Abstract Chinese households have experienced significant income growth, while their nutrition intake has not increased pari passu. This paper uses household data in both rural and urban China over the period 1989-2009 to explain the paradox of higher income but lower nutrition. In addition to...

Abstract Drawing upon panel data estimations, we have analysed the relationships among agricultural productivity, employment, technology, openness of the economy, inequality in land distribution and poverty. First, we have identified a number of important factors affecting agricultural...

Abstract Based on cross-country datasets, we find that (i) development of the rural agricultural sector is the most poverty reducing; (ii) rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty reducing in some cases, but its magnitude is much smaller than that associated with the rural agricultural...

Abstract Drawing upon a cross-country panel data for developing countries, the present study sheds new empirical light on dynamic and long-term linkages among growth, inequality and poverty. First, agricultural sector growth is found to be consistently the most important factor in reducing...

Rising food prices played an important role in the acceleration of inflation across Asia and the Pacific region during 2007 and the early months of 2008. Not only is food price inflation the most regressive of all taxes, it also leads to lower growth and accentuation of income inequality....

This article uses a discrete-time multivariate duration model to study poverty transition in rural China between 1989 and 2006. The analysis identifies nonlinear negative duration-dependence for both exit and re-entry rates of poverty. There is significant difference in hazard rates of exit and...

Abstract This paper assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children’s educational outcomes by using household panel data (2000 and 2004) in a poor province of northwest rural China. The unobservables between borrowers and non-borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic...

Abstract Using the recent estimates of rural, urban and aggregate poverty rates for 31 developing countries, the present study statistically examines the extent to which the rural sector contributes to aggregate poverty reduction. After adjusting for the effect of rural-urban migration, our...

This paper investigates the effect of the devolution of power to the village level government on the household-level allocation of poverty alleviation programmes, drawing upon National Sample Survey data and the Election Commission’s election data. First, greater inequality in land-holdings...

Abstract This study examines whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty, and if so, to what extent and across which dimensions of wellbeing. The study draws on first-hand observations and empirical data gathered from interviews of 1,132 households across 11 districts in the rural...