An Application of VECM to Investigate the Role of Socio-Economic Factors in Poverty: New Evidence from Pakistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahwish Zafar ◽  
Saeed Ahmed Sabir ◽  
Shagufta Manzoor ◽  
Manzoor Ali Isran ◽  
Shazia Kousar

Poverty is a crucial and worldwide phenomenon. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship exists between socio-economic factors, social factors, and poverty, the relative influence of economic and social factors on poverty and to describe causality between time series in the VAR system. This study utilized the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) by using quarterly time-series data, 1994Q1 to 2018Q4, that have been collected from the world development indicators (WDI) and Economic Survey of Pakistan. The study identified education, unemployment, inflation as economic factors while zakat and rainfall as social factors that can reduce poverty. The findings of this study indicate that inflation and unemployment have a positive and significant relationship with poverty in the long run in Pakistan while education, rainfall, social welfare programs, and zakat has a negative relationship in the long run with poverty. Besides, the study also found that in the short run, there is no relationship between economic and social factors with poverty. Moreover, the study found that in the long run that the relative contribution of education and rain increases, 28% and 20%, is greater than the contribution of inflation, social welfare programs, unemployment and zakat, 3.8%, 0.5%, 2.5%, and 0.08%. Similarly, its contribution to poverty reduces up to 44% in the long run. This study helps policymakers to take important decisions about economic and social factors while designing policies to reduce poverty. The results suggest that the state bank of Pakistan should adopt a contractionary monetary policy to control inflation and policymakers can develop policies like education for all. The government should develop a business environment to create more employment opportunities.

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahwish Zafar ◽  
Saeed Ahmed Sabir ◽  
Shagufta Manzoor ◽  
Manzoor Ali Isran ◽  
Shazia Kousar

Poverty is a crucial and worldwide phenomenon. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship exists between socio-economic factors, social factors, and poverty, the relative influence of economic and social factors on poverty and to describe causality between time series in the VAR system. This study utilized the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) by using quarterly time-series data, 1994Q1 to 2018Q4, that have been collected from the world development indicators (WDI) and Economic Survey of Pakistan. The study identified education, unemployment, inflation as economic factors while zakat and rainfall as social factors that can reduce poverty. The findings of this study indicate that inflation and unemployment have a positive and significant relationship with poverty in the long run in Pakistan while education, rainfall, social welfare programs, and zakat has a negative relationship in the long run with poverty. Besides, the study also found that in the short run, there is no relationship between economic and social factors with poverty. Moreover, the study found that in the long run that the relative contribution of education and rain increases, 28% and 20%, is greater than the contribution of inflation, social welfare programs, unemployment and zakat, 3.8%, 0.5%, 2.5%, and 0.08%. Similarly, its contribution to poverty reduces up to 44% in the long run. This study helps policymakers to take important decisions about economic and social factors while designing policies to reduce poverty. The results suggest that the state bank of Pakistan should adopt a contractionary monetary policy to control inflation and policymakers can develop policies like education for all. The government should develop a business environment to create more employment opportunities.


Organizacija ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 257-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Žiga Čepar ◽  
Štefan Bojnec

Higher Education Demand Factors and the Demand for Tourism Education in SloveniaThis paper investigates the higher education demand in Slovenia, which is investigated in general and in the field of tourism, using regression analysis on selected time-series data. We find a positive and significant association between the higher education demand in general and the demographic and socio-economic circumstances. Demographic trends in general slow down or even decrease the demand for higher education, while socio-economic factors mostly encourage the demand for higher education. However, unfavourable demographic factors are already prevailing over the favourable socio-economic factors, meaning that growth rates of absolute demand for higher education are starting to decline. We analyze the movements of demand for higher education in the field of tourism in recent years and compare them to the movements of the demand for higher education in general and to the movements of the demand for tourism in Slovenia. The demand for tourist services is a factor that encourages demands for higher education in the field of tourism. Finally, we derive some conclusions about higher education demand determinants in Slovenia in general and in the field of tourism, and propose some recommendations for national educational policy.


Author(s):  
Roy Germano

Remittances sent by international migrants have become an increasingly important source of social welfare in the developing world. This chapter explores what remittances are, why migrants send them, and how poor families use them. I argue in this chapter that remittances are more than just gifts from one relative to another. They play a larger social welfare role that complements funds that governments spend on social welfare programs. This social welfare function has become particularly important in recent decades as developing countries have prioritized austerity and integrated into volatile global markets. I argue that by filling a welfare gap in an age of austerity, remittances help to reduce the suffering and anger that so often trigger political and social instability during times of economic crisis.


Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier

Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic institutions are capable of creating and maintaining trust, even through polarized times. Combining philosophical arguments and empirical data, the author shows that liberal democracy, markets, and social welfare programs all play a vital role in producing social and political trust. Even more, these institutions can promote trust justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.


Author(s):  
R. Cherry

This article briefly reviews the conservative, liberal and radical approaches to social welfare programs, and compares these with empirical evidence from the USA. Conservatives stress that welfare programs reduce work incentives and undermine individual initiatives. Liberals suggest that cuts in welfare have created increased hardship without changing significantly the incentives to work. The Massachusetts Employment and Training Program is analyzed from both perspectives. The Program does not reduce benefits but instead increases work incentives. The results of this Program are skeptically reviewed by radicals as well as some liberals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory E. Compton

Rising economic insecurity in recent decades has focused attention on the importance of social welfare programs in managing household financial stability. Some governments are more effective than others in managing this outcome, and informal social institutions help explain why. Social capital is expected to shape economic security through multiple mechanisms, but whether the effect is to magnify or mitigate volatility is an open question. Part of the answer has to do with how social capital interacts with policy implementation, and whether it conditions the effectiveness of government spending. Evidence from the U.S. states from 1986 to 2010 fails to support a benevolent social capital thesis—not only is social capital associated with greater economic insecurity, there is no evidence that it improves social welfare effectiveness. However, greater spending on some social programs can mitigate the adverse impact of social capital on economic security.


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