Economics Commons^™

Income Vs. Race Effects In Refund Anticipation Loan Utilization, Richard J. Smith

Social Work Faculty Publications

This purpose of this paper is to illustrate how data can target outreach for social and economic justice by testing for an association between refund anticipation loan (RAL) utilization and a Zip code’s racial and income characteristics. RALs are rapid tax refunds marketed by tax preparers.

The Political Economy Of Poverty Reduction Policies In Ethiopia, Abu Girma Moges

International Conference on African Development Archives

Poverty reduction strategies and policies have gained considerable popularity in recent policy discourse and international economic relations. These policies and strategies are framed in the context of the Millennium Development Goals that set specific quantitative targets to be achieved within a specified time framework. The goals specify the targets and require countries to design national poverty reduction strategies and achieve them with a generous financial assistance from the international community. However, the domestic political economic forces remain to shape the extent and effectiveness of such strategies in addressing and reducing the extent and depth of poverty in the reforming countries. …

Poverty, Inequality, Violent Conflict, And Welfare Loss: Micro-Level Evidence From Nepal, Mani K. Nepal

Economics ETDs

Poverty alleviation has become one of the main global agendas of the twenty first century, but the identification and targeting of the poor is facing fundamental problems due to the lack of required information. We utilize the micro-level estimation technique to estimate household expenditure for the census households using Nepalese household surveys, and estimate different measures of poverty and inequality at the national level as well as at the regional, districts and village levels, and for the different caste/ethnic groups. Our findings indicate that the reduction in poverty during 1995/96 — 2003/04 is not uniform across the villages of Nepal, …

Henry George: The Theory Of Distribution In Progress And Poverty, Phillip J. Bryson

Faculty Publications

The core of Henry George's economic theory appeared in his most widely-read book, Progress and Poverty. On the basis of his dramatic "single tax" theory, his work became widely known and gained some avid followers who endeavored to base policy on it. But the work was also of value in George's day and interest in our day because of its economic content. George was not a part of the academic economics establishment of his day and his theory was of strictly classical methodology, but it still had much to commend it. A simple model to present his concepts in more …

Linking Economic Development And Poverty: The Role Of Innovation And Innovation Capacity In The South, Jeremy Hall

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

While most economic development research views poverty as a sign of need for development or poverty reduction as an outcome of successful development, this study treats poverty as an independent variable alongside contemporary measures of innovation capacity that reflect state potential for economic development, examining the combined impact of poverty and innovation capacity on economic development outcomes. The study examines the effect poverty has on economic development outcomes given levels of innovation capacity, and the effect poverty has on formation of state innovation capacity. The methodology consists of pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis with panel corrected standard errors with lags. The …

Minimum Wage As A Poverty Reducing Measure, Kevin Souza

Master's Theses - Economics

With the recent increase in the Federal minimum wage, it is important to consider the impact of minimum wage in order to assess its effectiveness as a poverty reducing measure. While an increase in the minimum wage will increase income, the increased labor cost may cause an increase in unemployment. Greater unemployment may negate any benefit derived from the change in the minimum wage. Also, the minimum wage could put upward pressure on all wages. By using data from the Census and Bureau of Labor and Statistic’s 2006 March Supplement, it is possible to develop a model that empirically tests …

Poverty Alleviation Through Geographic Targeting, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw, Berk Ozler, Wesley Yin

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we employ recently completed “poverty maps” for three countries as tools for an ex ante evaluation of the distributional incidence of geographic targeting of public resources. We simulate the impact on poverty of transferring an exogenously given budget to geographically defined sub-groups of the population according to their relative poverty status. We find large gains from targeting smaller administrative units, such as districts or villages. However, these gains are still far from the poverty reduction that would be possible had the planners had access to information on household level income or consumption. Our results indicate that a …

Poverty In Moldova, Corneliu Bolbocean

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

Moldova is the poorest nation in Europe and the Moldavian society has one f the highest degrees of economic inequality among the Soviet states. Official statistics as well as the World Bank poverty reports suggest that the number of people who live below the absolute poverty line is around 30%. In reality poverty is a massive phenomenon in Moldova and the real poverty rate exceeds 70% for both rural and urban areas.

Spatial Inequality In Chile, Claudio A. Agostini, Philip H. Brown

Working Papers in Economics

Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth and local inequality has been shown to affect such outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic well-being of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census …

Ali Wyne On Understanding Poverty Edited By Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, And Dilip Mookherjee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 496pp., Ali Wyne

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Understanding Poverty Edited by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 496pp.

The Meaning Of Poverty: Questions Of Distribution And Power, Arthur Macewan

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Focusing on the low-income parts of the world and reviewing the different ways we can define poverty, I first argue that what people generally mean by poverty – or, more broadly, by economic well-being – cannot be adequately captured by a single, absolute measure such as income level or a more complex aggregate such as the Human Development Index. Not only do these measures fail to account for the complexity of human material needs, but they also fail to recognize the importance of distributional issues. The failure to incorporate a consideration of distribution in defining poverty (or, more generally, economic …

Non-Participatory Poverty, Carrie Curtis

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

In a capitalistic market society, all individuals should have an equal opportunity to participate, with varying extents, in consumerism. Democracy entitles one to political participation but people have come to value consumer participation as having more importance as shopping and the exchange of goods and services have become an important part of everyday living. Yet not everyone can participate in consumerism and they end up suffering, especially the children living in poverty. These children internalize the message that since they cannot participate in a society based on material consumption, they cannot belong. Poverty not only causes individuals to experience their …

Empirical Analysis Of Poverty And Inequality In West Virginia, Hector Addison

Hector Addison

Poverty and income inequality have attracted a lot of attention in recent literature and policy discussions. Using Ordinary Least Squares and Two stage least squares and cross sectional data for all counties in West Virginia, this study examines the determinants of poverty and income inequality and possibility of simultaneous relationship between them. Findings indicate there is a weak simultaneous relationship and income inequality is declining among aged 65 and above. Education, seen as social equalizer does not provide any evidence in reducing income inequality in West Virginia but as more and more women take up headship in families, poverty and …

Critical Examination Of Ghana’S Agriculture Policy Under Vision 2020 Document - Ppt, Hector Addison

Hector Addison

Ghana, like many developing economies has a huge agricultural based with cocoa being the major export commodity. Since independence in 1957, Ghana had struggled to put together and implement and model of development that guarantees better life for her citizenry. This paper looks at one such document and analyzes it from agriculture perspective in the context of present realities. It is clear that Ghana stands to gain from a transformed agricultural sector which might lead the way to discover the eluded glory as a resource endowed nation

Adam Smith And Poverty, Jonathan B. Wight

English Faculty Publications

Can we end poverty in America? Does economic theory offer a solution? Humility would be a good starting place, because systemic problems like generational poverty rarely stem from single causes. Putting the broken pieces together is difficult when some edges are sharp, some are shattered, and others missing. This essay draws on insights from Adam Smith in order to examine the problem of poverty. It focuses on a case study involving Serena Robins (the real names have been altered).

Voices Of The Poor: Poverty And Growth In Albania, Magda Tsaneva

Honors Theses

This paper uses three waves of panel surveys at the household level to study growth and poverty in Albania over the period 2002-2004. It attempts to answer two main questions. The first question is directed at finding the micro determinants of growth and aims to expose the obstacles households face to improve their economic situation. The main focus of the analysis is to investigate the importance of health, education, and infrastructure indicators for income growth. The second question asks whether growth in Albania during the period 20022004 has been pro-poor. I find that there is some evidence for a convergence …

The Flood: Political Economy And Disaster, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As summer faded to fall in 2005, a hurricane hit New Orleans, a city so unique in its history that it has more history than many American cities. It was nonetheless an American city in these telling parameters: a city of luxury alongside squalor, two-thirds Black, one-fourth poor, with the gap between its rich and poor growing at a gallop as the waters of lake and river lapped gently along aging, grass-covered levees.

Freeze the frame before the waters rise, and what do you see? A devastated public school system, where Black children are labeled “failing,” along with their schools. …