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81. Measuring Vulnerability and Poverty: Estimates for Rural India

Author:
Raghav Gaiha and Katsushi Imai
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper measures the vulnerability of households in rural India, based upon the ICRISAT panel survey. We employ both ex ante and ex post measures of vulnerability. The latter are decomposed into aggregate and idiosyncratic risks and poverty components. Our decomposition shows that idiosyncratic risks account for the largest share, followed by poverty and aggregate risks. Despite some degree of risk-sharing, the landless or small farmers are vulnerable to idiosyncratic risks, forcing them to reduce consumption. Income-augmenting policies therefore must be combined with those that not only reduce aggregate and idiosyncratic risks but also build resilience against them.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
India and Asia

82. Minimum Wages, Globalization, and Poverty in Honduras

Author:
T.H. Gindling and Katherine Terrell
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
To be competitive in the global economy, some argue that Latin American countries need to reduce or eliminate labour market regulations such as minimum wage legislation because they constrain job creation and hence increase poverty. On the other hand, minimum wage increases can have a direct positive impact on family income and may therefore help to reduce poverty. We take advantage of a complex minimum wage system in a poor country that has been exposed to the forces of globalization to test whether minimum wages are an effective poverty reduction tool in this environment. We find the net effect of minimum wage increases in Honduras is the reduction of extreme poverty, with an elasticity of -0.18, and all poverty, with an elasticity of -0.10 (using the national poverty lines). These results are driven entirely by the effect on workers in large private sector firms, where minimum wage legislation is enforced. Increases in the minimum do not affect the incidence of poverty among workers in sectors where minimum wages are not enforced (small firms) or do not apply (self-employed and public sector). Hence, we show that minimum wages can be used as a poverty reduction tool in the formal sector. However, we do not endorse minimum wages as the best tool as we have not carried out a complete cost-benefit analysis of this policy vis-à-vis others.
Topic:
Poverty
Political Geography:
Latin America, Central America, and Honduras

83. Natural Disasters and Remittances: Exploring the Linkages between Poverty, Gender, and Disaster Vulnerability in Caribbean SIDS

Author:
Marlene Attzs
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores the linkages between poverty and disaster vulnerability in the context of remittance flows to households in the Caribbean. Jamaica is used as the case study country. The paper discusses the channels through which natural disasters and remittances affect each other but also reviews the distribution of female-headed households in Jamaica as a percentage of households living below the poverty line and seeks to identify whether flows of remittances alleviate the post-disaster living conditions of such households.
Topic:
Disaster Relief, Gender Issues, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Caribbean and Jamaica

84. The Optimal Distance to Port for Exporting Firms

Author:
Thomas Gries, Wim Naudé, and Marianne Matthee
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Success in international trade depends, amongst other things, on distance from markets. Most new economic geography models focus on the distance between countries. In contrast much less theorizing and empirical analysis have focused on how distances within a country—for instance due to the location behaviour of exporting firms—matter to international trade. In this paper we contribute to the literature on the latter by offering a theoretical model to explain the optimal distance that an export-oriented firm would locate from a port. We present empirical evidence from South Africa in support of the model.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

85. Ownership Reform, Foreign Competition, and Efficiency of Chinese Commercial Banks: A Non-Parametric Approach

Author:
Shujie Yao, Zhongwei Han, and Genfu Feng
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the pressure for bank reforms has mounted as China ought to fully open up its financial market to foreign competition by 2006. Efficiency is key for domestic banks to survive in a liberalised environment, but it appears that the last hope for raising bank efficiency is through ownership reform. Whether ownership reform and foreign competition can solve China's banking problem remains to be tested. This paper aims to answer this question through using a non-parametric approach to analyse the efficiency changes of 15 large commercial banks during 1998-2005. We find that ownership reform and foreign competition have forced the Chinese commercial banks to improve performance, as their total factor productivity rose by 5.6 per cent per annum. This coincides with the recent bullish Chinese stock markets led by three listed state-owned commercial banks. Despite such encouraging results, we remain cautious about the future of the Chinese banks, as the good results may have been artificially created with massive government support and the fundamentals of the banks may be still weak.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

86. Reducing People's Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Communities and Resilience

Author:
Terry Cannon
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The concepts vulnerability, resilience and community are widely used and abused in the literature on natural hazards and disaster risk reduction. This paper seeks to bring greater rigour in their use. In particular, vulnerability must be understood as a set of socioeconomic conditions that are identifiable in relation to particular hazard risks, and therefore perform a predictive role that can assist in risk reduction. Resilience is often confused as a concept, sometimes seen as the inverse of vulnerability, and by others as an independent quality. These confusions may be especially relevant in the context of §policy for disaster risk reduction at the scale of community. Here there is often an idealized notion of community as undifferentiated and unproblematic.
Topic:
Development, Disaster Relief, and Political Economy

87. Remittances and Vulnerability to Poverty in Rural Mexico

Author:
Alejandro de la Fuente
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
International remittances have been portrayed as the human face of globalization given their potential to alleviate poverty by directly increasing household income. Using a panel of rural households in Mexico from October 1998 to November 2000 this study assesses whether this is in fact the case. However, rather than examining whether transfers income would reduce future consumption poverty we asked if transfers are likely to reach people whose conditions are prone to worsen in the future. We used vulnerability to consumption poverty to quantify the extent to which risks and the more permanent disadvantages embedded in most rural livelihoods, can translate into future declines in well-being. We found, contrary to our expectations, a negative and statistically significant relationship between the remittance of transfers, including foreign remittances, and the threat to future poverty that rural households could experience.
Topic:
Globalization and Poverty
Political Geography:
Mexico

88. Resources and the Political Economy of State Fragility in Conflict States: Iraq and Somalia

Author:
Ghassan Dibeh
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper studies state failure and governance in two conflict-states in the Middle East: Iraq and Somalia. Iraq is currently undergoing a social experiment under which a new form of government is being constructed after the passage of autocratic rule. The government envisaged is a consociational democratic state designed a priori as a political mechanism for the redistribution of resources, mainly oil. Somalia represents a stateless society or anarchy. The paper argues that in resource-rich countries such as Iraq, the consociational project leads to an Olson-type rent-seeking confessional behaviour that hampers economic growth and development. The rent-seeking behaviour in Iraq is fuelling the insurgency that perceives the consociational system as a grabbing attempt of the country's resources by other ethnic groups. However, state construction is possible since there is a positive economic effect of combining government and resources. In Somalia, on the other hand, the developments and the evolution of anarchy since state collapse in 1991 exemplify the result of prolonged conflict in a resource-poor state. The lack of resources, direct access of producers to resources and low productivity and weak redistributional potential of combining resources and government offer no material incentives to the various groups for resurrecting central authority.
Topic:
Oil and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, Iraq, Middle East, and Somalia

89. The Rise of the Southern Economies: Implications for the WTO-Multilateral Trading System

Author:
Silvia Nenci
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The rise of the emerging southern economies – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (CIBS) – as both economic and political actors, is having significant and far-reaching impact on the world economy. Notwithstanding the increasing amount of study and research, there are still important knowledge-gaps with respect to a range of likely consequences of the dynamism of the Southern Economies. One of these gaps concerns the implications for the WTO-multilateral trading system. The present paper proposes a review of the southern participation in the multilateral integration process and suggests a methodology to assess the impact of CIBS' rise on the future of the WTO system. Through the analysis of the trajectories of 'impact' of the trade channel, the paper draws some suggestive remarks.
Topic:
International Organization and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, Asia, South Africa, Brazil, and South America

90. The Role of Women's Empowerment and Domestic Violence in Child Growth and Undernutrition in a Tribal and Rural Community in South India

Author:
Kavita Sethuraman
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Moderate undernutrition continues to affect 46 per cent of children under 5 years of age and 47 per cent of rural women in India. Women's lack of empowerment is believed to be an important factor in the persistent prevalence of undernutrition. In India, women's empowerment often varies by community, with tribes sometimes being the most progressive. This paper explores the relationship between women's empowerment, domestic violence, maternal nutritional status, and the nutritional status and growth over six months in children aged 6 to 24 months in a rural and tribal community. This longitudinal observational study undertaken in rural Karnataka, India included tribal and rural subjects. Structured interviews with mothers were conducted and anthropometric measurements were obtained for 820 mother-child pairs, the follow-up rate after 6 months was 82 per cent. The data were analyzed by multivariate regression. Some degree of undernutrition was seen in 83.5 per cent of children and 72.4 per cent of mothers in the sample, moreover the prevalence of undernutrition increased among children at follow up. Domestic violence was experienced by 34 per cent of mothers in the sample. In multivariate analysis, biological variables explained most of the variance in nutritional status and child growth, followed by health-care seeking and women's empowerment variables; socio-economic variables explained the least variance. Women's empowerment variables were significantly associated with child nutrition on enrolment and child growth at follow-up. At follow-up, mother's prior lifetime experience of physical violence significantly undermined child growth in terms of weight-for-age, and older age at marriage and high mobility of mothers predicted less stunting in their children. In addition to the known investments needed to reduce undernutrition, improving women's nutrition, promoting gender equality, empowering women, and ending violence against women could further reduce the prevalence of undernutrition in this segment of the Indian population.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Health
Political Geography:
India and Asia