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WORKING PAPERS
Smallholder Market Participation:
Concepts and Evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa
August 2008
Barrett, Christopher B.
This paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation, with a focus on staple foodgrains (i.e., cereals) in eastern and
southern Africa, in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi-subsistence
poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural Africa. The conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at
facilitating smallholder organization, at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce, and, perhaps especially, at improving poorer households’
access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from
semi-subsistence poverty traps. Macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders
in the region.
Prepared for FAO workshop on Staple Food Trade and Market Policy Options for Promoting Development in Eastern and Southern Africa, Rome, March 1-2, 2007.
In Food Policy 33(4): 299-317, August, 2008
Improving Food Aid’s Impact:
What Reforms Would Yield The Highest Payoff?
July 2008
Lentz, Erin C. and Christopher B. Barrett
Developing an integrated model of the food aid distribution chain, from donor
appropriations through operational agency programming decisions to
household consumption choices we simulate alternative policies and sensitivity
analysis to establish how varying underlying conditions — e.g., delivery costs,
the political additionality of food, targeting efficacy — affect the optimal policy
for improving the well-being of food insecure households. We find that
improved targeting by operational agencies is crucial to advancing food
security objectives. At the donor level, the key policy variable under most
model parameterizations is ocean freight costs associated with cargo preference
restrictions on US food aid.
In World Development 36(7): 1152-1172, July, 2008
Measuring Intra-Household Inequality: Explorations Using the Body Mass Index
June 2008
Sahn, David E. and Stephen D. Younger
This paper tests for relationships between level of well-being and inequality at both inter-country and intra-household levels, but using a different indicator of well-being, the body mass index (BMI). BMI captures individual’s consumption relative to their needs, and reflects a combination of both consumption (of calories, sanitation, and health care) and health status, two important dimensions of well-being. We do not find any evidence to support either the across country Kuznets curve or the intra-household Kuznets curve. Instead, we find consistent evidence for an increase in BMI inequality as average living standards (of countries or households) improve. A distinct and surprising result is that between one half and two-thirds of BMI inequality is accounted for by within-household BMI. This finding clearly suggests that a large share of the inequality that is measured using household surveys which assumes that the well-being of all household members is the same, is likely grossly under-estimating overall inequality in a given country. In examining the within-household ratios of adult to child body mass indexes we also find some evidence that health shocks are both large and affect children more than adults; although, there are also indications that in households with chronic food deficits, there is an attempt to protect young children from food and related stresses that contribut to low BMI. It is thus clear that policies and programs that target households, not individuals, will be largely ineffective.
Presented at the WIDER Conference on Advancing Health Equity, Helsinki, Finland, September 29-30, 2006, and the CIRPÉE Conference on Health Economics, Université Laval, March 30, 2007
Forthcoming in Health Economics
Determinants of HIV Knowledge and Condom Use among Women in Madagascar: An Analysis Using Matched Household and Community Data
June 2008
Glick, Peter, Josée Randriamamonjy, and David E. Sahn
We estimate the determinants of HIV/AIDS knowledge and related behavior (use of condoms)
among women in Madagascar, a country where prevalence remains low but conditions are ripe
for a rapid increase in infections. In both rural and urban areas, more educated and wealthier
women are more likely to know about means of preventing infection, less likely to have
misconceptions about transmission, and more likely to use condoms. Community factors such as
availability of health centers and access to roads also are associated with greater HIV knowledge. However, most of the large rural-urban difference in mean knowledge is due not to location per se but to differences in schooling and wealth; rather than simply being geographically targeted, AIDS education efforts must be designed to target and be understood by uneducated and poor subpopulations.
Forthcoming in African Development Review
Agricultural Technology, Productivity, and Poverty
in Madagascar
May 2008
Minten, Bart and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper uses a unique, spatially-explicit dataset to study the link between
agricultural performance and rural poverty in Madagascar. We show that, controlling for geographical
and physical characteristics, communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved
agricultural technologies and, consequently, higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices, higher real
wages for unskilled workers, and better welfare indicators. The empirical evidence strongly favors
support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the
high poverty and food insecurity rates currently prevalent in rural Madagascar.
In World Development 36(5): 797-822
Food Systems and the Escape from Poverty and Ill-Health Traps in Sub-Saharan Africa
May 2008
Barrett, Christopher
Millienium Development Goal #1 is to halve extreme poverty ($1/day per person)
and hunger. Progress toward this goal has been excellent at global level, led by China and
India, but woefully insufficient in sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa, a disproportionate share of the extreme poor are “ultra-poor”, surviving on less than $0.50/day per person, a condition that appears both stubbornly persistent and closely associated with widespread severe malnutrition – “ultra hunger” – and ill health. Indeed, ill health, malnutrition and ultra-poverty are mutually reinforcing states that add to the challenge of addressing any one of them on its own and make integrated strategies essential. Food systems are a natural locus for such a strategy because agriculture is the primary employment sector for the ultra-poor and because food consumes a very large share of the expenditures of the ultra-poor. The causal mechanisms underpinning the poverty trap in which ultra-poor, unhealthy and undernourished rural Africans too often find themselves remain only partially understood, but is clearly rooted in the food system that guides their production, exchange, consumption and investment behaviors. Four key principles to guide interventions in improving food systems emerge clearly. But there remains only limited empirical evidence to guide detailed design and implementation of strategies to develop African food systems so as to break the lock of poverty and ill-health traps.
This paper was prepared for the Cornell University and United Nations University Symposium on The African Food System and its Interactions with Health and
Nutrition, held at the United Nations, New York City, November 13, and at Cornell University,
November 15, 2007.
Incomplete Credit Markets and Commodity
Marketing Behavior
May 2008
Stephens, Emma C. and Christopher B. Barrett
We develop a simple theoretical model of market participation over multiple
seasons in the presence of liquidity constraints and transactions costs to explain the ‘sell low, buy high’ puzzle wherein certain households forego opportunities for intertemporal price arbitrage through storage and are observed to
sell output post-harvest at prices lower than observed prices for purchases in
the subsequent lean season. We test our model with data from western Kenya
using maximum likelihood estimation of a multivariate sample selection model
of market participation. Access to off-farm income and credit indeed seem to
influence crop sales and purchase behaviors in a manner consistent with the
hypothesized patterns.
Social Learning, Social Influence and Projection Bias: A caution on inferences based on proxy-reporting of peer behavior
April 2008
Hogset, Heidi and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper explores the consequences of conflating social learning and social influence
concepts and of the widespread use of proxy-reported behavioral data for accurate
understanding of learning from others. Our empirical analysis suggests that proxy-reporting is
more accurate for new innovations, about which social learning is more plausible, than for
mature technologies. Furthermore, proxy-reporting errors are correlated with respondent
attributes, suggesting projection bias. Self- and proxy-reported variables generate different
regression results, raising questions about inferences based on error-prone, proxy-reported
peer behaviors. Self-reported peer behavior consistently exhibits statistically insignificant
effects on network members’ adoption behavior, suggesting an absence of social effects.
Ability, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal: A Panel Data Analysis
March 2008
Glick, Peter and David E. Sahn
Little is known about the relationship of early ability and subsequent educational outcomes in
developing country environments, because the panel data needed to analyze this question have
been lacking. In this study we take advantage of unique data from Senegal, combining test
score data for children from the second grade with information on their subsequent school
progression from a follow-up survey conducted seven years later. We find that measures of
early cognitive ability, corrected for measurement error using multiple test observations per
child, are very strongly positively associated with later school progression. A plausible
interpretation is that parents invest more in a child’s education when the returns to doing so are higher. The results point to the need for remedial policies to target lagging students early on to reduce early dropout. A current policy targeting poorly performing students is grade repetition, which is pervasive in Francophone Africa. Using variation across schools in test score thresholds for promotion to identify the effects of second grade repetition, we find that a
repeated student is more likely to leave school before completing primary than a student with
similar ability who is not held back, pointing to the need for alternative measures to improve
skills of lagging children.
The Evolution of Horizontal Inequalities in Madagascar, 1999-2005
March 2008
Stifel, David, Felix Forster, and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper explores whether there exist persistent horizontal inequalities in
Madagascar; that is, whether there is a pattern over time of consistently poorer
performance among subpopulations readily identifiable by one or more identity markers.
Three key messages come out of this analysis. First, there exists a core group of
households that remained persistently poor over the 1999-2005 period. These households
were land poor, lived in remote areas, and were headed by uneducated individuals, most
commonly unmarried women. Second, in addition to establishing the existence of
horizontal inequalities across groups, relative differences in returns to education and land
holdings underscore the existence of vertical inequalities within groups, as one
characteristic affects the returns to another. Third, persistent horizontal inequalities are
associated with multiple different identities, some of which are offsetting and some of
which are reinforcing. For example, women’s higher education tends to offset (or even
overcome) the disadvantages associated with being a permanent head of household, while
being land poor compounds the disadvantages associated with remoteness.
This paper was prepared for a workshop hosted by the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity at the University of Oxford (U.K.).
Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty in Pastoral Areas of East Africa
March 2008
Little, Peter D., John McPeak, Christopher B. Barrett and Patti Kristjanson
Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable
attention by a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities,
academics, activists, and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there
surprisingly is little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should
be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an
interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of
poverty among one of the continent’s most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and
challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic
remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates ‘homogenize’
the concept of ‘pastoralist’ by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth
differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is
another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby
empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.
Overview Paper for the Policy Research Conference on
“Pastoralism and Poverty Reduction in East Africa,”
held in Nairobi, Kenya, June 27-28, 2006.
Policy Impacts on Schooling Gender Gaps in Developing Countries: The Evidence and a Framework for Interpretation
February 2008
Glick, Peter
In many regions of the developing world girls continue to receive less education than boys.
This paper reviews the evidence on the effects of policies in the education sector and
outside it on household schooling investments in girls and boys, distinguishing between
policies that are ostensibly gender neutral and those that explicitly target girls. It is
frequently (but certainly not universally) found that the demand for girl’s schooling is
more responsive than boys’ to gender neutral changes in school cost or distance as well as
quality. Although these patterns can be interpreted in terms of parental preferences, this
paper shows that they can also plausibly be explained within a human capital investment
framework through assumptions about the nature of schooling cost and returns functions.
Among these policies, increasing the physical accessibility of schools emerges as a
measure that may result in disproportionate enrollment gains for girls. Where gender gaps
are large or persistent, however, direct targeting of girls is probably necessary. Formal
evidence from a number of demand or supply side interventions, including subsidies to
households and to schools to enroll girls and the provision of girls-only schools, suggests
the potential for targeted measures to yield substantial gains for girls. Many other policies,
such as subsidized childcare or flexible school scheduling that address the opportunity
costs of girls’ time, hold promise but for the most part have yet to be subject to rigorous
assessment. The paper discusses methodological problems in such assessments and
concludes with suggestions for future research on policies to close schooling gender gaps.
This is an expanded version of a paper that is forthcoming in World Development
Risk Management and Social Visibility in Ghana
February 2008
Vanderpuye-Orgle, Jacqueline and Christopher B. Barrett
In this paper we test for risk pooling within and among social networks to see
if the extent of informal insurance available to individuals in rural Ghana varies with their
social visibility. We identify a distinct subpopulation of socially invisible individuals
who tend to be younger, poorer, engaged in farming, recent arrivals into the village who
have been fostered and are not members of a major clan. While we cannot reject the null
hypothesis that individual shocks do not affect individual consumption and that
individual consumption tracks network and village consumption one-for-one among the
socially visible, risk pooling fails for the socially invisible subpopulation. These results
have important implications for the design of social protection policy.
Forthcoming in African Development Review
Spatial Integration at Multiple Scales:
Rice Markets in Madagascar
January 2008
Moser, Christine, Christopher B. Barrett, and Bart Minten
This paper uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in Madagascar
are integrated across space at different scales of analysis and to explain some of the factors that
limit spatial arbitrage and price equalization within a single country. We use rice price data
across four quarters of 2000-2001 along with data on transportation costs and infrastructure
availability for nearly 1400 communes in Madagascar to examine the extent of market
integration at three different spatial scales—sub-regional, regional, and national—and to
determine whether non-integration is due to high transfer costs or lack of competition. The
results indicate that markets are fairly well integrated at the sub-regional level and that factors
such as high crime rates, remoteness, and lack of information are among the factors limiting
competition.
Are Africans Practicing Safer Sex: Evidence from Demographic
and Health Surveys for Eight Countries
January 2008
Glick, Peter and David E. Sahn
We use repeated rounds of Demographic and Health Survey data from eight African countries to
examine changes in and determinants of three HIV risk behaviors: age at first intercourse;
number of current sexual partners, and use of condoms. As a prelude, we assess the within-
country comparability of DHS surveys over time. We find some evidence of changes in sample
composition, which is easily handled in a multivariate framework, and find evidence as well of
changes in how people respond to questions about HIV behavior. Because of the latter, which
likely represents an increase in social desirability bias over time, our estimates of risk reduction
may be upper bounds on the true effects. Overall the picture is one of reductions in risk
behaviors over recent 4-6 year intervals, especially with respect to condom use; in some cases
the changes seem large given the short time periods involved. With some exceptions, however,
the extent and pervasiveness of these changes seems inadequate in relation to the urgency of the
public health crisis represented by AIDS. With respect to the determinants of behaviors,
schooling and wealth have contradictory impacts on risk behavior: they both tend to increase the
likelihood of using condoms while (for men) also increasing the demand for additional sexual
partners.
Presented at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) Seminar on “Interactions between Poverty and HIV/AIDS,” Cape Town, South Africa, December 2005.
Alternate version in Economic Development and Cultural Change 56(2):397-439, January, 2008
Productivity in Malagasy Rice Systems:
Wealth-differentiated Constraints and Priorities
December 2007
Minten, Bart, Jean Claude Randrianarisoa and Christopher B. Barrett
This study explores the constraints on agricultural productivity and priorities in boosting productivity in rice, the main staple in Madagascar, using a range of different data sets and analytical methods, integrating qualitative assessments by farmers and quantitative evidence from panel data production function analysis and willingness-to-pay estimates for chemical fertilizer. Nationwide, farmers seek primarily labor productivity enhancing interventions, e.g., improved access to agricultural equipment, cattle, and irrigation. Shock mitigation measures, land productivity increasing technologies, and improved land tenure are reported to be much less important. Research and interventions aimed at reducing costs and price volatility within the fertilizer supply chain might help at least the more accessible regions to more readily adopt chemical fertilizer.
Invited panel paper prepared for presentation at the International Association of Agricultural Economists Conference, Gold Coast, Australia,
August 12-18, 2006
In Agricultural Economics 37(s1): 237-248, December, 2007
Do Free Goods Stick to Poor Households?
Experimental Evidence on Insecticide Treated Bednets
November 2007
Hoffmann, Vivian, Christopher B. Barrett, and David R. Just
According to economic theory, the market will allocate a good to
those willing and able to pay the most for it. This suggests that efforts to
target durable health goods such as insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) to poor
populations may prove ineffective. However, wealth and endowment effects
militate against the sale of in-kind transfers. We quantify these effects
through a field experiment in Uganda in which households were randomly
assigned to receive ITNs, a cash transfer, or have the opportunity to purchase
nets with their own resources. Our results indicate that very few nets will be
resold by recipient households.
Are Client Satisfaction Surveys Useful? Evidence from Matched Facility and Household Data in Madagascar
September 2007
Glick, Peter
Client satisfaction surveys in developing countries are increasingly being promoted as a
means of understanding health care quality and the demand for these services. However,
concerns have been raised about the reliability of responses in such surveys: for example,
‘courtesy bias’ may lead clients, especially if interviewed upon exiting clinics, to provide
misleadingly favorable responses. This study uses unique data from Madagascar to
investigate these and other issues. Identical questions about satisfaction with local health
care centers were asked in user exit surveys and in a population based household survey;
the latter would be less contaminated by courtesy bias as well as changes in provider
behavior in response to being observed. We find strong evidence that reported satisfaction
is biased upward in exit surveys for subjective questions regarding (for example) treatment
by staff and consultation quality, but is not biased for relatively objective questions about
facility condition and supplies. The surveys do provide useful information on the
determinants of consumer satisfaction with various dimensions of provider quality. Still, to
obtain reliable estimates of consumer perceptions of health service quality, household based
sampling appears to be far superior to the simpler exit survey method.
Understanding Declining Mobility and Inter-household
Transfers among East African Pastoralists
August 2007
Huysentruyt, Marieke, Christoper B. Barrett, and John G. McPeak
We model inter-household transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent
consequence of individuals’ strategic interdependence, resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing
externalitiesFmore specifically, a public-good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g.
ethnic) identity in a potentially hostile environment, and a resource appropriation externality related to the
use of common property grazing lands. Our model augments the extant literature on transfers, and is more
consistent with the limited available empirical evidence on heterogeneous and changing transfers’ patterns
among east African pastoralists. The core principles of our model possibly apply more broadly, for
example to long-distance migrants or even ‘foot soldiers’ in street gangs.
Forthcoming in Economica
Inequality and Poverty in Africa in an Era of Globalization:
Looking Beyond Income to Health and Education
August 2007
Sahn, David E. and Stephen D. Younger
This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of well-
being – education and health – in Africa. We expected to find, as we did in Latin
America, that progress in the provision of public services and the focus of public
spending in the social sector would contribute to declining poverty and inequality in
health and education, even in an environment of stagnant or worsening levels of income
poverty. Unfortunately, our results indicate that in the area of health, little progress is
being made in terms of reducing pre-school age stunting, a clear manifestation of poor
overall health. Likewise, our health inequality measure showed that while there were a
few instances of reduced inequality along this dimension, there was, on balance, little
evidence of success in improving equality of outcomes. Similar results were found in our
examination of underweight women as an indicator of general current health status of
adults. With regard to education, the story is somewhat more positive. However, the
overall picture gives little cause for complacency or optimism that Africa has, or will
soon reap the potential benefits of the process of globalization.
Presented at the UNU-WIDER Conference on “The Impact of Globalization on the Poor
in Africa,” Johannesburg, South Africa, 1-2 December, 2005
Decomposing World Education Inequality
August 2007
Sahn, David E. and Stephen D. Younger
We decompose global inequality in educational achievement into within- and between-
country components. We find that the former is significantly larger. This is different
than results for international income inequality, but similar to results for international
health inequality.
Living Standards in Africa
August 2007
Sahn, David E. and Stephen D. Younger
This paper substantiates two claims — that Africa is poor compared to the rest of the world and that poverty in Africa is not declining consistently or significantly, in contrast to other regions of the world. We consider poverty in the dimensions of health and education, in addition to income, stressing the inherent conceptual and measurement issues that commend such a broader perspective. We note a lack of consistency in the movement of the poverty measures. During similar periods, we often find them moving in opposite directions. We therefore discuss the need go beyond examining each poverty measure individually, and present an approach to evaluating poverty reduction in multiple dimensions jointly. The results of the multidimensional poverty comparisons reinforce the importance of considering deprivation beyond the material standard of living and provide insight into how to reconcile differing stories that arise from examining each indicator separately.
Forthcoming in Sudhir Anand, Paul Segal, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Debates in the Measurement of Global Inequality, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Decentralization of Pastoral Resources Management and its Effects on Environmental Degradation and Poverty, Experience from Northern Kenya
August 2007
Munyao, Kioko and Christopher B. Barrett
“Growing concerns about persistent poverty and environmental sustainability have helped
fuel efforts at decentralizing governance throughout the developing world. The 1992
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro brought widespread calls for greater community
participation and equity in natural resources management and sustainable development
planning, and these pressures have grown amid institutional reforms fostered by
movements towards democratization and market-based economic policy, spurred by,
among others, the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank) in the last two decades of the twentieth century (Goumandakoye 2003).
Ironically, however, in many cases decentralization has been used by national
governments not as a means to cede authority to local subjects, but rather to extend
control still deeper into local community life and resource management, while still
reaping the political capital associated with the rhetoric of bringing government services
and development closer to the people. Often this involves the subtle but real transfer of
influence, even control, from customary users of the resource to newcomers with better
connections to government representatives... ”
In Decentralization and the Social Economics of Development: Lessons from Kenya, edited by Christopher B. Barrett, Andrew G. Mude, and John M. Omiti. Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 2007.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Microfinance in Kenya: The KDA Experience
August 2007
Osterloh, Sharon M. and Christopher B. Barrett
“Microfinance offers promise for alleviating poverty by providing financial services to
people traditionally excluded from financial markets. Small-scale loans can relieve capital
constraints that might otherwise preclude cash-strapped entrepreneurs from investing in
profitable businesses, while savings services can create opportunities to accumulate wealth in
safe repositories and to manage risk through asset diversification. While this promise of
microfinance is widely touted, it is infrequently subject to careful evaluation using detailed data.
This chapter examines the extension of microfinance services to people in Kenya. Using
data collected from seventeen Financial Service Associations (FSAs) founded by the Kenya
Rural Enterprise Program (K-REP) Development Agency (KDA), we explore the intricacies of
microfinance institutions emerging in these challenging environment...”
In Decentralization and the Social Economics of Development: Lessons from Kenya, edited by Christopher B. Barrett, Andrew G. Mude, and John M. Omiti. Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 2007.
Displaced Distortions:
Financial Market Failures and Seemingly Inefficient Resource Allocation
in Low-income Rural Communities
July 2007
Barrett, Christopher B.
Poor households in rural areas of the developing world commonly lack access to (formal or informal) credit or insurance. These financing constraints naturally spill over into other behaviours and (asset, factor and product) markets as households rationally exploit other market and non-market resource allocation mechanisms to resolve, at least partly, their financing problems. These displaced distortions of financing constraints commonly manifest themselves in allocative inefficiency that may lead researchers and policymakers to mistakenly conclude that poor households routinely make serious allocation errors and to direct policy interventions towards the symptoms manifest in other markets rather than towards the root financial markets failures cause.
July 2007 draft for festschrift volume in honor of Arie Kuyvenhoven
In Development Economics Between Markets and Institutions: Incentives for Growth, Food Security and Sustainable Use of the Environment, Bulte, Erwin and Ruerd Ruben, eds.,
Wageningen, The Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers
Cognitive Skills among Children in Senegal: Disentangling the Roles of
Schooling and Family Background
June 2007
Glick, Peter and David E. Sahn
We use unique data to estimate the determinants of cognitive ability among 14 to 17 year olds in
Senegal. Unlike standard school-based samples, tests were administered to current students as well as
to children no longer—or never—enrolled. Years of schooling strongly affects cognitive skills, but
conditional on years of school, parental education and household wealth, as well as local public school
quality, have surprisingly modest effects on test performance. Instead, family background primarily
affects skills indirectly through its impacts on years of schooling. Therefore closing the schooling gaps
between poor and wealthy children will also close most of the gap in cognitive skills between these
groups.
Presented at the Regional Conference on “Education in West Africa: Constraints and Opportunities” in Dakar, Senegal, November 1-2, 2005
Reproductive Health and Behavior, HIV/AIDS, and Poverty in Africa
May 2007
Glick, Peter
This paper examines the complex linkages of poverty, reproductive/sexual health and
behavior, and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It addresses the following questions: (1) what have we
learned to date about these links and what are the gaps in knowledge to be addressed by
further research; (2) what is known about the effectiveness for HIV prevention of
reproductive health and HIV/AIDS interventions and policies in Africa; and (3) what are the
appropriate methodological approaches to research on these questions. With regard to what
has been learned so far, the paper pays considerable attention in particular to the evidence
regarding the impacts of a range of HIV interventions on risk behaviors and HIV incidence.
Other sections review the extensive microeconomic literature on the impacts of AIDS on
households and children in Africa and the effects of the epidemic on sexual risk behavior and
fertility decisions. With regard to methodology, the paper assesses the approaches used in
the literature to deal with, among other things, the problem of self-selection and non-
randomness in the placement of HIV and reproductive health programs. Data requirements
for different research questions are discussed, and an effort is made to assess what
researchers can learn from existing sources such as Demographic and Health Surveys.
Presented at the AERC/Hewlett Foundation Workshop, “Poverty and
Economic Growth: The Impact of Population Dynamics and Reproductive Health Outcomes
in Africa” in Brussels, Belgium, November 5-6, 2006
Changes in HIV/AIDS Knowledge and Testing Behavior in Africa: How Much and for Whom?
April 2007
Glick, Peter and David E. Sahn
Demographic and Health Survey data from six African countries indicate that HIV
prevention knowledge is improving and that more Africans are getting tested. Still, in
many cases fewer than half of adult respondents can identify specific prevention
behaviors; knowledge appears particularly inadequate in countries not yet fully gripped
by the epidemic. Schooling and wealth impacts on prevention knowledge generally have
either not changed or have increased, meaning that initial disparities in knowledge by
education and wealth levels have persisted or widened. HIV messages therefore need to
be made more accessible to and/or better understood by the poor and less educated.
Paper prepared for the conference “African Development and Poverty Reduction: The Macro-Micro Linkage” Cape Town, South Africa October 2004
In Journal of Population Economics 20(2):383-422, April, 2007
Understanding the Formation of Social Networks
April 2007
Santos, Paulo and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper reviews the growing literature that uses social networks
as a method to analyze social context, paying special attention to how
methods of sampling data on relationships aspects inference with respect to the formation of social networks. We use original data from
southern Ethiopia to demonstrate a new approach to collecting data
on relationships, that starts with a random sample of individuals and
then randomly samples from the prospective relationships among sample respondents. We show that this method yields estimates of the
structure of social relations that are statistically indistinguishable from
those generated using more expensive and time-consuming methods
that trace respondents’ social networks. We then use Monte Carlo simulation to test the value of this approach and show that introduc-
ing this second level of sampling improves the accuracy of the inference
on the determinants of network formation.
Bayesian Herders:
Updating of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Climate Forecasts
March 2007
Lybbert, Travis J., Christoper Barrett, John G. McPeak, and Winnie K. Luseno
Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world’s poor. Model-based climate
forecasts could benefit such populations, provided recipients use forecast information to update
climate expectations. We test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update
their expectations in response to forecast information. The minority of herders who received these
climate forecasts updated their expectations for below normal rainfall, but not for above normal
rainfall. This revealed preoccupation with downside risk highlights the potential value of better
climate forecasts in averting drought-related losses, but realizing any welfare gains requires that
recipients strategically react to these updated expectations.
In World Development 35(3):480-497, 2007
Poverty Traps and Resource Dynamics In
Smallholder Agrarian Systems
February 2007
Barrett, Christopher B.
Poverty traps and resource degradation in the rural tropics appear to have multiple and complex, but similar, causes. Market imperfections, imperfect learning, bounded rationality, spillovers, coordination failures and economically dysfunctional institutions all play a role, to varying degrees in different places and times. Pinning down these mechanisms empirically remains a challenge, however, but one essential to the design of appropriate interventions for reducing poverty and environmental degradation in areas where livelihoods depend heavily on natural resources.
Prepared for the international conference on
“Economics of Poverty, Environment and Natural Resource Use,”
held at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, May 17-19, 2006
Forthcoming as Chapter 2 in Economics of Poverty, Environment and Natural Resource Use, A. Ruijs, R. Dellink, eds., Springer.
The Relationship between Poverty and Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa
December 2006
Meyerhoefer, Chad and David E. Sahn
“Good maternal health is of fundamental importance to a country’s well-being and
ability to prosper, and there are few times when maternal health is more at risk than in the
period surrounding childbirth. Protecting the health of mothers during reproduction
safeguards their future contributions to society and ensures the health and productivity of
future generations. If either the health of mothers or their newborn offspring is
compromised, there will be serious negative consequences for their families,
communities, and the entire process of economic and social development. This is why
the United Nations has set as one of its eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
the reduction of the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by two-thirds in the developing
world by the year 2015... ”
Presented at the AERC/Hewlett Foundation Workshop, “Poverty and
Economic Growth: The Impact of Population Dynamics and Reproductive Health Outcomes
in Africa” in Brussels, Belgium, November 5-6, 2006
Livelihood Strategies in the Rural Kenyan Highlands
December 2006
Brown, Douglas R., Emma C. Stephens, James Okuro Ouma, Festus M. Murithi and
Christopher B. Barrett
The concept of a livelihood strategy has become central to development practice
in recent years. Nonetheless, precise identification of livelihoods in quantitative data has
remained methodologically elusive. This paper uses cluster analysis methods to
operationalize the concept of livelihood strategies in household data and then uses the
resulting strategy-specific income distributions to test whether hypothesized outcome
differences between livelihoods indeed exist. Using data from Kenya’s central and
western highlands, we identify five distinct livelihood strategies that exhibit statistically
significant differences in mean per capita incomes and stochastic dominance orderings
that establish clear welfare rankings among livelihood strategies. Multinomial regression
analysis identifies geographic, demographic and financial determinants of livelihood
choice. The results should facilitate targeting of interventions designed to improve
household livelihoods.
In the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 1(1):21-35
Labor Market Activities and Fertility
December 2006
Younger, Stephen D.
“This paper focuses on one aspect of the demographic transition, women’s labor market
activity, and how it relates to the basic variables of fertility and poverty. Just as there
are differences in fertility and mortality in rich and poor countries, there are
differences in women’s time use. In rich countries, women tend to work outside the
home, usually in wage employment on a fixed hourly schedule. In poor countries,
women tend to work at home or, especially in Africa, on their family’s farm or at own-
account activities where time use is more flexible. Understanding the relationship
between the demographic transition and these differences in time use is our main
theme...”
Presented at the AERC/Hewlett Foundation Workshop, “Poverty and
Economic Growth: The Impact of Population Dynamics and Reproductive Health Outcomes
in Africa” in Brussels, Belgium, November 5-6, 2006
Export Processing Zone Expansion in Madagascar: What are the Labor Market and Gender Impacts?
December 2006
Glick, Peter and François Roubaud
This paper analyzes part of the controversy over export processing zones—the labor market and gender impacts—using unique time-series labor force survey data from an African setting: urban Madagascar, in which the EPZ (or Zone Franche) grew very rapidly during the 1990s. Employment in the Zone Franche exhibits some basic patterns seen elsewhere in export processing industries of the developing world, such as the predominance of young, semi-skilled female workers. Taking advantage of microdata availability, we estimate earnings regressions to assess sector and gender wage premia. Zone Franche employment is found to represent a significant step up in pay for women who would otherwise be found in poorly remunerated informal sector work. Because it provides relatively high wage opportunities for those with relatively low levels of schooling, export processing development may also eventually have significant impacts on poverty. Further, by disproportionately drawing women from the low-wage sector informal sector (where the gender pay gap is very large) to the relatively well-paid export processing jobs (where pay is not only higher but also similar for men and women with similar qualifications), the EPZ has the potential to contribute to improved overall gender equity in earnings in the urban economy. Along many non-wage dimensions, jobs in the export processing zone are comparable to or even superior to other parts of the formal sector. However, the sector is also marked by very long working hours and high turnover, which may work to prevent it from being a source of long-term employment and economic advancement for women.
Paper prepared for the conference “African Development and Poverty Reduction: The Macro-Micro Linkage” Cape Town, South Africa October 2004
In Journal of African Economies 15(4): 722-756, 2006
Agricultural Policy Impact Analysis:
A Seasonal Multi-Market Model for Madagascar
December 2006
Stifel, David C. and Jean-Claude Randrianarisoa
We describe the main features and results of a multi-market model for Madagascar that
focuses on income generating activities in an agricultural sector that is characterized by seasonal variability. We find evidence that investments in rural infrastructure and commercial food storage have both direct and indirect benefits on poor households.
In Journal of Policy Modeling 28(9):1023-1027, 2006
Empirical Forecasting of Slow-Onset Disasters for Improved Emergency Response: An Application to Kenya’s Arid North
November 2006
Mude, Andrew, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. McPeak, Robert Kaitho and Patti Kristjansen
Mitigating the negative welfare consequences of crises such as droughts, floods, and
disease outbreaks, especially in highly vulnerable areas insufficiently equipped to prevent
food and livelihood security crisis in the face of adverse shocks, is a major challenge in
many areas of the world. Given the finite resources allocated for emergency response,
and an the expected increase in incidences of humanitarian catastrophe due to changing
climactic patterns, there is a need for the development of rigorous and efficient methods
of early warning and emergency needs assessment. In this paper we develop an empirical
model, based on a relatively parsimonious set of regularly measured variables from
communities in Kenya’s Arid North, that generates sufficiently accurate forecasts of the
likelihood of famine with at least three months lead time. While several early warning
and emergency needs assessment guides exist, our empirical forecasting method has the
advantage of demonstrable statistical rigor and out-of-sample performance. Such a
forecasting model is an invaluable tool for emergency awareness and response needs,
offering rigorous, cost-effective and practical early warning capacity.
Presented at Policy Research Conference on
“Pastoralism and Poverty Reduction in East Africa,”
held in Nairobi, Kenya, June 27-28, 2006.
The Complex Dynamics of Smallholder Technology Adoption: The Case of SRI in Madagascar
November 2006
Moser, Christine M. and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption, with particular
reference to a high-yielding, low-external input rice production method in Madagascar. We present a
simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial
and land markets. We then use a probit model and symmetrically censored least squares estimation
of a dynamic Tobit model to analyze the decisions to adopt, expand and disadopt the method. We
find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers. Learning effects—both from extension agents and from other farmers—exert significant influence over adoption decisions.
In Agricultural Economics 35(3):373-388, 2006.
Interpersonal, Intertemporal and Spatial Variation in Risk Perceptions: Evidence from East Africa
September 2006
Doss, Cheryl, John McPeak, and Barrett, Christopher B.
This study investigates variation over time, space and household and individual
characteristics in how people perceive different risks. Using original data from the arid
and semi-arid lands of east Africa, we explore which risks concern individuals and how
they assess their relative level of concern about these identified risks. Because these
assessments were gathered for multiple time periods, sites, households and individuals
within households, we are able to identify the degree to which risk perceptions vary
across time, across communities, across households within a community, and across
individuals within a household. We find the primary determinants of risk rankings to be
changing community level variables over time, with household specific and individual
specific variables exhibiting much less influence. This suggests that community based
planning and monitoring of development efforts that address risk exposure should be
prioritized. We also find that individuals throughout this area are most concerned about
food security overall, so that development efforts that directly address this problem
should be given the highest priority.
Forthcoming in World Development
An Assessment of Changes in Infant and under-Five Mortality in Demographic and Health Survey Data for Madagascar
September 2006
Glick, Peter, Stephen D. Younger, and David E. Sahn
Repeated rounds of nationally representative surveys are an important source of information on changes in the welfare of the population. In particular, policymakers and donors in many developing countries rely heavily on the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to provide information on levels and trends in indicators of the health status of the population, including child survival. The reliability of observed trends, however, depends strongly on the comparability across survey rounds of the sampling strategy and of the format of questions and how interviews ask them. In Madagascar, the most recent (2003/4) DHS indicated very sharp declines in rates of infant and under-five mortality compared with the previous survey from 1997. However, retrospective under-one and under-five mortality data in 1997 and 2003/4 for the same calendar years also show large differences, suggesting that this trend may be spurious. We employ a range of descriptive and multivariate approaches to investigate the issue. Despite evidence of significant interviewer recording errors (with respect to date of birth and age at death) in 2003/4, the most likely source of problems is that the two samples differ: comparisons of time-invariant characteristics of households and of women suggests that the later DHS sampled a somewhat wealthier (hence lower mortality) population. Corrections to the data using hazard survival model estimates are discussed. These suggest a much more modest reduction in infant and under-five mortality than indicated by the raw data for the two surveys.
Heterogeneous Wealth Dynamics:
On the Roles of Risk and Ability
June 2006
Santos, Paulo and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper studies the causal mechanisms behind poverty traps, building on evidence of
nonlinear wealth dynamics among a poor pastoralist population, the Boran from southern
Ethiopia. In particular, it explores the roles of adverse weather shocks and individual
ability to cope with such shocks in conditioning wealth dynamics. Using original data, we
establish pastoralists’ expectations of herd dynamics and show both that pastoralists
perceive the nonlinear long-term dynamics that characterize livestock wealth in the
region and that this pattern results from adverse weather shocks. We estimate a stochastic
herd growth frontier that yields herder-specific estimates of unobservable ability on
which we then condition our simulations of wealth dynamics. We find that those with
lower ability converge to a unique dynamic equilibrium at a small herd size, while those
with higher ability exhibit multiple stable dynamic wealth equilibria. Our results
underscore the criticality of asset protection against exogenous shocks in order to
facilitate wealth accumulation and economic growth and the importance of incorporating
indicators of ability in the targeting of asset transfers, as we demonstrate with simulations
of alternative asset transfer designs.
Presented at the Policy Research Conference on
“Pastoralism and Poverty Reduction in East Africa,”
held in Nairobi, Kenya, June 27-28, 2006.
Informal Insurance in the Presence of Poverty Traps:
Evidence from Southern Ethiopia
May 2006
Santos, Paulo and Christopher B. Barrett
This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics on the formation of
informal insurance networks. Building on recent empirical work among a poor population
that finds evidence consistent with the hypothesis of poverty traps, and using original
primary data on social networks and transfers, we find that asset transfers respond to
recipients’ losses, but only so long as the recipients are not “too poor”. The persistently
poor are excluded from social networks and do not receive transfers in response to
shocks. We also find some evidence that the threshold at which wealth dynamics
bifurcate may serve as a focal point at which transfers are concentrated. Our results
suggest that, in the context of poverty traps, asset transfers may aim to insure the
permanent component of income generation, rather than the transitory component, as
standard insurance models assume.
An Ordered Tobit of Market Participation: Evidence from Kenya and Ethiopia
May 2006
Bellemare, Marc F. and Barrett, Christopher B.
Do rural households in developing countries make market participation and volume
decisions simultaneously or sequentially? This article develops a two-stage
econometric model that allows testing between these two competing hypotheses
regarding household-level market behavior. The first stage models the household’s
choice of whether to be a net buyer, autarkic, or a net seller in the market. The
second stage models the quantity bought (sold) for net buyers (sellers) based on observable
household characteristics. Using household data from Kenya and Ethiopia
on livestock markets, we find evidence in favor of sequential decision-making, the
welfare implications of which we discuss.
In American Journal of Agricultural Economics 88(2):324-337, May, 2006
Robust Multidimensional Spatial Poverty Comparisons
in Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda
April 2006
Duclos, Jean-Yves, David E. Sahn, and Stephen D. Younger
We investigate spatial poverty comparisons in three African countries using multidimensional
indicators of well-being. The work is analogous to the univariate stochastic dominance literature in
that we seek poverty orderings that are robust to the choice of multidimensional poverty lines and
indices. In addition, we wish to ensure that our comparisons are robust to aggregation procedures
for multiple welfare variables. In contrast to earlier work, our methodology applies equally well to
what can be defined as "union", "intersection," or "intermediate" approaches to dealing with
multidimensional indicators of well-being. Further, unlike much of the stochastic dominance
literature, we compute the sampling distributions of our poverty estimators in order to perform
statistical tests of the difference in poverty measures.
We apply our methods to two measures of well-being, the log of household expenditures per capita
and children’s height-for-age z-scores, using data from the 1988 Ghana Living Standards Survey,
the 1993 Enquête Permanente auprès des Ménages in Madagascar, and the 1999 National
Household Survey in Uganda. Bivariate poverty comparisons are at odds with univariate
comparisons in several interesting ways. Most importantly, we cannot always conclude that poverty
is lower in urban areas from one region compared to rural areas in another, even though univariate
comparisons based on household expenditures per capita almost always lead to that conclusion.
In World Bank Economic Review 20(1):91-113
The Demand for Primary Schooling in Madagascar: Price, Quality, and the Choice Between Public and Private Providers
February 2006
Glick, Peter, and David E. Sahn
We estimate a discrete choice model of primary schooling and simulate policy alternatives for
rural Madagascar. Poor households are substantially more price-responsive than wealthy ones,
implying that fee increases for public schools will have negative effects on equity in education.
Among quality factors, multigrade teaching (several classes being taught simultaneously by one
teacher) has a strongly negative impact on public school enrollments. Simulations indicate that
providing teachers to reduce by half the number of multigrade classes in public schools would
lead to modest improvements in overall enrollments, would be feasible in terms of costs, and
would disproportionately benefit poor children. In contrast, consolidation of primary schools
combined with quality improvement would be ineffective because of the negative effect of
distance to school. Other simulations point to limits to a strategy of public support for private
school expansion as a means of significantly increasing enrollment rates or education quality;
such an expansion may also reduce overall education equity.
In the Journal of Development Economics 79(1):118-145, 2006.
Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa
February 2006
Barrett, Christopher B., Michael R. Carter and Peter D. Little
This paper introduces a special issue exploring persistent poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. As a set, these papers break new ground in exploring the dynamics of structural poverty, integrating qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis and adopting an asset-based approach to the study of changes in well-being, especially in response to a wide range of different (climatic, health, political, and other) shocks. In this introductory essay, we frame these studies, building directly on evolving conceptualisations of poverty in Africa.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 167-177, lead article
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
The Economics of Poverty Traps and Persistent Poverty: An Asset-Based Approach
February 2006
Carter, Michael R. and Christopher B. Barrett
Longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the
nature and extent of poverty. While a number of studies have exploited this type of data
to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty, this
paper develops an asset-based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to
distinguish deep-rooted, persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally
with time due to systemic growth processes. Drawing on the economic theory of poverty
traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies, this paper briefly discusses some feasible
estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term, persistent
structural poverty. We also propose an extension of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of
poverty measures to provide a natural measure of long-term welfare status. The paper
closes with reflections on how asset-based poverty can be used to underwrite the design
of persistent poverty reduction strategies.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2):178-199, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
‘Moving in Place’: Drought and Poverty Dynamics in South Wollo, Ethiopia
February 2006
Little, Peter D., Priscilla Stone, Tewodaj Mogues, Peter Castro, and Workneh Negatu
This article discusses the impact of drought on poverty dynamics in the South Wollo area of northeastern Ethiopia. Using both survey and anthropological/qualitative data covering a six-year period, the paper assesses which households were able to hold on to assets and recover from the 1999-2000 drought and which were not. It suggests that while the incidence of poverty changed very little during 1997 to 2003 despite the occurrence of a major drought, the fortunes of the poorest improved, but not enough to keep them from poverty. The study concludes by asking how current policies affect patterns of poverty and inequality and what might be done to improve welfare in South Wollo.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2):200-225, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Exploring Poverty Traps and Social Exclusion in South Africa Using Qualitative and Quantitative Data
February 2006
Adato, Michelle, Michael R. Carter, and Julian May
Recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like South Africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty. To explore these ideas, this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. Novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993-98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of South Africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty. Qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998-2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility, and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low-level poverty trap. In addition, the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships. While finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks, these are more helpful for non-poor households. For the poor, social capital at best helps stabilise livelihoods at low levels and does little to promote upward mobility. While there is thus some economic sense to sociability in South Africa, elimination of the polarised economic legacy of apartheid will ultimately require more proactive efforts to assure that households have access to a minimum bundle of assets and to the markets needed to effectively build on those assets over time.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2):226-247, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Welfare Dynamics in Rural Kenya and Madagascar
February 2006
Barrett, Christopher B., Paswel Phiri Marenya, John McPeak, Bart Minten, Festus Murithi, Willis Oluoch-Kosura, Frank Place, Jean Claude Randrianarisoa, Jhon Rasambainarivo and Justine Wangila
This paper presents comparative qualitative and quantitative evidence from rural Kenya and Madagascar in an attempt to untangle the causality behind persistent poverty. We find striking differences in welfare dynamics depending on whether one uses total income, including stochastic terms and inevitable measurement error, or the predictable, structural component of income based on a household’s asset holdings. Our results suggest the existence of multiple dynamic asset and structural income equilibria, consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis. Furthermore, we find supporting evidence of locally increasing returns to assets and of risk management behaviour consistent with poor households' defence of a critical asset threshold through asset smoothing.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 248-277, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Persistent Poverty in North East Ghana
February 2006
Whitehead, Ann
This paper explores local poverty and wealth inequality in the Upper East Region of northern Ghana in the period from 1975-89. Land was not scarce and the social management of household membership and household labour were critical to household security, but this social management was not independent of wealth status. There was a virtuous circle between wealth and household labour supply and a vicious circle between poverty and small household size. Poverty traps existed so that those with too little labour and too little wealth engaged in strategies which entrenched them in poverty.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 248-277, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Shocks and Their Consequences Across and Within Households in Rural Zimbabwe
February 2006
Hoddinott, John
Increasing attention is now being paid to poverty dynamics in developing countries. This work links the extent to which households smooth consumption or smooth assets given income shocks, the empirical evidence on the churning of households in and out of poverty, and the possibility that temporary shocks can have permanent consequences. Using longitudinal data from rural Zimbabwe, this paper extends the discussion of these issues by disaggregating the impact of shocks by levels of asset holdings, by disaggregating the impact of shocks on individual level welfare and by assessing the extent to which such shocks have permanent consequences. By doing so, it assesses the validity of distinguishing between asset and consumption smoothing and provides insights into whether poverty dynamics assessed at the household level provide an adequate picture of dynamics at the individual level.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 301-321, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Rural Income and Poverty in a Time of Radical Change in Malawi
February 2006
Peters, Pauline E.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. There is widespread, though not universal, agreement about the shape of poverty in the country and the policy challenge this sets. Agriculture continues to be the most obvious means to stimulate broad-based rural growth and to provide levels of food security and income needed for the majority rural population. A longitudinal study over a decade during which radical policy and political changes occurred provides the data and basis for discussing the appropriate policy directions for reducing poverty.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 322-345, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor in 36 Villages of Central and Western Uganda
February 2006
Krishna, Anirudh, Daniel Lumonya, Milissa Markiewicz, Firminus Mugumya, Agatha Kafuko, Jonah Wegoye
Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions.
In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 346-370, 2006
In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007.
Fractal Poverty Traps
January 2006
Barrett, Christopher B. and Brent M. Swallow
This paper offers an informal theory of a special sort of poverty trap, one in which multiple dynamic equilibria exist simultaneously at multiple (micro, meso and/or macro) scales of analysis and are self-reinforcing through feedback effects. Small adjustments at any one of these levels are unlikely to move the system away from its dominant, stable dynamic equilibrium. Governments, markets and communities are simultaneously weak in places characterized by fractal poverty traps. No unit operates at a high-level equilibrium in such a system. All seem simultaneously trapped in low-level equilibria. The fractal poverty traps formulation suggests four interrelated strategic emphases for poverty reduction strategies.
In World Development 34(1):1-15, 2006
Ghana’s Economy at Half Century:
An Overview of Stability, Growth and Poverty
November 2005
Aryeetey, Ernest and Ravi Kanbur
As Ghana enters its second half century, we are faced with a paradox. Despite a solid
transition to democracy in the political situation, despite recorded recovery in the last
fifteen years from the economic malaise of the two decades preceding, and despite
reductions in measured poverty, there is widespread perception of failure of the economic
and political system in delivering improving living standards to the population. This
essay introduces a volume of papers that call for a deeper examination of the macro level
data on growth and on poverty. A sectoral and regional disaggregation reveals
weaknesses in the levels and composition of private investment, in the generation of
employment, in sectoral diversification, and in the distribution of the benefits of growth.
At the same time, the push for decentralization, and for better allocation, monitoring and
implementation of public expenditure has raised more questions than it has answered.
These are the challenges that Ghana faces if it is to fulfill the bright promise of its
independence in 1957. The papers in this volume set out an analytical agenda that we
hope will help in laying the ground work for the path that the nation’s policy makers will
have to steer on the road to 2057.
Introduction to a forthcoming volume, Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur (editors), The Economy of Ghana: Analytical Perspectives on Stability, Growth and Poverty, James Currey.
What Drives Change in Ghana?
A Political-Economy View of Economic Prospects
November 2005
Killick, Tony
President Clinton famously had the slogan, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’,
hanging in the Oval Office as a constant reminder to himself of what his
priority should be to keep the American electorate on his side. Giving
priority to the population’s economic well-being is good advice to all
democratic politicians but I will argue that, if we want to understand the half-century
of the Ghanaian economy’s experiences, we should invert Clinton’s
priority and pay most attention to institutions and politics. The mantra for
economists trying to understand the performance of Ghana’s economy should
be, “It’s the polity….” [readers to supply their own epithet].
Forthcoming in Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur (editors), The Economy of Ghana: Analytical Perspectives on Stability, Growth and Poverty, James Currey.
Rice Price Stabilization in Madagascar: Price and Welfare Implications of Variable Tariffs
November 2005
Dorosh, Paul and Bart Minten
Given the large share of major staples in the budgets of the poor, governments in many
developing countries intervene in food markets to limit variation in the prices of staple
foods. This paper examines the recent experience of Madagascar in stabilizing prices
through international trade and the implications of adjustments in tariff rates. Using a
partial equilibrium model, we quantify the overall costs and benefits of a change in
import duties for various household groups, and compare this intervention to a policy of
targeted food transfers or security stocks.
Measuring Recent Changes in South African Inequality and Poverty Using 1996 and 2001 Census Data
October 2005
Leibbrandt, Murray, Laura Poswell, Pranushka Naidoo, Matthew Welch
and Ingrid Woolard
The paper analyses poverty and inequality changes in South Africa for the
period 1996 to 2001 using Census data. To gain a broader picture of wellbeing
in South Africa, both income-based and access-based measurement approaches
are employed. At the national level, findings from the income-based approach
show that inequality has unambiguously increased from 1996 to 2001. As
regards population group inequality, within-group inequality has increased;
while between-group inequality has decreased (inequality has also increased in
each province and across the rural/urban divide). The poverty analysis reveals
that poverty has worsened in the nation, particularly for Africans. Provincially,
the Eastern Cape and Limpopo have the highest poverty rates while the Western
Cape and Gauteng have the lowest poverty rates. Poverty differs across the
urban-rural divide with rural areas being relatively worse off than urban areas.
However, due to the large extent of rural-urban migration, the proportion of the
poor in rural areas is declining. The access-based approach focuses on type of
dwelling, access to water, energy for lighting, energy for cooking, sanitation
and refuse removal. The data reveal significant improvements in these access
measures between 1996 and 2001. The proportion of households occupying
traditional dwellings has decreased while the proportion of households
occupying formal dwellings has risen slightly (approximately two-thirds of
households occupy formal dwellings). Access to basic services has improved,
especially with regard to access to electricity for lighting and access to
telephones. On a provincial level, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape display the
poorest performance in terms of access to basic services. The paper concludes
by contrasting the measured changes in well being that emerge from the income
and access approaches. While income measures show worsening well being via increases in income poverty and inequality, access measures show that well
being in South Africa has improved in a number of important dimensions.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Does City Structure Cause Unemployment?
The Case Study of Cape Town
October 2005
Rospabe, Sandrine and Harris Selod
Several theoretical and empirical findings suggest that the spatial organization of cities can be a
source of unemployment among unskilled workers and ethnic minorities, stressing either the
role of residential segregation or that of the physical disconnection between work and residence.
The present paper investigates this issue in South Africa by focusing on the example of Cape
Town, a sprawling and highly segregated city. Using the dataset of the 1998 study on the
Migration and Settlement in the Cape Metropolitan Area complemented by local population
statistics extracted from the 1996 Census and local employment statistics extracted from the
City of Cape Town’s 2000 RSC Levy database, we regress the unemployment probability of a
selection of workers in 24 different areas of the city on their individual and household attributes
as well as on the characteristics of their locations. Results obtained so far suggest that (i)
distance to jobs, (ii) rural origin (especially for women) and (iii) the length of time spent in their present dwelling reduce the employment probability of workers.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Half Measures: The ANC’s Unemployment and Poverty Reduction Targets
October 2005
Meth, Charles
This paper looks behind the [ANC’s 2004 election] manifesto at policy
and other documents in an attempt to discover what the ANC in government understands
by these commitments. Finding little evidence of a coherent view there, the paper delves
into unemployment and poverty statistics in South Africa in an attempt to see whether or
not greater precision than that displayed so far in specifying each of these targets, is
possible. In each case, the search for precision opens a window overlooking an
impressively wide plain of ignorance. In view of this, the paper ends with some
recommendations about what to do about the two commitments.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Internal Labour Migration and Household Poverty in Post-Apartheid South Africa
October 2005
Posel, Dorrit and Daniela Casale
The first objective
of this chapter is to briefly describe and discuss trends in labour migration over the period
1993 to 2002 using these household survey data. We show that a growing number of rural
African households report labour migrants as (non-resident) household members and we
discuss possible reasons why individuals may continue to migrate temporarily to places of employment.
Our second objective is to explore the economic status of those who remain
behind in the household of origin. We find that total household income on average is
significantly and consistently lower in migrant, than in non-migrant, households.
Remittance transfers are a more important source of income than the earnings of
employed resident members in migrant households. Since 1993, however, both the
receipt and the average real value of remittance income have fallen. We conclude our
study with a discussion of factors that may account for this trend and the possible
development implications of migration for rural African households.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Crime and Local Inequality in South Africa
October 2005
Demombynes, Gabriel and Berk Özler
We examine the effects of local inequality on property and violent crime in
South Africa. The findings are consistent with economic theories relating local
inequality to property crime and also with sociological theories that imply that inequality
leads to crime in general. Burglary rates are 25-43% higher in police precincts that are
the wealthiest among their neighbors, suggesting that criminals travel to neighborhoods
where the expected returns from burglary are highest. Finally, while we find little
evidence that inequality between racial groups fosters interpersonal conflict at the local
level, racial heterogeneity itself is highly correlated with crime.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Public Spending and the Poor Since the Transition to Democracy
October 2005
van der Berg, Servaas
Fiscal expenditure analysis, or benefit incidence analysis, as it is often referred to, deals
with the distribution of the statutory incidence of public expenditure, usually by income
group, although some studies incorporate geographic or even gender dimensions. (Demery
n.d.) This is the topic dealt with in this chapter, although the South African situation
requires that incidence analysis along racial grounds should also be considered. The chapter
addresses a number of interrelated questions, relating to targeting of, and shifts in, public
social spending, but also to the capacity to transform social spending into social outcomes.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa
October 2005
Hoogeveen, Johannes G. and Berk Özler
As South Africa conducts a review of the first ten years of its new democracy, the question remains as to whether the economic inequalities of the apartheid era are beginning to fade. Using new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000, this paper finds that real per capita household expenditures declined for those at the bottom end of the expenditure distribution during this period of low GDP growth. As a result, poverty, especially extreme poverty, increased. Inequality also increased, mainly due to a jump in inequality among the African population. Even among subgroups of the population that experienced healthy consumption growth, such as the Coloureds, the rate of poverty reduction was low because the distributional shifts were not pro-poor.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Persistent Poverty, Asset Accumulation and Shocks in South Africa: Evidence from KwaZulu-Natal
October 2005
May, Julian
Although their use has become widespread, approaches to poverty measurement such
as the FGT class of measures discussed by Woolard and Leibbrandt et al (2000:60-67)
for South Africa are necessarily static in nature. Such measurement regards poverty is
a deficiency, measured in terms of the proportion of the population who are
categorised as poor, or perhaps more usefully, in terms of the distance that separates
those that are poor from the least well-off of the non-poor: the individual or household
whose income is exactly equal to the poverty line. From the perspective of policy,
poverty becomes a circumstance to be resolved by appropriately targeted transfers
rather than the outcome of social and economic structures: a poverty that is
‘produced’ or in the language of some analysts, a poverty that is ‘perpetrated’ (Øyen,
2002). Beyond the identification of possible target groups and some of the ways in
which poverty is experienced, those factors which lead to the production,
reproduction and persistence of poverty are concealed. As a result, little can be
offered in the way of concrete issues for strategy in a country such as South Africa
where the legacy of past policies continues to burden efforts to reduce poverty.
While a comparatively new literature on poverty transitions offers some solutions to
this shortcoming through its focus on chronic versus transitory poverty, such analysis
still does not identify those who are structurally mobile from those who may be in
poverty trap. However, merging elements of Sen’s entitlement approach with the
economic theory of the household in imperfect market environments, Carter and May
(2001) present non-parametric estimates of the mapping between household assets
and poverty. This paper builds on their analysis of to identify an alternative
categorisation of poverty using panel data collected in 1993 and again in 1998 in
KwaZulu-Natal. The paper goes further to describe the shocks that result in persistent
poverty and the characteristics of those in different dynamic poverty categories in
terms of the assets that might eventually lead to their mobility. This draws out some
important themes for poverty reduction including redistributive strategies and microeconomic
reform.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Trade Liberalisation and Labour Demand in South Africa
during the 1990s
October 2005
Edwards, Lawrence
The 1990s heralded a period of increased globalization of the South African
economy. The new democratically elected government in 1994 initiated a range of
new policy reforms that were designed to encourage economic growth as well as
uplift the standard of living of the previously disenfranchised majority. These reforms
included significant tariff reductions in accordance with the government’s 1995 Offer
to the WTO. A new macroeconomic policy (GEAR) was also implemented with the
aim of transforming South Africa into a “competitive, outward orientated economy”
(GEAR, 1996)...
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
The Relative Inflation Experience of Poor Urban South African Households: 1997-2002
October 2005
Bhorat, Haroon and Oosthuizen, Morné
Much work has been done in South Africa on the relationship between the labour market and
household poverty, as well as more generally the association of differentially sourced incomes
to household poverty and inequality. The notion is that it is access to incomes, or lack
thereof, which lies at the heart of characterising inequality and poverty in the society. Clearly
though, a critical intermediary to income access remains the fluctuations in the real values of
these incomes, despite controlling for access to income. This line of enquiry – namely the
role of relative final price movements in affecting households across the income distribution –is a new one for the post-apartheid period, with its local intellectual origins lying in Kahn
(1985). At one level the study aims to identify and quantify the impact of relative price
movements on household poverty levels, with a key aim being to identify those products that
are critical to indigent households’ vulnerability. At a more generic level, the paper is
implicitly a representation of how the macroeconomic environment is able to, and indeed
does, impact on household welfare. Ultimately, the paper hopes to deliver a detailed analysis
not only of the construction of an appropriate consumer price index for South Africa, but also,
through the use of income and expenditure survey data, the impact of reported price
movements on inflation for households at different points in the national income distribution.
Specifically, this study’s two main objectives are, firstly, to derive inflation rates for urban households grouped according to expenditure deciles and, secondly, to identify some of the
key product categories responsible for the largest shares of inflation of the poorest 40% of
urban households.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
From Chimera to Prospect: Toward an Understanding of the South African Growth Absence
October 2005
Fedderke, Johannes
In this paper we consider the implications of evidence that has emerged over the past six years that carries insight into the growth and employment creation performance of the South African economy. The emphasis is explicitly on why limitation in the growth performance of the South African economy may have emerged.
In Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2006.
Decentralization and Access to Agricultural Extension Services
in Kenya
October 2005
Nambiro, Elizabeth, John Omiti, and Lawrence Mugunieri
The form and content of decentralization has dominated development discourse and public
sector reform agenda in Kenya in the last two decades. The case of agricultural extension
service presents decentralization in a difficult context partly due to lack of information on its
possible diverse impacts especially on resource poor farmers. This paper explores the effect
of decentralization of agricultural extension on access, accountability and empowerment, and
efficiency of delivering services to farmers. Secondary data, participatory research methods
and primary data from a random sample of 250 farmers were used. Data was analyzed using
descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis and logistic regression.
The results show that there is improved access to extension services with increasing level of
decentralization. Farmers from areas with higher decentralized extension also showed
enhanced level of awareness of different channels for delivery of extension services. This
improved knowledge, being an important component of empowerment of the farming
community, resulted from the increase of service providers, who displayed synergy in their
multiple methods of operation. Public delivery channels were the most affordable and were
also ranked first for quality. Income, literacy levels, distance from towns and access to
telephone significantly influenced access to extension services. Gender of the household-head
was a key determinant for seeking out extension services in areas with high concentration of
agricultural activities.
For a pluralistic system to work, there is need to for better co-ordination between the various
groups. Although there is evidence of partnership and synergy between service providers,
there appeared to be little effective co-ordination of the groups involved. The government,
and other stakeholders should work towards developing a strong institutional framework that
will guide and enhance this mutually beneficial partnership.
Reforming the Formula:
A Modest Proposal for Introducing Development Outcomes in IDA Allocation
Procedures
September 2005
Kanbur, Ravi
This paper develops a modest proposal for introducing final outcome indicators in the
IDA aid allocation formula. It starts with a review of the current formula and the rationale
for it. It is argued that this formula, and in particular the Country Policy and Institutional
Assessment (CPIA) part of it, implicitly relies too heavily on a uniform model of what
works in development policy. Even if this model were valid "on average", the variations
around the average make it an unreliable sole guide to the country-specific productivity
of aid in achieving the final objectives of development. Rather, it is argued that changes
in the actual outcomes on these final objectives could also be used as part of the
allocation formula. A number of conceptual and operational objections to this position
are considered and debated. The paper concludes that there is much to be gained by
taking small steps in the direction of introducing outcome variables in the IDA formula,
and assessing the experience of doing so in a few years’ time.
In Revue d’Economie du Developpement: 2005/2-3 September, Special Issue on Grounds, Allocation and Impact of Aid, AFD/EUDN Conference 2004
Supermarkets, International Trade and Farmers in Developing
Countries: Evidence from Madagascar
September 2005
Minten, Bart, Lalaina Randrianarison, and Johan F. M. Swinnen
Global retail companies (“supermarkets”) have an increasing influence on developing
countries, through foreign investments and/or through the imposition of their private
standards. The impact on developing countries and poverty is often assessed as negative.
In this paper we show the opposite, based on an analysis of primary data collected to
measure the impact of supermarkets on small contract farmers in Madagascar, one of the
poorest countries in the world. Almost 10,000 farmers in the Highlands of Madagascar
produce vegetables for supermarkets in Europe. In this global supply chain, small
farmers’ micro-contracts are combined with extensive farm assistance and supervision
programs to fulfill complex quality requirements and phyto-sanitary standards of
supermarkets. Small farmers that participate in these contracts have higher welfare,
more income stability and shorter lean periods. We also find significant effects on
improved technology adoption, better resource management and spillovers on the
productivity of the staple crop rice. The small but emerging modern retail sector in
Madagascar does not (yet) deliver these benefits as they do not (yet) request the same
high standards for their supplies.
Improvements in Children’s Health: Does Inequality Matter?
August 2005
Sahn, David E. and Stephen D. Younger
The literature on the contributions to poverty reduction of average improvements in living standards vs. distributional changes uses only one measure of well-being – income or expenditure. Given that poverty is defined by deprivation over different dimensions, we explore the role of average improvements and distributional changes in children’s health and nutrition using the height of young children as our measure of well-being. Similar to the income literature, we find that shifts in the mean level of heights, not changes in distribution, account for most improvements in heights. Unlike the literature on income inequality, however, there is a positive association between improvements in average heights and reduced dispersion of those heights.
In The Journal of Economic Inequality 3(2):125-143, 2005.
Scaling up HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing in Africa: What Can
Evaluation Studies Tell Us About Potential Prevention Impacts?
August 2005
Glick, Peter
Although there is a widespread belief that scaling up HIV voluntary testing and counseling
(VCT) programs in Africa will have large prevention benefits through reductions in risk
behaviors, these claims are difficult to establish from existing evaluations of VCT.
Considerations from behavioral models and the available data suggest that as VCT coverage
expands marginal program effects are likely to decline due to changes in the degree of client
selectivity, and that potential uptake among those at highest risk is uncertain. The paper also
assesses two other common perceptions about VCT in Africa: that a policy of promoting
couples-oriented VCT would be more successful than one emphasizing individual testing, and
that VCT demand and prevention impacts will be enhanced where scaling up is accompanied by
the provision of anti-retroviral drugs.
In Evaluation Review 29(4): 331-357, August 2005
Children’s Health Status in Uganda
July 2005
Bahiigwa, Godfrey and Stephen D. Younger
This paper studies trends and determinants of children's standardized heights, a good overall
measure of children's health status, in Uganda over the 1990s. During this period, Uganda made
impressive strides in economic growth and poverty reduction (Appleton, 2001). However, there
is concern that improvements in other dimensions of well-being, especially health, has been
much weaker.
We find that several policy variables are important determinants of children's heights. Most
importantly, a broad package of basic health care services has a large statistically significant
effect. Provision of some of these services, especially vaccinations, appears to have faltered in
the late 1990s, which may help to explain the lackluster performance on stunting during that
period. We also find that civil conflict, a persistent problem in some areas of the country, has an
important (negative) impact on children's heights. Better educated mothers have taller children,
but the only substantial impact is for children of mothers who have completed secondary school.
Finally, we find that households that rely more on own-production sources of income tend to
have more malnourished children, even after controlling for their overall level of income and a
host of other factors. This latter conclusion is supportive of the Plan for Modernization of
Agriculture, which aims to shift farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture or other
more productive activities.
Food Aid Targeting, Shocks and Private Transfers Among East African Pastoralists
July 2005
Lentz, Erin and Christopher B. Barrett
Public transfers of food aid are intended largely to support vulnerable
populations in times of stress. We use high frequency panel data among
Ethiopian and Kenyan pastoralists to test the efficacy of food aid targeting
under three different targeting modalities, food aid’s responsiveness to
different types of covariate shocks, and its relationship to private transfers.
We find that, in this region, self-targeting food-for-work or indicatortargeted
free food distribution more effectively reach the poor than do food
aid distributed according to community-based targeting. Food aid flows do
not respond significantly to either covariate, community-level income or
asset shocks. Rather, food aid flows appear to respond mainly to more
readily observable rainfall measures. Finally, food aid does not appear to
affect private transfers in any meaningful way, either by crowding out
private gifts to recipient households nor by stimulating increased gifts by
food aid recipients.
Getting the Inputs Right for Improved Agricultural Productivity in Madagascar, Which Inputs Matter and Are the Poor Different?
June 2005
Randrianarisoa, Claude and Bart Minten
We found that while farmers are willing to pay for improved irrigation infrastructure through water use associations, the amounts they are willing to contribute are significantly below the costs – and significantly below international standards – and this especially so for the poorest farmers. For chemical fertilizer, a more rational structuring of the fertilizer supply chain, with clear and consistent market signals, might help at least the more accessible regions to more readily adopt this input.
Paper presented during the workshop “Agricultural and Poverty in Eastern Africa,” June, 2005,
World Bank, Washington D.C.
Risk and Asset Management in the Presence of Poverty Traps: Implications for Growth and Social Protection
June 2005
Barrett, Christopher B. and Michael R. Carter
This note suggests a behavioral approach to poverty and vulnerability that escapes the standard, troublesome dependence on an arbitrary money-metric poverty line. More importantly, our approach, which is based on an empirically estimable dynamic asset poverty threshold, has immediate implications for both the linkage between poverty, risk and growth and for the design of social protection policies. One can identify the dynamic asset poverty threshold either by testing for asset smoothing behavior or via tests for bifurcated/split accumulation dynamics. We illustrate the concept and the estimation of dynamic asset poverty thresholds through brief applications to Ethiopia and Honduras.
Ghana Census-Based Poverty Map:
District and Sub-District level Results
May 2005
Coulombe, Harold
This paper documents the construction and presents the main results of
a Ghanaian poverty map based on the GLSS4 survey and the Census
2000. The methodology takes advantages of detailed information found
in the survey and the exhaustive coverage of the census. It permits the
calculation of poverty indicators at a very low level of desegregation;
sub-district in the case of Ghana. In the current paper district level
poverty figures are presented. Council level estimates are also
available. Forthcoming in Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur (editors), The Economy of Ghana: Analytical Perspectives on Stability, Growth and Poverty, James Currey.
Poverty Traps and Safety Nets
April 2005
Barrett, Christopher B. and John G. McPeak
This paper uses data from northern Kenya to argue that the concept of poverty traps needs to be taken seriously, and that if poverty traps indeed exist, then safety nets become all the more important. However, as presently practiced, safety nets based on food aid appear to be failing in northern Kenya.
In Poverty, Inequality and Development: Essays in Honor of Erik Thorbecke, Alain de Janvry and Ravi Kanbur, eds.,
Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005
Costs and Financing of Basic Education and Participation of Rural Families and Communities in Third-World Countries
April 2005
Assié-Lumumba, N’Dri
This paper focuses on the various types of educational costs, expenses, and financing and the roles of
families and communities. It presents a case study of educational costs
and financing in rural communities in countries around the world, then focuses
on the case of Côte d’Ivoire before the December 1999 Military coup followed by armed
conflicts that started in 2002 leading to the de facto division of the country. The paper considers the substantive and more general family and community participation in the educational process beyond material support. The conclusion
summarizes the main findings and points to new areas of research using comparative
approach. It is however likely that, while the political configuration may change, the administrative
structure that constitutes the framework for educational policy will remain the same.
Therefore this analysis has relevance even for the post-conflict reconstruction and
implementation of education policy implementation including past and new types of
community schools.
Les écoles communautaires de base au Sénégal: Contribution à la scolarisation universelle, l’éradication de la pauvreté,
et la mise en place d’un programme national pour le développement durable
April 2005
Assié-Lumumba, N’Dri, Mamadou Mara, and Marieme Lo
Growth, Inequality and Poverty: Some Hard Questions
March 2005
Kanbur, Ravi
This commentary poses a series of progressively harder questions in the economic analysis of growth, inequality and poverty. Starting with relatively straightforward analysis of the relationship between growth and inequality, the first level of hard questions come when we ask what policies and institutions are causally related to equitable growth. Some progress is being made here by the economics literature, but relatively little is known about the second level, harder questions—how a society comes to acquire "good" policies and institutions, and what exactly it is that we are buying into when we accept the number one Millennium Development Goal of the United Nations—halving the incidence of income poverty by the year 2015.
In Journal of International Affairs 58(2): 223-232, 2005
The Progression through School and Academic Performance in
Madagascar Study: Preliminary Descriptive Results
March 2005
Glick, Peter, Harivelo Rajemison, Arsène Ravelo, Yolande Raveloarison, Mamisoa
Razakamanantsoa, and David E. Sahn
This paper is a preliminary analysis of the Etude sur la Progression Scolaire et la Performance Academique en Madagascar (EPSPAM). The study is based on a nation-wide household survey with a special focus on schooling, complimented by academic and life skills tests and additional surveys of local schools and communities. The survey was designed to investigate the household, community, and school-level determinants of a range of education outcomes in Madagascar: primary and secondary enrollment, grade repetition and dropout during primary and lower secondary school cycles, transitions from primary to secondary school, and learning — both academic (math and French test scores) and non-academic ('life-skills'). It also seeks to understand the association of early academic performance, on the one hand, and subsequent school progression and scholastic attainment, on the other. The study also investigates the knowledge and perceptions of parents about the schools in their communities. In addition, the policy environment in education in Madagascar has been very dynamic in the last several years. Therefore the study also evaluates the implementation and impacts of several important recent policies in education, including the elimination of public primary school fees and the provision of books and supplies, as well as a series of administrative reforms such as the professionalization of the chefs CISCO and efforts to make school finances more transparent.
Progression through School and Academic Performance in Senegal: Descriptive Survey Results
March 2005
Dumas, Christelle, Peter Glick, Sylvie Lambert, David E. Sahn, and Leopold Sarr
This report provides a preliminary descriptive analysis of some of the data from
The Progression through School and Academic Performance in Senegal Study, a joint
research project of Cornell University, Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée
(CREA), and INRA. This project is based around a nation-wide household survey with a special
focus on schooling, complimented by academic and life skills tests and additional surveys
of local schools and communities. The topics covered in this report focus on the
household survey and test score data and include: enrollment rates; school attainment;
grade repetition; dropouts and progression to secondary school; academic and life skills
test scores; and perceptions about education and schooling.
Rural Poverty Dynamics: Development Policy Implications
March 2005
Barrett, Christopher B.
This paper summarizes a few key findings from a rich and growing body of research on the nature of rural poverty and, especially, the development policy implications of relatively recent findings and ongoing work. Perhaps the most fundamental lesson of recent research on rural poverty is the need to distinguish transitory from chronic poverty. The existence of widespread chronic poverty also raises the possibility of poverty traps. I discuss some of the empirical and theoretical challenges of identifying and explaining poverty traps. In policy ter
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