Vulnerability and poverty dynamics in Vietnam

Drawing upon the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) data that cover the whole of Vietnam in 2002 and 2004, ex ante measures of vulnerability are constructed. These are then compared with static indicators of poverty (i.e. the headcount ratio in a particular year). Detailed analyses of the panel data show that (i) in general, vulnerability in 2002 translates into poverty in 2004; (ii) vulnerability of the poor tends to perpetuate their poverty and (iii) sections of the nonpoor but vulnerable slip into poverty. Durable reduction in poverty is conditional on (i) accurate identification of the vulnerable, (ii) their sources of vulnerability and (iii) design of social safety nets that would enable the vulnerable to reduce risks and cope better with rapid integration of markets with the larger global economy.     

中国老年家庭的经济脆弱性与贫困

利用中国健康与营养调查(CHNS)2006和2009年的面板数据测度了老年家庭的经济脆弱性,检验各因素对经济脆弱性和贫困的相对影响力。老年家庭的经济脆弱性高于贫困;户主特征和家庭变量不同程度地影响到了经济脆弱性及贫困,代际间向上流动的私人转移支付对老年家庭的经济脆弱性和贫困没有作用;超过24%的非贫困家庭是经济脆弱性家庭;期望效用的脆弱性(VEU)方法表明,不平等虽然减少了脆弱性,但其影响经济脆弱性的力量最小,不可解释的风险是最重要的因素,异质性风险和协同性风险的力量居中。     

An introduction to rural and agricultural development in the digital age

This special issue contributes to the development economics literature by highlighting the role of information communication and technologies (ICTs) in supporting rural and agricultural development. It is comprised of nine papers. Key findings from this special issue include: (1) internet use increases rural consumption diversity and agricultural productivity; (2) smartphone use empowers rural women in household decision-making and off-farm work participation; (3) smartphone-based agricultural extension services boost rural income growth; (4) a lack of ICT infrastructure and inadequate skills to use digital technologies are two key factors that lead to digital poverty traps for smallholder rural farmers; (5) ICT adoption increases the probability of rural households' access to credit and empowers rural women and farm households in relatively less developed regions to access credit; (6) digital financial inclusion reduces farmers' vulnerability to poverty; and (7) e-commerce adoption increases both sales prices and marketing costs, but the magnitude of increasing the former is higher than the magnitude of increasing the latter, which finally contributes to a higher gross return. This special issue also proposes practical instruments and implications for advancing the application of ICTs in rural areas to accelerate rural and agricultural development in the digital age.     

数字金融、居民劳动参与及家庭财务脆弱性

国内居民劳动参与不足、家庭财务风险隐现,发展数字金融能否破局？基于中国家庭金融调查数据,本文从微观视角探究数字金融对居民劳动参与及家庭财务脆弱性的影响。研究发现,数字金融发展与数字金融使用程度的加深,有助于促进居民劳动参与,降低家庭财务脆弱性。机制分析表明,数字金融通过增加居民创业、吸引劳动力流动促进居民进行劳动参与,居民劳动参与的增加有助于降低家庭财务脆弱性,另外,数字金融降低家庭财务脆弱性的效应还可通过提升家庭金融素养、提高家庭金融资产配置比例来实现。异质性分析表明,不同特征的个体、家庭与地区,数字金融促进居民劳动参与、降低家庭脆弱性的边际效应既存在“数字红利”,也存在多维“数字鸿沟”。本文的结论为优化数字金融发展,利用数字金融来破解居民劳动参与率不足和家庭财务风险激增两大难题提供了政策参考。     

Vulnerability Orderings for Expected Poverty Indices

Vulnerability to poverty refers to the risk of an individual or household falling below the poverty line. A partial vulnerability to poverty ordering is defined to indicate when a situation characterized by uncertainty means that people are more vulnerable to poverty than in another situation. The family of expected poverty indices used in this context contains versions under vulnerability of many well‐known poverty indices. The ordering resembles the Hardy et al. result on the Lorenz partial ordering. A separate ordering for the expected income gap ratio is also investigated. First‐order stochastic dominance is used to indicate when the expected value of the censored returns from the states increases.     

新农保与农村低收入家庭贫困脆弱性*——基于精准扶贫背景和不同贫困标准

为考察新农保在精准扶贫时期能否降低农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱性，本文利用2014—2018年家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据，基于2 300元/年和每人每天32美元两类不同贫困标准衡量的贫困脆弱性指标，采用双向固定效应模型和工具变量法进行实证检验。研究发现，总体而言，缴费参与新农保对农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱性具有显著削弱作用，但领取新农保在一定程度上加剧了农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱程度。根据领保状态的分阶段分析发现，缴费参与新农保和缴费参保人数增加对未领保家庭和领保家庭的贫困脆弱性都具有显著改善作用，但领取新农保和领保人数对贫困脆弱性没有显著影响。异质性分析表明，缴费参与新农保可以改善健康成员家庭的贫困脆弱性，对无储蓄家庭和无借贷家庭的贫困脆弱程度具有显著缓解作用。机制检验表明，缴费参与新农保可以通过提高家庭生产性固定资产和减少代际转移，进而缓解家庭贫困脆弱性程度，而领取新农保则通过增加子女对老人的经济支持而加剧家庭贫困脆弱程度。     

Microfinance,vulnerability and risk in low income households

We investigate if participation in the Indian Self Help Group (SHG) program results in reducing poverty and vulnerability. The theoretical framework examines the mechanisms through which the pecuniary and non-pecuniary effects of the SHG impacts the households’ ability to manage risk. We use a vulnerability measure that quantifies the welfare loss associated with poverty and different types of risks, on an Indian panel survey data. Our results show that SHG members are less vulnerable compared with a group of non-SHG (control) members. About 80% of the vulnerability faced by the households is poverty related.     

Financial inclusion and poverty: a tale of forty-five thousand households

ABSTRACT

Using a new nationally representative survey data covering approximately 45,000 Indian households, we examine the effects of financial inclusion on poverty. We construct a multidimensional indicator of financial inclusion and examine the effects of financial inclusion on multiple measures of poverty including the household Poverty Probability Index (PPI), household deprivation scores, and poverty line. We find that financial inclusion has a strong poverty-reducing effect. This finding is consistent across the different measures of poverty used, and alternative ways of measures financial inclusion. These results underpin the importance of financial inclusion and the need for its promotion across countries.     

多维贫困的空间集聚与金融减贫的空间溢出—来自中国的经验证据

文章利用中国30个省份1999?2014年的省际面板数据,结合空间计量模型探讨了农村贫困的空间集聚效应和金融减贫的空间溢出效应.研究发现,不管是采用地理距离权重、经济距离权重还是嵌套权重,农民收入贫困、教育贫困和医疗贫困均呈现出显著的空间正向关联,意味着贫困分布呈现典型的"穷-穷"集聚特征,这一分布特征实际上从贫困角度验证了中国区域发展的不平衡.对收入贫困和教育贫困,农村金融发展不仅具有直接的减贫作用,还通过空间溢出效应对邻近省份发挥间接减贫作用,且这种溢出效应带来的减贫效果比直接效应更为显著.对医疗贫困等公共服务上的贫困,其改善主要依赖于政府财政支出和当地经济水平的发展.文章的研究结论有助于政府从多维视角重新审视农民面临的贫困问题,为"十三五"实施全面脱贫拓宽了视野.     

The impact of Nepal's earthquake on the health status of rural children

We study the impact of Nepal's 2015 earthquake on the health status of children aged 0–5 years. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that the earthquake decreased height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) and that this effect is largely driven by females, who experienced an average decline of −0.763 standard deviations in their HAZ. Further, we find that females in the 0–3 years age group and in the least wealthy households are the most vulnerable. This is particularly unfortunate, as the first 3 years of life can impact long-term health and well-being, and female undernutrition contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and ill health.     

The impact of macroprudential policies on the transmission of shocks across financially integrated countries

We study the implications of macroprudential policies across countries on the transmission of shocks when international investment activities are allowed. In a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model in which international investors are borrowing constrained and pledge international assets, we introduce a time-varying loan-to-value (LTV) ratio that adjusts to the variation of three different financial vulnerability indicators. We examine the effect of these policies on negative productivity and borrowing capacity shocks. Although time-varying LTV ratios reduce the international propagation of the productivity shock, their response to the shock depends on the financial vulnerability indicator with which the LTV ratio changes. With a productivity shock, the adjustment of the LTV ratio to the deviation of credit or asset price helps to reverse the negative impact of the shock. With a financial shock, LTV ratios varying with a deviation of credit-to-GDP ratio or aggregate credit can mitigate the impact of a negative financial shock. Adjustment of the LTV ratios reduces the fluctuation of international investors' balance sheets, investment, and productivity. We find that countries improve their welfare when time-varying LTV ratios are in place. The magnitude of the welfare gain differs with both the financial vulnerability indicator and the shock.     

Lifting You up or Dragging You Down? The Role of Financial Inclusion in Poverty Transitions Among Italian Households

We estimate the effect of financial inclusion on transition probabilities into/out of poverty. By exploiting a longitudinal sample of Italian households between 2002 and 2016, we find that financial inclusion is effective in both reducing the likelihood of entering poverty and helping the poor to climb out of it. According to our estimates, access to deposit accounts reduces the risk of falling below the poverty line by 2.7 percentage points (pp) and increases the chance of exiting poverty by 4.4 pp. Significance and magnitude of such effects are confirmed when considering different poverty thresholds and definitions, alternative proxies for financial inclusion as well as alternative empirical strategies.     

Equal opportunity and poverty reduction: How should aid be allocated?

This paper analyzes a model of aid allocation equalizing the opportunity between recipient countries to reach a common poverty reduction goal. We propose a fair and efficient aid allocation based on a multicriteria principle. The model considers structural handicaps in recipient countries in terms of lack of human capital and economic vulnerability, their initial poverty, and the natural gap between the growth rate required to reach a development goal and the observed one. We show that our proposed aid allocation favors poor and vulnerable countries with our multicriteria principle. It substantially differs from the observed allocation. Analyses also shed light on the impact of the donors' aversion to the low natural growth gap in recipient countries on the optimal aid allocation and the marginal efficiency of aid.     

Can microcredit reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from rural Vietnam

Extant literature has extensively explored microcredit's impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. However, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of credit services in helping the poor in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether rural microcredit can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which microcredit borrowing has a vital role in household businesses and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey data set from 2008 to 2016 is used to explore this issue. The findings indicate that rural Vietnam's access to microcredit significantly reduces vulnerability to poverty. Moreover, better-off households are seemingly the most effective at using microcredit, whereas the opposite is found among worse-off households. These results are found to be robust using the propensity score matching method.     

金融能力、金融决策与贫困

本文利用2013年中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据,通过因子分析法构建居民金融能力指数,运用Probit模型、工具变量法和中介效应模型实证分析了金融能力对贫困的影响以及金融能力、金融决策与贫困之间的作用机理。研究发现：（1）无论是绝对贫困还是相对贫困,金融能力能够显著抑制贫困的发生,且城镇地区相较农村地区更明显。（2）金融能力对贫困的影响既存在“抑制效应”,也存在“偏离效应”,两者之间呈现正“U”型关系。（3）经中介效应模型计算可知,在“抑制效应”下,金融能力可以通过改善金融决策来缓解居民贫困状况。具体而言,在三种不同的贫困状况衡量方式下,金融决策的中介效应占比分别为2542%,2296%和2160%。     

Intermediaries,transport costs and interlinked transactions

Farmers in developing countries often encounter difficulties selling their products on local markets. Inadequate transport infrastructure in rural areas and large distances between areas of production and consumption mean that farmers find it costly to bring their produce to the market and this very often results in small net margins and poverty among farmers who are geographically isolated. Agriculture in developing countries is characterized by the presence of intermediaries that have a cost advantage over farmers. Because of their market power, these intermediaries are able to impose interlinked contracts and are free to choose the spatial pricing policy they use. In this paper, we develop a model of input–output interlinked contracts between an intermediary and geographically dispersed farmers. We establish when the intermediary uses either uniform or mill pricing policies, as opposed to spatial discriminatory pricing. For each pricing policy, we analyze what the welfare implications are in terms of an increase in farmers' income and a reduction in poverty in rural areas. We also establish how the choice of a spatial pricing policy impacts geographically isolated farmers and how it influences the participation by farmers.     

Does financial inclusion empower women in Africa?

This paper examines the effect of financial inclusion on women's empowerment. We contribute to the growing interest in financial inclusion effectiveness literature by conducting an empirical analysis of 42 African countries to examine the role of financial inclusion in empowering women. We also examine and compare the effectiveness of the three dimensions of financial inclusion viz. usage, access, and quality, and the first most influential indicators, based on their PCA score, of these dimensions. Our findings suggest that financial inclusion has a significantly positive effect on women's empowerment-measured by females' human development index. Examining the relative importance of financial inclusion dimensions, we find access to financial services has a higher effect on women's empowerment. These results are robust to alternative measures of women's empowerment and financial inclusion, and alternative estimation procedures. We also find that the effect of financial inclusion on women's empowerment is higher in low and lower-middle-income countries compared with upper-middle-income countries in the region. This study provides evidence of one of the channels through which financial inclusion contributes to reducing gender inequality, and thereby enhancing economic development.     

MEASURING POVERTY USING BOTH INCOME AND WEALTH: A CROSS‐COUNTRY COMPARISON BETWEEN THE U.S. AND SPAIN

We study the correspondence between a household's income and its vulnerability to income shocks in two developed countries: the U.S. and Spain. Vulnerability is measured by the availability of wealth to smooth consumption in a multidimensional approach to poverty, which allows us to identify three groups of households: the twice‐poor group, which includes income‐poor households who lack an adequate stock of wealth; the group of protected‐poor households, which are all those income‐poor families with a buffer stock of wealth they can rely on; and the vulnerable‐non‐poor group, including households above the income‐poverty line that do not hold any stock of wealth. Interestingly, the risk of belonging to these groups changes over the life‐cycle in both countries while the size of the groups differs significantly between Spain and the U.S., although this result is quite sensitive to whether the housing wealth component is included in the wealth measure or not.     

包容性金融发展与农村居民贫困减缓——基于全要素生产率视角的分析

本文用DEA—Malmquist指数法测算了全要素生产率指数，结合2006—2016年中国内地省际面板数据，基于全要素生产率视角，运用中介效应模型实证分析了包容性金融发展对农村居民贫困的影响。实证结果表明：（1）包容性金融发展能够通过全要素生产率的中介效应发挥减贫作用。（2）进一步的研究发现，包容性金融服务渗透度的提升对贫困的影响最为显著；同时，包容性金融发展可通过技术进步和效率提升作用来推动全要素生产率增长，进一步作用于贫困。（3）稳健性检验表明，我国东部与中西部地区包容性金融发展水平差异较大，对全要素生产率的提升乃至农村减贫的贡献表现出较大不平衡性。本文的政策建议为：首先，应持续推进包容性金融发展，充分发挥全要素生产率的中介效应，以更快实现2020年全面脱贫目标；其次，要继续加强农村金融基础设施建设，以实现金融 服务均等性，充分发挥金融减贫的优势；最后，要合理配置金融资源，注重地区间发展的公平性，以实现经济社会均衡发展。     

Stress test for reforms: Transition and East Asian 'contagion'

Contagion from East Asia imposed a severe 'stress test' on the market-orientedreforms of transition economies. We find that the portfolio reallocations of investors differentiated sharply among these economies at the height of the East Asian turmoil, appearing clearly in the relative movements in interest rates and share prices. Those countries that appeared more vulnerable to contagion had large public or private sector imbalances and low reserve cover of short-term debt. The analysis, however, goes beyond macroeconomic and financial imbalances to link these weak fundamentals to inadequate structural and institutional reforms. We find that flaws in public finances together with weak enterprises and financial institutions were key underlying factors in the vulnerability to East Asian contagion. They were also key causes of the Russian crisis, which initiated a new round of contagion driven primarily by high exposures to Russian trade.