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321. Primary Education in India: Prospects of Meeting the MDG Target

Author:
Bernarda Zamora and Sonia Bhalotra
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It decomposes this growth into a component due to changes in the characteristics that determine schooling, and another associated with changes in the responsiveness of schooling to given characteristics. Our results caution against the common practice of using current data to make future projections on the assumption that the model parameters are stable. The analysis nevertheless performs illustrative simulations relevant to the question of whether India will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of realising universal primary education by the year 2015. The simulations suggest that India will achieve universal attendance, but that primary school completion rates will not exhibit much progress.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Education
Political Geography:
India and Asia

322. Reconstruction from Breakdown in Northeastern India: Building State Capability

Author:
M. Sajjad Hassan
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region's crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor growth trap? This paper argues that a key determinant of the instability in the region is the absence of the effective role of the state: to provide security and opportunities for social and economic wellbeing equitably to all sections of society; and to uphold the rule of law. For reconstruction to work the state must act to provide key political goods to all its citizens, and restore its legitimate authority by implementing policies and enforcing laws cleanly and transparently. Political leaders can contribute to this endeavour by organizing politics inclusively.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
India and Asia

323. Rethinking Import-substituting Industrialization: Development Strategies and Institutions in Taiwan and China

Author:
Tianbiao Zhu
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China's economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies in Taiwan and China have always been a combination of ISI and EOI strategies during their entire miracle-creating period; far from the shift from ISI to EOI strategies, export promotion was used in both cases to sustain ISI, which has always been the central focus of development. Behind this strategy there is a set of institutions in both Taiwan and China, which has played a key role in supporting ISI, in particular, the government, the bank sector, public enterprises, and their relationship.
Topic:
Development and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China, Israel, Taiwan, East Asia, and Asia

324. Food Security in Vietnam during the 1990s: The Empirical Evidence

Author:
Vasco Molini
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Analysing the performance of ten developing countries, Hoddinot and Yohannes (2002) find a strong association between two measures of food security (calorie intake and mostly dietary diversity) and the increase in expenditures per capita. Using various indicators of food security, we describe the changes in food balances in Vietnam and find evidence of a substitution of poor micronutrients items (rice and cereals) with rich ones like fruit, vegetables fish and meat. Poor households, while increasing the amount of calories consumed, still lack vitamins, iron, calcium, etc. A preliminary assessment of the food security variation showed that improvements were, as expected, more concentrated among the richer Vietnamese households than the poor ones, although there was some improvement among poorer strata as well. We also focus on the calorie/expenditure elasticity and compare results for the years 1993 and 1998. Our findings confirm that this link is strong, and show that calorie income elasticity changed in the expected direction. We conclude that in general food security improved in Vietnam during 1990s although considerable differences still remain among expenditure deciles and among regions due to the accentuated spatial difference.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Asia and Vietnam

325. Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Rural-Urban Inequality: China, 1978-98

Author:
Qi Zhang, Mingxing Liu, and Yiu Por Chen
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Using China as a test case, this paper empirically investigates how the development of financial intermediation affects rural-urban income disparity (RUID). Using 20-year province level panel data, we find that the level of financial development is positively correlated with RUID. Examining two subperiods, 1978-88 and 1989-98, we test several competing hypotheses that may affect RUID. We find that the increase of RUID may be explained by fiscal policy during the first period and financial intermediates during the second period. In addition, we show that the direction of the Kuznets effect on RUID is sensitive to changes in government development policies. The rural development policies during the first period may have enhanced the rural development and reduced RUID. However, the financial intermediary policy during the second period focused on urban development and increased both urban growth and intra-urban inequalities, thus leading to an increase in RUID. Finally, we show that RUID is insensitive to the provincial industrial structure (the share of primary industry in GDP). These results are consistent with the traditional urban-bias hypothesis and are robust to the inclusion of controls for endogeneity issues. This study adds to the economic inequality literature by clarifying the effects of government policies on the underlying dynamics on convergent and divergent effects on rural-urban inequality.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

326. How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?

Author:
Kuan Xu and Lars Osberg
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning. This paper asks whether the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is a good measure of trends in global poverty. We argue that the answer depends on two important issues in the measurement of poverty—the definition of the poverty line, and how best to summarize the level of poverty In this paper, we survey the literature on poverty measurement, demonstrate the importance of considering poverty incidence, depth and inequality jointly, present a simple but powerful graphical representation of the Sen and SST indices of poverty intensity (the poverty box) which is the FGT index of order 1 and extend our empirical work to China using the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median equivalent income.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

327. Poverty Accounting by Factor Components: With an Empirical Illustration Using Chinese Data

Author:
Guanghua Wan
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to develop two poverty decomposition frameworks and to illustrate their applicability. A given level of poverty is broadly decomposed into an overall inequality component and an overall endowment component in terms of income or consumption determinants or input factors. These components are further decomposed into finer components associated with individual inputs. Also, a change in poverty is decomposed into components attributable to the growth and redistributions of factor inputs. An empirical illustration using Chinese data highlights the importance of factor redistributions in determining poverty levels and poverty changes in rural China.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

328. Asia's Labour-Driven Economic Development, Flying-Geese Style: An Unprecedented Opportunity for the Poor to Rise?

Author:
Terutomo Ozawa
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The notion of 'shared growth' was introduced by the World Bank in recognition of East Asia's rapid growth accompanied by poverty reduction. It emphasizes the criticality of pro-poor policies and institutional setups in the fast-developing East Asian economies. The efforts of these individual countries are, however, a necessary but not sufficient condition (explanation). There is a more essential, underlying region-wide mechanism that simultaneously promotes regionalized growth and specifically favours Asia's working mass of unskilled labour. Such an efficacious mechanism is posited in the 'flying-geese paradigm of comparative advantage recycling in labour-intensive goods'. The paper argues that a number of favourable factors have fortuitously coalesced to engender a considerably favourable condition for Asia's rapid catch-up growth in which unskilled labour (the poor) can participate as their countries' most vital input in labour-driven development.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
East Asia and Asia

329. Pro-Poor Growth: The Asian Experience

Author:
Hyun H. Son and Nanak Kakwani
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, this study examines to what extent the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring pro-poor growth are scrutinized 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 monotonically an increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. This paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called the 'poverty equivalent growth rate', which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of the 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 a rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate ought to be maximized rather than the actual growth rate. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Asia, Vietnam, Korea, and Thailand

330. Development Strategy, Viability, and Economic Institutions: The Case of China

Author:
Mingxing Liu, Pengfei Zhang, Shiyuan Pan, and Justin Yifu Lin
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores the politically determined development objectives and the intrinsic logic of government intervention policies in east developed countries. It is argued that the distorted institutional structure in China and in many least developed countries, after the Second World War, can be largely explained by government adoption of inappropriate development strategies. Motivated by nation building, most least-developed countries, including the socialist countries, adopted a comparative advantage defying strategy to accelerate the growth of capital-intensive, advanced sectors in their countries. In the paper we also statistically measure the evolution of government development strategies and the economic institutions in China from 1950s to 1980s to show the co-existence and coevolution of government adoption of comparative advantage defying strategy and the trinity system.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia