Poverty Reduction

In real world everything is an object which represents particular classes. Every object can be fully described by its attributes. Any real world dataset contains large number of attributes and objects. Classifiers give poor performance when these huge datasets are given as input to it for proper classification. So from these huge dataset most useful attributes need to be extracted that contribute the maximum to the decision. In the paper, attribute set is reduced by generating reducts using the indiscernibility relation of Rough Set Theory (RST). The method measures similarity among the attributes using relative indiscernibility relation and computes attribute similarity set. Then the set is minimized and an attribute similarity table is constructed from which attribute similar to maximum number of attributes is selected so that the resultant minimum set of selected attributes (called reduct) cover all attributes of the attribute similarity table. The method has been applied on glass dataset collected from the UCI repository and the classification accuracy is calculated by various classifiers. The result shows the efficiency of the proposed method.

Over the last century, the world has seen a sustained decline in the proportion of people living in poverty. However, there is an increasing concern that climate change could slow or possibly even reverse poverty reduction progress. Given the complexities involved in analyzing climate change impacts on poverty, different approaches can be helpful; this note surveys the results of recent research on climate change impacts on poverty.

Most enterprises, from the smallest to the largest, need capital. Enterprise can play a crucial role in alleviating poverty. In developing economies, women’s role in alleviating poverty through enterprise has long been recognised, and they have been received as a client group. However, poor women lack the capital required for enterprise start-ups and although lending mechanisms exist in their economy, mainstream financial institutions are not oriented towards providing them with the funding they require. Microfinance generally refers to the provision of financial services (e.g.: savings, credit, insurance) to the poor, those who normally do not have access to formal financial institutions. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in India have promoted micro-finance through women’s self-help groups. However, the different institutional forms are not value-neutral and vested interests are involved. The interests of people and those of micro-financing institutions (MFIs) sometimes compete and conflict.If NGOs change their direction and become MFIs, there could be serious repercussions on development work at the field level. When funding support underlines financial viability, then the MFIs have to be competitive; poverty reduction and empowerment will suffer unless the institutions are also owned and managed by the poor. In this case, more investment in building their capacity is required. In the present phase of evolution of an entrepreneurial culture in India, financial support for NGOs to become MFIs is cheaper than policing a market economy and the real issue of the poor being left out by the market economy is ignored. NGOs can provide the leadership for greater structural reforms and do what they are best at: be facilitators, and create people’s institutions for micro-finance. In this way, the holistic development of people that should precede their involvement in small and micro-enterprise is more likely to occur.

"In line with its mandate of poverty reduction and sustainable development, the WorldFish Center is orienting its research towards high impact scientific activity. Identifying such activities is the task of prospective impact assessment, in turn based on impact pathway analysis. The paper describes a framework for analyzing benefits from aquatic resources research, the relevant research categories, pathways to impact by category, and indicators along each pathway that can be estimated in order to quantify probable research impact."

Agriculture provides the main support for Zambia’s rural economy, and because of this, growth in the agricultural sector is the clearest avenue through which poverty reduction can be achieved in Zambia. Yet despite widespread recognition of the strong connection between agricultural development and poverty reduction, there is continuing under-provision of public goods investments for over a decade. Zambia’s primary policy objective of achieving accelerated growth and competitiveness in the agricultural sector cannot be achieved unless adequate public resources are committed towards catalyzing the desired growth. Strong evidence from southern Africa as well as throughout the world indicates that long–term public investment in research and development, extension services, rural infrastructure, and food safety and quality systems have high pay-offs and are among the most important drivers of agricultural growth and competitiveness. Agricultural-led development has been identified by Af...

Fair Trade Tourism South Africa (FTTSA) is a certification that has similar ambitions to the pro-poor tourism approach. accordingly it has been implemented as a way of contributing to sustainability and poverty relief in South Africa post apartheid. The aim of this paper is to 1) critically review and establish a clear understanding of FTTSA from a theoretical perspective and 2) explore practically from the producers perspective whether FTTSA has created value for impoverished black communities along the Eastern Cape. The research question that guides this aim is: Can FTTSA be a mechanism to reduce poverty in South Africa? The study uses a case study approach, as well as in-depth interviews with the owners/managers and casual conversations with the local people. Three FTTSA certified businesses were investigated during two phases of fieldwork along the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The results recognize that FTTSA businesses are indeed prioritizing the needs of the poor in three identifiable ways: including the poor in tourism decision-making, creating employment opportunities and stimulating entrepreneurship and providing skilful opportunities.

Concept of foreign aid was examined. Nigeria was receiving foreign aid for long time and some improvements have been done in economic development. Our investigation was on the point how deep it was impacted. Following the empirical literature, this study adopts the model employed by Ajisafe (2017) and Chotia and Roa (2017) to examine the impact of foreign aid and infrastructural development on poverty reduction. The study makes use of annual dataset to examine the impact of foreign aid and infrastructural development on poverty reduction in Nigeria over the period of 1981 to 2016. Data on foreign aid measured by Total Official Development Assistance received (constant 2010 US$), infrastructural development (proxy by total electricity net generation. Electric power and distribution losses as a ratio of output, mobile cellular subscriptions, Internet subscribers per 100 population, improved sanitation facilities as a ratio of population with access. Improved water facilities as a rati...

To achieve the goal of poverty reduction, as encapsulated within the Millennium Development Goals, the collection, analysis, and use of geographic information as it relates to the multidimensionality of poverty offers a starting point. The spatial handling of poverty is an emerging paradigm for which researches on the spatial modelling of poverty are required. Attempting to contribute to a better understanding of poverty mapping, this paper examines GIS suitability for use in poverty application areas. GIS analysis functions most appropriate for use in specific poverty mapping tasks are examined. The uses are identified as data integration of socio-economic, environmental, cultural data, etc.; delineation of areas lying within a specified threshold distance from selected features or places; deriving further data from spatial analysis for multivariate analysis of poverty; deriving straight-line and network distances; visualisation and presentation of the results of poverty analysis. ...

This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of familymicroenterprises operate. It highlights a number of issues that impinge on household earnings such as the nature of the labor market, technology, product demand and entrepreneurial skills. The paper argues that the impact of microcredit is likely to be different across household types as well as across different economic environments. The paper identifies several important demand and supply constraints to the household's graduation from poverty. These constraints are difficult to overcome in a traditional economic environment, marked by stagnant technology and market saturation.

International agricultural policies to address hunger and malnutrition in the tropics and sub-tropics have typically been based on approaches to the intensification of farming systems effective in industrialised economies where the social, economic, and environmental conditions and the infrastructure are very different to those in Africa. The consequence of this short-sightedness has been that agricultural productivity, dependent on ecosystem services from natural capital, has declined in Africa due to ecological and environmental collapse. This has undermined the livelihoods of the millions of smallholder farmers living on the brink of the cash economy, leading to severe social injustice. This review summarises advances in smallholder agriculture’s sustainable intensification in the tropics and sub-tropics, leveraging the domestication and commercialisation of wild indigenous tree species that produce nutritious, marketable, and useful food and non-food products. These are grown wi...

This book presents the contributions of African and Latin American experts on economic development to the seminar Strategies against poverty: Designs from the North and Alternatives from the South organized by the Conferencia Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, CLACSO, the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty, CROP and the South- South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of development, SEPHIS. The purpose of the seminar was to open space for debate, from a historical perspective, alternative theoretical approaches on the causes of poverty and to explore the, sometimes diverging, strategies to its eradication as proposed by the North, donors and multilateral organizations, and by the South, governments and non-governmental organizations. The particular interest in studying poverty in the context of developing countries, often called the South, is to show the profound socio-economic inequalities existing in these countries and the problems that result when the progr...

This paper presents the results of a dichotomous choice contingent valuation (CV) study of flood control policy in Bangladesh. The application of CV studies in the domain of flood exposure and flood control, where people are asked to trade-off money income in terms of willingness to pay (WTP), the risk of flooding and corresponding impacts on their life and livelihood, is rare. The use of CV in developing countries furthermore faces the challenge of significant income constraints, limiting the applicability of the method. ...

Employing household survey data covering the periods 1992–1993, 1995–1996, and 1999–2000, this article shows for the case of Uganda that a coffee market liberalization followed by a price boom was associated with substantial reductions in poverty, which could even be sustained when prices went down again. Coffee is not planted by the richest farmers and the gains from higher coffee prices accrued to poorer and richer coffee farmers alike. Nor were poorer farmers hurt disproportionately when prices fell. In addition, we find strong spillovers from coffee production to other agriculture, which tends to favor the poor, and to nonagricultural activities. These multiplier effects are concentrated in coffee regions. In an economic environment characterized by a booming agricultural sector, coffee farmers were able to accommodate the negative price shock, in particular through agricultural diversification. General agricultural growth also cushioned possible negative multiplier effects in coffee regions. Overall, the case of coffee in Uganda thus lends support to the view that agricultural trade liberalization is beneficial for the poor.

The Caribbean region is composed of 34 islands ranked from middle to high-income countries except Haiti, which is considered as the poorest one in the hemisphere. As Small Island Developing States (SIDS), these countries have to face challenges induced by their specific characteristics and their geographical localization both at the global and domestic levels. Among these challenges, the eradication of poverty is one of them. Although consensually defined by the International Institutions, poverty definition in the Caribbean is derived from the Caribbean development Bank (CDB) methodology applied for analysing the extent, depth, and severity of the phenomenon. This chapter exposes the determinants and characteristics of poverty in the region bases upon a set of Country Poverty Assessments (CPAs) realized in 12 countries – all Borrowing Members at CDB – between 1995 and 2009. Some theoretical concepts explain the persistence and nature of poverty in a country like Haiti, whose case is compared to the Dominican Republic, its neighbour on Hispaniola. The two countries are economically divergent and high recipient of remittances. The impact of this external financial assistance on poverty reduction in both these economies is also questioned. We conclude that in Haiti poverty is due to non-monetary causes, whereas in the rest of the Caribbean it is a multidimensional phenomenon and policies have to be redesigned to better target the real and identified causes of poverty in the area.

Since 2008, the impact of the global financial markets meltdown, often attributed to the downturn in sub-prime mortgage industry in advanced Western economies, have resulted in worldwide deterioration of living standards, mass unemployment and the
collapse of various social programmes. In many developing countries, the crisis has disrupted modest economic gains and continues to undermine various attempts at securing sustainable wealth and jobs. Drawing from a critical reflection of the themes
of governance and capacity development, and the concepts of “sustainable social protection systems” and “social dialogue” advanced by the International Labour Organisation, this paper explores various means by which the public sector could be
strengthened to create wealth and employment amid the current economic crises. The paper challenges policy makers to meet mounting citizens’ expectations and various international and governmental commitments to commit to full employment and
poverty reduction through state-driven interventions. It argues, among others, that without an effective and dynamic public sector that has the capacity to undertake constructive engagements with other private actors, a strong state may be unable to meet the expectations and promises of jobs and income growth. The analysis points to the need to blend traditional administrative tools with innovative techniques revolving around information communication technologies, public-private partnerships and best-fit inclusive governance processes for effective policy making to drive economic
growth and full employment

Drawing from the problem of typology creation in its current forms that can be found mainly in policy papers, Berescu offers a critical overview of some of the ways in which the places where impoverished Roma live are named, then labelled and categorized. The delimitation and counting of extreme poverty areas is a highly contentious issue in itself, but admitting that racial segregation exists is an even more difficult one. This is why official documents tend to circumvent the problem of slums and ghettos in Romania and, to a lesser extent, in Eastern Europe. By analysing the underlying methods and the language of reports and strategies we can comprehend the ways in which new ghettos are formed and concealed, and how they will be governed.

This study assesses which agricultural subsectors have the strongest capacity to drive economic growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia, and what kind of agricultural and nonagricultural growth is needed to achieve the millennium development goal of halving the 1990 poverty rate by 2015. A spatially disaggregated, economywide model was developed under the study, enabling the analysis of growth and poverty reduction linkages at national and regional levels using national household surveys, agricultural sample surveys, geographic information systems, and other national and regional data. The study reveals that agriculture has the potential to play a central role in decreasing poverty and increasing growth in Ethiopia, primarily through growth in staple crops and livestock. Agricultural growth also requires concurrent investments in roads and other market conditions. At the subnational level, similar rates of agricultural growth have different effects on poverty, necessitating regiona...

Ghana’s tax reforms constitute the major policy instrument needed to accelerate growth and poverty reduction. Over the past two decades, the government has consistently spent more revenue than it is able to generate and the gap is often financed with foreign aid which has perpetuated the country’s aid dependency. Two options can be explored to reduce the gap between government revenue and expenditure; generate more revenue or reduce government expenditure. Although the latter sounds reasonable, the government needs to spend more on key sectors like education, health and infrastructure if the country is to significantly reduce poverty. The critical issue has been how to generate the needed resources domestically, using tax instruments that are least harmful to the poor. This will obviously involve reforming the tax system to ensure efficiency by widening the tax net without necessarily increasing the tax rate. This paper provides an assessment of the changing structure of the tax sys...

Food security is a high priority issue on the Chinese political agenda. China’s food security is challenged by several anthropogenic, sociopolitical and policy factors, including: population growth; urbanization and industrialization; land use changes and water scarcity; income growth and nutritional transition; and turbulence in global energy and food markets. Sustained growth in agricultural productivity and stable relations with global food suppliers are the twin anchors of food security. Shortfalls in domestic food production can take their toll on international food markets. Turbulence in global energy markets can affect food prices and supply costs, affecting food security and poverty. Policy safeguards are needed to shield food supply against such forces. China must make unremitting policy responses to address the loss of its fertile land for true progress towards the goal of national food security, by investing in infrastructure such as irrigation, drainage, storage, transport, and agricultural research and institutional reforms such as tenure security and land market liberalization. The links between water and other development-related sectors such as population, energy, food, and environment, and the interactions among them require reckoning, as they together will determine future food security and poverty reduction in China. Climate change is creating a new level of uncertainty in water governance, requiring accelerated research to avoid water-related stresses.

This article discusses school counselors' multifaceted role as educator-counselor-leader-collaborator, inextricably linked roles so necessary to build strengths-based school-family-community partnerships. We examined the effects of one such partnership on 20 elementary school students, using photo elicitation and interviews to explore students' satisfactions and experiences about the Just Love partnership. Thematic analysis of the data revealed six categories: (a) perceptions of Just Love, (b) positive feelings, (c) positive relationships and connectedness, (d) classroom and school climate, (e) experiences, and (f) support and resources. Each category comprised themes aligned with protective factors and developmental assets that help students thrive.