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Abstract:
This paper examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into poverty in Madagascar using household survey data combined with a census of administrative communes. Given the importance of agriculture to the rural poor, where nine out of ten poor persons is engaged in farming, we concentrate on isolation manifesting itself in the form of high transaction costs such as the cost of transporting agricultural commodities to major market centers. We find that (a) the incidence of poverty in rural Madagascar increases with remoteness; (b) yields of major staple crops fall considerably as one gets farther away from major markets; (c) and the use of agricultural inputs declines with isolation. Simulation results using output from rice production function estimates suggest that halving travel time per kilometer on major highways (feeder roads) will increase primary season rice production by 1.3 (1.0) percent.

Abstract:
This paper evaluates the Vaso de Leche (VL) feeding program in Peru. We pose the question that if a community-based multistage targeting scheme such as that of the VL program is progressive, is it possible that the program can achieve its nutritional objectives? We address this by linking VL public expenditure data with household survey data to assess the targeting, and then to model the determinants of nutritional outcomes of children to see if VL program interventions have an impact on nutrition. We confirm that the VL program is well targeted to poor households and to those with low nutritional status. While the bulk of the coverage of the poor is attributed to targeting of poor districts, the degree to which the poor receive larger in-kind transfers is attributed to intradistrict targeting. The impact of these food subsidies beyond their value as income transfers is limited, however, by the degree to which the commodity transfers are inframarginal. We find that transfers of milk and milk substitutes from the VL program are inframarginal for approximately half of the households that receive them. Thus, it is not entirely surprising that we fail to find econometric evidence of the nutritional objectives of the VL program being achieved. In models of child standardized heights, we find no impact of the VL program expenditures on the nutritional outcomes of young children - the group to whom the program is targeted.

Health & Population, Governance, Poverty

Abstract:
This paper takes advantage of nationally representative cross-sectional household data sets from 1993, 1997 and 1999, to examine changes in poverty in Madagascar. The authors find that poverty in this Indian Ocean country rose from an already high level of 70 percent in 1993, to 73.3 in 1997, before falling to 71.3 in 1999. This pattern of change, which corresponds to the evolution of macroeconomic policy during this period, was restricted primarily to urban areas. Populations in rural areas witnessed persistent increases in poverty despite market reforms, as structural constraints affected their ability to escape poverty. A strong correlation between "remoteness" (as measured by various proxies) and high levels of poverty support this finding. Small scale agricultural households were hit particularly hard in the 1990s, and the data suggest that these are the very households that have been extending their land use by clearing and cultivating increasingly fragile lands. The use of models of household consumption to decompose changes in poverty into returns and endowment effects, substantiate the hypothesis that decreases in land productivity among these small-holders contributed to increases in poverty. These decompositions also reveal that increased access and returns to education between 1993 and 1999 contributed to declines in poverty.

economic development, measurement of economic growth, aggregate productivity, Africa, Madagascar

Abstract:
Following the endorsement by the international community of the Millennium Development Goals, there has been an increasing demand for practical methods for steadily tracking poverty. An economically intuitive and inexpensive methodology is explored for doing so in the absence of regular, comparable data on household consumption. The minimum data requirements for this methodology are the availability of a household budget survey and a series of surveys with a comparable set of asset data also contained in the budget survey. This method is illustrated using a series of Demographic and Health Surveys for Kenya.

C81, I32

Abstract:
Following the endorsement of the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing demand for methods to track poverty regularly. This paper develops an economically intuitive and inexpensive methodology to do so in the absence of regular, comparable data on household consumption. The minimum data requirements for the methodology are the availability of a household budget survey and a series of surveys with a comparable set of asset data also contained in the budget survey. The methodology is illustrated using a series of Demographic Health Surveys from Kenya.

Poverty Evolution, Asset Index, Kenya

Abstract:
This paper takes advantage of nationally representative cross-sectional household data sets from 1993, 1997 and 1999, to examine changes in poverty in one province of Madagascar, Fianarantsoa. The authors find that poverty in this province rose from an already high 74 percent in 1993 to 81 percent in 1999. This pattern of change, which corresponds to the evolution of macroeconomic policy during this period, was restricted primarily to urban areas. Populations in rural areas witnessed persistent increases in poverty despite market reforms, as structural constraints affected their ability to escape poverty. A strong correlation between "remoteness" (as measured by various proxies) and high levels of poverty support this finding. Small scale agricultural households were hit particularly hard in the 1990s, and the data suggest that these are the very households that have been extending their land use by clearing and cultivating increasingly fragile lands. The use of models of household consumption to decompose changes in poverty into returns and endowment effects, substantiate the hypothesis that decreases in land productivity among these small-holders contributed to increases in poverty. These decompositions also reveal that increased access and returns to education between 1993 and 1999 contributed to declines in poverty.

Abstract:
We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to make international and inter-temporal welfare comparisons. While most poverty analyses rely on expenditures or income, we use anthropometric measures of nutrition as indicators of living standards. The advantages are that we observe individual - not household - well-being, deflators and exchange rates are unnecessary, and measurement techniques are similar across surveys. We test the robustness of the headcount results, and find that applying higher order Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures adds little information; although stochastic dominance testing of nutrition distributions reveals that changes in malnutrition are sensitive to the choice of the nutrition poverty line.

Abstract:
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.

Abstract:
This study of the Vaso de Leche ("Glass of Milk") feeding program in Peru looks for evidence that this in-kind transfer program aimed at young children furthers nutritional objectives. The study links public expenditure data with household survey data to substantiate the targeting and to model the determinants of nutritional outcomes. It confirms that the social transfer program targets poor households and households with low nutritional status. Nevertheless, the study fails to find econometric evidence that the nutritional objectives are being achieved.

Abstract:
This article examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into productivity. In particular, we study the effect of isolation and transport infrastructure on welfare and agricultural productivity in the case of Madagascar. Madagascar is a good case study given the bad shape of its infrastructure and therefore the significant variation in isolation. Based on comprehensive household survey data combined with a census of communes, we discover a strong poverty-isolation relationship. Further we find the inverse relationship between agricultural productivity and isolation to be surprisingly strong. We isolate the following reasons why productivity might decline with isolation: (i) transportation-induced transaction costs, (ii) the inverse relationship between plot size and productivity, (iii) increasing price variability and extensification onto less fertile land, and (iv) insecurity.

transport costs, transaction costs, regional development

Abstract:
In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban-rural differences for several African countries for which we have data and find that living standards in rural areas lag far behind those in urban areas. Then we examine the relative and absolute rates of change for urban and rural areas and find no overall evidence of declining differences in the gaps between urban and rural living standards. Finally, we conduct urban-rural decompositions of inequality, examining the within versus between (urban and rural) group inequality for asset inequality, education inequality, and health (height) inequality.

Abstract:
This article models the determinants of pre-school age malnutrition in Africa using the Demographic Health Surveys. By examining the differences in the impact of mother's and father's education on the nutrition of boys and girls, we draw inferences from our reduced-form equations regarding the existence of non-unified preferences. In a bargaining framework, women with more schooling are able to earn more, which improves their fallback position. Thus, we test whether mother's schooling has a larger impact on daughter's than son's nutrition, and whether father's education favors son's nutrition. Using classical testing criteria, we generally find that preferences of fathers and mother differ in regard to the health of boys and girls.

pre-school age malnutrition, Africa, mother's and father's education, classical testing criteria

Abstract:
We build a CGE model of an archetype African economy to simulate the welfare effects of trade liberalization specifically on poverty. The economy is modeled following a dual-dual framework (Thorbecke, 1993, 1994, 1997) that is characteristic of the structure of a developing country in its middle development phase. This provides the basis for analyzing the distribution of modern and informal sector activities in both rural and urban areas. The interdependence of these four broadly defined sectors is modeled not only in terms of production and consumption decisions within them, but also in terms of labor migration among them, adding a richness which is missing in the standard CGE models. Poverty analysis is integrated in the CGE methodology by endogenizing both intra-group income distributions and the nominal poverty line. The application of standard poverty measures to the pre- and post simulation poverty lines and distributions of income for each socio-economic group, allows the assessment of policy-induced changes on group specific poverty and national poverty. Simulations with a model calibrated from a social accounting matrix (SAM) of a prototype African economy, show that an important contribution of the dual-dual model vis-a-vis poverty analysis in a CGE model is the inter-group migration it incorporates. Changes in the population shares of the socio-economic groups that follow population shifts have important implications for the magnitudes of changes in national poverty.

CGE, Dual, Poverty, Africa, Migration, Trade liberalization

Abstract:
We consider an asset-based alternative to the standard use of expenditures in defining well-being and poverty. Our primary motivation is to see if there exist simpler and less demanding ways to collect and analyze data to measure economic welfare and rank households. This is particularly important in Africa and other poor regions where there is limited capacity to conduct consumption and expenditure surveys and to collect price data, and consequently where reliable data (including valid deflators) necessary to make inter-temporal and inter-regional poverty comparisons is scarce. We evaluate an index derived from a factor analysis on household assets using multipurpose surveys from ten countries. We find that the asset index is a valid predictor of what is arguably the most crucial manifestation of poverty - child malnutrition. Further, indicators of relative measurement error show that the asset index is measured as a proxy for long-term wealth with less error than expenditures.

Abstract:
We analyze demographic and health surveys to examine the progress of African countries in achieving six of the seven millennium development goals (MDG) set forth by the United Nations. Our results paint a discouraging picture. Despite some noteworthy progress, the evidence suggests that, in the absence of dramatic changes in the rates of improvement in most measures of living standards, the MDG will not be reached for most indicators in most countries. The results are particularly sobering for rural areas, where living standards are universally lower, and where rates of progress lag behind urban areas.

Africa, development goals, poverty, welfare measures, urban-rural

Abstract:
We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to compare "poverty" at two or more points in time within and between African countries. Our welfare measure is an index resulting from a factor analysis of various household characteristics, durables, and household heads' education. An advantage of this measure is that for intertemporal and intraregional comparisons, we need not rely on suspect price deflators and currency conversion factors. The wide availability and similarity of questionnaires of the DHS facilitate comparisons over both time and countries. Our results generally show declines in poverty during the previous decade, largely due to improvements in rural areas.

Africa, asset index, factor analysis, poverty, stochastic dominance, welfare measures