Showing papers on "Poverty published in 2001"

World development report 2000/2001 : attacking poverty

Abstract: This report focuses on the dimensions of poverty, and how to create a better world, free of poverty. The analysis explores the nature, and evolution of poverty, and its causes, to present a framework for action. The opportunity for expanding poor people's assets is addressed, arguing that major reductions in human deprivation are indeed possible, that economic growth, inequality, and poverty reduction, can be harnessed through economic integration, and technological change, dependent not only on the evolvement of markets, but on the choices for public action at the global, national, and local levels. Actions to facilitate empowerment include state institutional responsiveness in building social institutions which will improve well-being, and health, to allow increased income-earning potential, access to education, and eventual removal of social barriers. Security aspects are enhanced, by assessing risk management towards reducing vulnerability to economic crises, and natural disasters. The report expands on the dimensions of human deprivation, to include powerlessness and voicelessness, vulnerability and fear. International dimensions are explored, through global actions to fight poverty, analyzing global trade, capital flows, and how to reform development assistance to forge change in the livelihoods of the poor.

Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences

Abstract: Losing the Traditional Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms' A Life of One's Own in a Runaway World Individualization, Globalization and Politics Beyond Status and Class? The Ambivalent Social Structure Poverty and Wealth in a 'Self-Driven Culture' From 'Living for Others' to 'A Life of One's Own' Individualization and Women On the Way to the Post-Familial Family From a Community of Need to Elective Affinities Division of Labour, Self-Imaging and Life Projects New Conflicts in the Family Declining Birthrates and the Wish to Have Children Apparatuses Do Not Care for People Health and Responsibility in the Age of Genetic Technology Death of One's Own, Life of One's Own Hopes from Transience Freedom's Children Freedom's Fathers Zombie Categories Interview with Ulrich Beck

The Economic Burden of Malaria

Abstract: Malaria and poverty are intimately connected. Controlling for factors such as tropical location, colonial history, and geographical isolation, countries with intensive malaria had income levels in 1995 of only 33% that of countries without malaria, whether or not the countries were in Africa. The high levels of malaria in poor countries are not mainly a consequence of poverty. Malaria is geographically specific. The ecological conditions that support the more efficient malaria mosquito vectors primarily determine the distribution and intensity of the disease. Intensive efforts to eliminate malaria in the most severely affected tropical countries have been largely ineffective. Countries that have eliminated malaria in the past half century have all been either subtropical or islands. These countries' economic growth in the 5 years after eliminating malaria has usually been substantially higher than growth in the neighboring countries. Cross-country regressions for the 1965-1990 period confirm the relationship between malaria and economic growth. Taking into account initial poverty, economic policy, tropical location, and life expectancy, among other factors, countries with intensive malaria grew 1.3% less per person per year, and a 10% reduction in malaria was associated with 0.3% higher growth. Controlling for many other tropical diseases does not change the correlation of malaria with economic growth, and these diseases are not themselves significantly negatively correlated with economic growth. A second independent measure of malaria has a slightly higher correlation with economic growth in the 1980-1996 period. We speculate about the mechanisms that could cause malaria to have such a large impact on the economy, such as foreign investment and economic networks within the country.

Trade, growth, and poverty*

Abstract: The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries. To determine the effect of globalization on growth, poverty, and inequality, the authors first identify a group of developing countries that are participating more in globalization. China, India, and several other large countries are part of this group, so well over half the population of the developing world lives in these globalizing economies. Over the past 20 years, the post-1980 globalizers have seen large increases in trade and significant declines in tariffs. Their growth rates accelerated between the 1970s and the 1980s and again between the 1980s and the 1990s, even as growth in the rich countries and the rest of the developing world slowed. The post-1980 globalizers are catching up to the rich countries, but the rest of the developing world (the non-globalizers) is falling further behind. Next, the authors ask how general these patterns are, using regressions that exploit within-country variations in trade and growth. After controlling for changes in other policies and addressing endogeneity with internal instruments, they find that trade has a strong positive effect on growth. Finally, the authors examine the effects of trade on the poor. They find little systematic evidence of a relationship between changes in trade volumes (or any other measure of globalization they consider) and changes in the income share of the poorest-or between changes in trade volumes and changes in household income inequality. They conclude, therefore, that the increase in growth rates that accompanies expanded trade translates on average into proportionate increases in incomes of the poor. Absolute poverty in the globalizing developing economies has fallen sharply in the past 20 years. The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries.

Growth, Inequality, and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages

Abstract: One side in the current debate about who benefits from growth has focused solely on average impacts on poverty and inequality, while the other side has focused on the diverse welfare impacts found beneath the averages. Both sides have a point. The evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction. But how much do poor people share in growth? Do they gain more in some settings than others? Do some gain while others lose? Does pro-poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth? Recent theories and evidence suggest some answers, but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributional change. Only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth-oriented policies. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to better inform development policy debates.

The home environments of children in the United States part I: variations by age, ethnicity, and poverty status.

Abstract: Although measures of the home environment have gained wide acceptance in the child development literature, what constitutes the “average” or “typical” home environment in the United States, and how this differs across ethnic groups and poverty status is not known. Item-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth on four age-related versions of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment–Short Form (HOME-SF) from five biennial assessments (1986–1994) were analyzed for the total sample and for four major ethnic groups: European Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans. The percentages of homes receiving credit on each item of all four versions of the HOME-SF are described. For the majority of items at all four age levels differences between poor and nonpoor families were noted. Differences were also obtained among African American, European American, and Hispanic American families, but the magnitude of the effect for poverty status was greater than for ethnicity, and usually absorbed most of the ethnic group effects on HOME-SF items. For every item at every age, the effects of poverty were proportional across European American, African American, and Hispanic American groups.

Engendering development through gender equality in rights, resources, and voice

Abstract: On one level, poverty exacerbates gender disparities. Inequalities between girls and boys in access to schooling or adequate health care are more acute among the poor than among those with higher incomes. These disparities disadvantage women and girls and limit their capacity to participate in and benefit from development. On another level, gender inequalities hinder development. Evidence brought together in this report shows this unambiguously. A central message is clear: ignoring gender disparities comes at great cost-to people's well-being and to countries' abilities to grow sustainably, to govern effectively, and thus to reduce poverty. This conclusion presents an important challenge to the development community. What types of policies and strategies promote gender equality and foster more effective development? This report examines extensive evidence on the effects of institutional reforms, economic policies, and active policy measures to promote greater equality between women and men. The evidence sends a second important message: policymakers have a number of policy instruments to promote gender equality and development effectiveness. But identifying what works requires consultations with stakeholders-both men and women-on key issues and actions. This points to a third important message in this report: to enhance development effectiveness, gender issues must be an integral part of policy analysis, design, and implementation.

School Subsidies for the Poor: Evaluating the Mexican Progresa Poverty Program. Center Discussion Paper.

Abstract: This paper evaluates how the Progresa Program, which provides poor mothers in rural Mexico with education grants, has affected enrollment. Poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the Progresa are compared to those who reside in other (control) communities. Pre-program comparisons check the randomized design, and double- difference estimators of the program's effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex. Probit models are also estimated for the probability a child is enrolled, controlling for additional characteristics of the child, their parents, local schools, and community, and for sample attrition, to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates. These estimates of program short-run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages.

Farming Systems and Poverty IMPROVING FARMERS' LIVELIHOODS IN A CHANGING WORLD

Abstract: Small farmers produce much of the developing world's food. Yet they are generally much poorer than the rest of the population in these countries, and are less food secure than even the urban poor. Furthermore, although the majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2030, farming populations will not be much smaller than they are today. For the foreseeable future, therefore, dealing with poverty and hunger in much of the world means confronting the problems that small farmers and their families face in their daily struggle for survival. The material for this book is derived from a study originally undertaken at the request of the World Bank in order to provide a specifically agricultural perspective to the revision of the Bank's rural development strategy. It has drawn on many years of specialized work within FAO and the World Bank, as well as in a number of other national and international institutions. Findings were supported by more than 20 case studies from around the world which analyzed innovative approaches to small farm or pastoral development. This book is intended for a wider audience than the original study, and it is hoped that policy makers, researchers, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and the agribusiness sector will all find its conclusions and recommendations interesting and thought provoking; and that they will carry the analysis further by applying the approach at national level to assist in the formulation of rural development strategies.

Moving to Opportunity in Boston: Early Results of a Randomized Mobility Experiment

Abstract: This paper examines the short-run impacts of a change in residential neighborhood on the well-being of low-income families, using evidence from a program in which eligibility for a housing voucher was determined by random lottery. We examine the experiences of households at the Boston site of Moving To Opportunity (MTO), a demonstration program in five cities. Families in high poverty public housing projects applied to MTO and were assigned by lottery to one of three groups: Experimental-offered mobility counseling and a Section 8 subsidy valid only in a Census tract with a poverty rate of less than 10 percent; Section 8 Comparison-offered a geographically unrestricted Section 8 subsidy; or Control-offered no new assistance, but continued to be eligible for public housing. Our quantitative analyses of program impacts uses data on 540 families from a baseline survey at program enrollment, a follow-up survey administered l to 3.5 years after random assignment, and state administrative data on earnings and welfare receipt. 48 percent of the Experimental group and 62 percent of the Section 8 Comparison group moved through the MTO program. One to three years after program entry, families in both treatment groups were more likely to be residing in neighborhoods with low poverty rates and high education levels than were families in the Control group. However, while members of the Experimental group were much more likely to be residing in suburban communities than were those in the Section 8 group, the lower program take-up rate among the Experimental group resulted in more families remaining in the most distressed communities. Households in both treatment groups experienced improvements in multiple measures of well-being relative to the Control group including increased safety, improved health among household heads, and fewer behavior problems among boys. Experimental group children were also less likely to be a victim of a personal crime, to be injured, or to experience an asthma attack. There are no significant impacts of either MTO treatment on the employment, earnings, or welfare receipt of household heads in the first three years after random assignment.

Psychosocial and material pathways in the relation between income and health: a response to Lynch et al

Abstract: Much of the debate on health inequalities has centred on the damage done by poverty. However, evidence suggests that health is also related to inequality. Firstly, as the Whitehall studies of British civil servants show, there is a gradient in health among those who are not poor, indicating that the higher the socioeconomic position, the lower the morbidity and mortality.1–4 Whole population samples show that this gradient runs right across societies and that its magnitude varies between societies and over time. 5 6 Although absolute mortality has been falling in Britain, inequalities in mortality have increased. 7 8 Secondly, despite the health gradient within societies, there is little relation between average income (gross domestic product per capita) and life expectancy in rich countries. This suggests that absolute material standards are not, in themselves, the key. Thirdly, there is a strong relation between mortality and income inequalities. People living in countries with greater income inequality have a shorter life expectancy.9–11 Furthermore, a similar relation has been found for geographical areas within countries.12–15 #### Summary points Economic and social circumstances affect health through the physiological effects of their emotional and social meanings and the direct effects of material circumstances Material conditions do not adequately explain health inequalities in rich countries The relation between smaller inequalities in income and better population health reflects increased psychosocial wellbeing In rich countries wellbeing is more closely related to relative income than absolute income Social dominance, inequality, autonomy, and the quality of social relations have an impact on psychosocial wellbeing and are among the most powerful explanations for the pattern of population health in rich countries These observations support our argument that there are psychosocial pathways associated with relative disadvantage which act in addition to the direct effects of absolute material …

Attitudes Toward the Poor and Attributions for Poverty

Abstract: Prior psychological research on attitudes toward the poor has focused almost exclusively on the attributions people make to explain why individuals are poor (e.g., Smith & Stone, 1989; Zucker & Weiner, 1993). The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationships among feelings about the poor and poverty, stereotypes of the poor, attributions for poverty, and sociopolitical ideologies (as assessed by the Protestant Ethic, Belief in a Just World, and Right Wing Authoritarianism Scales). In our Midwestern college sample (n = 209), attitudes toward the poor were found to be significantly more negative than attitudes toward the middle class. In addition, participants were most likely to blame poor people them-selves for their poverty. However, attitudes toward the poor and attributions for the causes of poverty were found to vary among individuals from different sociodemographic backgrounds and by degree of endorsement of Protestant ethic, just world, and authoritarianism beliefs. Few gender differences were obtained.

Deep democracy: urban governmentality and the horizon of politics:

Abstract: This paper describes the work of an alliance formed by three civic organizations in Mumbai to address poverty - the NGO SPARC, the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan, a cooperative ...

Effects of Poverty and Maternal Depression on Early Child Development

Abstract: Researchers have renewed an interest in the harmful consequences of poverty on child development. This study builds on this work by focusing on one mechanism that links material hardship to child outcomes, namely the mediating effect of maternal depression. Using data from the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey, we found that maternal depression and poverty jeopardized the development of very young boys and girls, and to a certain extent, affluence buffered the deleterious consequences of depression. Results also showed that chronic maternal depression had severe implications for both boys and girls, whereas persistent poverty had a strong effect for the development of girls. The measures of poverty and maternal depression used in this study generally had a greater impact on measures of cognitive development than motor development.

Tackling the Down Side: Social Capital, Women's Empowerment and Micro-Finance in Cameroon

Abstract: Micro-finance programmes are currently dominated by the ‘financial selfsustainability paradigm’ where women’s participation in groups is promoted as a key means of increasing financial sustainability while at the same time assumed to automatically empower them. This article examines the experience of seven micro-finance programmes in Cameroon. The evidence indicates that micro-finance programmes which build social capital can indeed make a significant contribution to women’s empowerment. However, serious questions need to be asked about what sorts of norms, networks and associations are to be promoted, in whose interests, and how they can best contribute to empowerment, particularly for the poorest women. Where the complexities of power relations and inequality are ignored, reliance on social capital as a mechanism for reducing programme costs may undermine programme aims not only of empowerment but also of financial sustainability and poverty targeting.

Poverty reduction strategy papers.

Abstract: See also apers p 139 and Education and debate p 152 A path out of abject poverty is currently being beaten by many low income countries which are developing poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) as a condition for debt relief. This new acronym in the alphabet soup of international aid is the latest lifeline being offered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund after what many regard as the failure of its predecessor, the structural adjustment programme (SAP). By May, 33 interim and four full poverty reduction strategy papers had been developed: do they offer genuine hope to low income countries or are they the same old approaches under a new name? Structural adjustment was characterised by economic policies such as devaluation and public expenditure reduction coupled with longer term structural reforms such as privatisation and trade liberalisation. It has been blamed for rising food prices, closed schools, and massive lay offs and for delivering the final blow to creaking health systems. Poverty reduction strategies instead offer good intentions such as “national ownership,” “less dictation from Washington,” …

Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare

Abstract: Shattered Bonds is a stirring account of a worsening American social crisis--the disproportionate representation of black children in the U.S. foster care system and its effects on black communities and the country as a whole. Tying the origins and impact of this disparity to racial injustice, Dorothy Roberts contends that child-welfare policy reflects a political choice to address startling rates of black child poverty by punishing parents instead of tackling poverty's societal roots. Using conversations with mothers battling the Chicago child-welfare system for custody of their children, along with national data, Roberts levels a powerful indictment of racial disparities in foster care and tells a moving story of the women and children who earn our respect in their fight to keep their families intact.

Food insufficiency, family income, and health in US preschool and school-aged children

Abstract: Objectives. This study investigated associations between family income, food insufficiency, and health among US preschool and school-aged children. Methods. Data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were analyzed. Children were classified as food insufficient if the family respondent reported that the family sometimes or often did not get enough food to eat. Regression analyses were conducted with health measures as the outcome variables. Prevalence rates of health variables were compared by family income category, with control for age and gender. Odds ratios for food insufficiency were calculated with control for family income and other potential confounding factors. Results. Low-income children had a higher prevalence of poor/fair health status and iron deficiency than high-income children. After confounding factors, including poverty status, had been controlled, food-insufficient children were significantly more likely to have poorer health status and to experience more frequent stomachaches and headaches than food-sufficient children; preschool food-insufficient children had more frequent colds. Conclusions. Food insufficiency and low family income are health concerns for US preschool and school-aged children.

Globalization, Growth, and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy

Abstract: Assesses the impact of globalization; examines the anxieties it has generated about rising inequality, shifting power, and cultural uniformity; and addresses how to make globalization work better for poor countries and poor people. Considers the new wave of globalization and its economic effects; measures to improve the international architecture for integration and to enable locations currently left out of globalization to participate and benefit; what should be done to strengthen domestic institutions and policies; and issues of power, culture, and the environment. Summarizes an agenda for action. Collier is Director, and Dollar is Research Manager, in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. No index.

Governing development: neoliberalism, microcredit, and rational economic woman

Abstract: This paper addresses the emergence of microcredit programmes as a preferred strategy for poverty alleviation world-wide. Taking the paradigmatic case of Nepal, it engages a genealogical approach to trace how Nepalese planners' enduring concerns about rural development intersect in surprising (and gendered) ways with donors' present focus on deepening financial markets. In the resulting microcredit model, the onus for rural lending is devolved from commercial banks to subsidized 'rural development banks' and women borrowers become the target of an aggressive 'selfhelp' approach to development. As a governmental strategy, microcredit thus constitutes social citizenship and women's needs in a manner consistent with neoliberalism. Drawing on ethnographic research, the paper also considers the progressive and regressive possibilities in the articulation of such constructed subjectivities with local cultural ideologies and social processes. Such an investigation can in turn provide a foundation for articulating...

Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History

Abstract: Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 PART ONE 23 Chapter 1. Origins: Poverty and Social Science in The Era of Progressive Reform 25 Chapter 2. Poverty Knowledge as Cultural Critique: The Great Depression 55 Chapter 3. From the Deep South to the Dark Ghetto: Poverty Knowledge, Racial Liberalism, and Cultural "Pathology" 74 Chapter 4. Giving Birth to a "Culture of Poverty": Poverty Knowledge in Postwar Behavioral Science, Culture, and Ideology 99 Chapter 5. Community Action 124 PART TWO 137 Chapter 6. In the Midst of Plenty: The Political Economy of Poverty in the Affluent Society 139 Chapter 7. Fighting Poverty with Knowledge: The Office of Economic Opportunity and the Analytic Revolution in Government 166 Chapter 8. Poverty's Culture Wars 196 PART THREE 211 Chapter 9. The Poverty Research Industry 213 Chapter 10. Dependency, the "Underclass," and a New Welfare "Consensus": Poverty Knowledge for a Post-Liberal, Postindustrial Era 242 Chapter 11. The End of Welfare and the Case for a New Poverty Knowledge 284 Notes 297 Index 359

Distribution and Development: A New Look at the Developing World

Abstract: Most of the world's people live in "developing" economies, as do most of the world's poor. The predominant means of economic development is economic growth. In this book Gary Fields asks to what extent and in what circumstances economic growth improves the material standard of living of a country's people. Most development economists agree that economic growth raises the incomes of people in all parts of the income distribution and lowers the poverty rate. At the same time, some groups lose out because of changes accompanying economic growth. Fields examines these beliefs, asking what variables should be measured to determine whether progress is being made and what policies and circumstances cause some countries to do better than others. He also shows how the same data can be interpreted to reach different, even conflicting, conclusions. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, Fields defines and examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being. Finally, he considers various policies for broad-based growth.Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation.

URBAN POVERTY AFTER THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED : The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture

Abstract: ▪ Abstract In what follows we critically assess a selection of the works on urban poverty that followed the publication of WJ Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), with a particular focus on the family, the neighborhood, and culture. We frame our discussion by assessing the broad explanations of the increased concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, in the section on the family, we address the rising out-of-wedlock and disproportionately high teenage birthrates of poor urban women. Next, we critique the literature on neighborhood effects. Finally, in the discussion of culture, we examine critically the new efforts at complementing structural explanations with cultural accounts. We conclude by calling for more comparative, cross-regional, and historical studies, broader conceptions of urban poverty, and a greater focus on Latinos and other ethnic groups.

Conditional Cash Transfers and Their Impact on Child Work and Schooling: Evidence from the PROGRESA Program in Mexico

Abstract: In this paper we investigate whether a conditional cash transfer program such as the Programa Nacional de EducaciA³n, Salud y AlimentaciA³n (PROGRESA) can simultaneously combat the problems of low school attendance and child work. PROGRESA is a new program of the Mexican government aimed at alleviating extreme poverty in rural areas. It combats the different causes of poverty by providing cash benefits that are targeted directly to households on the condition of children attending school and visiting health clinics on a regular basis. Some of the questions addressed are as follows: Does the program reduce child labor? Does it increase participation in school activities? Does the latter occur at the expense of children's leisure time? And how do the effects of the program vary by age group and gender? Our empirical analysis relies on data from a quasi-experimental design used to evaluate the impact of the program involving a sample of communities that receive PROGRESA benefits (treatment) and comparable communities that receive benefits at a later time (control). We estimate the effect of treatment on the treated" using both double-difference and cross sectional difference estimators. Our estimates show significant increases in the school attendance of boys and girls that are accompanied by significant reductions in the participation of boys and girls in work activities. We also find that the program has a lower impact on the incidence of work for girls relative to boys."

Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Alleviation

Abstract: How important is agricultural growth to poverty reduction? This article first sets out the theoretical reasons for expecting agricultural growth to reduce poverty. Several plausible and strong arguments apply - including the creation of jobs on the land, linkages from farming to the rest of the rural economy, and a decline in the real cost of food for the whole economy - but the degree of impact is in all cases qualified by particular circumstances. Hence, the article deploys a cross-country estimation of the links between agricultural yield per unit area and measures of poverty. This produces strong confirmation of the hypothesised linkages. It is unlikely that there are many other development interventions capable of reducing the numbers in poverty so effectively.