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"The author uses a large, nationally representative household survey to analyze the impact of internal remittances (from Ghana) and international remittances (from African and other countries) on poverty in Ghana. With only one exception, he finds that both types of remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in Ghana. But the size of the poverty reduction depends on how poverty is being measured. The author finds that poverty is reduced more when international, as opposed to internal, remittances are included in household income, and when poverty is measured by the more sensitive poverty measures-poverty gap and squared poverty gap. For example, the squared poverty gap measure shows that including international remittances in household expenditure (income) reduces the severity of poverty by 34.8 percent, while including internal remittances in such income reduces the severity of poverty by only 4.1 percent. International remittances reduce the severity of poverty more than internal remittances because of the differential impact of these two types of remittances on poor households. Households in the poorest decile group receive 22.7 percent of their total household expenditure (income) from international remittances, as opposed to only 13.8 percent of such income from internal remittances. When these "poorest of the poor" households receive international remittances, their income status changes dramatically and this in turn has a large effect on any poverty measure-like the squared poverty gap-that considers both the number and distance of poor households beneath the poverty line. "--World Bank web site

In the UNECE region, countries' approaches to poverty measurement vary significantly. There is a large spectrum of poverty indicators, wide varieties of definitions, methods, thresholds and data sources that are not fully matched by national or international guidelines. This publication provides guidance on applying various measurement approaches and aims to improve the international comparability of poverty statistics. It mainly targets national statistical authorities and provides useful information for policymakers, researchers and other users of poverty data.

An attempt to define, measure and explain poverty is presented in this volume by means of a newly developed theoretical model. A combination of theory and empirical application is achieved by using the theoretical model on a sizeable data set derived from an extensive survey conducted in eight European countries. The nature of poverty is thereby empirically defined (and not a priori) as being the income level at which households feel that their income is just between sufficient and insufficient. An aggregate poverty index, associated with this poverty line definition, is calculated for each country and for subgroups within each country. Conclusions for social policy are drawn, describing which groups are at especially high risk of entering poverty, and who therefore need more specific policies. It is also discussed to what extent economic growth will eliminate poverty and which alternative measures are available.

The reduction in the official poverty rate seen in relation with increasing morbidity status, a mammoth income gap between the rich and the poor, ambiguous methodology followed to calculate Below Poverty Line Census and government policies on poverty reduction tends to question the whole poverty line debate. The official commitment to higher economic growth may reflect booming economic growth but it also has led to a large gap between the rich and the poor in both regional and social dimensions. To look into the causes and ameliorate poverty levels, various committees and policies have identified poverty levels. Using different criteria and methods, they still have failed to look at the social and political aspects. It is politics that has engulfed the whole discourse over universalisation of social welfare policies as some sort of justification behind the nation's fiscal deficit and subsidy constraint-related questions.

This article provides a detailed analysis of China's ongoing struggle against poverty. In addition to discussing the recently concluded targeted poverty alleviation program, in which the CPC-led government achieved its goal of ending extreme poverty, the author discusses the anti-poverty measures taken during the various phases of the Chinese Revolution, including land reform in the liberated areas in the 1930s and 1940s; the period of initial socialist construction from 1949; reform and opening up from 1978; and the more recent measures aimed at building common prosperity. He concludes that poverty alleviation, and more broadly the improvement of people's living standards, has been foundational to the entire Chinese socialist project and constitutes a key theme of each of its stages.

Slower growth and higher inflation can worsen poverty. By implication, maintaining macroeconomic stability is necessary to reduce poverty. When a typical aggregate demand (AD) policy for stabilization is not effective, however, its impact on poverty could be devastating as incomes of the poor typically decline with falling output. In this study, I argue that when poverty reduction is included in welfare objectives, it is imperative that policymakers weigh the impact of macroeconomic policy on the poverty line and household incomes. I address this issue by exploring the theoretical and empirical link between output, price, poverty line, and household incomes, and juxtapose them with their combined effect on poverty. Central to my argument is the premise that neither growth itself nor stability per se is the answer to poverty reduction. Applying a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) with the Blanchard-Quah (B-Q) restriction to the data of two Asian countries, Thailand and Indonesia, it was revealed that the aggregate supply (AS) curves in both countries are flat, implying that a stabilization policy based on AD shock is not effective. On the other hand, an AD expansion can produce non-inflationary growth and raise the incomes of the poor. To the extent that the transmission mechanism through which output affects household incomes is complex, involving direct, indirect, and feedback effects within an economy-wide system, a general equilibrium model with a detailed financial block was used. From the model simulations, poverty and income inequality results were found to be sensitive to the type of shock, price elasticity of wages, and structure of the economy, particularly the mechanisms by which the financial sector affects household income. While a positive fiscal shock tends to reduce poverty in Thailand, but not in Indonesia, the effect of an expansionary monetary policy on poverty can be either favorable or unfavorable. As shown in the Indonesia case, when the price elasticity of wages is low, the effect can be favorable but it can be unfavorable if the elasticity is high. An expansionary policy can raise the earnings of financial asset holders (i.e., higher income households) more than the incomes of the poor, as is the case in Indonesia, but not in Thailand. A fundamental gain from using the approach is to allow policymakers to measure the intensity of the trade-offs between growth, stability, and poverty, based upon which macroeconomic stability with lower poverty can be achieved.

Theorists have identified a wide range of reasons why individual and collective actors have a moral responsibility to help alleviate global poverty. There is now widespread agreement that several of these reasons are valid. From the perspective of the poverty opponent, it might seem that the more reasons there are to alleviate poverty, the better. The difficulty is that different reasons for alleviating poverty point to different poverty-alleviating activities. This situation generates questions about both how actors should set priorities among different poverty-alleviating activities ('actor-centred' questions) and who should have primary responsibility for alleviating particular cases of poverty ('case-centred' questions). This article explains why actor-centred and case-centred questions are worth asking and sketches a promising way of responding to them.