Journal of Social and Economic Development最新文献

This paper analyzes the impact of public assistance during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with regard to household survival, using data from a two-round survey of 1274 respondents in Togo conducted by the National Institute of Statistics, Economic and Demographic Studies. The analysis uses the propensity score matching method, the probit model, and the discrete endogenous regressor. The first result shows that more than two thirds of respondents experienced income shocks due to the health crisis. The second result shows that public assistance programs have enabled the beneficiary populations to overcome the impact of shocks.

Ageing is an overarching phenomenon, its effects felt across lines of region, gender, caste and other identifiers. Standards in international human rights law as well as the Constitution of India lay down broad guidelines to protect rights including ideals of equality and non-discrimination. These are reflected in the legal landscape on the ground and its working. However, both these seem to fall short of Constitutional guarantees. The abdication of responsibility by the State in terms lack of social security and in inordinate delays on issues relating to rights claims outweigh the minor gains made by maintenance and domestic violence legislations that seek to ensure life with equality and dignity in times of ageing. This paper critiques the legal landscape on maintenance and domestic violence from the lens of rights of older persons.

This paper develops a framework for analysis of distribution related policy issues (i.e. inequality, poverty and inequity) for ensuring economic security for India's older persons by the public old-age pension systems with special reference to Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS). The analysis is focused on (a) measurement of age-specific and intra-generational inequity by Lifecycle Deficit in the framework of National Transfer Accounts (NTA), (b) relationship between this inequity and poverty and inequalities in distribution of income and consumption and (c) role of current public funded IGNOAPS to improving economic security or reducing inequity for the elderly generation. The entire analysis is based on the benchmark year 2004-05 and a comparative analysis between 2004-05 and 2011-12. Main results show (a) remarkable age and intra-generational patterns for the older persons in labour income, consumption, income and consumption inequalities, consumption poverty and inequality-adjusted inequity and (b) efficacy of poverty-linked universal IGNOAPS to improve economic security or reducing the inequity for the older persons at a national cost of less than 0.20% of total revenue or consumption expenditure of Government of India. These results offer empirical evidence for design and implementation of redistributive policies for the older persons by integrating the objectives of reduction in economic inequalities, poverty and inequity. Such policies have wider implications for attainment of select UN-SDG goals, especially goals related to age-specific reduction in poverty and inequalities. The approach, results and implications of this paper are of general relevance for other developing countries in Asia and Africa if their economic policies aim at improving economic security of the older person in the framework of NTA methodology.

Although microfinance is usually delivered with a spatial outlook, the literature is so far silent on the potential spatial effect of microfinance delivery. The aim of this study was, therefore, to examine the effect of microfinance intensity on spatial inequality and poverty in Ghana. Using the 6th (2012/2013) and 7th (2016/2017) rounds of data from a national survey on living standards in Ghana, the study first examined the pattern of district-level poverty and inequality in Ghana and then adopted spatial econometric techniques to explore the spatial correlation between microfinance, inequality, and poverty. The results revealed that microfinance has a significant negative impact on spatial inequality and poverty in Ghana. The spatial effect of microfinance intensity on poverty and inequality is characterized by both direct and spillover effects on neighbours. It was identified that the outreach of microfinance drives within-district disparity, whereas the disparity in microfinance credit distribution powers between-district disparity. Additionally, while there is evidence of an indirect effect, the indirect effect diffuses monotonically as the number of neighbours increases. The study's findings advocate for a complementary approach to microfinance delivery, as well as the elimination of institutional barriers that limit access, availability, and operational delivery of microfinance services in order to achieve spatially optimal microfinance delivery.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40847-022-00210-3.

Well-being is often quantitatively measured based on individuals' income or health situation but the relationship between education and well-being has not been fully investigated. It is also important to compare well-being using different individual characteristics especially gender. This paper analyzes well-being using a unique dataset from the Chinese General Social Surveys in 2012, 2013, and 2015. Two measures of well-being are used: self-assessed unidimensional subjective well-being and parametrically estimated multidimensional objective well-being. Objective well-being is a composite parametric index with contributions from different domains of education influenced by identity, capability, and material well-being. These help in understanding the differences between and compare subjective and objective well-being. The results of our descriptive and regression analysis suggests that the multidimensional well-being index differs from subjective well-being in ranking individuals grouped by important common characteristics. These differences are captured by our study which helps to broaden the measurement and analysis of the multidimensionality of the well-being index. Education influences well-being positively, conditional on controlling for identity, capability, material and marital status, and Confucianism. Investments in education and female empowerment which target well-being measures will help reduce the dimensionality of the gender gap in rural China, in particular those attributed to Confucianism.

There is evidence that cancer mortality and morbidity could be reduced when the disease is diagnosed and treated at an early stage. The paper examines the pathways of delay of cancer diagnosis in an Indian setting. It draws on a qualitative study conducted among cancer survivors and family members of cancer patients in the city of Bengaluru, South India. The results show that a substantial part of the delay occurred at the stage of initial formal help seeking wherein patient and family-led, disease-related and systemic factors together played a major role. Patient-led factors included trivialisation and normalisation of symptoms as part of general fatigue and aging; unrealistic risk perceptions that linked causality of cancer merely to heredity and behavioural risk factors; fear of being diagnosed as cancer patient; gender related reasons including family's gender performance expectation, lower agency of women to seek help and lower prioratisation of women's health in the household and access related issues including financial constraints and unavailability of specialised hospitals nearby. Disease-related factors included the presence of comorbidity, cancer's mimicking of symptoms of other diseases and absence of distinguishable symptoms at the initial stage for certain types of cancers. The practitioner-led and system-led factors such as trivialisation of symptoms by general practitioners, non cancer-specific referrals, and lack of cancer screening facilities accounted for a major part of delay after the formal help seeking. The paper argues that the mere knowledge of cancer symptoms did not always lead to early diagnosis due to the interplay of these factors. The ongoing cancer prevention and control interventions in India need to be informed of these micro level factors while developing strategies to prevent avoidable delays in cancer diagnosis.

With homogenisation of various cultural groups due to outside forces and the effect of globalisation, many traditional foods, as developed by various cultural groups, have been lost or on the verge of elimination. In this context, the present study aims to examine and document the traditional food knowledge of local people in Uttarakhand State of India. Interviews and interactions with the local people resulted in documentation of 38 cuisines traditionally prepared by the local people of selected study regions in Uttarakhand. Apart from boiled rice and chapattis (flatbread) of wheat flour, chapattis and porridge of finger millet flour and boiled barnyard and foxtail millets were frequently consumed dishes in combination with dishes made with locally grown pulses such as horse gram and black gram and vegetables such as potato, radish and other leafy vegetables. The supplementary dishes were locally called as fanu, chaisu, gathoni, thechwani, kafli and kadhi. Plants formed the major ingredients in making traditional cuisines. The present study documented 41 plant species comprising of cereals, millets, pulses and spices. With a view to enhance the taste of the dishes, different spices and condiments such as Allium humile, Allium wallichii, Cleome viscosa, Cannabis sativa, Perilla frutescens and Cinnamomum tamala were used by the local people. These dishes possessed some unique characteristics and ethno-medicinal values; hence, when required, they were used to cure a number of ailments as well. Since most of the mountain region in the study area was once inaccessible and health facilities were not much developed till recent times, the traditional health-care system was supported by the traditional food systems. The findings of the present study are further discussed in the context of sustainability of socio-ecological systems of Uttarakhand.