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。     

Poverty, Growth, and Redistribution: a Study of Iran

The paper examines changes in the extent of poverty in Iran in the period 1983 to 1993. More specifically, it investigates the contributions of growth and redistribution factors to changes in poverty over this period of ten years. The analysis is based on household‐level data relating to three Household Income and Expenditures Surveys of 1983, 1988, and 1993. The study reveals that the extent of poverty in the rural sector declined slightly, whereas in the urban sector it increased significantly. Decomposition of changes in poverty into growth and redistribution components indicates that in each sector the redistribution component was positive, implying that the deterioration of income inequality contributed to the worsening of poverty. The growth component, however, affected the two sectors differently: it contributed to a reduction in poverty in rural areas and an increase in urban areas.     

PRICES,INEQUALITY, AND POVERTY: METHODOLOGY AND INDIAN EVIDENCE

This paper uses a methodology for evaluating the distributional implications of price movement for inequality and poverty measurement. The methodology is based on a distinction between inequalities in nominal and real expenditure. The conversion of nominal to real expenditure takes into account the varying household preferences. The empirical application to the Indian budget datasets from NSS rounds 50, 55, and 61 shows the usefulness of the proposed procedures. The relative price changes in India have tended to be inequality and poverty reducing as confirmed by formal statistical tests. The result is robust to expenditure dependent equivalence scales. The progressivity of the relative price changes weakened in the second half of our time period as Fuel and Light overtook the composite group called “Miscellaneous” in recording the largest price increase. While the poverty rates registered a decline, which was marginal in the urban areas, there was a sharp increase in inequality.     

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.     

Economic reform,growth and the poor: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

A new decomposition of poverty changes is developed to analyse the determinants of poverty changes during a period of economic reform (1989–1995) in villages in Ethiopia. Poverty fell substantially, but with diverse experiences across villages. Shocks mattered, but the main factors driving consumption changes were relative prices changes, resulting in changes in the returns to land, labour, human capital and location. The experience of the poor is mixed: one group of the poor in 1989, with relatively good land and location, outperformed all other households, while another group with much poorer endowments and location experienced virtually unchanged and persistent poverty.     

The impact of natural disasters on household income,expenditure, poverty and inequality: evidence from Vietnam

Natural disasters are expected exacerbate poverty and inequality, but little evidence exists to support the impact at household level. This article examines the effect of natural disasters on household income, expenditure, poverty and inequality using the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey in 2008. The effects of a natural disaster on household income and expenditure, corrected for fixed effects and potential endogeneity bias, are estimated at 6.9% and 7.1% declines in Vietnamese household per capita income and expenditure, respectively. Natural disasters demonstrably worsen expenditure poverty and inequality in Vietnam, and thus should be considered as a factor in designing poverty alleviation policies.     

Finance and inequality: a study of Indian states

Although a large literature exists on finance and economic growth, few studies have empirically examined the relationship between finance and inequality. Using grouped national household sample survey data on monthly household consumption expenditure at the sub-national level for the years 1999–2000 to 2006–2007, we examine the relationship between Financial Development (FD) and rural and urban inequality in India. The results indicate that FD is associated with a reduction in inequality, but only in the urban areas. Further, inequality is found to be higher in the richer states compared to less developed and low income states, and as state income increases, inequality also increases both in the rural and urban areas. Finally, our results show that increase in population per bank branch leads to higher inequality in urban areas but decline in rural areas.     

浅析贫困、经济增长与脱贫时间——基于中国城镇居民调查数据的分析

20世纪90年代以来，经济增长和收入分配不平等对于城镇人口脱贫时间产生了消极影响。研究发现，城镇贫困在1997年达到高峰，然后逐渐缓和；贫困人口的收入增长在初期能使脱贫时间迅速减少，但边际效果是递减的；贫困人口之间的收入分配不平等延长了脱贫时间，如果贫困人口的初始收入增加，则会明显缩短脱贫时间。     

Multi‐asset Deprivation and Pro‐poor Growth in Cameroon

This article analyzes pro‐poor growth of multiple dimensions of household well‐being by sector of activity in Cameroon. It uses (1) a polychoric principal component analysis to construct indicators of household asset endowments, (2) the growth incidence curve to analyze the pro‐poorness of the different assets, and (3) a Shapley value framework decomposition to account for changes in deprivation in terms of within‐sector growth and changes in within‐sector inequality. Data is sourced from the second and third Cameroon household consumption surveys. Results show that: (a) pro‐poor growth is not observed for all assets and households at the bottom of the distribution of the different assets experienced an increase in inequality; (b) for all asset endowments, overall deprivation worsened between 2001 and 2007; (c) whereas the growth component mitigated the worsening incidence, depth and severity of human asset deprivation, both growth and redistribution components accounted for the worsening physical, financial and social asset deprivations; (d) while the tertiary sectors of activity benefited some human asset poverty reduction, all sectors suffered from worsening financial and social asset deprivation. These results have implications for promoting growth and improving the allocation of household assets.     

The Hunger of Old Women in Rural Tanzania: Can Subjective Data Improve Poverty Measurement?

On average, women in Tanzania are slightly less likely than men to say that they are “always/often without enough food to eat”—but this masks a much higher rate of self‐reported food deprivation among elderly rural women. Official Tanzanian poverty statistics are, however, based on a methodology which presumes equal sharing per equivalent adult within the household. This paper combines subjective and objective micro‐data from Tanzania's 2007 Household Budget Survey and 2007 Views of the People Survey. By imputing individual consumption based on the relative probability of self‐reported food deprivation, it provides an example of the possible importance of one type of intra‐household inequality—i.e., the hunger of old women—for poverty measurement. Implications include the complexity of gendered intra‐household inequality and the importance of “technical” poverty measurement choices for public policy priorities, such as old age pensions.     

Health care spending and hidden poverty in India

India has a high level of out-of-pocket (OOP) health care spending, and lacks well developed health insurance markets. As a result, official measures of poverty and inequality that treat medical spending symmetrically with consumption goods can be misleading. We argue that OOP medical costs should be treated as necessary expenses for the treatment of illness, not as part of consumption. Adopting this perspective, we construct poverty and inequality measures for India that account for impoverishment induced by OOP medical costs. For 2011/12 we estimate that 4.1% of the population, or 50 million people, are in a state of “hidden poverty” due to medical expenses (based on official poverty lines). Furthermore, while poverty in India fell substantially from 1999/00 to 2011/12, the fraction of the remaining poverty that is due to medical costs has risen substantially. Economic growth appears less “pro-poor” if one accounts for OOP medical costs, especially since 2004/05, and especially in rural areas. Finally, we look beyond poverty rates to show how OOP health costs affect the entire shape of the consumption distribution.     

收入增长和分配对我国农村减贫的影响-方法、特征与证据

改革开放30年来,在农村居民收入水平快速增长的大背景下,农村减贫进程却表现出明显的波动性和不一致性。基于此,本文在贫困分解的基础上,运用贫困弹性的动态特征,从理论和实证的角度探讨了收入增长和收入分配对贫困减少的影响,解释上述问题。文章发现:(1)人均收入水平越高,贫困越有可能和收入不平等联系在一起;(2)收入不平等越严重的地区,贫困对收入不平等的反应越迟钝;(3)1998年是我国农村反贫困性质发生改变的拐点。文章建议,今后农村反贫困政策的重点应从以促进收入增长的开发式扶贫向以改善收入分配为重点的社会保护式扶贫政策转变。     

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.     

An exploration of the positive effect of inequality on common property forests

This paper analyzes the household level forces driving the positive impact of inequality on common property forest cover in Mexico. A game theoretic model demonstrates that when common property goods are complementary to private inputs in production, an increase in wealth inequality can lead to a decrease in exploitation of the commons. Data from 350 Mexican common properties show that as inequality increases, those on the lower end of the land distribution are less likely to use the commons. The data also show a negative correlation between inequality and poverty. Alternative hypotheses for these results are considered.     

CHINESE REGIONAL INEQUALITIES IN INCOME AND WELL-BEING

Dividing China into seven regions reveals rural income and consumption divergence for both 1980–2005 and 2000–05. But while real rural consumption growth averaged 7.7 percent over 1985–2005 in the eastern coastal region, it averaged 6.5 percent uniformly in the interior. In evaluating well-being, such rapid improvement in all regions arguably overshadows negative connotations of divergence. Twenty years of household survey data reveal dramatic increases in rural household savings, as rural consumption improved more slowly than income in some periods. This raises questions about the suitability of consumption as a basis for measuring well-being and its distribution. Increased savings appear to be transient, as some households save while others dissave to purchase durables and afford lumpy services like education and healthcare—supplies of which became more plentiful in the 1990s. The paper argues that more meaningful measures of regional disparities come from differences in regional poverty headcounts. It also suggests that higher regional inequality and accompanying interregional migration indicate that inequality plays an important positive role in inducing economic actors voluntarily to move to more productive locations and activities as a mechanism for ensuring sustainable improvements in individual well-being.     

GENDER, POVERTY AND THE INTRA-HOUSEHOLD DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES

Most empirical studies of poverty assume an equal sharing of resources between all household members. There is a growing body of research indicating that this assumption is not realistic. This paper explores how the unequal sharing of resources could potentially affect the measurement of poverty. Simulations based on micro-data from two countries (Italy and the U.S.A.) are carried out under the assumption that women "lose" and men and children "gain" because of unequal sharing in the household. Our findings suggest that if there is significant intra-household inequality of this type, as some writers have suggested, then conventional methods of poverty measurement will likely to lead to a serious under-estimate (over-estimate) of the incidence and intensity of female (male) poverty.     

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.     

Minimum Wage: Does it Improve Welfare in Thailand?

We study the causal impact of the minimum wage on labor market outcomes, household consumption, inequality and poverty in Thailand by relying on policy variation in minimum wages over time across provinces. We find that minimum‐wage increases have a large and significant impact on the likelihood of working in the uncovered sector among workers with elementary education. However, the impact is very small and insignificant among other labor market groups. In contrast, the minimum wage has large positive effects on the formal sector wages of low‐earning workers, such as the young, elderly and low educated. Increases in the minimum wage are associated with reductions in household poverty and consumption inequality at the bottom half of the distribution.     

Poverty, inequality, and growth in urban China, 1986–2000

Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated cross section household survey from 1986 to 2000, this study maps the changes in income, inequality, and poverty over the fifteen-year period and investigates the determinants of poverty. We find that the increase in poverty in the 1990s is associated with the increase in the relative food price and the need to purchase items that were previously provided free or at highly subsidized prices by the state, i.e., education, housing and medical care. In addition, the increased saving rate of poor households, which is due to an increase in income uncertainty, contributes significantly to the increase in poverty measured in terms of expenditure. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 710–729.     

DATA SOURCES ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN BANGLADESH, INDIA, PAKISTAN AND SRI LANKA: AN EVALUATION

This paper examines the data base available in four South Asian countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, for the examination of trends in real inequality and poverty. Taking the position that sample surveys of household income and consumption are the only really adequate bases on which size distributions of income for a less developed country can be constructed, the paper examines in Section I the reliability of the surveys available in the four countries. Section II evaluates available price data. Section III looks at directions for future development of data collection. The conclusion is reached that sample surveys regularly conducted in these countries do not provide a particularly good basis for this type of analysis. Needed alterations include permitting access to the primary data (or redesign of published tabulations to meet the needs of this type of analysis), use of per capita rather than total household income and consumption, better coverage of regions and occupations, and exploitation of the price data implicit in the survey data collected. Further, the surveys themselves need to be overhauled, especially with regard to timing of interviews. The paper concludes with a short discussion of alternatives to estimates of inequality that can be used to measure absolute deprivation, such as the QUAC stick for identifying nutritional insufficiency.