Population and poverty

Prospects of Indian cities are greatly tied to rural migrants’ ability to transition into productive urban citizens. However, their ability to do so depends not only on economic opportunities but also on the city’s ability to deliver on quality of life indicators. While there is increasing work on micro-level dimensions of poverty and wellbeing in rural developing country contexts, little empirical work examines parallel dimensions in urban areas. This gap is especially pronounced in scholarly work on migrant outcomes, especially in Indian urban destinations. Within this context, I carry out an assessment of rural-urban migrants’ multidimensional wellbeing in India’s capital city, Delhi. The analysis uses two unique geo-referenced data sources that allow for combining socio-economic survey data with neighborhood level indicators of service provision extracted from Delhi GIS. I find that as compared to urban native dwellers, rural-urban migrants are significantly poorer across economic as well as non-economic formulations of wellbeing in Delhi. More importantly, the disadvantage arising from being a rural migrant does not disappear with an increased duration of residence in the city, implying a persistent lack of socio-economic mobility for the urbanizing individuals and important implications for urban inequality in India.

The 1993 National Population Policy of Ethiopia: The guiding theories
(Terefe Degefa, PhD)
Center for Population Studies, College of Development Studies,
Addis Ababa University, Email: TerefeD@yahoo.com

Abstract

The National Population Policy of Ethiopia was finalized in 1993. The pace of its implementation has however been slow. It is posited that the theoretical basis of the policy could have played an important role in slowing implementation. A discourse analysis of the content of the policy document is made to analyze theories that guided the policy per se. The roles of global theories expressed as pessimistic and optimistic discourses influence policymaking. However, the former (neo-Malthusianism), which claims that rapid population growth is a menace to development processes, has had the upper hand in Ethiopia, regardless of the resistance it receives. This resistance indicates, it is argued, an obvious need for rigorous research to initiate debate and establish consensus, and in this way allow the cultivation of homegrown theoretical frameworks that could provide guidance to the policy and enhance its implementation activities.

Key words: Population policy, theory, discourse, discourse analysis, theoretical frameworks, homegrown theoretical framework.

Poor households find it difficult to finance their health expenditure which leads to poor health and non utilization of the health care. The catastrophic payment as defined in the literature in terms of a threshold share of expenditure may not be comparable across the expenditure hierarchy rather than conceptualising the same in terms of source of financing the health expenditure. The notion of `disproportionate’ may well depend on how one finances the same? The objective of this paper is to examine the socio-economic vulnerability of the household incurring catastrophic expenditure in terms of its source of finance and role of an event in incurring catastrophic payment. Further, it also attempts to figure out the type of morbidities associated with catastrophic payment. This paper uses the National Sample Survey Organization data on Morbidity and Health Care during Junuary-June 2004. Catastrophic payment in health care need not only be based on the criterion of disproportionateness but also its source of financing, which is evident from this analysis. Further, catastrophic payments are selectively conditioned by intra-household relational domain and household vulnerabilities associated with presence/absence of children and elderly. Instead of focussing on universal health care we should focus on the most vulnerable population.

In the context of Nepal, this study calculates inequalities in utilisation of maternal health care and relative contribution of different factors affecting it. It used data from the latest round of Nepal Demographic and Health Survey-4, 2011. Concentration index and decomposition of concentration index are used as the methods of analyses. CI estimates in three selected indicators suggest considerable inequalities in maternal health care utilisation. Results of decomposition analyses indicate that the critical factors contributing to inequalities in <3ANCs are poor economic status of households and women's and her partner’s illiteracy. However, in case of no institutional delivery, along with poor economic status of household and women’s illiteracy, the rural place of residence also emerged as a critical factor. For no post natal care within a day, birth order becomes significant factor, next to poor economic status of the household in terms of the relative contribution to total inequalities. Policies and program targeting maternal health interventions need to take note of the findings to achieve equity with efficiency in utilisation of maternal health care, and further to achieve the targets of millennium development goal 5 in Nepal.

The attention of Indonesian government in population growth control is directing to remote areas as health and family planning services hardly reach households of these areas. This research purposes to find an alternative variable in encouraging participation of household in family planning program through correlting between access to natural resources and household size, fertility and and out-migration. A survey has been carried out in most remote area areas of West Sumatra. We found that there is strong correlation between access to natural resources and family size, fertility, and out migration. We found that, the families which have higher access to natural resources tend to have bigger family size, higher fertility and more number of out-migrants. High-access families demanded more children than low-access families as lack of labor for land cultivation in the frontier areas of West Sumatra. High-access families also have more number of out-migrant of their members as the strategy for pursuing securer livelihood. Based on the findings, providing non-natural resources based livelihood is another variable which will catalyze participation in family planning program in frontier areas.

The concept of poverty is multidimensional. The variables chosen for defining the multidimensional concept of poverty and grouped into housing, occupation, education, food security, access to financial institutions and beneficiary programme along with factor. First, a composite wealth index will be computed using PCA on a set of 12 variables, covering above broad areas. Poverty experienced by individuals and households for extended periods of time or throughout their entire lives is called chronic poverty .The data on chronic poverty is sparse and, mainly depends on panel data, at two point of time with a number of variables on economic and social dimension. Understanding the need, one of the major contributions of this research is to define a methodology to identify the poor, and particularly the chronic poor. Third, along with the classification of poor, perception of poor on intergenerational economic status, that is, how the household perceive the economic condition compared to his/her parents, will adopted to classify the chronic poor.

Access to basic amenities like drinking water, sanitation, electricity, housing, drainage and others are crucial to the well-being as they contribute to physical and material comfort and quality of life. In the recent years, many international agencies like UNDP, UNESCAP, UN-HABITAT, ADB, World Bank and others have advocated and highlighted the importance of basic amenities for well-being and raising the standards of living. Indian government have also launched several plans and policies for the same in urban and rural areas. The emphasis on the disparities in the access to basic amenities across the economic groups, caste, ethnic and religious groups brings out the issues of exclusion, discrimination and deprivation persisting in the society. This paper has examine the disparities in the access to basic amenities across caste, ethnic, religious and economic groups and also their cross classifications to bring out insightful details for rural and urban India during 1993, 2002 and 2008-09 using NSSO, Household Amenities Surveys unit record data. Findings of this study implies that various policies on basic amenities such drinking water, sanitation, electricity, housing qualities and drainage arrangement needs to be supplemented with pro poor and group specific policies for raising the overall standard of life and well-being.

The pattern of economic development of the region necessitates movement and migration of people from one region to another. The Gujarat state is considered to be one of the developed states of India, which gained statehood in 1960. The State has been showing differential inter-district migration trends. The demographic changes in the distribution of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) (as enshrined in Constitution of India) are recorded in various census years since 1961 to 2001.

This paper examines the regional development changes based on development indicators for decadal years of 1961 to 2001. The mapping of the development status of districts and blocks in these decades have been done and superimposed on the share of SC and ST population of State.

The paper attempts to bring out the relationship between the statuses of economic development vis-à-vis the changing demographic patterns. The paper uses the Geographical Information System (GIS), statistical analysis tools and technology to detect the change across the decades from 1961 to 2001. In the present context, the relevance of the study is to highlight the regional characteristics on the basis of development and demographic changes especially the composition and distribution of SC and ST population.

Climate change is one of the emerging challenges staring households in rural Nigeria at the face and this is attributable to the fact that many of these households rely on livelihood sources that are directly or indirectly climate-dependent and climate controlled. The study relied on data collected from a random sample of 350 households selected from four communities in rural southwest Nigeria. A descriptive analysis of socioeconomic characteristics of respondents revealed their average age to be 55 years with over one-quarter having average household size of seven. Distribution of respondents by educational status indicated that over one-third do not have formal education with only about 26.7 percent educated up to tertiary level.However, the result of tobit regression model employed to ascertain correlates of livelihood options harnessed by these households indicate age, household size, years of formal education, climate change, access to credit and social capital as important determinants. Meanwhile, on the adaptive mechanisms employed to cushion the impact of climate change, storing water in kegs and jerry cans for domestic use (especially during the raining season), compulsory savings

The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of relationship of fertility and poverty reduction in districts of India. Data from multiple sources; the census of India, 1991, 2001 and 2011, the District Level Household Survey 2004-05 and 2007-08 and the National sample Survey, 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2009-10 is used in the analyses. The district is the unit of analyses and data on demographic, social and economic dimensions of 640 districts are derived at three point of time. The relationship of fertility transition and money metric poverty is examined using the descriptive statistics, ordinary least square and the fixed effect and random effect model.
Results indicates that fertility transition is a significant determinant of poverty reduction in districts of India. A 10% reduction in fertility leads to 7% reduction in poverty controlling for economic growth, state domestic product percapita and fiscal deficit. The other significant predictors of poverty reduction are use of modern method of contraception, female literacy, percentage of laborer households and the region. On the other hand, the relationship of poverty and TFR is becoming weak over time. While female literacy, hospital based delivery and sterilization are negative and significantly related with TFR, the level of poverty is not significant related to fertility