Vietnam: Jobs, Growth & Poverty

.Poverty, Jobs

Assessing the pro-poorness of government fiscal policy in Thailand

This paper proposes a methodology to assess the pro-poorness of government fiscal policies in view of bringing marginal reforms. A government policy is said to be pro-poor if it benefits the poor proportionally more than the non-poor. The author first derives the poverty elasticity for the general class of poverty. Then, using the idea of poverty elasticity, she proposes a pro-poor index that can be utilized to assess government expenditure and tax policies. This index may be useful in making the government fiscal system more beneficial towards the poor through marginal reforms. The proposed methodology is applied to Thailand, utilizing the 1998 Socio-Economic Survey.Poverty, Income distribution, Pro-poor, Tax policy, Public spending

Evaluating Targeting Efficiency of Government Programmes: International Comparisons

targeting, pro-poor growth, poverty

Women's earning power and wellbeing

.Poverty, Women?s

Evaluating Targeting Efficiency of Government Programmes: International Comparisons

This paper suggests how the targeting efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using the “pro-poor policy” (PPP) index developed by the authors, the study investigates not only the pro-poorness of government programmes geared to the poorest segment of the population but also basic service delivery in education, health and infrastructure. The paper also shows that the targeting efficiency for a particular socio-economic group should be judged on the basis of a ‘total-group PPP index’, to capture the impact of operating a programme for the group. Using micro-unit data from household surveys, the paper presents a comparative analysis for Thailand, the Russian Federation, Viet Nam and 15 African countries.Targeting, universalism, pro-poor, poverty

A note on measuring unemployment

This paper proposes a new measure of the unemployment rate. This measure takes into account not only people who are unemployed, but also those earning below the subsistence level of income in the labor market. The proposed methodology is applied to Brazil?s unit record household surveys covering the period between 1995 and 2004.Open unemployment rate, Underemployment, Productive employment, Poverty

Pro-poor Growth: Concepts and Measurement with Country Case Studies

This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, we examine the extent to which the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring propoor growth are scrutinised using a variety of criteria. It is argued that the satisfaction of a monotonicity axiom is a key criterion for measuring pro-poor growth. The monotonicity axiom sets out a condition that the proportional reduction in poverty is a monotonically increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. The paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called a ‘poverty equivalent growth rate’, which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of growth are distributed to the poor and the non-poor. As the new measure satisfies the criterion of monotonicity, it is indicative that to achieve rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate—rather than the actual growth rate—ought to be maximised. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to three Asian countries, namely, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.

New Global Poverty Counts

The main objective of this study is to compute an international poverty threshold based on the food requirement to ensure an adequate calorie intake for the world?s poorest. The study proposes a new methodology based on consumer theory to provide a caloric based international poverty threshold. Using this methodology, the international poverty line is estimated to be equal to $1.22 in 1993 PPP exchange rates. According to this new yardstick, almost 1.37 billion people were poor around the world in 2001. The study also provides global estimates of hunger, according to which 13.28 percent of the world population ? equivalent to 687 million people ? suffered from hunger in 2001.Poverty, Purchasing power parity, Global estimates

Measuring the Impact of Price Changes on Poverty

This paper develops a methodology to measure the impact of price changes on poverty measured by an entire class of additive separable poverty measures. This impact is captured by means of price elasticity of poverty. The total effect of changes in price on poverty is explained in terms of two components. The first component is the income effect of the change in price and the second is the distribution effect captured by the price changes. It is the distribution effect which determines whether the price changes benefit the poor proportionally more (or less) than the non-poor. This paper also derives a new price index for the poor (PIP). While this index can be computed for any poverty measures, our empirical analysis applied to Brazil is based on three poverty measures, the head-count ratio, the poverty gap ratio and the severity of poverty. The empirical results show that price changes in Brazil during the 1999-2006 period have occurred in a way that favors the non-poor proportionally more than the poor. Nevertheless, during the last 2-3 years the price changes have favored the poor relative to the non-poor.Inflation, Price elasticity, Money metric utility, Price index for the poor

Leaky Bucket

.Poverty, Leaky Bucket