What is Behind the Decline in Poverty Since 2000? Evidence from Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand
This paper quantifies the contributions of different factors to poverty reduction observed in Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand over the last decade. In contrast to methods that focus on aggregate summary statistics, the method adopted here generates e...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/09/16739242/behind-decline-poverty-2000-evidence-bangladesh-peru-thailand http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12041 |
| Summary: | This paper quantifies the contributions
of different factors to poverty reduction observed in
Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand over the last decade. In
contrast to methods that focus on aggregate summary
statistics, the method adopted here generates entire
counterfactual distributions to account for the
contributions of demographics and income from labor and
non-labor sources in explaining poverty reduction. The
authors find that the most important contributor was the
growth in labor income, mostly in the form of farm income in
Bangladesh and Thailand and non-farm income in the case of
Peru. This growth in labor incomes was driven by higher
returns to individual and household endowments, pointing to
increases in productivity and real wages as the driving
force behind poverty declines. Lower dependency ratios also
helped to reduce poverty, particularly in Bangladesh.
Non-labor income contributed as well, albeit to a smaller
extent, in the form of international remittances in the case
of Bangladesh and through public and private transfers in
Peru and Thailand. Transfers are more important in
explaining the reduction in extreme compared with moderate poverty. |
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