This book examines economic and political polarisation in post-Soviet Russia, and in particular analyses the development of rural inequality. It discusses how rural inequality has developed in post-Soviet Russia, and how it differs from the Soviet period, and goes on to look at the factors that affect rural stratification and inequality, using human and social capital, profession, gender, and village location as independent variables. The book uses survey data from rural households and fieldwork in Russia in order to highlight the multiplicity of divisions that act as fault lines in contemporary rural Russia.
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 2015 Millennium Development Goal to cut in half the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty was met with time to spare. By 2013, the percentage of developing-country populations living in extreme poverty decreased from 43 percent in 1990 to 21 percent by 2010. Clearly, there is still a long way to go, with 1.2 billion people without enough to eat. What can we learn from the recent success? This volume presents recent methods to decompose the contributions to poverty reduction. What was the main contributor to poverty reduction? Using a simple accounting approach, we find that labor income growth was the largest contributor to moderate poverty reduction for a group of 21 countries with substantial reductions in poverty over the past decade. Moreover, in most cases, it was the growth in income per worker that contributed the most to poverty reduction, rather than an increase in employment. Changes in demographics, public transfers and remittances helped, but made relatively smaller contributions to poverty reduction. Public transfers were important in reducing extreme poverty, pointing to the crucial role of social protection systems. How was labor income growth able to reduce poverty? After a review of the literature, a structural decomposition method is presented and implemented in three countries. The results show that that labor income grew mainly because of higher returns to human capital endowments. This could signal increases in productivity, a higher relative price of labor, or both. In Bangladesh and Peru, this was driven by higher returns to workers with low levels of education, which may have partly been driven by higher food prices. In contrast, in Thailand, poverty fell partly due to increasing returns to education.
This book explores trends of inequality and poverty in China, identifies their causes and assesses their consequences, analyzing in detail the regional/personal variation in incomes, measures of human wellbeing, the gap between the coastal regions and the interior regions, and urban–rural disparity.
Using data from household and labor force surveys, this study documents the effects of the 2008–09 global financial crisis on poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, the social protection policy responses activated, and a macro-micro modeling of crisis/no-crisis scenarios for Mexico and Brazil.
This handbook initiates fresh debates on poverty and its impact in a constantly changing Global South society. It studies the concept, theories, and causes of poverty, as well as the design and delivery of social welfare policies related to specific groups, such as women, children, and the elderly. The chapters are theoretical, evidence-based, and empirical in nature and bring together a holistic understanding of social problems and issues in developing countries. The volume brings together researchers, educators, and practitioners from across the globe to develop a hands-on reference work that will be requisite for several social science disciplines concerned with poverty and the welfare of poor people. The first of its kind, the handbook will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, social work, political studies, poverty studies, population and demographic studies, sociology, social anthropology, public policy, and political economy, especially those concerned with the Global South.
The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region’s role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.
While the US portrays itself as a noble example of freedom and democracy, it has in fact led the world to greater inequality than ever before. But now, for the first time in decades, nations facing the brunt of its domination and exploitation have alternative, more tenable options in pursuit of development. Chinese finance is building badly-needed infrastructure where the West would not, Chinese commerce is providing a lifeline to countries the US has targeted for destruction, and Chinese industry is producing new sources of renewable and transition energy at an unparalleled rate. This book addresses: China’s development and political economy based on independent studies, statistical data, and comparative analysis Current geopolitical conflicts and major developments and their relation to China Chinese finance and its effect on the rest of the world, particularly Africa. China’s profound emphasis on environmentalism, renewable energy, and plan for the future. Though it has yet to fully step into this role, the People’s Republic of China has become the de facto leader of a future multipolar world.
In light of the opportunities and the challenges facing African economies in the 21st century, this edited volume traces the evolution of poverty in the course of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa over the recent decades. By engaging with, and seeking to develop on, the work of Professor Erik Thorbecke, it examines the evolving dynamics of poverty in multiple dimensions. It also discusses how to lay down foundations for improved governance and institutions that will realize inclusive development in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the volume contributes to our understanding of dynamics of pro-poor growth and pro-growth poverty reduction, and to the on-going policy and academic debates on how to overcome fragility and vulnerability and secure inclusive development through socio-economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. The volume is divided into four parts; two overview chapters in Part 1 set out a common theme running through the volume. Four chapters in Part II examine an evolution of the poverty profile in different dimensions in sub-Saharan Africa since the new millennium. Part III presents three country case studies of tracing poverty dynamics under a country-specific institutional and policy environment. Part IV consists of three chapters, each of which addresses the question of how to advance an inclusive development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa, but from three different perspectives: structural changes, a governance framework, and an institutional foundation.
Libman and Obydenkova reveal how legacies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) have survived in the politics, economic development, culture, and society of post-Communist regions in the 21st Century. The authors show how this impact is not driven by Communist ideology but by the clientelistic practices, opportunism and cynicism prevalent in the CPSU. Their study is built on a novel dataset of the CPSU membership rates in Russian regions in the 1950s-1980s, alongside case studies, interviews and an analysis of mass media previously only available in Russian and discussed here in English for the first time. It will appeal to students and scholars of Russian and Eastern European politics and history, and anyone who wants to better understand countries which live or have lived through Communism: from Eastern Europe to China and East Asian Communist states.
