Abstract

Keywords

References

Abstract

The diffusion of e-commerce has played a significant role in recent rural economic development in China. E-commerce is also considered as an efficient channel to alleviate poverty in rural China. Voluminous studies have investigated the contribution of e-commerce to agricultural development, yet it is lacking empirical evidence as to the effects of e-commerce on rural poverty alleviation. Since the year of 2014, in order to develop rural e-commerce, Chinese government launched the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project. This gradual involvement policy offered a natural experiment for evaluation of e-commerce. Based on village-level survey data from rural China and Heckit method, our study finds that rural e-commerce has a significantly positive effect on rural income. Moreover, the effect is inverted U-shaped for the relative-poverty villages. The estimation of the propensity scores matching model confirms that the results are robust. The following policy recommendations are proposed: (1) policy support to rural e-commerce should prioritize the poverty-stricken villages. By doing so, the marginal income effects of e-commerce will be maximized. (2) Investment in internet infrastructure and establishment of human resources for e-commerce in rural areas will have spillover effects, increasing rural income through the “digital dividend”.

1. Introduction

Since 1978, China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty. China was the first developing country that achieved the Millennium Development Goal for poverty alleviation set by the United Nations (Liu et al. 2019). Although the Chinese government has prioritized policies that target at improving rural residents’ welfare, poverty remains a critical problem with 16.6 million people estimated to live in poverty and an poverty incidence rate of 1.7% in 2018 (NBSC 2019). Poverty alleviation remains a massive task for the Chinese government, which is determined to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020.

Thanks to the development of information technology and increasing use of smartphones in rural areas, e-commerce penetration in the rural economy has been on the rise in recent years. Rural e-commerce is a direct approach to take advantage of information technology and achieve higher profits. It adapts to the requirements of rural industrial transformation and upgrade. By doing so, it provides new drivers for the revitalization of rural industry. In recent years, “empowerment” to players of rural e-commerce has also attracted much attention (Ogutu et al. 2014; Leong et al. 2016; Zeng et al. 2018). In these literature, rural e-commerce was considered as an efficient tool to enable people to develop modern agriculture and commerce. Especially, e-commerce promoted agricultural value chain development and commodity circulation (Baorakis et al. 2002; Mintert 2003; Jalali et al. 2011; Parker et al. 2016; Song et al. 2019). E-commerce, unlike traditional commerce in which employees need to be present in stores, enables its staff to work from home. It is a highly accessible form of offfarm work for those constrained in rural areas due to either agricultural production or caring responsibilities. In some rural areas, e-commerce has become a potential engine for farmers’ income growth. As an innovative solution, poverty alleviation through e-commerce began to emerge.

1- Introduction

2- Literature review

3- Methodology

4- Empirical validation

5- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Purpose – The analysis of poverty is fundamentally focused on examining the well-being condition of the poor. We usually neglect the information provided by the rich. Nevertheless, perhaps the non-considered information indicating the determinants of non-poverty is also useful for fighting against poverty. The purpose of this paper is to analyze poverty under a new angle i.e. focusing on the information provided by the non-poor instead of the poor. For that a richness index is calculated in order to estimate econometric models regressing both indices i.e. poverty and richness indices on same selected characteristics. Thus, the comparison of the determinants of poverty and non-poverty for Tunisian case have allowed the classification of the selected explanatory variables with significant effect into four categories: the variables having significant effect on both sides (permanent effect), the variables having significant effect on the poor but not on the non-poor (transitory effect), the variables having significant effect on the non-poor but not on the poor (insurance effect) and the variables without any effect on both cases (neutral effect). This procedure is thus important given that it provides additional information and new way to enhance the targeting efficiency of the poor and fighting against poverty.
Design/methodology/approach – Using Tunisian data, an original procedure is proposed for calculating a richness index, defined based on the common formula of calculating the poverty index. Next econometric models are estimated regressing both the indices i.e. poverty and richness index on same selected characteristics.
Findings – The comparison of the determinants of poverty and non-poverty have allowed the classification of the selected explanatory variables with significant effect into four categories: the variables having significant effect on both sides (permanent effect), the variables having significant effect on the poor but not on the non-poor (transitory effect), the variables having significant effect on the non-poor but not on the poor (insurance effect) and the variables without any effect on both cases (neutral effect).
Originality/value – The analysis and the classification of the determinants of poverty according to the determinants of non-poverty is never made before in the litterature. This procedure is important given that it provides additional information and a new way to enhance the efficiency of targeting the poor and fighting against poverty.

Introduction

The fight against poverty is an indisputable priority for enhancing the well-being of individuals and reaching a real socio-economic development, particularly in developing countries. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of any anti-poverty policy depends on the good comprehension of the phenomenon and the way to operationalize the identification of the poor. However in practice, the complexity of the phenomenon makes the poverty targeting rather complicated. Numerous methods have been presented in the literature for analyzing poverty. Despite this, the situation of the poor doesn’t seem to become better, particularly in developing countries. This may indicate that there is a real problem of effectiveness and it is essential to find alternative tools making it possible to refine the targeting of the poor in order to enhance the effectiveness of poverty alleviation policies.

Climate variability is a major source of risk to smallholder farmers and pastoralists, particularly in dryland regions. A growing body of evidence links climate-related risk to the extent and the persistence of rural poverty in these environments. Stochastic shocks erode smallholder farmers’ long-term livelihood potential through loss of productive assets. The resulting uncertainty impedes progress out of poverty by acting as a disincentive to investment in agriculture – by farmers, rural financial services, value chain institutions and governments. We assess evidence published in the last ten years that a set of production technologies and institutional options for managing risk can stabilize production and incomes, protect assets in the face of shocks, enhance uptake of improved technologies and practices, improve farmer welfare, and contribute to poverty reduction in risk-prone smallholder agricultural systems. Production technologies and practices such as stress-adapted crop germplasm, conservation agriculture, and diversified production systems stabilize agricultural production and incomes and, hence, reduce the adverse impacts of climate-related risk under some circumstances. Institutional interventions such as index-based insurance and social protection through adaptive safety nets play a complementary role in enabling farmers to manage risk, overcome risk-related barriers to adoption of improved technologies and practices, and protect their assets against the impacts of extreme climatic events. While some research documents improvements in household welfare indicators, there is limited evidence that the risk-reduction benefits of the interventions reviewed have enabled significant numbers of very poor farmers to escape poverty. We discuss the roles that climate-risk management interventions can play in efforts to reduce rural poverty, and the need for further research on identifying and targeting environments and farming populations where improved climate risk management could accelerate efforts to reduce rural poverty

Introduction: climate risk and rural poverty

Significant gains in food security and rural poverty reduction, associated with the Green Revolution, resulted from a combination of investments that increased production, reduced risk and enhanced market access. Subsidized inputs, such as irrigation, reduced the production risk faced by farmers and in part account for their willingness to invest in increased on-farm production and productivity. Because agricultural development efforts in the 1960s–1980s focused more on intensification of favorable areas than on the constraints in more marginal and risk-prone environments, the Green Revolution’s contribution to rural poverty reduction was less evident in marginal production environments (Pingali, 2012). Despite continued efforts to improve farmer’s living standards, poverty and food insecurity are still prevalent across large portions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Prevalence is often high in the drylands (i.e., rain-fed areas in dry subhumid to arid agro-ecological zones), where climate variability exposes smallholder farmers and pastoralists to major risk (Hyman et al., 2008; Dercon, 2002; Walker and Ryan, 1990; Zimmerman and Carter, 2003). Today, there are increasing calls for a second Green Revolution targeted at regions with precarious agricultural conditions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. A central challenge is to go beyond increased agricultural production per se, and mitigate risks posed by increasing variable climate and marginal production conditions to ensure that large numbers of farmers move out of poverty and increase rural prosperity

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical framework

3. Method

4. Results and discussion

5. Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world. Besides, it is also considered by many international organizations as having the broad impact in the group of the least developed countries. The article aims to analyze the economic effects of tourism on the group of the least developed countries and discuss the potential positive and negative effects of tourism. For our purpose of creating the groups of the similar least developed countries, we use the cluster analysis and analyze the countries according to the Economic Impact Research. As a result, we group the countries into a number of clusters based on the specific components.

Introduction

Tourism is often stated to be one of the most important socio-economic sectors of our time, considered as having the broad impact among the least developed countries and as a tool for the poverty alleviation. Indeed, tourism is considered as an effective vehicle of development and has long been recognized as a growth industry. However, the connection between tourism and development is still an important area of the research (Sharpley, Telfer, 2015). Internationally, Tourism creates one in eleven jobs directly or indirectly, accounts for as much as 10 % of the world’s gross domestic product and 6 % of the global exports are generated by international tourism (WTTC, 2015). The issue of the least developed countries (LDC) and their further development opportunities has long been a discussed topic at the international level. It is related to tourism, as it has been one of the sources of their potential economic growth and development. Tourism is already the first or second source of exports earnings for almost the half of the world’s forty-eight least developed countries and one half of all the those countries already consider tourism as one of the main drivers of their development (UNWTO, 2010) . The article aims to analyze the economic effects of tourism on the group of the least developed countries, introduce an overview of the pro-poor (PPT) tourism approaches by the international organizations and discuss the potential positive and negative effects of tourism. For our purpose of creating the groups of the similar least developed countries, we use multivariate statistical technique – cluster analysis. Based on the evaluation of the different methods in the different situations, we use Ward method in conjunction with the square of the Euclidean distance measure. In case of the non-identical measurement units we use standardization of variables. We analyze the countries according to the Economic Impact Research by the World Travel and Tourism Council and the Oxford Economics, based on the input-output model.

1. Introduction

2. Research Objectives

3. Research Methodology

4. Findings and Conclusion

References

This research endeavour set out to empirically examine the determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Agriculture Sector based on selected high-income developing economies in OIC countries. The agriculture sectors react as important keys in the expansion of any economy growth to eliminate the poverty issues. Therefore, it reviews the experiences of agriculture investment in selected member countries with a view to identify potential roles for countries seeking FDI and their development partners in nurturing FDI intra OIC especially in the agriculture new investment. In this study, the FDI in Agriculture Sector react as dependent variable and the independent variable economic determinant, list of market size, inflation, poverty, exchange rate and infrastructure in selected OIC Countries (Malaysia, Oman and Brunei).

Introduction

This paper reviews the agriculture sector in member countries of Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and pays specific attention to issues of determining the potential FDI in the sector. In addition, it reviews the experiences of agriculture investment in selected member countries with a view to identify potential roles for countries seeking FDI and their development partners in nurturing FDI intra OIC especially in the agriculture new investment. Incremental on the foods price viewed during the food crisis in year 2006 until 2008 triggered several serious harmful socio-economic impacts on the economies of many developing countries, including the OIC members. In addition, it created further poverty for millions of societies who were already distress from the hunger and poverty in these countries. In high income countries, they also exposed to these crisis where inflation on price of goods and foods worsened the food security conditions. The agriculture sectors react as important keys in the expansion of any economy growth to eliminate the poverty issues. These roles are even more pronounced in low income economies where majority of the residents live in rural areas and they are rely directly, indirectly or greatly on the sector. With the sector being a vital source of employment with over 65 percent of the developing countries labor force depending on agriculture, it is not surprising that agriculture development is essential in any poverty alleviation policy. The World Bank (2014) stated the total OIC population that are still living not more than USD $1.25 each day was about 17.4% of world total population in the year 1990 until 2011.

Poverty remains one of the world’s greatest challenges, and neither the industrialised nor the resource-rich countries have succeeded in its total eradication. Such eradication remains an integral part of the developmental agendas of individual nation states and of the world at large. Eradication of extreme poverty was goal number one of the millennium development goals (MDGs), which lapsed in 2015, and it is currently goal number 1 of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) that seek to eliminate poverty by 2030. Knowledge is an essential element for the achievement of the SDGs (World Bank, 2017). Sachs (2005) argues that poverty can be eradicated by 2025 through carefully planned development aid. The Constitution of South Africa (1996) recognises the importance of eradicating poverty, and, in this regard, Sections 27, 28 and 29 reiterate the rights of access to social security, social services and education. To this end, since 1994, the post-apartheid government has implemented a number of policies, pieces of legislation, plans and strategies to deal with poverty, ranging from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (African National Congress, 1994) to the National Development Plan, which seeks to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030 (National Planning Commission [NPC], 2011, 2013). Some of the policies have been criticised for being top-down handouts and temporary relief measures through the provision of social grants, free houses and free social services, which, taken together, have resulted in a perpetual dependency mentality (Williams, 2006; Moyo, 2014). In addition, some of the policies do not provide for monitoring and evaluation of the poor in terms of who they are or in terms of the trends in poverty, and there is also a lack of an interdisciplinary analysis of poverty and a lack of a link between poverty assessment and other instruments of planning (Maxwell and Conway, 2000; Mbuli, 2008). Above all, ineffective knowledge-sharing and the lack of proper coordination among government agencies in pursuit of effective problem-solving remains a challenge. As the debate around moving towards an integrated poverty strategy in the knowledge economy continues, emphasis is being placed on the role of knowledge management for poverty eradication (World Bank, 1998; World Bank, 2007; United Nations Development Organisation UNDP, 2014). A World Bank “Voices of the Poor” study based on interviews with 60,000 men and women concluded that people want access to knowledge and opportunities, rather than charity, to fight poverty (Nath, 2000). This paper explores poverty eradication within the context of knowledge management and advocates for a contextualised strategy tailored to specific poverty intervention projects and communities. It raises awareness among policy- and decision-makers as to the importance of knowledge management as a tool for poverty eradication. To consolidate the line of thought, secondary data sources, in the form of journal articles, policy documents and newspaper articles, were consulted along with internet sources.

With 2015 marking the end of the era for the millennium development goals (MDG) and the start of that for sustainable development goals (SDG), with reduction of global poverty featuring prominently in both sets of goals, there has recently been a surge of studies that seek to quantify the magnitude of global poverty. Examples include Cruz et al. (2015), Ferreira et al. (2016), Jolliffe and Prydz (2015), Kakwani and Son (2016). The literature on estimating global poverty[1] can be traced back to Ahluwalia et al. (1979) with the next major contribution by Ravallion et al. (1991). In the nearly 4 decades that have elapsed since the Ahluwalia et al. (1979) study, the complexity of the exercise has grown many fold with an increase in the number of countries included in the poverty enumeration. The complexity has been reflected in changes in the manner the “international poverty line” (IPL) has been defined and implemented in successive poverty counts. While the Ahluwalia et al. (1979) study was based on the Indian poverty line used as the IPL, Ravallion et al. (1991) provided the first dollar-a-day poverty line at 1985 PPPs. This study, which was designed to answer a set of poverty related questions on world poverty and give aggregate results for 86 countries in the mid-1990s, was conducted as a background paper for the World Development Report, 1990. Since this was the first time the concept of an “international poverty line” was proposed and implemented, let us explain how the $1 a day figure was arrived at. Ravallion et al. (1991) proposed measuring global poverty by the standards of the poorest countries, based on a survey of national poverty lines. Drawing on 33 national poverty lines for the 1970s and 1980s (for both developed and developing economies), Ravallion et al. (1991) proposed a line of $23 a month ($0.76 a day) at 1985 consumption PPP. That value was the predicted poverty line for the poorest country in the sample of 88 countries (Somalia), based on a regression model that ran a semi-log regression of the national poverty line on per capita mean consumption and per capita mean consumption square (all at 1985 PPP). This value was quite close to the poverty line of India. As Ravallion et al. (1991, pp. 348/349) note: Thus, India’s poverty line is very close to the poverty line we would predict for the poorest country, and as such, can be considered a reasonable lower bound to the range of admissible poverty lines for the developing world […]. A more generous, and more representative, absolute poverty line for low-income countries is $31, which (to the nearest dollar) is shared by six of the countries in our sample, namely Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, Tanzania, and Morocco, and two other countries are close to this figure (Philippines and Pakistan). We shall use both these poverty lines, interpreting the lower line as defining “extreme absolute poverty”.

There is a broad consensus that economic growth is a prerequisite for sustainable poverty reduction (for example, Ahluwalia et al. 1979; Fields 1989; Demery and Squire 1995; Ravallion and Chen 1997; Dollar and Kraay 2002; Ravallion 2004; Bourguignon 2003; Kraay 2006; Ram 2007). However, the extent to which economic growth can reduce poverty depends on income distribution. Several studies, for example, Ravallion (1997) and Fosu (2009), find supportive evidence from cross-country distributional data that higher initial income inequality is associated with a lower absolute elasticity of poverty to growth in average incomes. Inequality can be a factor detrimental to economic growth, thereby impeding poverty reduction (Alesina and Rodrik 1994; Persson and Tabellini 1994; Deininger and Squire 1998; Bourguignon 2003). It is possible that negative growth can lead to poverty reduction, while positive economic growth can be associated with poverty increase (Son and Kakwani 2008). Growth that is most effective at reducing poverty is not necessarily the same as growth that reduces poverty through decreasing inequality (Warr 2005). In cases where economic growth does not drive poverty reduction, a strategy of propoor growth should be promoted. Economic growth is highly pro-poor when income growth is accompanied by inequality reduction (Klasen 2004, 2008). Regarding empirical studies, findings on the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction are mixed. For example, Wang et al. (2014) measured the pro-poor growth in rural China from 1989 to 2009. They found that during the 1989–2006 period, economic growth in rural China was weakly pro-poor since income distribution deteriorated. However, rural Chinese economic growth was more pro-poor between 2006 and 2009. Fuwa et al. (2015) showed that the main driver of rural poverty reduction has shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural growth in the Philippines. De Silva and Sumarto (2014) found that the poor received proportionately less benefits from economic growth than the non-poor in Indonesia between 2002 and 2012. Ali et al. (2017) found different patterns of pro-poor growth between urban and rural areas in Pakistan between 2001 and 2012. Urban areas experienced propoor growth, while rural areas showed antipoor growth. Using cross-country data, Son and Kakwani (2008) examined the propoorness of growth in 80 low and middleincome countries during the period 1984–2001 and they found that nearly half of the countries experienced pro-poor growth and the remainder experienced antipoor growth. Thus the existing studies show a wide diversity of empirical results, which calls for more empirical studies to better understand pro-poor growth, inequality, and poverty. This study examines the relationship between economic growth, inequality, and poverty reduction in Vietnam during the period 1993–2008. We use the decomposition approach of Datt and Ravallion (1991) and Kolenikov and Shorrocks (2005) to analyse the effect of economic growth and inequality on poverty during the 1990s and the 2000s. We also employ Kakwani’s (1980) method to estimate the elasticity of poverty to economic growth and inequality, and Kakwani and Pernia’s (2000) method to calculate changes in the degree of ‘pro-poorness’ over time.

Growing income inequality over the last three decades (Duncan & Murnane, 2011) along with stagnation in wages and employment opportunities have increased the likelihood that children born into poverty will experience persistent exposure over the life course (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, & Turner, 2014). There is evidence that income volatility has also increased, particularly among lower-income families least able to absorb downward income shocks (Hardy & Ziliak, 2014). Finally, poverty is seldom a unique feature of families; it is often associated with other disadvantages such as low parental education and single parenthood which may serve to compound the adverse effects of poverty on children’s mental health (Evans, Li, & Whipple, 2013). Internalizing behaviors such as emotional problems and externalizing behaviors such as conduct problems are among the most common health concerns experienced by children and youth worldwide (Gore et al., 2011). The environment of poverty exposes children to various adversities that contribute to their externalizing and internalizing behaviors (Evans et al., 2013). Yet, more research is needed to better understand the extent to which stable and changing patterns of poverty exposure from birth elevate children’s risk for externalizing and internalizing behaviors over the early life course, whether other disadvantages such as low maternal education and single parenthood exacerbate the risk associated with specific patterns of poverty exposure, and whether this risk is stronger for externalizing or internalizing behaviors. We classify children from birth to age 14 into five patterns of poverty exposure: always or never poor – stable patterns; a single transition into or out of poverty, or fluctuations in and out of poverty – changing patterns. We then model children’s mental health trajectories as a function of their poverty classifications and two important covariates: low maternal education and single parenthood. The three primary objectives of this study are to: (1) compare the mental health trajectories of children exposed to five patterns of poverty; (2) determine if associations between child mental health trajectories and patterns of poverty exposure vary as a function of low maternal education or single parenthood (statistical interactions); and (3) assess the extent to which the associations between child mental health trajectories and poverty exposures, low maternal education and single parenthood differ for two types of mental health outcomes: externalizing and internalizing behaviors.

In the public view, financial markets have, at times, contributed to economic turmoil that has spilled over into all classes of society. Theory, however, is relatively in agreement about the implications of how financial development affects economic growth. As early as Schumpeter (1912), economists have studied how the development of financial markets can influence economic growth rates. More recently, several theoretical and empirical studies seem to confirm the idea that finance matters when attempting to explain economic output, although identifying the direction of causality is difficult (Goldsmith (1969), McKinnon (1973), Pagano (1993), King and Levine (1993), Neusser and Kugler (1998), Rajan and Zingales (1998), Levine et al. (2000), Khan (2001), and Calderon and Liu (2003)). Levine and Zervos (1998) look beyond general financial development, per se, and instead examine whether stock markets promote long-run economic growth. Using data from 47 countries, they find that the liquidity of a country’s stock market is positively correlated with a country’s economic growth rate. These findings suggest that well-functioning stock markets are, at least, an important correlate of economic output. These results also support endogenous growth theory, which indicates that well-functioning markets allow a greater portion of gross saving to flow into capital investment, thus contributing to economic growth (Romer (1989) and Pagano (1993)). What may be more interesting than identifying the association between stock market liquidity and economic growth is determining whether or not this liquidity disproportionately affects the rich vis-
a-vis the poor. The main of objective of this study is to examine this particular question. More specifically, we test whether stock market liquidity influences the level of income inequality using a large sample of nearly 100 countries. Our tests are motivated by a broad stream of research that examines the interaction between finance, economic development, and the distribution of income. Kuznets (1955) proposes that economic growth can contribute to the level of income inequality in the early stages of development. For those well-developed countries, however, greater economic growth can reduce the level of inequality. Greenwood and Jovanovic (1990) follow Kuznets (1955) and model the growth-inequality framework while accounting for financial structure. Their theory shows that in its infancy, both economic and financial development contribute to greater income inequality while more developed countries, with mature financial structures, tend to have more stability with respect to inequality. To the contrary, Becker and Tomes (1979, 1986) show that the development of the financial system can influence the economic opportunities of the poor and subsequently decrease intergenerational inequality. Demirguc-Kunt and Levine (2009) provide a thorough and critical review of the theory related to this topic. In their review, they concede that the existing theory that speaks to the association between finance and inequality produces conflicting predictions. The empirical literature, however, seems to lean towards the idea that financial development is associated with a reduction in inequality. For example, Burgess and Pande (2005) show that the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to open banks in more rural locations resulted in an increase in the wages of the most disadvantaged workers, thus reducing both poverty and inequality.

A. Recent Trends in Poverty

1. Income poverty.

Georgia’s strong economic performance has had a limited positive impact on poverty reduction because growth was largely driven by increases in labor productivity and attendant income growth was concentrated among the top 10% of income earners. The percentage of the population living below the relative poverty line decreased from 24.6% in 2004 to 21.4% in 2013. 2 The poverty headcount ratio based on the absolute poverty line declined from 18.0% in 2006 to 14.8% in 2012, and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty fell from 5.4% to 3.7% over the same period.3 So-called registered poverty, which is the percentage of the population officially registered as poor, rose from 6.4% in 2007 to 9.7% in 2013. The poverty headcount ratio at $2.0 a day at purchasing power parity declined from 36.7% in 2003 to 35.6% in 2010, but the percentage of the population living on less than $1.25 a day at purchasing power parity increased from 17.7% to 18.0% during the same period. 4 With the rate of officially recorded unemployment at 11.5% in 2003, 15.0% in 2012, and 14.6% in 2013, the reduction in poverty mostly resulted from declines in food prices in 2012 and increases in social transfers, such as social assistance allowances and old-age pensions, and remittance inflows.

2. Non-income poverty.

Progress in reducing non-income poverty has been mixed. The under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) dropped from 35.7 in 2000 to 13.1 in 2013. The net primary school enrollment rate rose from 89.8% in 2004 to 98.3% in 2012. The percentage of the population with access to an improved water source increased from 89.2% in 2000 to 98.7% in 2012, and life expectancy rose from 71.6 years to 73.9 years over the same period. However, the maternal mortality rate (per 100,000 live births) decreased from 60 in 2000 to 41 in 2013 according to the World Bank’s modeled estimates. 5 The proportion of the population with access to improved sanitation facilities remained unchanged at about 95% during this period (footnote 4).

A major socio-economic problem afflicting many countries of the world, particularly the developing regions of the globe, is poverty. Interestingly, with the rapid and unprecedented increase in globalization, poverty has reduced significantly in the world both in number and in proportion (World Bank, 2016). Unfortunately, not all regions have made remarkable progress in reducing poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind other regions with regard to poverty reduction (World Bank, 2016). In Nigeria, poverty has increased over the years – for instance, from 27.2% to 69% between 1980 and 2010 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2012). A crucial aspect of poverty that has attracted the attention of development experts, researchers and policy makers is child poverty. As observed in Chen and Corak (2008), child poverty has continued to increase in its dominance in discussions and analyses of poverty. Several reasons have been given for the crucial importance of a child-focused approach in poverty analysis. These reasons include the following. First, poverty makes it impossible for children to have their fundamental human rights. Severe or extreme poverty which occurs over a prolonged period can stunt and distort children’s development and destroy their opportunities for optimum fulfillment in life including the roles they are expected to successively play as they grow older in the family, community and society (Gordon, Nandy, Pantazis, Pemberton, & Townsend, 2003). Second, children are at a higher risk of poverty irrespective of place and time; children largely depend on their direct environment for the provision of their basic needs. Given that they are not independent economic actors by themselves, they fully depend on the distribution of resources by their parents or guardians within the framework of household and community arrangement (Roelen & Gassmann, 2008). Third, as children grow up in poverty, they become trapped in the web of the phenomenon, and are most likely to remain in the poverty trap as they become adults; thus, it is said that poverty often presents itself as a vicious cycle, causing children to be trapped in it from birth onwards (Roelen, Gassmann, & de Neubourg, 2010). Fourth, children are affected differently from poverty and deprivation when compared to adults. The basic needs of children are different from those of adults; for instance, the dietary requirements of children are different from those of adults. (Roelen & Gassmann, 2008; Roelen et al., 2010); also the educational requirements as well as other requirements for protection of children are different from those of adults. Thus, children-specific approach in poverty and deprivation analyses can highlight and emphasize those basic needs that are particularly very important for children and their development (Roelen & Gassmann, 2008).

مقاله سال 2016

Previousresearch on business and poverty alleviation has addressed the roles and responsibilities of corporations in society (Bies, Bartunek, Fort, & Zald, 2007; Fort & Schipani, 2004, 2007; Goodhand, 2001). We know less, however, about the possibilities and limits of business in addressing the needs of the poorest of the poor in situations where it is costly and risky for business to get involved. The World Bank, using calculations of purchasing power parity, first defined the poverty line in 1993 as households living on less than a dollar per day.

We seek to contribute to the literature on business and peace by exploring the following question: What are the roles, possibilities, and limits of large corporations in promoting sustainable peace in very poor communities? According to the United Nations, sustainable peace is marked by the absence not only of conflicts but also of violence in all forms. Violence is defined by the World Health Organization (2016) as: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.

The definition of violence includes interpersonal violence at the family level (against oneself, children, partners, or the elderly) as well as within communities (acquaintance or stranger) and is divided into four modes: physical, sexual, psychological, and deprivation/negligence.