Measurement of Changes in Economic Welfare in India: 1970–2001

This paper provides time series estimates of measures of economic welfare, inequality, decile class specific true cost of living index and poverty measures based on 20 rounds of National Sample Survey data for the period 1970–2001. It has estimated piece-wise Linear Expenditure System (LES) for very poor, moderately poor, non-poor low and non-poor high expenditure groups for rural as well as urban areas. Money metric utility for deciles are derived from the money metric utility function and social welfare index is constructed by aggregating metric utility of the deciles. Using social welfare index as well as real per capita consumption, the paper analyses the changes in economic welfare over the three decades. Using conventional measures, the paper analyses the changes in poverty and inequality during 1970–2001. The paper also provides estimates of the welfare effects of commodity prices.

     

MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY: POLAND IN THE 1980s

This paper presents results of an examination of poverty in Poland in the 1980s. The individual welfare measure is expenditure on consumption per equivalent adult. Household equivalence scales are estimated using a quasi-exact scales trans logarithmic model. Four poverty indices are calculated. These are intended to capture the following aspects of poverty: (1) incidence, (2) relative deprivation, acid (3) social ability to eliminate poverty by income transfers. The study revealed significant changes in poverty during the investigated period, from 9 to 30 percent with persistent poverty resulting for pensioners, farmers and low educated persons.     

Viewpoint: Measuring the well‐being of the poor with income or consumption: a Canadian perspective

Abstract There is a long tradition of using consumption measures derived from Statistics Canada's household expenditures surveys to study material well‐being, inequality, and poverty. We offer an introduction to this research. Income and consumption measures give different pictures of the patterns of material well‐being in Canada, but the differences are not as large as in the US. We also provide a comparison to Meyer and Sullivan's results on data quality. Canadian expenditure surveys are of high quality. Unique aspects of these surveys (variation in quality control measures over time and the possibility of comparing to income tax data) provide important insights into the quality of survey data on income and consumption.     

Price Changes and Some Underlying Aspects of Measurement of Poverty

The paper deals with effects of price changes on measurement of poverty. It is shown that there are situations, when prices and nominal incomes change, a higher nutritional intake or an increase in commodity consumption of the poor can be associated with higher poverty gaps and a higher poverty index of the society. A positive relationship of this kind is quite counter-intuitive in the context of poverty measurement. This is caused by the adjustment of the poverty line and/or incomes of one situation by the prices of the other for the purpose of comparison.

     

How to Compare Apples And Oranges: Poverty Measurement Based on Different Definitions of Consumption

Poverty rates calculated on the basis of household consumption expenditures are routinely compared across countries and time. The surveys which underlie these comparisons typically differ in the types of food and non-food expenditures included, often in ways which are easily overlooked by analysts. With several examples we demonstrate that these commonly occurring variations in expenditure definitions can give rise to marked differences in poverty rates where there are no real differences in well-being. We show that one approach to calculating poverty lines, used with the headcount measure of poverty, can allow comparisons based on data with different definitions of consumption. In addition to allowing comparative poverty analysis using existing survey data, the results suggest that poverty monitoring could be done effectively at lower cost by alternating detailed expenditure surveys with far more abbreviated surveys.     

Electricity Tariff Changes and Consumer Sentiment on Household Consumption Expenditure in Malaysia

Purpose

This study investigates the impact of the current electricity tariff, represented by optimized tariff calculation, on Malaysian household’s consumption across different levels of income.

Design/methodology/approach

The input-output (IO) model has vastly been used in many energy economics literature that presented the matrix of production between various sectors in an economy. This study aggregated the 124 subsectors in IO Price Table 2015 into 12 groups of consumption of goods and services based on Household Expenditure Survey 2019 (HES 2019) to meet the study’ objectives.

Findings

This study found that in all simulations, high-income earners would be highly affected by the tariff changes. The lower the increment level in electricity tariff rate, the lower the magnitude would be on the changes of household expenditure level.

Research limitations/implications

Optimization in electricity tariff consumptions can pattern the Malaysian household’s consumption across different levels of income efficiently.

Practical implications

Useful to all consumer in the Malaysia economic business sector to predict their energy consumption up to optimum level.

Social implications

The study’s findings can benefit the society in optimiza their electricity consumption since everyone requires the energy for basic needs in their life.

     

POVERTY DYNAMICS DURING TRADE REFORM: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL VIETNAM

This paper implements and adapts the conceptual framework developed by Winters (2002) that identifies the transmission mechanisms between trade policy reform and household welfare outcomes. We make use of household panel data from Vietnam collected in two years, 1992–93 and 1997–98 that span the very earliest years of the reform period and its immediate after effects. Poverty dynamics are modeled using changes in consumption expenditure and poverty transition models. The trade effect is captured by a set of variables that are most likely to have an impact on rural poverty, namely prices of staples and employment in the export sector. We show that trade liberalization has a material and positive effect on rural household welfare and this trade effect is largely transmitted to the poor through the labor market channel.     

Socio-economic Determinants of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural West Bengal: A Household Level Analysis

The present study tries to estimate the incidence, depth and severity of multidimensional poverty (MDP) along with the contributions of dimensions to MDP among the rural households using multi-stage random sampling method in West Bengal. We decompose the inequality of deprivation scores between and within different socio-economic, religious and ethnic groups. The factors affecting the probability of falling in multidimensional poverty is also explored here using logistic regression, and the regression results suggest that public infrastructure plays an essential role towards explaining the variations of MDP. The present study is expected to be helpful to the development planners for better understanding of the root causes of MDP among the rural households in West Bengal.

     

Seasonality of income and poverty in Bangladesh

Seasonal food deprivation in Bangladesh, locally known as Monga, sometimes rises to the level of famine during the pre-harvest period of aman rice. An analysis of household income and expenditure survey data shows that income and consumption are lower during Monga than in other seasons, and that seasonal income greatly influences seasonal consumption. Econometric estimates reject the hypothesis of perfect consumption smoothing. In the northwestern region of greater Rangpur, rural households suffer disproportionately from Monga. Seasonal differences in poverty across regions are due mainly to differences in household-specific seasonality of income and consumption. Income diversification explains the lower incidence of income seasonality observed in non-Rangpur regions. To contain seasonal hunger in greater Rangpur, public policies should promote rural income diversification together with seasonal migration. A flexible microfinance scheme that provides both production and consumption loans on flexible repayment terms could help diversify income and reduce seasonality of income and poverty.     

我国贫困地区农村居民消费需求影响因素研究

本文基于2005年国家级贫困县农村居民入户调查数据,实证分析了收入、消费环境、消费观念以及人口学特征等因素对我国贫困地区农村居民消费需求的影响。研究结果表明,居民所在村通公路会增加农民的消费支出;家庭规模的扩大会导致居民消费支出的减少;如果居民家庭中有成员在城市工作,其消费观念的变化会导致其消费支出发生变化;在我国贫困地区,汉族居民的消费支出水平高于少数民族居民;家庭结构对居民消费支出亦有显著影响。在此基础上,本文提出改善我国贫困地区农村居民消费水平的措施,包括提高农村居民的收入、加快农村地区基础设施建设、改变农村居民的消费观念、注重对少数民族居民的政策扶持等。     

Does urbanization reduce rural poverty? Evidence from Vietnam

This paper uses data from household surveys to contribute to the urbanization-poverty nexus literature by assessing the effect of urbanization on income, expenditure, and poverty in rural households in Vietnam. We find that the urbanization process stimulates the transition from farm to non-farm activities in rural areas. More specifically, urbanization tends to reduce farm income and increase wages and non-farm income in rural households. This suggests that total income and consumption expenditure of rural households are more likely to increase with urbanization. Finally, we find also that urbanization helps decrease the expenditure poverty rate of rural households, albeit by a small magnitude.     

贫困缺粮地区的粮食消费和食品安全

本文以实证分析方法对我国农村地区,特别是贫困缺粮地区的农民食品消费及其影响因素进行研究,认为影响我国贫困农村地区农民粮食和食品安全保障的最主要因素是农民的收入水平;传统的扩大当地粮食种植比重、提高自给自足水平的政策选择不仅导致资源配置低效,而且不利于食品安全水平的提高。研究提出,更有效地保障这部分弱势人群食品安全的政策选择是增加农民收入、完善和健全农产品,特别是粮食市场的流通机制。     

Determinants of Public Expenditure on Health in India: A Panel Data Analysis at Sub-National Level

This study explores whether political factors and fiscal capacity matter more in explaining the growth and variation in health expenditure than the state’s income in India. The findings suggest that with the widening of political participation and greater representation of diverse population groups in politics, one can see a concomitant rise in government expenditure on health, indicating state interventionism in health sector for political reasons. Government’s desire to increase health spending depends on the availability of financial resources with the states, failing which the probability of fulfilling expenditure obligations towards the sector would be low. In contrast to earlier estimates that income elasticity of health expenditure is nearly equal to or greater than one, the elasticity is found to be less than one which ranges between 0.16 and 0.59. Overall, coefficient estimates of most of these important covariates show an upward bias in terms of magnitude and precision due to the absence of unobserved control factors and of advanced robust estimation techniques.

     

Economic well-being and poverty among the elderly: An analysis based on a collective consumption model

We apply the collective consumption model of Browning et al. (2010) to analyse economic well-being and poverty among the elderly. The model focuses on individual preferences, a consumption technology that captures the economies of scale of living in a couple, and a sharing rule that governs the intra-household allocation of resources. The model is applied to a time series of Dutch consumption expenditure surveys. Our empirical results indicate substantial economies of scale and a wife's share that is increasing in total expenditures. We further calculated two sets of poverty rates: one based on the collective consumption model and one based on the traditional approach with a standard equivalence scale. Poverty among widowers is underestimated by the traditional approach. The same is true for women (men) in elderly couples for the first (later) time periods in our analysis. Finally, we analysed the impact of becoming a widow(er). Based on cross-sectional evidence, we find that the drop in material well-being following the husband's death is rather substantial for women. For men, the picture is reversed.     

Methods of household consumption measurement through surveys: Experimental results from Tanzania

Surveys of consumption expenditure vary widely across many dimensions, including the level of reporting, the length of the reference period, and the degree of commodity detail. These variations occur both across countries and also over time within countries, with little current understanding of the implications of such changes for spatially and temporally consistent measurement of household consumption and poverty. A field experiment in Tanzania tests eight alternative methods of measuring household consumption, finding significant differences between consumption reported by the benchmark personal diary and other diary and recall formats. Under-reporting is particularly apparent for illiterate households and for urban respondents completing household diaries; recall modules measure lower consumption than a personal diary, with larger gaps among poorer households and for households with more adult members. Variations in reporting accuracy by household characteristics are also discussed and differences in measured poverty as a result of survey design are explored.     

Transport Modal Choice by Multinational Firms: Firm-level Evidence from Southeast Asia

The impacts of trade liberalization on poverty status of farm households in Africa often come through its effects on prices, government revenues, and employment, among other things. For the case of Ethiopia, the main channel through which trade liberalization affects farm households is changes in the prices of inputs and outputs. The aim of this study is to empirically examine the impacts of trade reform on poverty status in rural Ethiopia. The results show that, although households’ resource endowment had consistent and significant improvement impacts, trade liberalization had mixed effects on change in poverty status. As a result of trade liberalization, contrary to expectation, changes in the prices of cash crops (i.e. chat and coffee) had increased the probability of remaining poor and falling into poverty. On the other hand, changes in the relative prices of staple food crops (i.e. teff and wheat), together with access to credit and schools, had increased the probability of escaping poverty and remaining above the poverty line.     

Hoglex Demand Systems and Welfare Policy in Major Asean Developing Countries: A Bayesian Analysis Using Expenditure Unit Records

The HOGLEX demand system (Tran Van Hoa (1983, 1985)) is integrable and flexible in the sense that it is based on utility maximization and encompasses most other well-known demand systems (e.g., LINEX, AIDS) in the literature on consumer behaviour (Laitinen et al. (1983)). HOGLEX studies to date have been based on conventional OLS or MLE methods and panel aggregate income and price data, and restricted to investigating consumption patterns. The paper elaborates on three important subsets of the HOGLEX demand system and, using household expenditure unit records from two major ASEAN developing countries (i.e., Thailand and the Philippines), estimates by the Bayesian method these subsets for 20 socio-demographic cohorts, and discusses their substantial implications in social security and welfare policy analysis. We also estimate the models in the more practical case of measurement errors in total expenditure and compare the results with those without measurement errors.

     

Middle Class,Government Effectiveness and Poverty in the EU: A Dynamic Multilevel Analysis

Using the 2008-2011 EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data, we implement a dynamic three-level model to analyze poverty persistence in 26 EU countries. We isolate true state dependence phenomena by disentangling the effects of observed and unobserved heterogeneity at country level and employ cofactors not previously considered by the literature. Estimates show that unobserved heterogeneity across individuals remains large, even after explicitly controlling for the observable components of individual characteristics. The initial value of poverty has large effects on current poverty status but this effect is not uniform across countries. The risk of poverty is negatively related to the size of the structural middle class and to the level of structural social expenditure but it increases when lagged total public expenditure increases (with respect to the structural value). There is strong evidence of true state dependence.     

What the Welfare State Left Behind—Securing the Capability to Move for the Vulnerable

The purpose of the present paper is to measure the disadvantage of the vulnerable in contemporary Japan, focusing on their capabilities in moving both outside and inside the home. Our research interest is to find a new informational base other than consumption expenditure, which provides a strong clue about how to assess the eligibility for social support. We examine theoretical methods to apply the capability approach empirically, extending existing multidimensional poverty measurements. We find that people with disabilities and nursing care users are significantly restricted in their capabilities. The elderly in general, whom we have used as a reference group, are also in a precarious situation.