甘肃省能源资源禀赋与贫困关系的量化研究

应用因子分析和主成分分析方法,以甘肃省的能源资源数据为基础,分别分析了矿物能源和生物质能源资源禀赋与贫困之间的相关性.结果表明,矿物能源资源禀赋与贫困之间没有显著的相关性,而生物资源禀赋与贫困之间存在显著的负相关性,不合理的能源政策体制是决定能源资源禀赋与贫困之间相关性的主要因素,并提出了相关的建议.     

With exhaustible resources, can a developing country escape from the poverty trap?

This paper studies the optimal growth of a developing non-renewable natural resource producer. It extracts the resource, and produces a single consumption good with man-made capital. Moreover, it can sell the extracted resource abroad and use the revenues to buy an imported good, perfect substitute of the domestic consumption good. The domestic technology is convex-concave, so that the economy may be locked into a poverty trap. We show that the extent to which the country will escape from the poverty trap depends on the interactions between its technology and its impatience, the characteristics of the resource revenue function, the level of its initial capital stock, and the abundance of the natural resource.     

How well do tree plantations comply with the twin targets of the Clean Development Mechanism? — The case of tree plantations in Tanzania

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is supposed to provide both carbon mitigation and poverty reduction. This article reports from a model based study of market related carbon leakage and poverty reduction in the wake of a CDM tree-planting project in Tanzania. A tree plantation was incorporated in a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with income differentiated household segments. The study focused on sensitivity of carbon leakage and income distribution to different project ownerships and carbon premium allocations. It turned out that the project value in terms of carbon premium has clear shortcomings as indicator of induced GDP growth and poverty alleviation. The non-poor rural and urban households benefit considerably more than the poor households. However, rising household income in all domestic project ownership arrangements increases demand for food, raises use of fertilizer and crop yields. A carbon cycle module for agricultural land use was incorporated in the CGE model, showing an increased carbon sequestration in agricultural soil, representing a negative leakage through markets in the range of 60-120% of the certified emissions reductions as registered in the CDM tree plantation project.     

Fuel poverty in residential housing: providing financial support versus combatting substandard housing

Between 50 and 125 million Europeans are unable to afford the energy needed for adequate heating, cooking, light and use of appliances in the home. Tackling fuel poverty has thus become a public policy challenge. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of social energy subsidies and social housing to reduce fuel poverty. The literature reports that rising fuel prices, low incomes and energy-inefficient housing are the main causes of fuel poverty. Existing public policies focus mainly on price- and income-based measures to reduce fuel poverty, such as social energy subsidies. This type of policy is palliative as it does not permit to sustainably eradicate fuel poverty. Other policies aim to encourage renovation in order to improve energy efficiency. Those policies are curative as they sustainably reduce one cause of fuel poverty: energy inefficiency. In this article, we focus on another public policy to tackle fuel poverty: social housing. We believe that this policy could be preventive, as the literature reports the better energy efficiency of social housing. We use matching methods and find that living in social housing decreases fuel poverty by 5.4% to 9.1%. On the contrary, social energy subsidies have no effect on fuel poverty.     

Air conditioning and electricity expenditure: The role of climate in temperate countries

This paper investigates how households adopt and use air conditioning to adapt to climate change and increasingly high temperatures, which pose a threat to the health of vulnerable populations. The analysis examines conditions in eight temperate, industrialized countries (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland). The identification strategy exploits cross-country and cross-household variations by matching geocoded households with climate data. Our findings suggest that households respond to excess heat by purchasing and using air conditioners, leading to increased electricity consumption. Households on average spend 35%–42% more on electricity when they adopt air conditioning. Through an illustrative analysis, we show that climate change and the growing demand for air conditioning are likely to exacerbate energy poverty. The number of energy poor who spend a high share of income on electricity increases, and households in the lowest income quantile are the most negatively affected.     

A multivariate time series analysis of energy consumption,real output and pollutant emissions in a developing economy: New evidence from Nepal

Mountain economies will have to play a central role in attaining the global pursuit of green economic growth as crucial bearers of ecosystems goods and services. However, these economies are not adequately represented in the development policy debates in spite of their fundamental importance towards global sustainable development. This study examines the inter relationships between energy consumption, output and carbon emissions in a developing mountainous economy using an augmented Vector Autoregression model. Time-series data over the period 1975–2013 is studied applying a multivariate framework using population and gross fixed capital formation as additional variables for Nepal. Testing for Granger causality between integrated variables based on asymptotic theory reveals a long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP to energy consumption, and a unidirectional Granger causality running from carbon emissions to GDP. We suggest that the government of Nepal can address energy poverty by accelerating the adoption energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and energy efficiency improvements to narrow the energy supply-demand gap. The opportunity to promote the uptake of decentralised off-grid renewable technologies in remote areas and the large scale development of hydropower at the national level also needs to be prioritized. Our results remain robust across different estimators and contributes to an emerging literature on the nexus relationships between energy consumption, income and carbon emissions in mountainous developing economies.     

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.     

能源贫困与中国欠发达资源富集区的农村能源建设问题研究——以贵州毕节地区为例

能源贫困通过各种机制影响着贫困人口的减贫和发展。而当前中国欠发达资源富集区的能源贫困问题具有特殊性,即传统能源供应的突然减少和中断,而这种能源贫困使这些地区面临着生态恶化和贫困加深的风险。贵州毕节地区近年来的农村能源结构变化表明：该地区以煤和薪柴为代表的传统能源结构已经解体并给农民的生产生活造成一定影响,但新的能源结构也正在逐步形成。为有效能源贫困问题,今后该类型地区的农村能源建设应实施不同能源不同定位的发展建设措施。     

中国城镇家庭能源贫困评估*——基于微观调查数据的研究

我国扶贫工作重点已进入新阶段,从消除绝对贫困向缓解发展不平衡、不充分的相对贫困转变,从解决收入贫困向解决多维贫困转变,从重点解决农村贫困问题向统筹城乡扶贫转变。能源是人民生活质量的重要指标,能有效反映福利水平。了解我国城镇家庭能源消费的基本特征、准确测度能源贫困水平与分布,有助于为今后扶贫工作提供资料基础和科学管理依据。本文构建消费者能源消费决策分析框架,并运用第一次中国家庭能源消费调查数据,考察居民收入与能源消费之间的关系,并对中国城镇家庭能源贫困状况进行测度。研究发现,居民收入与能源消费之间存在S型非线性关系,能源价格、家庭特征、地域特征等因素在能源消费决策中都发挥重要影响。我国城镇家庭相对能源贫困较为严重,主要表现为能源可支付性问题。能源贫困率在20%左右,其中电力贫困程度更为严重,超过25%。家庭收入增长、户主受教育程度提高、城市电力基础设施的普及、城市环境规制水平的提升会显著降低城镇家庭陷入能源贫困的可能性,而电力价格上涨会显著增加城镇家庭陷入能源贫困的概率。     

Disentangling the Poverty Effects of Sectoral Output,Prices, and Policies in India

This paper attempts to disentangle the poverty effects of key policy variables that directly affect the poor (namely the government‐led channel of development spending and financing) in both agricultural and non‐agricultural sectors after accounting for the effect of respective sectoral per capita income and prices, using data from India over five decades. The paper emphasizes the sectoral composition of income and prices as mechanisms influencing the level of poverty and establishes empirically that it is the rise in non‐agricultural per capita income that reduces rural poverty via the channel of internal migration, after having controlled for the variation in key components of fiscal spending and monetary/financial policy via the availability of credit. Uneven sectoral growth pattern explains why urban poverty becomes a spill‐over of persistent rural poverty when the agricultural sector shrinks. While checking for robustness, there is evidence that the rise in non‐agricultural income alone may not reduce rural poverty, when measured in terms of rural infant mortality rate as a non‐income indicator of well‐being.     

甘肃省耕地资源禀赋与贫困关系的量化研究

文章对甘肃省87个县以及其中的43个国家贫困县的耕地资源指标和贫困指标进行了相关分析,得出的结论是:甘肃省耕地资源禀赋与贫困之间没有相关性。因此要解决甘肃省的贫困问题,保证粮食安全战略,进而实现可持续发展的目标,必须提高土地质量,发展生态农业,增加单位面积的产出,并调整农业产业结构。片面扩大耕地面积不仅不能够提高粮食产量,反而会造成发展的不可持续性。     

Consumption risk, technology adoption and poverty traps: Evidence from Ethiopia

Much has been written on the determinants of technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented: the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests. Building on an explicit model, this is explored in panel data from Ethiopia. Historical rainfall distributions are used to identify consumption risk. Controlling for unobserved household and time-varying village characteristics, it emerges that not just ex ante credit constraints, but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail, discourage the application of fertilizer. The lack of insurance or alternative means of keeping consumption smooth leaves some trapped in low return, lower risk agriculture, one of the mechanisms through which poverty perpetuates itself in agrarian settings.     

Global warming and livestock husbandry in Kenya: Impacts and adaptations

This paper examines the economic impact of climate change on livestock production in Kenya. We estimate a Ricardian model of net livestock incomes and further estimate the marginal impacts of climate change. We also simulate the impact of different climate scenarios on livestock incomes. The Ricardian results show that livestock production in Kenya is highly sensitive to climate change and that there is a non-linear relationship between climate change and livestock productivity. The estimated marginal impacts suggest modest gains from rising temperatures and losses from increased precipitation. The predictions from atmospheric ocean general circulation models suggest that livestock farmers in Kenya are likely to incur heavy losses from global warming. The highest and lowest losses are predicted from the Hadley Centre Coupled model (HADCM) and Parallel Climate Model (PCM) respectively, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The paper concludes that in the long term, climate change is likely to lead to increased poverty, vulnerability and loss of livelihoods. Several policy interventions are recommended to counter this impact.     

非传统生态脆弱区贫困群体的生态资源感知及生态脱贫意向分析——以山东地区的政府生态扶贫调查为例

依托山东地区政府生态扶贫实地调查所获得的776份问卷数据,运用二元Logistic模型对非传统生态脆弱区贫困群体的生态资源感知及生态脱贫意向进行实证分析。样本区域贫困群体的生态资源感知指数介于2.307~2.953之间,无较大差异,超过90%的贫困群体存在积极生态脱贫意向。实证结果表明:(1)非传统生态脆弱区生态资源韧性大,贫困群体的生态资源供给感知敏感度低于生态资源需求感知;(2)非传统生态脆弱区贫困群体的生态脱贫意向首先直接受到生态保护补偿扶贫政策的刺激,除了补助金补偿,还应通过就业机会补偿、市场化补偿等多种形式刺激贫困群体的发展积极性;(3)其次生态脱贫意向还受到生态资源感知、生态脱贫政策和社会人口特征的交互影响。     

Microcredit,Labor, and Poverty Impacts in Urban Mexico

Improved household accessibility to credit is a significant determinant of intra‐household allocation of labor resources with important implications for productivity, income, and poverty status. However, credit accessibility could also have wider impacts on poverty if it leads to new hires outside the household. This paper contributes to the existing literature on microcredit in two important ways. First, it investigates the routes through which microcredit reaches those in poverty outside the household. We test whether by lending to the vulnerable non‐poor microcredit can indirectly benefit poor laborers through increased employment. Second, we conduct the study in the context of urban poverty Mexico. This is relevant when considering that labor often represents the only source of livelihoods to the extreme urban poor. Our findings point to significant trickle‐down effects of microcredit that benefit poor laborers; however, these effects are only observed after loan‐supported enterprising households achieve earnings well above the poverty line.     

Housing as a wage and luxury good: absolute poverty and the distribution of income in supply-side economics

A fundamental tenet of supply-side economics is the ‘trickle-down’ effect, according to which a redistribution of income shares to those with higher incomes is supposed to result in sufficient income growth to make everyone better off. Apart from the inherent improbability of such an outcome, it is possible to argue that such a redistribution causes scarce resources to be transferred to luxury goods production, reducing the supply of the wage goods commodities in whose production those resources are used. The reduced availability of such commodities can give rise to an increase in absolute poverty (defined as the inability to afford basic necessities). This increase in absolute poverty forms a ‘threshold’ which must be more than balanced by an increase in real income due to the supply-side acceleration of economic growth before the ‘trickle-down’ effect may be said to have been realized. Some evidence from the UK is provided, together with a note on how this poverty mechanism affects the calculation of the retail Prices index.     

MONITORING ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE POVERTY: “NOT ENOUGH” IS NOT THE SAME AS “MUCH LESS”

Financial poverty indicators assess which people have few financial resources and are thereby at risk of having an unacceptably low living standard. Most countries use one or several “official” poverty indicators, but they typically use either an absolute or a relative benchmark to determine what is unacceptable; absolute benchmarks are based on basic needs or rights while relative benchmarks depend on what is considered to be a “normal” living standard. Applying the absolute U.S. and the relative EU poverty indicators on the U.S. and 15 EU member states, this research shows that it makes sense to use both benchmarks.     

滇西北高山峡谷区脱贫与生态保护建设研究

滇西北地区以其丰富多姿的生物资源、人文资源和景观资源而久负盛名。但由于地处边远和环境恶劣造成区内贫困问题、生态环境在耕种农业发展的压力下日趋恶化、山地灾害频发,这都成为影响区域社会经济发展的主要障碍。本文在实地调查与统计资料的研究基础上,对区内贫困现状与产生因素进行综合评价,认为区内贫困人口表现为:经济收入缺乏型、粮食生产短缺型、能源困乏型、水资源缺乏型及环境型5种贫困特征,以此为基础,就如何通过调整产业结构、合理开发利用与管理资源等,为实现区域脱贫与建设良好的生态环境提出相关建议。     

Issues in environmental justice within the European Union

This paper surveys pressing issues facing current and future social policies in the European Union (EU) at the juncture of social justice demands and environmental concerns. European policy-makers have in fact only recently acknowledged the notions of environmental justice and environmental inequalities, which have been part of the US policy arsenal for almost two decades. Yet, challenges to equality and fairness in the environmental domain are many and growing within the European Union. After having defined environmental justice and environmental inequalities in the European context, the paper addresses two contemporary dimensions of those challenges for EU social policies: vulnerability and exposure to environmental disaster and risk; and fairness in environmental taxation and the related issue of fuel poverty.