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102. Lebanon’s Political Economy: From Predatory to Self-Devouring
- Author:
- Lydia Assouad
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- To survive its ongoing financial crisis, Lebanon needs a new economic system that addresses massive income inequality. Paired with political and institutional reform, tax reform can help. Over the past three decades, Lebanon’s ruling class—which comprises intertwined political and business elites—has run the country into the ground. To survive its ongoing accumulation of challenges, including the financial crisis that erupted in October 2019, Lebanon requires a revamped state backed by a new economic model with social justice at its core. Tax reform is central to such an endeavor—and to ensuring that the state has the means both to deliver basic services and to tackle poverty and inequality.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Inequality, Economic structure, Business, Social Justice, Tax Systems, and Elites
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Lebanon
103. Social Policy Programme “The Family 500+” – Assumptions, Results, and Costs of Functioning: Is It Worth?
- Author:
- Anna Owczarcyk
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Polish Political Science Yearbook
- Institution:
- Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
- Abstract:
- The unfavorable demographic situation and the falling number of births resulted in an increased interest among Polish politicians in introducing tools to social policy that would reverse this negative trend. Implemented to social policy by Prawo i Sprawiedliwość Party in 2016, the “Family 500+” benefit has become such a tool. According to the government’s intention, this financial aid for families with children aims to reverse the decline in the number of births observed for many years and reduce the scale of poverty among families with the most complex financial situation. After several years of the “Family 500+” Program in force, it is difficult to clearly define whether the goals were achieved and whether the expenses for financing the program were adequate to the results. The aim of the article is an attempt at the assessment of the functioning of the Family 500+ Programme. Both the statutory assumptions of the programme, the costs of its functioning, and its results so far were analyzed. The central part of the analysis covered the period 2016–2019.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Children, Social Policy, and Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Poland
104. Celebrating 20 Years of The Living Wage at Queen Mary University of London
- Publication Date:
- 11-2021
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London
- Abstract:
- The Living Wage Campaign was launched by London Citizens in Walthamstow, East London, in 2001. Since then, it spread across the country and became a nationwide campaign led by the Living Wage Foundation. In 2006, Queen Mary became the first accredited university in the UK to pay all staff a real Living Wage, based on the cost of living, not just the government minimum. Queen Mary also improved working conditions so that every staff member at the university – regardless of rank or role – received a minimum of 30 days’ annual leave, access to sick pay, an annually negotiated pay increase, and an employer contribution pension scheme. In 2011, the University became a founding partner of the Living Wage Foundation. At this event to mark twenty years of the Living Wage Campaign, the Mile End Institute hosted a conversation with Matthew Bolton, the Executive Director of Citizens UK, to revisit the history of the Living Wage and the campaign to establish the living wage at Queen Mary. The event reflected on how the Living Wage is a vital strategy in the fight to end poverty in London and the important role of higher educational institutions in creating a fairer society.
- Topic:
- Economics, Poverty, Labor Issues, and Standard of Living
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Europe
105. Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China
- Author:
- Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
- Abstract:
- Grandmother Peng Lanhua lives in a two-hundred-year-old rickety wooden house in a remote village of Guizhou Province. Born in 1935, she grew up in a China that was under Japanese occupation and entered adolescence during the Chinese Revolution. Peng is one of the few people in her community who did not want to relocate as part of the government’s poverty alleviation programme when the government designated her house unsafe to live in. Since 2013, eighty-six other households whose houses were deemed too dangerous or for whom jobs could not be generated locally were moved to a newly built community an hour’s drive away. But Peng has her reasons for not moving. She is eighty-six years-old and lives with Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to low-income insurance and a modest pension, she receives supplemental income from a new grapefruit company that leased her family’s land. The company, whose dividends are distributed to villagers like Peng as part of the national anti-poverty efforts, was established to develop the local agricultural industry. Peng’s daughter and son-in-law live next door in a two-storey house they built with government subsidies. Her children are employed. In other words, her basic needs are cared for, and relocation is voluntary. ‘We can’t force anyone to move, but we still have to provide the “three guarantees and two assurances”’, says Liu Yuanxue, the Party cadre sent to live in the village to see that every household emerges from extreme poverty. He is referring to the government poverty alleviation programme’s guarantee of safe housing, health care, and education, as well as being fed and clothed. Liu visits Peng on a monthly basis, as he does with all the households in the village. Through these visits, he comes to know the details of each person’s life. ‘The floor is too messy’, Liu says, jokingly reprimanding Peng’s daughter-in-law as he enters the large wooden house. She is also a member of the Communist Party of China. On the wall, a poster of Chairman Mao and, next to him, President Xi Jinping, pay homage to two of China’s socialist leaders who bookend the course of Peng’s life. Below their portraits sit a weathered table and a dusty terracotta water jug, an internet router flashing green beside them. A string of ethernet cables and wires stretch to different corners of the house (each house gets free internet and CCTV satellite television for three years before a subsidised rate sets in). There are energy-saving lightbulbs in each room and a satellite dish installed next to Peng’s hanging laundry. An extension of the house was built with a toilet and shower equipped with solar-heated running water, the mud floor poured over with concrete. As Lenin said, ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country’. Strengthening the Party in the countryside and meeting the concrete needs of the people have been pillars in China’s fight against poverty. Liu’s visit to Peng’s house is just one everyday scene in that process. The fact that Peng has lived in this house for half a century is also a product of the Revolution; in the 1970s, during the Cultural Revolution, the house was confiscated from a rich landlord and redistributed to three poor peasant families, including Peng’s. That cadres like Liu visit her on a monthly basis, that her house has been made safe to live in through the recent renovations, and that there is internet to connect the poorest of rural villages with the world is a continuation of this revolutionary history. After all, ensuring that the country’s workers and peasants like Peng get housed, fed, clothed, and cared for is part of China’s long struggle against poverty and a fundamental stage in constructing a socialist society.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Governance, Inequality, and Socialism
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
106. Regional Inequality and the Persistence of Poverty in Mozambique, Explained from the Perspective of the Vicious Circle of Poverty
- Author:
- Gilberto Libânio and Castigo José Castigo
- Publication Date:
- 08-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Abstract:
- To what extent have regional inequal-ities adversely affected the effectiveness of policies to combat poverty in Mozam-bique? To answer this question, the Vicious Circle of Poverty (VCP) perspec-tive is used to explain the persistence of poverty in the context of significant regional inequalities that characterize the economy of Mozambique, in the period 2001-2014. Therefore, the study aims to analyze how regional inequalities neg-atively affected policies to combat poverty in Mozambique and dictated their persistence and unequal incidence, using the VCP perspective. More specif-ically, it is intended to demonstrate the existence of unequal development or opportunities between regions and provinces, and to analyze how this dif-ference in development/opportunities influenced poverty reduction, finding its basis in the VCP.
- Topic:
- Development, Poverty, Inequality, and Economy
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Mozambique
107. The Poverty-Reducing Effects of Financial Inclusion: Evidence from Cambodia
- Author:
- Kimty Seng
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
- Abstract:
- This study analyses the effects of financial inclusion on poverty in terms of household income per capita in Cambodia, with data from the FinScope Survey carried out in 2015. The analysis describes the effects via financial literacy, accounting for endogenous selection bias resulting from unobserved confounders and for structural differences between users and non-users of financial services in terms of income functions. The findings suggest that the use of financial services is very likely to make a great contribution to reducing household budget deficits and poverty if the users, female in particular, have at least basic financial knowledge.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Inequality, Finance, and Financial Services
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Cambodia
108. Financial Inclusion, Active Bank Accounts and Poverty Reduction in India
- Author:
- Tony Cavoli, Ilke Onur, and Patricia Sourdin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
- Abstract:
- Using the World Bank’s Global Findex data, this research first shows that the efforts by the Indian Government and the Reserve Bank have been successful in providing access to formal banking services, especially in the rural areas of the country. Similarly, financial account ownership gap has been eliminated in terms of gender and income. Further analysis, using the Financial Inclusion Insights dataset, shows that financial inclusion has a positive and significant effect on reducing poverty in India. A closer look at the utilisation of the financial accounts shows that active usage of these accounts would lead to further reductions in poverty levels in India. Therefore, targeted programmes, such as offering financial education both in and outside schools, with the aim of improving financial literacy, could lead to further poverty reduction in India.
- Topic:
- Education, Poverty, Finance, and Banks
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
109. Measuring the Pro-Poorness of Urban and Rural Economic Growth in Indonesia, 2004–2014
- Author:
- Takahiro Akita and Sachiko Miyata
- Publication Date:
- 11-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
- Abstract:
- This study measures the pro-poorness of urban and rural economic growth by region from 2004 to 2014 in Indonesia using pro-poor growth indexes, with data from the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas). It also conducts a probit analysis to explore the determinants of poverty. All regions (Sumatra, Java–Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and East Indonesia) experienced a substantial increase in expenditure inequality in both urban and rural areas; thus, the change in poverty incidence due to redistribution effects is positive. Apart from East Indonesia, they reduced the incidence of poverty in both areas, but their growth was not pro-poor in the strict sense. According to the pro-poor growth indexes, urban areas performed better than rural areas; in most regions, the growth of urban areas was moderately pro-poor, while that of rural areas was weakly pro-poor or anti-poor. The government needs to take urban–rural and regional differences into account when formulating poverty alleviation policies and programs since these differences would affect economic growth and changes in inequality.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Inequality, Economic Growth, Urban, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- Indonesia, Asia-Pacific, and Indo-Pacific
110. An analysis of optimal devolved government size for growth: Armey curve in Kenya
- Author:
- Naftaly Mose
- Publication Date:
- 12-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Institution:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Abstract:
- The recent global initiative towards federalized spending has been gradually justified on the basis that decentralization of resources to sub-national governments level are likely to deliver greater efficiency in the delivery of public goods and services and consequently stimulate economic activities at devolved units (Martinez-Vasquez and McNab 2006). The devolution trend in unindustrialized nations is reinforced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB), which considers expenditure decentralization as a key pillar of its economic growth and poverty eradication strategy (World Bank 2016). But, attention to expenditure transfer has been mainly inspired by local political reasons (Mwiathi 2017). Like the case of Kenya in 2007/2008. The 2007/2008 post-election violence saw the introduction of the new governance system, which entrenched devolved systems (GoK 2010). In a number of nations including Kenya, a devolved system of governance refers to devolution. Essentially devolution is one form of fiscal decentralization. However, devolution is more extensive and includes transfer of both economic and political powers from central government to devolved units (Ezcurra and Rodríguez-Pose 2010).
- Topic:
- Government, International Political Economy, Poverty, World Bank, Economic Growth, Economic Development, and IMF
- Political Geography:
- Kenya and Africa