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This paper analyzes poverty in rural and semi-urban areas of Mexico (localities with less than 2,500 and 15,000 inhabitants, respectively) and it provides guidance on a social agenda and poverty alleviation strategy for rural Mexico. The analyses are based on INIGH and ENE datasets for 1992-2002. Monetary extreme poverty affected 42 percent of the rural population in dispersed rural areas and 21 percent in semi-urban areas in 2002, slightly less than one decade earlier. Most of the rural poor live in dispersed rural areas and 13.2 million people live in poverty in rural Mexico with less than 15,000 inhabitants. It is disproportionately a feature of households whose heads main job is in the agricultural sector, as self-employed farmers or rural laborers, and that have at most a primary education. However, the incidence of extreme rural poverty has declined since 1996 but at a slower pace than the decline in urban poverty. Hence, the rural-urban poverty gap increased in recent years and in some places extreme poverty is at least four times higher in rural than urban areas. Moreover, not only is the income gap in urban areas increasing, but also the gap between richer and poorer segments of the population.

Agricultural Sector --- Extreme Poverty --- Farmers --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Household Surveys --- Income --- Income Gap --- Population Policies --- Poverty --- Poverty Alleviation --- Poverty Alleviation Strategy --- Poverty Gap --- Poverty Line --- Poverty Lines --- Poverty Profile --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Development --- Rural Laborers --- Rural People --- Rural Poor --- Rural Population --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Reduction

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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

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The authors provide new evidence on the extent to which absolute poverty has urbanized in the developing world, and the role that population urbanization has played in overall poverty reduction. They find that one-quarter of the world's consumption poor live in urban areas and that the proportion has been rising over time. By fostering economic growth, urbanization helped reduce absolute poverty in the aggregate but did little for urban poverty. Over 1993-2002, the count of the "USD 1 a day" poor fell by 150 million in rural areas but rose by 50 million in urban areas. The poor have been urbanizing even more rapidly than the population as a whole. Looking forward, the recent pace of urbanization and current forecasts for urban population growth imply that a majority of the poor will still live in rural areas for many decades to come. There are marked regional differences: Latin America has the most urbanized poverty problem, East Asia has the least; there has been a "ruralization" of poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; in marked contrast to other regions, Africa's urbanization process has not been associated with falling overall poverty.

Absolute Poverty --- Agricultural Production --- Economic Growth --- Global Poverty --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Income --- International Poverty Lines --- Local Poverty Lines --- Measures --- National Poverty --- Poor --- Poor Living --- Population Policies --- Poverty Assessments --- Poverty Incidence --- Poverty Measures --- Poverty Profile --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Development --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Lines --- Rural Poverty Reduction

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This paper analyzes the impact of trade reforms on household welfare. In particular, it studies the importance of each of the links that together constitute the impact using data from the Vietnamese experience in the 1990s. The implementation of trade reforms in the 1990s, most noteworthy of which was the liberalization of rice, resulted in substantial improvement in welfare as evidenced by the drastic decline in poverty. Using analytical and empirical methods, the author examines the role of each channel (direct versus indirect) in this improvement for different groups of households. Results indicate that the growth has been broad based and pro-poor. Poorer households experienced more growth for each and every group analyzed. And contrary to the standard literature, net buyer households had more growth compared with net sellers, emphasizing the importance of indirect links. Decomposition of the growth shows that for rural households, both the direct effect and the multiplier effect drive growth while the multiplier effect was key in urban areas. The importance of the secondary effects underscores the need for a broader model to estimate the impact of trade reforms fully.

Agricultural Production --- Counterfactual --- Economic Theory and Research --- Emerging Markets --- Farmers --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Food Buyers --- Food Crops --- Food Prices --- Household Welfare --- Income --- Income Distribution --- Income Growth --- Income On Food --- Inequality --- Labor Policies --- Land Titling --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poor --- Poor Households --- Poverty --- Poverty Diagnostics --- Poverty Profile --- Poverty Reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Rural --- Rural Areas --- Rural Development --- Rural Households --- Rural Poor --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping --- Social Protections and Labor