Inclusive businesses as a development strategy to fight poverty

Inclusive businesses implement policies aimed at bringing a marginalized part of the global population into value chains. This paper analyzes these social inclusion strategies which have gained increasing importance in the development debate. In order to do so, we have examined the role of two multilateral organizations – the United Nations and the World Bank – in constructing the concept of inclusive businesses and analyzed 107 cases which are considered inclusive. From the analysis of how inclusive businesses incorporate low-income people and microenterprises into value chains, we identified three central approaches: inclusion through consumption, distribution chains, and supply chains. We rely on Boltanski and Chiapello's (1999) theoretical model to understand the assumptions and dynamics behind each of these three approaches and to grasp the moral justifications that legitimize them. In this sense, such strategies are understood here as a response by capitalism to its critics, a kind of response that allows neoliberal capitalism to absorb the less threatening demands of the progressive agenda and promote new forms of engagement in the system. We conclude that these development strategies do not address the structural asymmetries of the global productive and distributive system, since they replace an agenda for decreasing inequality and poverty eradication with one of mere poverty relief and overshadow the role of the state in the development process. The first step to move beyond this approach requires bringing collective and redistributive demands back into the center of development debate.

Evaluating anti-poverty policy efficiencies in China: meta-frontier analysis using the two-stage data envelopment analysis model

PurposeThis study examines the relative efficiencies of anti-poverty policies implemented in 28 Chinese provinces.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses meta-frontier undesirable dynamic two-stage data envelopment analysis. The authors divide the poverty reduction process into two stages: agricultural production and poverty reduction. Public expenditure is the input for the second stage, and the population below the poverty line is the undesirable output. The authors compute the efficiencies (overall efficiency, efficiency of each stage and the efficiencies of individual inputs and outputs) using meta-frontier analysis for the 28 provinces.FindingsThe results show that: (1) a significant imbalance exists between the eastern and western regions in terms of input-output efficiencies; (2) the poverty reduction stage generally fared better than the agricultural production stage did. In particular, most provinces saw increases in poverty reduction efficiencies between 2013 and 2017; (3) the place-based poverty relief policies introduced in recent years are effective at reducing the poverty rate and reaching the government-set goals and (4) while disposable income has increased steadily over the past few years, income inequality has been exacerbated.Research limitations/implicationsThe results show that: (1) a significant imbalance exists between the eastern and western regions in terms of input-output efficiencies; (2) the poverty reduction stage generally fared better than the agricultural production stage did. In particular, most provinces saw increases in poverty reduction efficiencies between 2013 and 2017; (3) the place-based poverty relief policies introduced in recent years are effective at reducing the poverty rate and reaching the government-set goals and (4) while disposable income has increased steadily over the past few years, income inequality has exacerbated.Originality/valueA large amount of attention and public resources are devoted to fighting poverty and associated market failures in China. The extant literature focuses either on the agricultural production itself or the relationship between human capital and productivity levels. Making use of recent developments of the DEA method, the authors propose a new framework for evaluating the efficiencies of the poverty reduction process. Such a framework has the advantage of giving researchers and policymakers a more detailed diagnosis with regard to the components in the endeavor to eliminate poverty and providing useful information for policymakers to optimize public funds use. Methodologically, the framework is flexible enough to be employed for future research in similar appraisals, at different geographic and scale aggregation levels, for public projects including but not limited to poverty reduction.

Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines: Decomposing the roles of age and socio-economic status shows that European tax-and-benefit systems primarily redistribute across age groups

Social scientists identify two core functions of modern welfare states as redistribution across (a) socio-economic status groups (Robin Hood) and (b) ‘the lifecycle’ (the piggy bank). But what is the relative importance of these functions? The answer has been elusive, as the piggy bank is metaphorical. The intra-personal time-travel of resources it implies is based on non-quid-pro-quo transfers. In practice, ‘lifecycle redistribution’ must operate through inter-age-group resource reallocation in cross-section. Since at any time different birth cohorts live together, ‘resource-productive’ working-aged people are taxed to finance consumption of ‘resource-dependent’ younger and older people. In a novel decomposition analysis, we study the joint distribution of socio-economic status, age, and respectively (a) all cash and in-kind transfers (‘benefits’), (b) financing contributions (‘taxes’), and (c) resulting ‘net benefits,’ on a sample of over 400,000 Europeans from 22 EU countries. European welfare states, often maligned as ineffective Robin Hood vehicles riddled with Matthew effects, are better characterized as inter-age redistribution machines performing a more important second task rather well: lifecycle consumption smoothing. Social policies serve multiple goals in Europe, but empirically they are neither primarily nor solely responsible for poverty relief and inequality reduction.

Poverty Relief Programs in Postcommunist Countries: A Case Study on the Albanian and Chinese Programs

Social assistance is a cash transfer program targeting the poorest households. China has created the Dibao (DB), meaning minimum livelihood guarantee, the most extensive unconditional cash transfer program globally with over 70 million people covered, whereas in Albania, the Ndhime Ekonomike (NE) meaning financial help covers around 15% of the total working-age population. Both programs are means-tested, have strict requirements for eligibility, and have been enlarged and modified in time to improve targeting and tackling leakage. In this article, we will look at similarities and common issues first, and then calculate the cost of enlarging both programs to all working-age population with no means-testing. We argue that a UBI (universal basic income) can increase private expenditure in health and education while costing less than 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) in both countries’ rural areas. We will conclude by looking at how the COVID-19 outbreak is pushing developing countries toward a UBI by first adopting a temporary basic income (TBI).

The Bank Forces Guide the Realization Path of Consumption Poverty Alleviation—Consider Industrial and Commercial Bank of China

As one of the main bodies involved in consumption poverty alleviation, Banks play a very important role in the process of poverty alleviation. This paper takes the consumption poverty alleviation practice of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as an example and discusses the main ways of bank poverty alleviation. For example, relying on the advantages of ICBC’s E-shopping e-commerce platform, we should innovate the poverty alleviation mode of “combining business with finance”. We will actively establish a new mechanism for poverty alleviation through consumption, and encourage community-level Party committees under our control to combine blood transfusion with blood production through the combination of “help selling” and “direct buying”, so as to facilitate the sale of poverty-relief commodities. Focusing on the “combination of business and finance”, it integrates various types of customer ports, establishes the working concept of “overall planning of a game of chess, integrated promotion and package solution”, and actively coordinates the implementation of poverty alleviation work of consumption in Beijing. Through a variety of measures, effectively help the village out of poverty, poverty alleviation effect is remarkable, expected to provide effective reference for other major Banks poverty alleviation work.

From Social Insurance to Poverty Relief

This article expounds how analysts have narrated and analyzed the transformations undergone by policies of social protection in Latin America since the emergency of social security. It emphasizes the weight given in these analyses to the construction of typologies adapted to this regional context, the incidence of the consolidation of democracy, the models of economic development and corporate pacts, the role of political parties and policy makers, the legacy of previous policies, and the actions undertaken by social movements and other organized actors (such as private service providers). In general, it finds that the narratives offered in the literature specializing in this theme have shown the how of the developments undergone by welfare systems in Latin America and identified the factors that have influenced these changes, but they have rarely sought to discover the why of these transformations.