Vulnerability to Poverty: Tajikistan During and after the Global Financial Crisis

39 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2016

See all articles by Ira N. Gang

Ira N. Gang

Rutgers University - Economics Department

Kseniia Gatskova

Osteuropa-Institut (OEI)

John Landon-Lane

Rutgers University, New Brunswick/Piscataway - Faculty of Arts and Sciences-New Brunswick/Piscataway - Department of Economics

Myeong-Su Yun

Inha University - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Abstract

We examine vulnerability to poverty in Tajikistan during the global financial crisis, focusing on the roles played by international migration and remittances, using a formal, practical, and easily decomposable vulnerability measure. Our strategy is to estimate a Markov transition probability matrix with the aim of identifying the vulnerability of households to poverty. Importantly, by introducing the index of vulnerability as the weighted probability of a household falling into poverty over a given time horizon, we can use the estimated dynamics to assess the short, medium and long-run vulnerability. We find that during the "recession transition" almost all households were vulnerable to poverty while almost none were during the "recovery period". Overall, urban households, more educated households and households receiving remittances from international labor migrants were less vulnerable to poverty. While households with a current or very recent migrant did not have a significantly lower measured vulnerability to poverty, those households receiving remittances from migrants had a lower vulnerability to poverty. Our findings stress that the international labor migration from Tajikistan may not be considered as a reliable means of welfare security for the households because external economic shocks and internal political decisions may negatively affect Russian economy and lead to a reduction of remittances flow to Tajikistan.

Keywords: mobility measurement, vulnerability, poverty, inequality, measurement, Tajikistan

JEL Classification: J60, D63, I32

Suggested Citation

Gang, Ira N. and Gatskova, Kseniia and Landon-Lane, John and Yun, Myeong-Su, Vulnerability to Poverty: Tajikistan During and after the Global Financial Crisis. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10049, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2810460 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2810460

Ira N. Gang (Contact Author)

Rutgers University - Economics Department ( email )

75 Hamilton Street
ECONOMICS, New Jersey Hall, Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
United States
732-932-7363 (Phone)
732-932-7416 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://econweb.rutgers.edu/gang/research

Kseniia Gatskova

Osteuropa-Institut (OEI) ( email )

Landshuter Straße 4
Regensburg, 93047
Germany

John Landon-Lane

Rutgers University, New Brunswick/Piscataway - Faculty of Arts and Sciences-New Brunswick/Piscataway - Department of Economics ( email )

75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
United States

Myeong-Su Yun

Inha University - Department of Economics ( email )

253 Yonghyun-dong
Nam-gu Incheon 402-751
+82 32 860-7779 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/site/myeongsuyun

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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