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The global textile and apparel sector is critically important as an early phase in industrialization for many developing countries and as a provider of employment opportunities to thousands of low-income workers, many of them women. The goal of this book is to explore how the lifting of the Multi-fibre Arrangement/ Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (MFA/ATC) quotas has affected nine countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam with the broader aim of better understanding the links between globalization and poverty in the developing world. Analyzing how employment, wage premiums, and the structure of the apparel industry have changed after the MFA/ATC can generate important lessons for policy makers for economic development and poverty reduction. This book uses in-depth country case studies as the broad methodological approach. In-depth country studies are important because countries are idiosyncratic: differences in regulatory context, history, location, trade relationships, and policies shape both the apparel sector and how the apparel sector changed after the end of the MFA. In-depth country studies place broader empirical work in context and strengthen the conclusions. The countries in this book were chosen because they represent the diversity of global apparel production, including differences across regions, income levels, trade relationships, and policies. The countries occupy different places in the global value chain that now characterizes apparel production. Not surprisingly, the countries studied in this book represent the diversity of post-MFA experiences. This book highlights four key findings: The first is that employment and export patterns after the MFA/ATC did not necessarily match predictions. This book shows that only about a third of the variation in cross-country changes in exports is explained by wage differences. While wage differences explain some of the production shifts, domestic policies targeting the apparel sector, ownership type, and functional upgrading of the industry also played an important role. Second, changes in exports are usually, but not always, good indicators of what happens to wages and employment. While rising apparel exports correlated with rising wages and employment in the large Asian countries, rising exports coincided with falling employment in Sri Lanka. Third, this book identifies the specific ways that changes in the global apparel market affected worker earnings, thus helping to explain impacts on poverty. Fourth, in terms of policies, the countries that had larger increases in apparel exports were those that promoted apparel sector upgrading; those that did not promote upgrading had smaller increases or even falling exports.

'Handbook on Poverty + Inequality' was originally designed to support training courses in poverty analysis and inequality. The 'Handbook' begins with an explanatory text that includes numerous examples, multiple-choice questions to ensure active learning, and extensive practical exercises that use Stata statistical software. The 'Handbook' will help researchers and evaluators in charge of preparing background materials for Poverty Reducation Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and those responsible for monitoring and evaluating poverty reduction programs and policies. The World Bank Institute has used the 'Handbook' in training workshops in countries from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, to Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, to Malawi and Tanzania, as well as in university courses on poverty and in distance education courses with participants from Asian and African countries. The 'Handbook' has also been used in an online asynchronous course with more than 200 participants worldwide. Using the feedback from these courses, the authors have created a clearly-written text that balances rigor with practicality. The 'Handbook' is designed to be accessible to people with a university-level background in science or the social sciences. It is an invaluable tool for policy analysts, researchers, college students, and government officials working on policy issues related to poverty and inequality.

The objective of the Nepal Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in Nepal in all its dimensions and promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of many dimensions that shape the opportunities for investments, employment creation, and growth of private firms. Such dimensions include factor markets, product markets, infrastructure services, and the macroeconomic, legal, regulatory, and institutional framework. The report's key finding is that while there are some niche sectors growing and expanding employment in Nepal (including tourism and certain educational and other services), there are many constraints to the investment climate in Nepal that are hindering the development and growth of the private sector. In particular, political instability, poor infrastructure, poor labor relations, poor access to finance, and declining exports plague Nepal's private sector. To overcome many of these issues and move forward, many reforms are needed. Given the extent of the challenge, effective public-private dialogue is required so that the government and the private sector can work in partnership to address these constraints. The pervasiveness and impact of political instability in Nepal makes the investment climate in the country comparable more to Afghanistan than other countries in the region or the comparator countries used in the analysis. While this comparison is unflattering, it is true. Political instability has stifled growth and limited Nepal's ability to exploit its hydropower and tourism potential. Interestingly, many firms do not perceive access to land and finance as major obstacles. This could be a reflection of lack of dynamism: Nepalese firms are simply not planning to invest, expand, and grow in their unstable and unpredictable environment. The peace dividend is not difficult to measure. As the surveys show, ending civil unrest alone would give back to enterprises 44 working days a year. The effects on economic activity, investment, growth, and job creation could be potentially huge.

Following the 1998 financial crisis, four out of every ten people slipped into poverty, not able to meet basic needs. Luckily, post-crisis economic rebound was impressive and broad-based ? albeit uneven ? across sectors and regions. This title explores the nature of poverty, both nationally and regionally, to identify the groups with a high poverty risk. It then examines growth-poverty linkages through the labor market, as well as the contribution of growth and inequality to the recent poverty reduction. It also considers the expected impact of WTO accession on overall growth and poverty. Finally, it focuses on the scope for improving social policy in ways that will have a direct impact on the poor.

The key objective of this study is to analyze the moderating effect of farmers’ attitude between the resources of farmer and poverty incidence in rural areas. For this purpose, 650 small farmers were selected through the stratified random sampling technique and face to face interviews were conducted by using a structured questionnaire for data collection. The proposed model was analyzed through PLS-SEM technique. Empirical findings of the current study reveal that the resources of farmer has a significant and negative impact on multidimensional poverty indices. Moreover, the findings also concluded that the resources of farmer has a direct negative effect on poverty incidence, meanwhile, attitude of the farmer significantly and negatively moderates the effect of farmer’s resources on poverty incidence. In framing the policies of rural development, the current study emphasized the need for strategies related to increasing agricultural productivity and allied activities. Similarly, the current research also recommends that seminars may be arranged to provide vocational training to improve the farmers’ attitude for better utilization of common, social and human resources. In addition, credit support may also be offered to small farmers which can drastically reduce their poverty incidence.

Broad-based growth is critical for accelerating poverty reduction. But income inequality also affects the pace at which growth translates into gains for the poor. Despite the attention researchers have given to the relative roles of growth and inqequality in reducing poverty, little is known about how the microunderpinnings of growth strategies affect poor households' ability to participate in and profit from growth. Delivering on the Promise of Pro-Poor Growth contributes to the debate on how to accelerate poverty reduction by providing insights from eight countries that have been relatively successful in delivering pro-poor growth: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Tunisia, Uganda, and Vietnam. It integrates growth analytics with the microanalysis of household data to determine how country policies and conditions interact to reduce poverty and to spread the benefits of growth across different income groups. This title is a useful resource for policy makers, donor agencies, academics, think tanks, and government officials seeking a practical framework to improve country level diagnostics of growth-poverty linkages.

Poverty is not only the focal issue that has drawn worldwide attention but is also an essential issue in people's livelihoods. This research examines the primary factors of poverty in the Birbhum district. Multivariate statistical techniques have been used to identify the primary determinants. Ten parameters have been identified as significant drivers of poverty, six of which are physical, viz. slope, elevation, drainage density, pond frequency, soil texture, and rainfall. The remaining four sociocultural and economic parameters are literacy, major market center, population growth, and road density. A linear relationship has been established between the explanatory and response variables where the R-square or coefficient of determination value is 0.741, and this relationship explains more than 74% of the variables. The P-value of multi-linear regression is 0.000, which validates the model and permits the data for factor analysis to extract the major determinants. Factor analysis indicates that five essential factors have been found based on their eigenvalue viz., agro-climatic factor, infrastructural and educational factors, hydrological factor, demographic factor, and pedological factors. All the p-values of the correlation matrix are < 0.05, meaning all the relationships are valid and significant. This research also demonstrates the spatial analysis of data using GIS technology. The western part of the study area has been affected by the high influence of all factors due to the presence of plateau fringe and associated low productivity. The outcomes of the research are scientifically significant and this study helps the planners, higher authorities, and social workers to eradicate poverty from this region through formulating better policies and management.

One out of every five Latin Americans—about 130 million people—have never known anything but poverty, subsisting on less than US$4 a day throughout their lives. These are the region's chronically poor, who have remained so despite unprecedented inroads against poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean since the turn of the century. This book takes a closer look at the region's entrenched poor, who and where they are, and how existing policies need to change to effectively assist the poor. The book shows significant variations of rates of chronic poverty across and within countries. The book posits that refinements to the existing policy toolkit —as opposed to more programs—may come a long way in helping the remaining poor. These refinements include intensifying efforts to improve coordination between different social and economic programs, which can boost the income-generation process and deal with the intergenerational transmission of chronic poverty by investing in early childhood development. In addition, there is an urgent need to adapt programs to directly address the psychological toll of chronic poverty on people's mindsets and aspirations, which currently undermines the effectiveness of existing policy efforts.

One of the most serious challenges threatening agricultural sustainability in Nigeria is land degradation. Although this issue has received little attention, soil and water conservation practices have been identified as a possible pathway out of the potential problems posed by land degradation. Therefore, the central research question that this paper tries to address is the following: Do adoption of soil and water conservation (SWC) practices affect crop productivity and household welfare? This paper uses data collected by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from maize farmers in rural Nigeria. We usedemploy the propensity score matching (PSM), inverse probability weighting adjusted regression model (IPWRA) approach, and the linear regression with endogenous treatment effect (LRETE) model to incorporate the typologies of SWC practices, and tested how the model affects crop productivity and household welfare. Additionally, multinomial logit was used to estimate the factors influencing the decision to adopt single and multiple SWC practices. The estimates show that education, age of the household head, access to credit, experience of drought, soil fertility, and occupational stress contribute to the decision to adopt SWC practices. The casual effect estimates reveal that both single and multiple adoptions of SWC practices had a positive and significant relationship with the crop productivity and welfare of the adopters. The results show that the adoption of combined SWC practices has a higher impact on crop productivity and welfare than single SWC practices. For instance, the adoption of a combination of three SWC practices was found to increase crop productivity and household welfare by 27.55% and 38.23%, respectively versus 13.91% and 15.11% in the case of single SWC practices. The study suggests that profile-raising agenda and efforts that focus on promoting the adoption of combination of SWC practices should be designed and implemented to enhance crop productivity and hence the welfare of the maize farming households in rural Nigeria.

This study investigates the characteristics that contribute to elderly poverty, mainly focusing on individuals’ lifetime work experience. It adopts the heterogeneous relative poverty line. It calculates the work experience and obtains demographic variables using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study’s survey data for 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015. The objective is to estimate poverty among elderly and explain its variations in relation to individual characteristics and lifetime work experience. Poverty is measured in terms of the head count, poverty gap and the poverty severity indices based on monetary dimensions, namely income and consumption. The methodology used in this study is a logit model to explain the incidence of poverty and a sample selection model to analyze the depth and severity of poverty. The results show that an increase in the total work years and a decrease in the gap years between jobs reduce incidence and depth of poverty.