Poverty in Kagera, Tanzania: Characteristics, Causes and Constraints

This paper analyses the determinants of household welfare in the Northwest region of Tanzania using microlevel cross section data. Despite having gone through a series of structural adjustment programs in the late-1980s, Tanzania is still considered one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper argues that the determinants of household welfare are numerous and complex, ranging from individual and household to community and social characteristics, but that the relative importance of these factors varies across the welfare distribution. Using quantile regressions, we find that human, social and physical capital all play a significant role in improving households’ living standards, but that the relatively poor are harmed more by weather shocks because they face more constraints in diversifying out of agriculture. Our results also reveal subtle insights into the relationships between gender and poverty.Poverty, inequality, quantile regression, gender, rainfall, shocks, agriculture, vulnerability, Kagera, Tanzania.

Welfare in Vietnam During the 1990s: Poverty, Inequality and Poverty Dynamics

During the 1990s, Vietnam’s economy was transformed through a series of economic, social and political reforms, resulting in an average growth rate over the decade in excess of 6% per annum. This strong growth performance was accompanied by a dramatic fall in the incidence of consumption per capita poverty. This paper examines the changes in poverty and poverty dynamics over the 1990s using a nationally representative panel of households surveyed in 1992-93 and 1997-98. We analyse how robust the reduction in poverty is to the methods used to measure poverty. We find that regardless of where the poverty line is drawn, consumption poverty fell between 1992-93 and 1997-98, but that the extent of this fall is sensitive to the choice of poverty line. We also examine changes in the distribution of living standards over time, finding that the fall in poverty was accompanied by a rise in inequality, with some subgroups of the population failing to share equally in the strong growth of the country. Finally, we examine rural poverty dynamics, presenting transition matrices of movements in and out of poverty over time and estimating a model of consumption change. We find that regional differences are important, as are access to key institutions and infrastructure, and education. We also find that shifts in employment and production patterns, especially of rice, which we argue to be induced by the economic reform process, are strongly related to changes in living standards over time.Poverty, growth, dominance, economic reform, Vietnam

Education or Inflation? The Roles of Structural Factors and Macroeconomic Instability in Explaining Brazilian Inequality in the 1980s

This paper investigates possible explanations for the increases in inequality observed in Brazil during the 1980s. While the static decompositions of inequality by household characteristics reveal that education and race of the household head, as well as geographic location, can account for a substantial proportion of inequality levels, a dynamic decomposition suggests that changes in inequality are not explained by income or allocation effects across these groupings, but by pure within-group inequality effects. The analysis then turns to the role of macro-economic instability, and finds some significant correlation and regression coefficients which suggest a link between inflation and inequality, while poverty appears to be more strongly driven by real wages, growth and employment.Brazil, inequality decomposition, poverty, inflation and unemployment

Income Inequality Comparisons with Dirty Data: The UK and Spain during the 1980s

Inequality comparisons between countries and over time should take into account problems of data imperfection. We examine the contrasting experience of the UK and spain during the 1980s in terms of the distribution of disposable income. We consider whether the apparent divergence of inequality could be attributed to deficiencies in income data including under-reporting.Lorenz dominance, data contamination, cross-country comparisons.

An anatomy of male labour market earnings inequality in Serbia – 1996 to 2003

This study uses a regression-based framework to identify the key factors that determine the level and changes in main job earnings inequality for men. A number of different inequality measures are used in our work. The analysis uses data for Serbia drawn from eight annual labour force surveys, which cover both the early episode of sluggish transition and a more recent concerted phase of economic reform. It thus provides some useful insights on the evolution of labour earnings inequality through an uneven transitional process and identifies factors likely to retain an influence on earnings inequality as the market reform processes take greater hold

Income inequality comparisons with dirty data: the UK and Spain during the 1980s

Inequality comparisons between countries and over time should take into account problems of data imperfection. We examine the contrasting experience of the UK and Spain during the 1980s in terms of the distribution of disposable income. We consider whether the apparent divergence in inequality could be attributable to deficiencies in income data including under-reporting

Poverty and Income Distribution in Chile: 1987-1998 New Evidence

This paper presents an update on the poverty and income distribution situation in Chile during the 90s. The analysis shows unambiguously that there was less poverty between 1994 and 1998 than in all earlier years, whether poverty is measured by the headcoPoverty, income distribution, growth, Chile