Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

April 2000 - Community-level targeting of antipoverty programs is now common. Do local community organizations target the poor better than the central government? In one program in Bangladesh, the answer tends to be yes, but performance varies from village to village. The authors try to explain why. It is common for central governments to delegate authority over the targeting of welfare programs to local community organizations - which may be better informed about who is poor, though possibly less accountable for getting the money to the local poor - while the center retains control over how much goes to each local region. Galasso and Ravallion outline a theoretical model of the interconnected behavior of the various actors in such a setting. The model's information structure provides scope for econometric identification. Applying data for a specific program in Bangladesh, they find that overall targeting was mildly pro-poor, mostly because of successful targeting within villages. But this varied across villages. Although some village characteristics promoted better targeting, these were generally not the same characteristics that attracted resources from the center. Galasso and Ravallion observe that the center's desire for broad geographic coverage appears to have severely constrained the scope for pro-poor village targeting. However, poor villages tended not to be better at reaching their poor. They find some evidence that local institutions matter. The presence of cooperatives for farmers and the landless appears to be associated with more pro-poor program targeting. The presence of recreational clubs has the opposite effect. Sometimes the benefits of decentralized social programs are captured by local elites, depending on the type of spending being decentralized. When public spending is on a private (excludable) good, and there is no self-targeting mechanism to ensure that only the poor participate, there is ample scope for local mistargeting. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the performance of alternative means of reaching the poor through public programs. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Policies for Poor Areas (RPO 681-39). The authors may be contacted at egalasso@worldbank.org or mravallion@worldbank.org.

Anti-Poverty --- Community Groups --- Community Organizations --- Conflict --- Food-For-Education --- Income --- Irrigation --- Land Inequality --- Local Farmers --- Local Irrigation Facility --- Participatory Poverty Assessments --- Poor --- Poor Families --- Poor Farmers --- Poor Households --- Poverty Programs --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Spending --- Rural --- Rural Development --- Rural Families --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Services and Transfers to Poor --- Targeting

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

November 1999 - Changes in Poland's family allowances and unemployment benefits have significant but different effects on different groups of households. In deciding on strategies to address long-term poverty, policymakers must take such differences into account. Okrasa analyzes how the incidence of household endowments and the allocation of social benefits affect families' transitions into and out of poverty. Using panel data for 1993-96 from Poland's Household Budget Survey, and a framework based on sample survival analysis techniques, Okrasa evaluates how various policies will affect households with specific characteristics that make them likely to become poor or to move out of poverty under different scenarios (including whether or not they receive a given amount of a particular type of social transfer). He also discusses how nonincome sources of welfare, such as savings, credits, and loans, affect the likelihood that families will become or stop being poor. He concludes that family allowances and unemployment benefits, the two major social programs analyzed, have significant but different effects on different groups of households (characterized in terms of the age, gender, marital status, and educational attainment of the head of household; the size, type, location, and sector of employment of the family or household; and the year in which the household fell into poverty). If the share of family allowances in total household income were reduced by 1 percent, for example, the average length of poverty would be increased by roughly 2 percent. But a 1 percent change in unemployment benefits would yield a 3 percent change in the average duration of poverty. Differences in hazard rates for various subgroups would be even greater. Households in villages were much more likely to fall into poverty than households in cities and large towns, but the poor in towns and cities had more difficulty exiting poverty. There was generally less poverty mobility among households headed by public sector employees than among those headed by employees in the private sector. Families with three or more children and one-parent families (and grandparents with children) faced the greatest risk of being poor; single-person households and childless married couples were the least endangered. Small nuclear families with one or two children and families without children fell between these two extremes. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze the dynamics of poverty and the effectiveness of the safety net. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Household Welfare Change during the Transition (RPO 681-21). The author may be contacted at wokrasa@worldbank.org.

Chronically Poor --- Economic Growth --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Household Budget --- Household Income --- Human Development --- Income --- Measures --- Poor --- Poor Households --- Population Policies --- Poverty --- Poverty Dynamics --- Poverty Index --- Poverty Profile --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Development --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Safety Nets and Transfers --- Savings --- Services and Transfers to Poor --- Social Policies --- Social Programs --- Social Protections and Labor --- Temporarily Poor --- Unemployment

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

October 1999 - During the turbulent years 1976-96, aggregate data for Brazil appear to show only small changes in mean income, inequality, and incidence of poverty - suggesting little change in the distribution of income. But a small group of urban households - excluded from formal labor markets and safety nets - was trapped in indigence. Based on welfare measured in terms of income alone, the poorest part of urban Brazil has experienced two lost decades. Despite tremendous macroeconomic instability in Brazil, the country's distributions of urban income in 1976 and 1996 appear, at first glance, deceptively similar. Mean household income per capita was stagnant, with minute accumulated growth (4.3 percent) over the two decades. The Gini coefficient hovered just above 0.59 in both years, and the incidence of poverty (relative to a poverty line of RD 60 a month in 1996 prices) remained effectively unchanged over the period, at 22 percent. Behind this apparent stability, however, a powerful combination of labor market, demographic, and educational dynamics was at work, one effect of which was to generate a substantial increase in extreme urban poverty. Using a decomposition methodology based on microsimulation, which endogenizes labor incomes, individual occupational choices, and decisions about education, Ferreira and de Barros show that the distribution of income was being affected by: Three factors that tended to increase poverty - a decline in average returns to education and experience, a negative growth effect, and unfortunate changes in the structure of occupations and participation in the labor force; Two factors that tended to reduce poverty - improved educational endowments across the board, and a progressive reduction in dependency ratios; The net effect was small and negative for measured inequality overall, and negligible for the incidence of poverty (relative to high poverty lines). But the net effect was to substantially increase extreme poverty - suggesting the creation of a group of urban households excluded from any labor market and trapped in indigence. Above the 15th percentile, urban Brazilians have stayed put only by climbing hard up a slippery slope. Counteracting falling returns in both self-employment and the labor market required substantially reduced fertility rates and an average of two extra years of schooling (which still left them undereducated for that income level). This paper - a product of the Poverty Division, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network - is part of a larger effort in the network to understand the determinants of urban poverty. Francisco Ferreira may be contacted at fferreira@econ.puc-rio.br.

Economic Growth --- Economic Theory and Research --- Extreme Poverty --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Formal Safety Nets --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Household Composition --- Household Income --- Household Per Capita Income --- Income --- Income Distribution --- Income Inequality --- Inequality --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Measures --- Poor --- Poor Households --- Population Policies --- Poverty Incidence --- Poverty Indices --- Poverty Line --- Poverty Lines --- Poverty Measures --- Poverty Reduction --- Pro-Poor Growth --- Rural --- Rural Development --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Services and Transfers to Poor --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployment