Economic Implications     

印度森林资源管理与消除贫困考察报告

对印度森林资源管理、林产品贸易及加工、联合森林经营和消除贫困等情况进行了考察。联合森林经营是印度最重要的社会林业形式,对于恢复退化林地、增加当地居民收入、消除贫困、保障林产品需求等有较大贡献;印度政府将反贫困作为重要目标之一,制定有不同阶段的具体措施,并积极依靠民间科技力量扶贫,成效显著。印度森林资源管理及消除贫困的经验值得我国借鉴。     

农业产业扶贫应解决好的几个问题

产业扶贫是脱贫攻坚的重头戏。农业是贫困地区的基础产业和民生产业,是贫困人口生活和收入的重要来源。文章分析了当前农业产业扶贫中存在的困难和问题,提出要树立精准理念、选准特色产业、培育新型主体、完善利益机制、编制科学规划、加大投入力度、强化保险支持,确保贫困人口通过产业发展精准受益,如期实现脱贫。     

Robust Comparisons of Malnutrition in Developing Countries

We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to make international and inter–temporal welfare comparisons. While most poverty analyses rely on expenditures or income, we use anthropometric measures of nutrition as indicators of living standards. The advantages are that we observe individual—not household—well–being, deflators and exchange rates are unnecessary, and measurement techniques are similar across surveys. We test the robustness of the headcount results, and find that applying higher order Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty measures adds little information; although stochastic dominance testing of nutrition distributions reveals that changes in malnutrition are sensitive to the choice of the "nutrition poverty line."     

The Labour Process in Rural Haryana (India): A Field-Report from Two Villages

Forms of labour hiring and the extent of unemployment are analysed using primary data collected from two villages in Haryana (India) during 2002–3. Data from these villages show that wage labourers, particularly women, faced extremely high levels of unemployment. Employment in agriculture was limited and new forms of labour hiring contracts had emerged under conditions of high unemployment. Earnings of manual workers were very low and gender disparities in wages very high. In one of the villages, a high concentration of landholdings and a decline in labour use facilitated the use of long-term workers. Labour relations were characterized by significant degrees of unfreedom, although the extent and nature of unfreedom varied considerably between casual and long-term workers, and between the two villages. In particular, long-term siri workers worked under conditions that were akin to bondage. It is argued that a very high degree of unemployment, combined with unequal caste and land relations and dependence on employers for credit, contributed to sustenance of unfree labour relations in rural Haryana.     

河北坝上地区生态治理与反贫困问题研究

通过各方对河北坝上地区贫困和生态问题研究的分析,提出了该地区发展生态旅游农牧业,形成农、牧、游型生态产业区的思路,且作为今后发展的突破点;提出了走农业企业化发展道路,并把农业企业化发展与乡镇一级的行政区划改革有机地结合起来,促进该地区传统农牧业与生态、经济、社会的协调发展。     

安徽省大别山贫困地区农业发展战略研究

大别山贫困地区应立足生态和水源涵养的主体功能,依托山区特色资源优势,调整农业产业结构,突出发展劳动密集型的特色农业和观光休闲农业。要充分发挥政府的引导作用,逐步在大别山区建立生态补偿机制,转变山区经济增长方式,以科学发展观统筹区域和城乡协调发展。     

Agro-Manufactured Export Prices, Wages and Unemployment

This article estimates the impacts of world agricultural trade liberalization on wages and unemployment in Argentina in the presence of individual labor supply responses and adjustment costs in labor demand. After a 10% increase in agro-manufactured export prices, I find that: ( a ) the employment probability would increase by 1.36 percentage points, matched by a decline in the unemployment probability of 0.75 percentage points and an increase in labor market participation of 0.61 percentage points; ( b ) the unemployment rate would decline by 1.23 percentage points; ( c ) expected wages would increase by 10.3%, mostly due to higher employment probabilities.     

经济增长与收入再分配对湖北省农村贫困变动的影响

本文通过对湖北省否受益并相关结论贫困变动由人均收入水平和收入分配不平等程度两个因素共同决定。贫困变动的增长再分配分解，考察1997—2003年间如上两个因素村贫困变动的影响方向和程度，进而分析在经济增长过程中穷人是算和比较基尼系数，考察在此期间农村居民的收入分配状况，得出对农测。     

Chinese Land Reform in Long-Run Perspective and in the Wider East Asian Context

The claims made by Griffin et al. for the impact of land reform in China are unconvincing. The land reform of 1947–52 did not lead to a pronounced increase in agricultural output. Nor was it egalitarian; indeed, but for the deliberate preservation of the rich peasant economy, growth might have been non-existent. The second land reform of 1981–3 was equally ineffectual. Agricultural growth had shifted on to a faster growth path before decol-lectivization, and the surge of 1980–4 was little more than a temporary response to decent weather, procurement price rises, the abandonment of the Dazhai system and a reduction in output under-reporting. Rural income inequality has been held in check since 1984 because of local government intervention, not because family farming is intrinsically egalitarian. China's experience of land reform is mirrored by those of other East Asian countries. A century of land reform has not resolved Japan's deep-seated agricultural problems, nor those of Taiwan and South Korea.