Microdeterminants of consumption, poverty, growth, and inequality in Bangladesh

Using household data from five successive national surveys, the author analyzes the microdeterminants of (and changes in) consumption, poverty, growth, and inequality in Bangladesh from 1983 to 1996. Education, demographics, land ownership, occupation, and geographic location all affect consumption and poverty. The gains in per capita consumption associated with many of these household characteristics tend to be stable over time. Returns to demographics (variables in household size) have the greatest impact on growth, perhaps because of improving employment opportunities for women. Education (in urban areas) and land (in rural areas) contribute most to measures of between-group inequality. Location takes second place, in both urban and rural areas. The author introduces the concept of conditional between-group inequality. Existing group decompositions of the Gini index along one variable do not control for other characteristics correlated with that variable. Conditional between-group Ginis avoid this pitfall. He also shows how to use unconditional and conditional between-group Ginis for simulating policies.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Public Health Promotion,Housing&Human Habitats,Inequality,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Safety Nets and Transfers

Growth, poverty, and inequality : a regional panel for Bangladesh

Most empirical work on how growth affects poverty and inequality has been based on international panel data sets. Panels can also be used within a country, if the analysis is carried out at the regional level. The author does this for Bangladesh, where regional panel estimates indicate that growth reduces poverty in both urban and rural areas. Growth is associated with rising inequality only in urban areas. Simulations based on these estimates indicate how much poverty reduction could increase in the next 10 years if growth were promoted in rural areas rather than urban areas.Services&Transfers to Poor,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Governance Indicators,Poverty Assessment,Services&Transfers to Poor,Rural Poverty Reduction,Achieving Shared Growth

Between group inequality and targeted transfers

The author provides two extensions to Yitzhaki and Lerman's group decomposition of the Gini index. First, he analyzes stratification (within the group) and inequality (between groups) along several dimensions at once. This makes the determinants of inequality more understandable. Second, he derives the impact on the Gini of marginal changes in income or consumption by group. This can be used to evaluate targeted redistributive policies or to assess the impact of exogenous shocks by group. He applies the analysis to data from Bangladesh, with a focus on how inequality affects land ownership, education, and occupation. Education appears to be a stronger determinant of inequality than occupation, with land ownership ranking third. Marginal targeted transfers and taxes have more effect on redistribution when applied to education (from the well-educated to the illiterate) or occupation groups (from officials and managers to tenants and agricultural workers).Services&Transfers to Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Drylands&Desertification,Inequality,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Services&Transfers to Poor,Rural Poverty Reduction

Future inequality in Carbon Dioxide emissions and the projected impact of abatement proposals

The authors analyze inequality in future carbon emissions using a group decomposition of the Gini index. Business-as-usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declining, but slowly. They also measure the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the Kyoto Protocol and other abatement proposals for Annex II (non-Eastern European high income) countries in 2010, focusing on their gap narrowing and reranking effects. Per capita emissions of Annex II and non-Annex II countries will probably not be substantially reranked unless the Annex II countries reduce their emissions by at least half (from 1990 levels) and emissions from non-Annex II countries continue growing unabated.Climate Change,Montreal Protocol,Global Environment Facility,Environmental Economics&Policies,Sanitation andSewerage,Montreal Protocol,Environmental Economics&Policies,Carbon Policy and Trading,Energy and Environment,Climate Change

Transient and chronic poverty in turbulent times: Argentina 1995-2002

Using panel data, poverty in Argentina is decomposed into transient and chronic components. Overall poverty has increased in large part due to higher chronic poverty. While many household characteristics have similar impacts on both chronic and transient poverty, there are differences. Households with self-employed workers and business owners have higher levels of transient but not chronic poverty. The reverse is observed for households with public sector workers.

Parity restoration in the Highly Truncated Diagonalization Approach: application to the outer fission barrier of 240^{240}Pu

The restoration of the parity symmetry has been performed in the framework of the Highly Truncated Diagonalization Approach suited to treat correlations in an explicitly particle-number conserving microscopic approach. To do so we have assumed axial symmetry and used a generalized Wick's theorem due to L\"owdin in a projection-after-variation scheme. We have chosen the Skyrme SkM$^*$ energy-density functional for the particle-hole channel and a density-independent delta force for the residual interaction. We have applied this approach in the region of the outer fission barrier of the $^{240}$Pu nucleus. As a result, we have shown that the $K^{\pi} = 0^+$ fission isomeric state is statically unstable against intrinsic-parity breaking modes, while the projection does not affect the energy at the top of the intrinsic outer fission barrier. Altogether, this leads to an increase of the height of the outer fission barrier--with respect to the fission isomeric state--by about 350 keV, affecting thus significantly the fission-decay lifetime of the considered fission isomer

An analysis of mixed integer linear sets based on lattice point free convex sets

Split cuts are cutting planes for mixed integer programs whose validity is derived from maximal lattice point free polyhedra of the form $S:=\{x : \pi_0 \leq \pi^T x \leq \pi_0+1 \}$ called split sets. The set obtained by adding all split cuts is called the split closure, and the split closure is known to be a polyhedron. A split set $S$ has max-facet-width equal to one in the sense that $\max\{\pi^T x : x \in S \}-\min\{\pi^T x : x \in S \} \leq 1$. In this paper we consider using general lattice point free rational polyhedra to derive valid cuts for mixed integer linear sets. We say that lattice point free polyhedra with max-facet-width equal to $w$ have width size $w$. A split cut of width size $w$ is then a valid inequality whose validity follows from a lattice point free rational polyhedron of width size $w$. The $w$-th split closure is the set obtained by adding all valid inequalities of width size at most $w$. Our main result is a sufficient condition for the addition of a family of rational inequalities to result in a polyhedral relaxation. We then show that a corollary is that the $w$-th split closure is a polyhedron. Given this result, a natural question is which width size $w^*$ is required to design a finite cutting plane proof for the validity of an inequality. Specifically, for this value $w^*$, a finite cutting plane proof exists that uses lattice point free rational polyhedra of width size at most $w^*$, but no finite cutting plane proof that only uses lattice point free rational polyhedra of width size smaller than $w^*$. We characterize $w^*$ based on the faces of the linear relaxation