Listing 1 - 7 of 7 |
Sort by
|
Choose an application
Choose an application
Choose an application
Choose an application
March 1999 What are the gains from a better education, more land ownership, or a different occupation in Bangladesh? Do the gains differ in urban and rural areas? Have they remained stable over time? Do household size, family structure, and gender affect well-being? Do consumption, poverty, and inequality depend more on characteristics of households or on the areas in which those households are located? Using household data from five successive national surveys, Wodon 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. Wodon 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. This paper-a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, South Asia Region-was written as part of background work for the Bangladesh poverty assessment. The author may be contacted at qwodon@worldbank.org.
Choose an application
March 1999 Empirical work in Bangladesh shows that growth reduces poverty in both urban and rural areas - and is associated with rising inequality only in urban areas. It appears that promoting growth in rural areas rather than urban areas would reduce poverty more. 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. Wodon 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. This paper-a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, South Asia Region-was written as part of background work for the Bangladesh poverty assessment. The author may be contacted at qwodon@worldbank.org.
Choose an application
Choose an application
Under business-as-usual projections to the year 2100, inequality in per capita carbon emissions is likely to decline-but slowly. Targeted reductions should be effective in reducing not only total emissions but emissions inequality. Heil and Wodon 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 the 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. This paper-a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Latin America and Caribbean Region-is part of a larger effort in the region to analyze the implications of economic growth. The author may be contacted at qwodon@worldbank.org.
Listing 1 - 7 of 7 |
Sort by
|