Assessing the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Poverty

poverty, fiscal policy, benefit incidence analysis, behavioural responses, poverty monitoring

Combining quantitative and qualitative methods in assessing chronic poverty: the case of Rwanda

This paper addresses the issue of chronic poverty in Rwanda, an issue which has not been addressed specifically in the policy debate, despite the fact that it is likely to be widespread. In part this has reflected lack of available evidence, in that the conventional sources used to analyze chronic poverty are not available. We argue in this paper that by judicious combination of existing qualitative (a high quality nationwide participatory poverty assessment) and quantitative sources (a household survey) it is possible to identify and characterize a clearly distinct group of chronically poor households, whose characteristics are different from the poor as a whole

EXPLORING THE PARADOX OF RWANDAN AGRICULTURAL HOUSEHOLD INCOME AND NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES IN 1990 AND 2000

Nationally representative surveys regarding sources of income among agricultural households in Rwanda, fielded in 1990 and 2000, provide insights into how families responded to changes in their environment in a turbulent decade. Despite political upheavals and increasing land pressure, the survey evidence suggests that by 2000 average incomes returned to the 1990 level, while the nutritional status among rural children was better in 2000 than in the early 1990s. The nutrition improvement is tempered by evidence of increasing rural inequality. While the least poor households expanded their access to income through skilled labor, the majority of households retreated into a more autarkic mode of production focused on key subsistence crops. The change in crop mix seems to be associated with the improved the nutritional status of children. This has important implications for the current agricultural commercialization strategy in Rwanda and other countries where similar conditions prevail.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Relationships between consumption and inequality in the Indian states

Current evidence on the relationships between growth and inequality is predominantly based on cross-country data sets or panel data sets covering a small number of time periods. But these relationships, being fundamentally dynamic in nature, need to be considered over a much longer time horizon. Available state level results from the National Sample Surveys in India provide such an opportunity. This paper uses this unique data set to examine the interrelationships between average consumption and inequality within states, and test for causality. Distributional patterns of growth vary, but there is strong evidence in many instances of a strong negative effect of initial inequality on subsequent growth.Growth and inequality, Restricted VAR analysis, Causality tests, Panel data analysis, Indian states.

A New Labour Force: An econometric analysis of multiple jobholding

In this paper we model multiple jobholding empirically using a specially collected database for the region of Magnesia in Greece. We find that although income plays a major deterministic impact on multiple jobholding, other factors have a determining the final outcome of the individual’s choice. These determining factors can either explain the amount of fixed costs that is involved towards taking up a second job, or the restrictions arising from the individual’s personal and family characteristics.

Assessing the impact of fiscal policy on poverty

Fiscal policy measures are a key means by which governments can influence distribution and poverty, but in fact the relationships between fiscal policy and poverty are not well understood. The most commonly used technique for assessing the distributional impact, benefit incidence analysis, is straightforward, but applied by itself it suffers from a number of serious limitations. Assessment of the impact of fiscal policy needs to be developed in various directions, including allowing for behavioural responses and incorporating a broader range of information. In parallel with this careful attention needs to be paid to more effective monitoring of the poverty impsact of fiscal policy. – poverty ; fiscal policy ; benefit incidence analysis ; behavioural responses ; poverty monitorin

How I Spent My Summer Defending-or-Defeating Anscombe: Anscombian Action Theory and the Possibility of Logically Complex Actions

This paper attempts to bridge the divide between action theorists who work in a conceptual terrain shaped primarily by Donald Davidson and Michael Bratman and action theorists who work in a conceptual terrain shaped primarily by G.E.M. Anscombe. In it, I consider a feature of action that has only been discussed by the Anscombe camp: the means-end structure of actions in their unfolding over time. Then, I draw out an implication of this feature: that actions can involve structure which is logically complex (that is, can involve means taken to a logically complex end). Next, I argue that numerous arguments made by philosophers in the Davidson-Bratman camp involve the tacit assumption that this is false, considering four such arguments--by Bratman, Kieran Setiya, Hugh McCann, and Richard Holton--in some detail. Given that structure is a neutral desideratum that any theory of action should account for, I argue that this assumption renders these arguments faulty and is evidence that these philosophers\u27 inattention to structure has radically circumscribed the conceptual space in which they operate. I conclude with some lessons about the importance of future exchanges between these two camps of action theorists

La mesure de la pauvreté : vue d’ensemble et méthodologie avec illustration dans le cas du Ghana

Durant les années quatre-vingt, la plupart des pays en développement ont connu de graves chocs macroéconomiques qui ont provoqué l’adoption de programmes de stabilisation et d’ajustement structurel. Suite au débat public sur les effets néfastes de ces programmes, les 15 dernières années ont vu naître de nombreuses études sur la pauvreté effectuées à l’aide de banques de données microéconomiques, particulièrement des enquêtes auprès des ménages. Cet article fait un survol des principaux concepts liés à la quantification de la pauvreté, en particulier quant au choix de la mesure de bien-être au niveau des individus, à la détermination du seuil de pauvreté et à la mesure de la pauvreté. Après cette présentation des différents outils d’analyse, ils sont par la suite appliqués à une série d’enquêtes auprès des ménages ghanéens.During the 1980s, the majority of developing countries experienced serious macroeconomic shocks, leading them to adopt stabilisation and structural adjustment programs. Following the public debate on the harmful effects of these programs, numerous studies on poverty have been undertaken in the last 15 years using microeconomic datasets, particularly those derived from household surveys. This article presents an overview of the principal concepts used in quantifying poverty, especially in relation to the choice of the standard of living measure for individuals, the determination of the poverty line, and the measure of poverty. Following this presentation of the different analytical tools, they are then applied to a series of Ghanaian household surveys

Enhancing student writing with do-it-yourself corpora on a PhD pre-sessional programme

As an effective writing course should focus on disciplines and their unique characteristics, practitioners of English for academic purposes (EAP) are often faced with the challenge of addressing the different needs of learners from various fields of study. This article reports on how a data-driven learning (DDL) approach can be applied to enhance student written production in a multidisciplinary classroom in a 10-week PhD pre-sessional programme at a British University. The participants were six international students who used a do-it-yourself (DIY) corpus in weekly DDL sessions to familiarize themselves with discipline-specific academic writing conventions and applying them in their writing. The effectiveness of this approach was investigated through a ‘talk around texts’ technique employed in semi-structured interviews with individual students and their supervisors on programme completion. The findings show that a DDL approach utilizing a DIY corpus has the potential of enhancing PhD student writing in a multidisciplinary classroom on a pre-sessional programme. This article suggests that DDL could be successfully implemented not only in PhD pre-sessional programmes, but also in wider EAP contexts