The Evolution Of Welfare And Poverty Under Structural Change And Economic Recession In Cote D Lvoire 1985 88

Abstract: August 1995 - In urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital - especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned - matters most. Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend to focus on the incidence of poverty at a particular point in time. If the incidence of poverty increases, however, there is no information about how many new poor have joined the existing poor and how many people have escaped poverty. Yet this distinction is of crucial policy importance. The chronically poor may need programs to enhance their human and physical capital endowments. Invalids and the very old may need permanent (targeted) transfers. The temporarily poor, on the other hand, may best be helped with programs that complement their own resources and help them bridge a difficult period. Results from analyses of panel surveys show significant mobility into and out of poverty and reveal a dynamism of the poor that policy should stimulate. Understanding what separates chronic from temporary poverty requires knowing which characteristics differentiate those who escape poverty from those who don't. In earlier work, Grootaert, Kanbur, and Oh found that region of residence and socioeconomic status were important factors. In this paper they investigate the role of other household characteristics, especially such asset endowments as human and physical capital, in the case of Côte d'Ivoire. In urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, human capital is the most important endowment explaining welfare changes over time. Households with well-educated members suffered less loss of welfare than other households. What seems to have mattered, though, is the skills learned through education, not the diplomas obtained. Diplomas may even have worked against some households in having oriented workers too much toward a formal labor market in a time when employment growth came almost entirely from small enterprises. In rural areas, physical capital - especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned - mattered most. Smallholders were more likely to suffer welfare declines. Households with diversified sources of income managed better, especially if they had an important source of nonfarm income. In both rural and urban areas, larger households suffered greater declines in welfare and households that got larger were unable to increase income enough to maintain their former welfare level. Households whose heads worked in the public sector maintained welfare better than other households, a finding that confirms earlier observations. The results also suggest that government policies toward certain regions or types of household can outweigh the effects of household endownments. Surprisingly, migrant non-Ivorian households tended to be better at preventing welfare losses than Ivorian households, while households headed by women did better than those headed by men (after controlling for differences in or changes in endowment). The implications for policymakers? First, education is associated with higher welfare levels and helps people cope better with economic decline. Second, targeting the social safety net to larger households - possibly through the schools, to reach children - is justified in periods of decline. Third, smallholders might be targeted in rural areas, and ways found to encourage diversification of income there. This paper - a joint product of the Social Policy and Resettlement Division, Environment Department, and the Africa Regional Office, Office of the Chief Economist - is the result of a research project on The Dynamics of Poverty: Why Some People Escape Poverty and Others Don't, A Panel Analysis for Côte d'Ivoire (RPO 678-70).

Panel data sets show that a lucky few bucked the general trend of economic decline in Côte d'Ivoire -- that among the poorest of the poor, some actually improved their standard of living, despite a great increase in the incidence of poverty.

World Bank Environment Paper 4. This survey describes the factors that affect tree cultivation and clearance by Kenyan farmers. These factors include agricultural conditions, product markets, the family life cycle, income, and changing demands for household labor--especially demands caused by labor migration. The author explains why removing structural constraints on rural land markets might reduce the incentive to start and maintain woodlots. He also details why policies that seek to create forests may conflict with programs that generate rural employment.

Analysts must pay close attention to sampling procedures used to collect survey data. This case study illustrates how observed changes in household welfare and in the incidence of poverty can vanish when corrections are applied to the data for changes in sampling procedures - and how even the direction of the trend may be reversed.

Annotation Showcases improvements in environmentally sustainable development indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The World Bank is both a compiler and a user of environmentally sustainable development (ESD) indicators. Although the Bank is more a user than a compiler of indicators in general, it believes in ensuring proper communication between users and compilers, especially for users who are policymakers. It is essential that policymakers have at least rough indicators of whether environmental conditions are improving or deteriorating in broad areas of concern. This report showcases improvements in ESD indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The report examines issues in developing indicators that are understood by compilers and users, including definitions, methodology, and practical considerations. It addresses the gray area where physical indicators of environmental conditions blend into policymaking and proposes a change in the role of national accounting, where poor measurement of environmental aspects can send distorted signals to decisionmakers.

Simpler and bigger are better, for household living standards surveys. And better collection of price data, in an independent survey, should be a priority.