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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Relationship Between Poverty And Economic Growth Revisited, Lonnie K. Stevans, David N. Sessions Mar 2008

The Relationship Between Poverty And Economic Growth Revisited, Lonnie K. Stevans, David N. Sessions

Lonnie K. Stevans

It has been shown in prior research that increased economic growth reduces poverty. Authors have also found that the effect of growth in GDP on poverty growth has either diminished or remained unchanged over time and the 1980s economic expansion in the U.S. had no affect on poverty. Using a formal error-correction model, we find that increases in economic growth are significantly related to reductions in the poverty rate for all families. Specifically, GDP growth was found to have a more pronounced effect on poverty during the expansionary periods of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Other findings include …


Income Mobility In Latin America, Gary S. Fields, Robert Duval Hernández, Samuel Freije Rodríguez, María Laura Sánchez Puerta Jan 2008

Income Mobility In Latin America, Gary S. Fields, Robert Duval Hernández, Samuel Freije Rodríguez, María Laura Sánchez Puerta

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In the last decades Latin American countries have experienced substantial macroeconomic instability. While the region as a whole experienced economic growth during most of the 1990’s and 2000’s, there were also years of stagnation as well as economic decline.


How Much Should We Care About Changing Income Inequality In The Course Of Economic Growth?, Gary S. Fields Jan 2008

How Much Should We Care About Changing Income Inequality In The Course Of Economic Growth?, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper asks how much we should care about changes in Lorenz curves and standard inequality measures when economic growth takes place. I conclude that these changes are of some importance but that other aspects of inequality and poverty are more important.


Are There Lessons For Africa From China’S Success Against Poverty?, Martin Ravallion Jan 2008

Are There Lessons For Africa From China’S Success Against Poverty?, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

At the outset of China’s reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that context matters, two lessons for Africa stand out. The first is the initial importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture, which will require both market-based incentives and public support. The second is the role played by strong …


How Relevant Is Targeting To The Success Of An Antipoverty Program?, Martin Ravallion Jan 2008

How Relevant Is Targeting To The Success Of An Antipoverty Program?, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

Policy-oriented discussions often assume that “better targeting” implies larger impacts on poverty or more cost-effective interventions for fighting poverty. The literature on the economics of targeting warns against that assumption, but evidence has been scarce, and the lessons from the literature have often been ignored by practitioners. The paper shows that standard measures of targeting performance are uninformative, or even deceptive, about the impacts on poverty, and cost-effectiveness in reducing poverty, of a large cash transfer program in China. The results suggest that in program design and evaluation, it would be better to focus directly on the program’s outcomes for …


“Poverty, Development, And Ecological Services”, Edward Barbier Dec 2007

“Poverty, Development, And Ecological Services”, Edward Barbier

Edward B Barbier

No abstract provided.