Targeting with Agents

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Niehaus ◽  
Antonia Atanassova ◽  
Marianne Bertrand ◽  
Sendhil Mullainathan
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Statistical Accuracy ◽  
Line Card ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Poverty Indicators

Targeting assistance to the poor is a central problem in development. We study the problem of designing a proxy means test when the implementing agent is corruptible. Conditioning on more poverty indicators may worsen targeting in this environment because of a novel tradeoff between statistical accuracy and enforceability. We then test necessary conditions for this tradeoff using data on Below Poverty Line card allocation in India. Less eligible households pay larger bribes and are less likely to obtain cards, but widespread rule violations yield a de facto allocation much less progressive than the de jure one. Enforceability appears to matter. (JEL D12, I32, I38, O12, O15)

scholarly journals Estimación de la función de distribución y cuantiles en la población de pobres

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 1063
Author(s):  
Encarnación Álvarez-Verdejo ◽  
María Dolores Estudillo-Martínez ◽  
Sonia Castillo-Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo Simulation ◽  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Distribution Function ◽  
Sampling Design ◽  
Economic Indicator ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Simulation Studies ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data

The poverty line is an economic indicator that divides a population into poor and non poor. Studies about poverty are highly interested on the population of poor, hence they measure the distribution and intensity of the poor through different indicators. Such indicators are generally based upon the distribution function and quantiles. Assuming an arbitrary sampling design, the estimation of the previous parameters is discussed in this paper. Proposed estimators are numerically evaluated via Monte Carlo simulation studies and using data extracted from the Spanish Household Panel Survey.

scholarly journals How Poor Are the Poor? Looking beyond the Binary Measure of Income Poverty

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-549
Author(s):  
Iryna Kyzyma
Keyword(s):  
Poverty Line ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Income Poverty ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Binary Measure

Abstract This paper contributes to the literature by analysing how poor the income poor are in European countries. Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, I go beyond average estimates of the intensity of poverty and analyse the distribution of individual-level poverty gaps in each country of interest. As a next step, I identify which personal and household characteristics predict how far away incomes of the poor fall from the poverty line. The results indicate that, in most European countries, half of the poor have income shortfalls not exceeding 30% of the poverty line whereas only a few percent of the poor have income deficits of 80% and more. The results also suggest that traditional poverty correlates (e.g. age, gender, educational background) are not always significantly associated with the size of normalised poverty gaps at the individual level, or the nature of these associations differs as compared to when the same characteristics are linked to the probability of being poor.

scholarly journals Acute Financial Hardship and Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence from the Sequence of Bank Working Days

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
MAX SCHAUB
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Financial Hardship ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Financial Status ◽  
Definitive Answer ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data

How does poverty influence political participation? This question has interested political scientists since the early days of the discipline, but providing a definitive answer has proved difficult. This article focuses on one central aspect of poverty—the experience of acute financial hardship, lasting a few days at a time. Drawing on classic models of political engagement and novel theoretical insights, I argue that by inducing stress, social isolation, and feelings of alienation, acute financial hardship has immediate negative effects on political participation. Inference relies on a natural experiment afforded by the sequence of bank working days that causes short-term financial difficulties for the poor. Using data from three million individuals, personal interviews, and 1,100 elections in Germany, I demonstrate that acute financial hardship reduces both turnout intentions and actual turnout. The results imply that the financial status of the poor on election day can have important consequences for their political representation.

scholarly journals Social health insurance for the poor: lessons from a health insurance programme in Karnataka, India

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. e000582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neeraj Sood ◽  
Zachary Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Tertiary Care ◽  
Substantial Reduction ◽  
Unmet Need ◽  
Social Health Insurance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Social Health ◽  
The Poor

Life-saving technology used to treat catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease and cancer is often out of reach for the poor. As life expectancy increases in poor countries and the burden from chronic illnesses continues to rise, so will the unmet need for expensive tertiary care. Understanding how best to increase access to and reduce the financial burden of expensive tertiary care is a crucial task for the global health community in the coming decades. In 2010, Karnataka, a state in India, rolled out the Vajpayee Arogyashree scheme (VAS), a social health insurance scheme focused on increasing access to tertiary care for households below the poverty line. VAS was rolled out in a way that allowed for robust evaluation of its causal effects and several studies have examined various impacts of the scheme on poor households. In this analysis article, we summarise the key findings and assess how these findings can be used to inform other social health insurance schemes. First, the evidence suggests that VAS led to a substantial reduction in mortality driven by increased tertiary care utilisation as well as use of better quality facilities and earlier diagnosis. Second, VAS significantly reduced the financial burden of receiving tertiary care. Third, these benefits of social health insurance were achieved at a reasonable cost to society and taxpayers. Several unique features of VAS led to its success at improving health and financial well-being including effective outreach via health camps, targeting expensive conditions with high disease burden, easy enrolment process, cashless treatment, bundled payment for hospital services, participation of both public and private hospitals and prior authorisation to improve appropriateness of care.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN THROUGH MICRO CREDIT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-60
Author(s):  
T. Indumathi ◽  
G. Savaraiah
Keyword(s):  
Rural Women ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Micro Credit

The World Bank's Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project supports the self helf groups of the women members. It promotes women's social, economic, legal and political empowerment to reduce poverty among the poor and the poorest of the poor. The important object of this article is to examine the impact of micronance on the socio economic empowerment of the rural women supported by the national reputed NGO- Rashtriya Seva Samithi (RASS). 184 women members of the SHGs promoted by Rasthriya Seva Samathi (RASS) an NGO which located in Tirupati town. 184 samples are selected randomly from 15 SHGs scattered throughout the Tirupati rural mandal (Taluk) from the area of the study have been considered to conduct the present research study. The study reveals that 87.71 percent of the sample women were below the poverty line before joining the SHGs. As a result of SHG, about 40 percent of the sample women crossed the poverty line. The highest intensive value indicates that more women have participated in social agitations for the welfare of the children and the society. The second highest intensity reveals that considerable numbers of women of SHGs have participated in the government sponsored schemes. The 1st point secured 3rd rank with total intensity value of 605 which status that the micro credit has resulted in increased social status and empowerment.

scholarly journals A Critical Analysis of Legal Aid in Bangladesh

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Md. Nannu Mian ◽  
Md. Mamunur Rashid
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
The Government

Legal aid is essentially a mechanism that enables the poor and the vulnerable sectors of the society to be able to enforce their legal rights in order to access a fair and equitable justice in the society. Nowadays, a legal aid can be justifiably said as a crying need to ensure social and legal justice in Bangladesh because most of the citizens are illiterate and they live below the poverty line which incidentally makes matters worse. Due to their financial crisis or lack of legal knowledge they are often precluded to access justice. In recognizing the legal aid as a right, the government has enacted some laws. However, unfortunately those laws are full of weaknesses, loopholes, and procedural complexities which have to be judiciously addressed in the proper legal perspectives. As a matter of fact, legally speaking, much has been said and done, but ironically not much has been practiced. Due to these ever unsettling defects, the ultimate objectives of those laws have frequently failed to ensure enjoyment of the legal aid services among the vulnerable sectors of the society. In this research, an attempt has been made to analyze and find out numerous legal the gaps, loopholes and complexities of the existing laws relating to legal aid services in Bangladesh and frame out a comprehensive solution for ensuring the aid program by adopting the qualitative and the analytical research methods.

PROBLEMS OF CREATING A LIVING STANDARDS MODEL

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
Abdujabbor Abidov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Data Structures ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Poverty Measurement ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Formal Modeling ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Communication Models ◽  
Using Data

This article is devoted to the development of a model for determining the standard of living of the population. The problems of using data warehouses, communication models of e-government that form the basis of digital platforms, big data, issues of the digital economy, the choice of data structures, methods of formal modeling of relationships are also considered.As a result, a model was developed using the poverty criteria set out in the Poverty Measurement Toolkit when determining the international poverty line.

Political equality for women and the poor: Assessing the effects and limits of world society, 1975–2010

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade M Cole ◽  
Gaëlle Perrier
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
World Society ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Socioeconomic Rights ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Poor ◽  
World Society Theory ◽  
Conveyor Belts ◽  
Using Data

Empirical tests of world society theory routinely analyze the effects of country-level linkages to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on countries’ policies and practices. Analysts regard INGOs as “conveyor belts” that transport cultural models and scripts to countries around the globe. We modify this mechanistic interpretation by shifting focus to the broader institutional and cultural environments in which INGOs operate. Using data for an unbalanced panel of 126 countries between 1975 and 2010, we examine the effect of INGO linkages on the distribution of political power by gender and socioeconomic status. We find that INGOs are much stronger predictors of political equality for women than for the poor, and we argue that these differential effects reflect broader world-cultural conditions. Women’s rights are highly institutionalized in world society, which enhances the effectiveness of INGOs. Socioeconomic rights discourses, conversely, are comparatively less institutionalized and more contested, especially following the neoliberal turn.

scholarly journals Food away from home and the reversal of the calorie intake decline in India

Food Security ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepthi E. Kolady ◽  
Shivendra Kumar Srivastava ◽  
David Just ◽  
Jaspal Singh
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Calorie Intake ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Food Away From Home ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Food And Nutrition ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Using Data

Abstract India experienced a consumption puzzle since the 1970s, whereby households’ calorie intakes declined over time, despite significant economic growth. This declining trend in calorie intake (consumption puzzle) was reversed for the first time in 2011–12. This is the first empirical study that investigates the relationship between refinements in data collection on food away from home (FAFH) and the trend reversal in per capita calorie intake decline in India. Findings from the study showed that the declining trend in calorie intake in India has been partly due to measurement issues and that correcting for these issues through refinements in data collection for FAFH in 2011–12 had a positive effect on the reversal of the calorie intake decline. India uses per capita calorie intake estimated using data from HCES to define the official poverty line, a benchmark used in designing many social welfare programs. Incorrect estimates of calorie intake will have negative implications on the effectiveness of welfare programs aimed at reducing food insecurity. Findings from this study provide insights for further improvement in data collection regarding household-level consumption expenditures. The study has implications not only for India but also for other countries that use household-level consumption data to understand diets and to design food and nutrition programs.

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