Suchergebnisse

Over the past century, the world has seen a sustained decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but climate change could challenge poverty reduction efforts. On the Poverty and Welfare Impacts of Climate Change: Quantifying the Effects, Identifying the Adaptation Strategies surveys the relevant research on how climate change may affect global poverty rates and presents country-specific studies with implications for low-income rural populations as well as governments' risk management programs.An evidence review examines three main strands of the literature. Unsurprisingly, the impacts of climate change are shown to be generally regressive-falling more heavily on the poor than on the rich. However, most estimates have tended to ignore the effect of aggregate economic growth on poverty and household welfare. With continued growth, the evidence suggests that the poverty impact will be relatively modest and will not reverse the major decline in poverty expected over the next 40 years. Sector-specific studies-focusing on how climate change may affect agricultural yields-are generally poor predictors of national-level poverty impacts because of heterogeneity in the ability of households to adapt. That heterogeneity features prominently in studies of how weather shocks affect rural households in Indonesia and Mexico. Erratic deviations from long-term weather patterns affect growing cycles and thereby rural households' consumption (per capita expenditure) and health indicators. In Indonesia, the affected households appeared able to protect food expenditures at the expense of nonfood expenditures, and their access to credit and community public-works projects had the strongest moderating effects. In Mexico, weather shocks affected both food and nonfood consumption in ways that varied by both region and timing. The affected households' ability

This document synthesizes the findings contained in a series of reports prepared by IFPRI for PROGRESA between November 1998 and November 2000. PROGRESA is one of the major programs of the Mexican government aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Targeting its benefits directly to the population in extreme poverty in rural areas, PROGRESA aims to alleviate current and future poverty levels through cash transfers to mothers in households. One of the most important contributions of IFPRI's evaluation of PROGRESA has been the continuation of the program in spite of the historic change in the government of Mexico in the 2000 elections. The overwhelming (and unprecedented) evidence that a poverty alleviation program shows strong signs of having a significant impact on the welfare and human capital investment of poor rural families in Mexico has contributed to the decision of the Fox administration to continue with the program and to expand its coverage in the poor urban areas of the country after some improvements in the design of the program. The majority of the improvements in the design of PROGRESA (renamed Oportunidades by the Fox administration) were based on findings of the evaluation of PROGRESA that revealed areas of needed improvements in some of the structural components and the operation of the program. Yet in spite of these improvements in the program, the evaluation findings suggest that some issues remain to be resolved." -- from Text ; PR ; IFPRI1; PROGRESA; Public Policy and Investment ; FCND

AbstractThis paper uses panel data from rounds V–IX of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to examine the extent to which households are able to protect their consumption from fluctuations in their income.It is found that consumption is only partially protected from idiosyncratic shocks to income with food consumption being better protected than non‐food consumption expenditures. This suggests that adjustments in non‐food expenditures may be an important component of the risk management tools of Russian households. The analysis also provides evidence on the extent and nature of the coping strategies adopted by households. It is demonstrated that households complement their self‐insurance strategies, of borrowing, adjusting their labour supply, and selling assets, with informal risk sharing arrangements with households within their community. An examination of the role of sample selection confirmed that these findings are quite robust to this potential source of bias. Furthermore, accounting for the role of measurement and imputation errors in the measure of household income revealed that OLS estimates may yield a misleading picture about the extent to which urban and rural households are insured from idiosyncratic income shocks.JEL classification: D1, R2, P5.

In early 1998, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was asked to assist the PROGRESA administration to "determine if PROGRESA is functioning in practice as it is intended to by design." PROGRESA is one of the major programs of the Mexican government aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Targeting its benefits directly to the population in extreme poverty in rural areas, it aims to alleviate current poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health and nutrition. This document synthesizes the findings contained in a series of reports prepared by IFPRI for PROGRESA between November 1998 and November 2000. A more detailed description of the research, rationale and methods appears in the list of supporting documents from which this document has been derived. The evaluation is based on data collected from seven states that were among the first states to receive PROGRESA, including Guerrero, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Puebla, Querétero, San Luis Potosi, and Veracruz. A total of 24,000 households from 506 localities in these states were interviewed periodically between November 1997 and November 1999. Focus groups and workshops with beneficiaries, local leaders, PROGRESA officials, health clinic workers, and schoolteachers were also carried out. This report offers some key highlights beginning to emerge from this study related to the impact of PROGRESA on its target group, Mexico's rural poor. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; PROGRESA ; FCND

AbstractIn this paper I use the detailed consumption modules of the 1996 and 1999 National Socio‐Economic Surveys (SUSENAS) to calculate proportional changes in two welfare measures within 53 rural and urban regions of Indonesia. The results suggest that urban regions experienced the greatest drops in consumption while rural regions were less affected. The large decreases in mean consumption were accompanied by a reduction in inequality within the majority of the regions that tended to counteract the negative effect of the lower mean consumption on social welfare. The same general picture emerges when I use per capita caloric availability as a measure of welfare. Most of the regions experiencing a large drop in per capita consumption also seem to experience a drop in per capita caloric availability. This suggests that the drop in consumption has been accompanied by a reduction in the availability of calories and possibly nutrients at the household level. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.