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Education And Income Distribution In Developing Countries: A Review Of The Literature, Gary S. Fields
Education And Income Distribution In Developing Countries: A Review Of The Literature, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] This paper is a survey of the available literature on education and income distribution in developing countries. Education may affect the distribution of income in a variety of ways: by raising the level of income; by changing, for better or worse, the dispersion of income; by opening up new opportunities for the children of the poor and thereby serving as a vehicle for social mobility and/or, by limiting participation to the children of the well-to-do, transmitting intergenerational inequality; by offering greater access to favored segments of the population (boys, city-dwellers, certain racial groups); by rewarding differently the education received …
Poverty Changes In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields
Poverty Changes In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] This chapter is concerned with measuring how the extent of poverty changes in a country over time. 'Poverty', as the term is used here, denotes the inability of an individual or a family to command sufficient resources to satisfy basic needs. The poverty line is a constant real amount below which people are said to be poor. The extent of poverty in a country is then based on variables such as the number who are poor and the extent of their resource shortfall. This chapter treats three topics: how poverty is defined, how much poverty there is, and how …
Trade Strategies And The Poor: Adjusting To New Realities, Gary S. Fields
Trade Strategies And The Poor: Adjusting To New Realities, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] The major policy issue examined in this paper is that of a country's choice of a trade strategy in the context of helping the poor. As the end of the 1980s approaches, developing countries face a much more difficult economic situation than that which they confronted at the end of the 1970s. The paper begins by reviewing these new realities and the need for adjusting to them. After mentioning some non-policies, I proceed to consider both successful and unsuccessful country experiences and draw lessons from them. One policy singled out for special attention is wage policy and its interaction …
Employment Generation And Poverty Alleviation In Developing Economies, Gary S. Fields
Employment Generation And Poverty Alleviation In Developing Economies, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] We know well that the East Asian economies have achieved higher economic growth rates than those in any other region of the world and that production for world markets has featured as a hallmark of the East Asian successes. This paper has three purposes: first, to present comparative data showing that the rates at which employment opportunities improve and poverty is reduced mirror countries' differential growth experiences; second, to examine differences in labour market institutions, demonstrating that those in East Asia have similarities more likely to lead to higher output performance and shared improvements in living conditions; and third, …
Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg
Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Consistent with the mainstream view of economic growth as a factor promoting long-term economic mobility, we hypothesize that those economies in which economic growth has been most rapid are precisely the ones that have achieved the greatest progress toward poverty reduction through improved labor market conditions, especially in private employment. We also hypothesize that the positive relationship running from economic growth through the labor market to poverty reduction continued to hold in the 1990s in essentially the same way as in earlier years when globalization was less intense. Both hypotheses are confirmed by our data. Our results therefore cast …
Reducing Poverty: The Overall Framework, Guy Pfeffermann, Gary S. Fields
Reducing Poverty: The Overall Framework, Guy Pfeffermann, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] How private firms contribute to economic mobility and poverty reduction and what governments can do to enhance their contribution is the theme of this book. We look first at the positive role the private sector plays in economic development, a role that has received less emphasis that that of other players. We then focus on the labor market and how various mechanisms in the economy interact to affect conditions for people as workers and as consumers. The volume examines the links among the business environment, private sector development, economic growth, poverty reduction, and economic mobility. Until recently, development economists …
Escaping From Poverty: Household Income Dynamics In Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Escaping From Poverty: Household Income Dynamics In Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] This study presents the main results of a larger, more technical report (Fields and others 2001) and subsequent work (Fields and others 2002) that analyzes income mobility in Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela. These economies were selected on the basis of the availability of panel data with which to analyze household income dynamics in the 1990s. By following households over time, we are able to investigate how households that were poor initially fared economically, relative to their richer counterparts. We can learn more about how and why households exit—and enter—poverty. To gauge income mobility, this study centers on …
Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields
Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] In the literature, much attention has been paid to a number of aspects of inequality including the distinction between relative and absolute inequality, axiomatization of inequality, the Lorenz criterion for inequality comparisons, properties of various inequality measures, and inequality decomposition. In no way do I wish to argue with the main results derived in these areas. Rather, my purpose here is to add to the theory of inequality measurement by dealing with one aspect of inequality which has been largely ignored by economists and by others. This is the question of how inequality changes - in particular, whether it …