Population and poverty

Indian government has initiated the world’s largest Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in 1975 through community level anganwari centres (AWC). However, nearly half of the children under five years of age are still under nourished and merely one- third of babies are weighed immediately after birth. The present paper seeks the utilization of ICDS programme in India and examines the unmet need of the service to the children and their mothers and uses information from 51887 children (0-71 months), 55550 pregnant women, and 51837 lactating mothers from NFHS-3. The results show that only 32.9 percent children had received any services from AWC, which means two third of children did not received any services from AWC in the country. The unmet need is high in urban areas, with OBC membership and among Muslim. To reduce this unmet need one should focus up on why not people with high education and belong to upper strata of society utilized the ICDS services? The purpose of programme is to reach to every sections of the society with well acceptance and provide proper services to the target population. There must be some gap in the programme implementation which might make it not acceptable to all and create a cavity of unmet need.

In this paper I investigate the nature of the differential in poverty by ethnicity in rural China using data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP). For that, I use counterfactual distributions (Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux, 2009; Yun, 2004) in which disadvantaged minorities are given a set of relevant characteristics of the Han majority. Among these characteristics are the description of the geographical location, social attitudes, social capital, assets, demographics (sex, age, civil status, number of children) and education and labor attachment. The proposed technique allows for identifying the global contribution of these mentioned factors, as well as the individual contribution of each set of factors to the total observed gap in poverty. Preliminary results show that even the region of residence plays an important role in explaining the gap in poverty by ethnicity, contrary to what was suggested previously in the previous literature poverty would be higher if minoriti9es and Han had the same geographical distribution. It is mostly the higher number of children and the lower level of education what explains the ethnic poverty gap in the West of the country, and the fact that minorities live in least developed areas in the Central and Easter region.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a pervasive public health challenge in many developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. The paper proposes to assess (i) the medium-term impact of the NTD management program on the treated children’s educational outcomes such as school attendance/primary school completion/test scores on school-leaving exams mandatory for children graduating from primary schools in the country, and (ii) the efficacy of supplementary intervention, provision of access to safe water through newly drilled wells, in controlling the risk of re-infection. Through this research we expect to be able to provide evidence for the efficacy of the NTD management program on children’s human capital investment as well as useful suggestions to more effectively address the re-infection risk challenge. The preliminary analysis of difference-in-differences estimator using the school level data finds that the NTD program in Mwanza increased the attendance rate, completion rate and passing rate of the national exam by 2.6%p, 3.2%p and 0.7%p, respectively. The results suggest that the program had a quite sizable impact on attendance and completion by school children, but that its impact on passing the national exam is limited.

This paper explores behavioural changes resulting from the presence of a background risk. Due to markets incompleteness, not all risks are insurable. The literature suggests that, according to the structure of preferences, agents bearing a background uninsurable risk are less willing to bear other insurable risks and increase their demand for insurance. The empirical evidence of this effect is limited and, despite the relevance of this question, unexplored in developing countries. This paper fills this gap. It explores the effect of a background risk on the decision to buy health insurance using household data from the Palestinian Territories. We consider the risk of food insecurity as a background uninsurable risk. Using a bivariate probit model, we find that the propensity to buy health insurance is positively affected by the presence of a background risk of food insecurity. When allowing the background risk to vary in intensity, we find that the propensity to insure is higher as the background risk becomes more intense. These results are robust to alternative indicators of background risk. The study shows that, in presence of background risks, there might be incentive changes towards the desirability of insurance that have implications for policy design.

In India, consumer expenditure data collected by National Sample Survey (NSS) is used for the poverty estimation in the absence of income data in the sample surveys. There have been debates about the comparison of expenditure estimates from the consumer expenditure schedule (CES) data and employment and unemployment schedule (EUS) data. Therefore, this study aims to compare the estimates of poverty using unit level data from the 66th quinquennial round (2009-10) of NSS from CES and EUS for all the states and union territories of India and tries to present a new methodology to estimate poverty. We construct variable MPCE percentiles by distributing households into hundred equal percentile groups for both the schedules (schedule 10 and schedule 1.0). We further merged the both the schedules using the key variables state, place of residence and percentile groups (100 percentile). We further compare the mean MPCE of from as well as Poverty Head-count Ratio for both the schedules using regression method. Preliminary results suggest that it could be argued based on preliminary findings that comparison of poverty estimates could be made using the consumer expenditure and employment & unemployment schedules. It will be helpful in understanding the relationship between poverty and other socio-economic factors.

With growing emphasis on human development, health has emerged as one of the key areas for policy interventions by governments in many developing countries in general, and India in particular. A large body of evidence now exists to suggest that poverty has a close inter-relationship with health status of the population. Given that poverty is a major outcome of poor health status and low level of human capital, it appears to be vital to bring this to Uttar Pradesh and its regions under serious empirical investigation. For empirical analysis we have considered NSSO morbidity and health care (60th round) data as major source.
Some of the major findings suggest that the postulated relationship is more profound in urban areas than in rural. A possible reason may be the lack of access to health services by rural households due to very acute poverty situation. By implication, it amounts to suggest that a considerable proportion of rural population in parts of UP suffer from serious health issues due to poverty driven inaccessibility of health care and suffer from pains and misery. That it severely affects their productivity and contribution to the economy can be easily inferred.

Over the past decades, many studies have documented the impact of declining fertility on the well-being of children. Few studies, however, have dealt with the sub-Saharan African context or examined the distribution of benefits within and across households during the fertility transition – the possible effects on social inequities. Our paper empirically examines systematic changes in boys’ and girls’ schooling in Ouagadougou (capital city of Burkina Faso), where total fertility has fallen from over 6 to 3.5 in recent years. More precisely, which households and, within households with regard to parents’ resource allocation decisions, which children benefit more (or pay the costs) of declining family size? Data are from the 2010 DHS and from the DEMTREND Project of the Ouagadougou DSS which follows a population of approximately 85000. This surveillance system is one of two that exists in large African cities. Early results indicate that the benefits of fertility decline in terms of schooling are no equally distributed either within or across households, acting to reinforce socioeconomic inequality in the next generation.

The countries in which poverty levels are the highest are generally those that have the most rapid increases in population and the highest fertility levels. This can be observed for Malawi where the 2010/11 Integrated household survey has found that poverty incidence is 52.4 percent and has remained unchanged in the last 5 years. Malawi ‘s population growth rate is at 2.8 percent with a TFR that has slightly declined to 5.7 from 7.6 in 1982.There are several variations in poverty levels geographically as well as along the lines of household size, education of household head , and housing conditions. Smaller families , fewer pregnancies and lower fertility are part of the formula to increase average per-capita income.
This paper will examine poverty disparities by geographic location from 2010/11 Integrated Household Survey and examine the fertility and household composition from 2010 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and 2008 Malawi Population and Housing Census. The preliminary results are consistent with global findings that big households are likely to be poor.

The assessment of how different countries moving and converging in terms of average health and health inequalities is crucial for understanding the challenges of future health policy. As progress in average health in necessary but could not be the sufficient condition of progress in health inequality. The principal objective of this study is to assess the trend in absolute and relative inequality against the progress in reduction of average maternal mortality ratio in 179 countries. The result of study foster some important insights about progress in maternal mortality: First, the progress or decline in average maternal mortality ratio not necessarily will lead to decline in inequalities in maternal mortality ratio. Second, the decline in absolute dispersion in maternal mortality ratio will ratio not necessarily will lead to decline in relative inequalities in maternal mortality ratio. Therefore, policies aiming to reduce maternal mortality should aim at reducing both absolute and relative inequalities. Therefore, efficacy with equity should be a principle for convergence in progress in maternal health in world countries.

Over the past decades, many studies have documented the impact of declining fertility on the well-being of children. Few studies, however, have dealt with the sub-Saharan African context or examined the distribution of benefits within and across households during the fertility transition – the possible effects on social inequities. Our paper empirically examines systematic changes in boys’ and girls’ schooling in Ouagadougou (capital city of Burkina Faso), where total fertility has fallen from over 6 to 3.5 in recent years. More precisely, which households and, within households with regard to parents’ resource allocation decisions, which children benefit more (or pay the costs) of declining family size? Data are from the 2010 DHS and from the DEMTREND Project of the Ouagadougou DSS which follows a population of approximately 85000. This surveillance system is one of two that exists in large African cities. Early results indicate that the benefits of fertility decline in terms of schooling are no equally distributed either within or across households, acting to reinforce socioeconomic inequality in the next generation.