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In South Africa, youth (15–34 years) are the most vulnerable age group, assuming a large share of unemployment and NEET rates. This has raised concerns of their living standards, which have a great influence on their overall development. Although much has been written on poverty in South Africa, poverty specifically among the youth remains under-researched. This study analyses factors that determine poverty among youth-headed households in South Africa using the 2018 General Household Survey data from Statistics South Africa. Using a binary logistic regression, the paper provides findings and makes recommendations and imperative insights to policy-makers in advancing the socio-economic status of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household consumption surveys do not typically offer poverty estimates for refugees. We test the performance of a recently developed cross-survey imputation method to estimate poverty for a sample of refugees in Chad, combining survey and administrative data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We find the imputed poverty rates are not statistically different from the poverty rates obtained directly from the survey consumption data. This result is robust to different model specifications, varying poverty lines, and assumptions of the error terms. Targeting results based on the imputed poverty estimates also outperform common targeting methods, such as proxy means tests and the current targeting method used by humanitarian organizations in Chad. Replicating this approach in at least some of the 122 other countries currently using UNHCR administrative data could help address data gaps and provide much-needed estimates to effectively respond to forcibly displaced crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effect on poverty of a significant increase in the minimum wage using a quasi-experimental situation in Mexico. In January 2019, the Mexican government announced an increase in the minimum wage: in most of the country it increased by 16 per cent, while in 43 municipalities along the U.S. border it increased by 100 per cent. Using household surveys and the official method for calculating labor income poverty, we implement difference-in-difference and synthetic control methodologies to estimate whether this policy affected poverty in Mexico. We find that poverty along the border decreased by 2.6–3.0 percentage points (11–13 per cent) due to the larger increase in the minimum wage. Poverty was reduced mainly by reducing the flow from non-poverty into poverty. However, poverty intensity increased, mainly because the policy did not affect the share of families without labor income among the poorest households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While utilizing the latest round of a household survey of Bangladesh, this paper used a vulnerability index to understand household welfare in case of shocks, uncertainty, or unforeseen events like COVID-19. According to our analysis, environmentally exposed regions are found to be more vulnerable to economic shock, and certain occupational groups are expected to experience higher incidences of poverty and vulnerability. In addition, demographic features of households can be crucial in vulnerability analysis. Our analysis therefore expects to provide crucial policy guidelines for identifying the vulnerable groups as well as for redesigning poverty reduction strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reduce poverty, it is important to obtain accurate information on poverty conditions in a timely manner. Previous studies indicated that nighttime light products are helpful for poverty estimation. However, there exist no studies that have investigated the potential of LuoJia1-01, a new-generation nighttime light satellite with a much finer resolution (∼130 m), for analyzing poverty. In addition, nighttime light data may not reflect daytime-only socio-economic activities. To address these problems, our study first compared the performance of LuoJia1-01 and NPP-VIIRS products in poverty estimation. Next, we incorporated point of interest (POI) information so that daytime-only socio-economic activities can be considered. Our experiments indicated that LuoJia1-01 performs slightly better than NPP-VIIRS in terms of poverty estimation at county level. More importantly, we revealed that the combination of POIs and nighttime light products can moderately increase the average estimation accuracies. These findings are expected to support poverty monitoring over large regions for long periods, which cannot be fulfilled by traditional household surveys and census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses poverty in South Africa, using the GHS-data of 2018. STATSSA designates three poverty lines, the upper-bound poverty line is employed in the methodology, which makes the analysis more detailed and unique. The methodology uses descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis and inferential approaches specifically the binary-logistic regression model. The results of the model indicate that socioeconomic factors such as income, and household size, on the household level and head of household characteristics such as gender, marital status, age and population group were significant determinants of poverty. Policies that target girl education would go a long way in addressing poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyse geo-coded climate data matched with two rounds of household surveys from Mauritania to compare the impact of the 2008 and 2014 droughts on rural households' welfare and the adaptation strategies they employed. The 2008 and 2014 droughts differ sharply in intensity. The 2008 drought was localised with about 45% rural households reporting loss of livestock. In contrast, the 2014 drought was the worst in a decade and affected nearly all parts of the country. We find that households living in the districts where the 2014 drought was at least one standard deviation more intense relative to the district's long-term precipitation average have an 11.9% lower per capita consumption and 8.9% higher likelihood of falling below the poverty line compared to households which faced less-intense drought. We observe no such welfare losses during the 2008 drought. Change in household asset portfolio sheds light on these findings: Household wealth fell during both periods of drought, implying that farm households attempted to maintain consumption by liquidating assets, especially livestock. However, ownership of small ruminants grew, suggesting a greater reliance on more drought-resistant livestock species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies at national level have emphasized the failure of microfinance services as a means for development in Cambodia due to high interest rates, non-productive use of loans, over-indebtedness, often landless customers and intergenerational migration. This paper examines the effect of access to microfinance on household poverty and welfare using cross-sectional data from a 2015 survey of 411 households in 48 districts located in nine of Cambodia's provinces. These households were beneficiaries of the Agriculture Cooperative (AC) community development project supported by World Vision and the Australian Government. Applying the Wald test of exogeneity and Newey's minimum chi-squared estimators with the two-step option, probit models of household poverty status were estimated, as well as tobit models of household welfare level with endogenous treatment effects. The findings suggest that access to microfinance is associated with poverty reduction and increased per capita income of the household, but access to microfinance services has an insignificant impact on household welfare proxied by per capita economic assets and expenditure on child well-being. However, the results must be interpreted with caution due to sample selection effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite record economic growth in the decade that followed the fall of the Taliban regime, poverty remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, declining substantially only in regions that suffered more from conflict. This paper aims to explain this apparent puzzle by combining conflict-related indicators at the province level with household level observations. Estimates, which start in 2007 and stop in 2014 because of data availability constraints, show that large troop deployments reduced conflict intensity but also boosted local consumption, an effect reinforced by foreign aid flows being larger in conflict-affected areas. The robustness of these findings is assessed through an out-of-sample simulation of the impact of declining international troops and foreign aid after 2014. The simulation accurately predicts the sharp deterioration in living standards uncovered by a 2016 household survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence on the heterogeneous welfare implications of rural income portfolios in eastern Uganda. We use household survey data from two-panel rounds, and fixed and random effects estimation and quantile regressions to estimate average and heterogeneous effects. While the literature mostly focuses on either income diversification or participation in non-farm activities, we distinguish between income diversification, using the Simpson Index, and off-farm income generation. We use ex-post income and poverty measures as well as an ex-ante vulnerability measure to analyse welfare effects. We find that income diversification and non-farm income generation improve household income, and reduce poverty and vulnerability. We find that it is most beneficial for poorer households with less land assets to diversify their income portfolio, while moving out of agriculture is equally beneficial at all income levels and most beneficial for households with more human capital. We find that income diversification reduces vulnerability most strongly at high levels of diversification and low levels of income while non-farm income generation reduces vulnerability at lower levels of non-farm income and increases vulnerability at higher levels of non-farm income. Our results lead to nuanced findings that bring additional insights in the literature on structural transformation and rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]