Book Review – Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia: Beyond Safta

Although known as the poorest region and faced with many internal conflicts, South Asia has much potential to be one of the leading regions in the world. As addressed by the many topics in this paper, South Asia has many economic advantages such as trade, tourism, transportation and employment. Hence, economic cooperation among the countries in the region has to be established and strengthened. The theme of this book is current, relevant and shows the importance of establishing economic cooperation in South Asia not only to benefit the South Asian countries but the world too. The arrangement of the book with thematic segment dealing with very specific topics provided easy understanding on the importance and directions of economic cooperation in South Asia. The strength of this book is the extensive information each author provided on the topics. The main weakness is the failure of the many authors to provide critical views and rigorous analysis on the addressed topics especially on why the countries failed to achieve economic integration in the region with regards to the specific issues addressed

A Co-Integration Analysis On The Saving Rate Determinants In Malaysia.

Kertas kerja ini mengkaji penilaian mengenai penentu kadar tabungan di Malaysia menggunakan Hipotesis Kitaran Hidup (LCH) lanjutan dengan menggunakan data siri masa bagi tempoh 1964-2001

Poverty: A Socio-economic Disease and Causative Agent of Numerous Socio-economic Diseases

The overall objective of this paper is to point out that poverty is a disease as well as a host to many social economic diseases. A navigation through the literature reveals that despite reported mixed findings of the effect of poverty on some socio-economic problems, it is still one of the leading causes of such problems. Thus, the need to channel a lot of resources and efforts towards combating it becomes compelling for two broad reasons. First, tackling poverty properly will indirectly reduce many vices confronting both developing and developed countries. Such problems include, but not limited to terrorism, robbery, corruption, social unrest, among others.Second, it is economically rational to commit adequate resources to tackle poverty now with a view to indirectly conserving resources for future development projects

Credit Where Due: A Debate

This paper reviews earlier work in order to get a single point of consensus regarding current global crises, which overlap the economy of whole world. We find contradictory explanations for the current episode of crises where different methodologies had been adopted in scrutinizing the situation. Overall few put the blame on macroeconomic variables and little on financial vulnerabilities. Some suggest for monetary policy reevaluation and others for fiscal policy to fill in the gap. We find fiscal policy a superior instrument for scheming such circumstances. We propose that interest free financial system would be a better option as an alternative. Keywords: Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, Credit Issues, Interest free solution

Characteristics of Poverty In Pakistan

Poverty is a multidimensional conception and usually it is defined by focusing narrowly on income poverty or broadly by including lack of access to opportunities for raising standards of living. Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and agreeable to modification by policy. This study uses integrated Household Survey (2009-10) data collected by Federal Bureau of Statistics Pakistan to examine probable determinants of poverty status, employing bivariate models. In general, this study tries to seek in depth knowledge of the key factors like demographic factors and human capital variables that account for poverty differentials in Pakistan. The demographic variables show significant impact on poverty status of the household, especially dependency ratio, sex of the head of the household, family type and household size. These all are found to be of supreme important in defining poverty. The educational attainment of the head of the household is also found to be very important factor that is associated with poverty. If policy makers target the education of head of household in order to get rid of this evil vicious circle of poverty then it might be establish more effective, powerful and sustainable tool. Keywords;   Poverty status, Demographic variables, human capital variables, Poverty Differential

Social Safety Nets Programs in Bangladesh: Preparing for Adaption to Demographic Change, Disaster, and Poverty Reduction

From the last two decades, Bangladesh has experienced a rapid decline in birth rate and childhood mortality rate simultaneously. Due to increase in literacy rate, per capita income, more awareness about life, and better nutrition, life expectancy has also increased rapidly in Bangladesh. As a result, the increase in population and life expectancy undeniably has an impact on the demographic profile of the population. As a disaster prone and large populated country with limited resources, a big share of population is still poor and vulnerable. To tackle the situation a large scale social safety net (SSN) programs with grants cash, in-kind or both for targeted people have been implementing by the government and non-government organization. This paper is an attempt to provide an overview of the current SSN program implemented by the government. Considering existing literature and document, this paper identifies three models of SSN transfers: natural shocked-based, extreme poverty-based and age-based transfers model. It concludes that coverage and amount of age-based transfer need to increase at priority basis as the number of elderly increases over the year. It also concludes that for extreme poverty reduction the coverage and amount of benefit as last resort of other two transfer models can be revised. Keywords: social safety nets, demographic change, vulnerability, elderly, and povert

Patterns of income distribution in the Northern States of Malaysia: A life cycle approach

Income distribution can be defined as equality in which income is dealt out among members of a society. Income distribution is measured by how much income is earned by different segments of a population. In Malaysia, a common measure of income distribution is through calculating mean monthly income. The reported mean monthly income uses macroeconomic data segregated into ethnicity, states and urban-rural. At present, there is no income distribution measurement specifically for the Northern States of Malaysia. Therefore this study aims to estimate and identify the patterns of income distribution using different categories of income. The categories of income used are employment income, property income and gross income. This study uses 2009 Household Income Survey (HIS) data where 30 per cent of total observations are used. The findings confirm the LCH theory. There are different peak ages with different categories of income. However, the peak is not as high as proposed by Modigliani and Brumberg (1954). Calculation of mean income of different categories shows that the income from employment takes a large portion of total income

Consumption-Savings Pattern of Low Income Households towards a Sustainable Livelihood – A Gender Perspective

A report by Khazanah Research Institute on the State of Households in 2015 revealed that majority of Malaysian households owned items such as cars, motorcycles, refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, satellite TVs and internet subscriptions and that most low-income households acquired these items and services on credit. The report further concluded that this trend was also accompanied by low personal savings. While strong income growth has in turn, helped alleviate poverty and added to the legions of the middle-income, incidentally, this has fuelled consumption; with households increasingly use debt for spending. Interestingly, low-income households do not only have low personal savings due to high consumption, but low personal savings due to high consumption of assets (productive and non productive) that act as buffers against any unanticipated events such as loss of job or income. By using a structured questionnaire on 300 low-income households, the objectives of the study are (i) to examine the consumption-savings pattern of low-income households and (ii) to assess the consumption-savings pattern between genders. Low-income households are identified as households earning MYR 3,600 per month. Data gathered on personal savings include cash savings, savings for pilgrimage, gold, kut (rotational savings scheme), community death benefits, land and propert

Relationship between poverty and inequality: a case study of Bumiputera household in the Northern States of Malaysia

The relationship between poverty and inequality has never been straightforward. While some research found that poverty does not mirror inequality, others found that a change in income inequality definitely affects poverty. Malaysia has been applauded by international organizations for its success in alleviating poverty. However, inequality as measured by Gini coefficient has only shown a marginal drop from 0.46 in 1992 to 0.43 in 2012. This situation is more apparent when inequality is assessed according to ethnic groups. While the ethnic inequality measure has narrowed, the inequality for the Bumiputeras remains high. The Gini coefficient of the Bumiputeras stands at 0.42 in 2012, a drop of 0.02 from 1992. The Bumiputera, which is literally known as the ‘son of the soil’ is the largest ethnic group in Malaysia. In 2012, there is only 2.2 per cent Bumiputeras living in absolute poverty. This seems a small percentage but pockets of poverty among Bumiputeras remain. At present, there is a lack of research in understanding the relationship between poverty and inequality among the Bumiputeras, particularly in the Northern States of Malaysia. This study assesses the relationship between poverty and inequality of the Bumiputera Household in the Northern States of Malaysia using the Household Income Survey (HIS) data for 2009. A logistic probability function with values of 1 and 0 to represent households living in poverty and household not living in poverty respectively, is employed. Contextual inequality as measured by Theil Index is used as a proxy to inequality. The analysis found that per capita income and education attainment (except for tertiary education) significantly affect poverty. The study found no significant relationship exists between poverty and inequality. This provides an important implication towards policy formulation. Policy to tackle the issues of poverty and inequality need to be addressed separately, rather than pursued simultaneously