scholarly journals Social Mobility in Developing Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Vegard Iversen

Limited attention has been paid to how well social mobility measures developed and used to study industrial countries perform in analysis of low-income settings. Following brief, selective reviews of the axiomatic, econometric and other relevant literature, three mobility concepts illustrate how properties that appear innocuous in industrial country analysis become problematic when downward mobility includes descents into destitution. For origin-independence measures—the most widely used in research on developing countries so far—axiomatic propriety and cognizance of co-residency-induced and other estimation bias are not enough. Adopting a variant of the ‘perverse fluidity’ concept from sociology to define the estimate bias attributable to intergenerational descents into poverty, we use experiments and data from India to find perverse fluidity biases in intergenerational mobility estimates of up to 50 per cent. Seemingly ‘good’ mobility news may thus be ‘bad’ with intergroup, regional and international mobility comparisons more precarious than acknowledged so far.

Agriculture plays the role of providing employment, income, food, raw materials, and foreign exchange earnings for people. The ability and the inability of agriculture in playing the provisioning roles, in varying degrees, define the poverty status of those engaged in it. It is a paradox that a majority of those who are engaged in agriculture, especially in developing countries, tend to be associated with such poverty-linked characteristics as low income, hunger, deprivation, and vulnerabilities. There is therefore the need to refocus on defining the concept of agriculture with a view to bringing out its role in the development process and how the roles can be effectively achieved by the majority of those engaged in it. The objectives of the chapter include describing the expected roles of agriculture in the development process; highlighting the performance of the agriculture sector; describing the role of agricultural credit in agricultural development; defining the concept of extreme poverty; highlighting some of the strength and weaknesses of incometrics, highlighting vulnerability views of poverty; discussing measurement of extreme poverty; and highlighting feminization of formal agricultural finance. The chapter concludes with recommendations. The methodology is based on systematic reviews of relevant literature. The findings include how agriculture can play the roles expected of it and effectively empower those who are engaged in it. The chapter shares the view that majority of those engaged in agriculture in most developing countries are women, and that poverty has a feminine face and so advances the feminization of formal agricultural finance interventions. The chapter is concluded with relevant recommendations.


Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves—which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines—typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID LABORDE ◽  
WILL MARTIN ◽  
DOMINIQUE VAN DER MENSBRUGGHE

AbstractThis paper uses detailed data on bound and applied tariffs to assess the consequences of the WTO's December 2008 Modalities for tariffs levied and faced by developing countries, and the welfare implications of these reforms. We find that the tiered formula for agriculture would halve tariffs in industrial countries and lower them more modestly in developing countries. In non-agricultural market access (NAMA), the formulas would reduce the tariff peaks facing developing countries and cut average industrial country tariffs by more than a third. We use a political-economy framework to assess the implications of flexibilities for the size of the tariff cuts and find they are likely to substantially reduce the outcome. However, despite the flexibilities, there are likely to be worthwhile gains, with applied tariffs facing developing countries cut by about 20% in agriculture and 28% in NAMA, and sizeable cuts in tariffs facing industrial countries. The welfare impacts of reform are evaluated using a new approach to aggregation that improves on the traditional, flawed approach of weighted-average tariffs. This substantially increases the estimated benefits of an agreement along the lines of these modalities, with estimated global income gains of up to $160 billion per year from market access reform.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-273
Author(s):  
Vegard Iversen ◽  
Anirudh Krishna ◽  
Kunal Sen

Abstract While social mobility in advanced economies has received extensive scholarly attention, crucial knowledge gaps remain about the patterns and determinants of income, educational, and occupational mobility in developing countries. Focusing on intergenerational mobility, we find that estimates often differ greatly for the same country, depending on the concept and measure of mobility used, on variable constructions and on the data set utilized. There is also wide variation in mobility across regions and social groups. We discuss data and income and other variable measurement challenges when agriculture and the informal sector absorb most of the workforce, and illustrate why occupational classifications and widely used mobility measures may perform less well in such settings. Factors beyond those featuring in the literature on advanced economies are plausible determinants of social mobility, particularly of what we call moderate and large ascents (and descents), in developing country contexts. We highlight the lack of in-depth understanding of the multiple and often localized hurdles to such more pronounced progress. Similar knowledge gaps exist for large descents, which give rise to particularly profound concerns in low-income settings. We report and touch on the implications of suggestive findings of a disconnect between educational and occupational mobility. Innovative research requires critical engagement with theory and with methodology, identification, and data challenges that may overlap or deviate notably from those encountered in advanced economies.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Morton

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this book looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. The book reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, the book seeks to reverse this course. It urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. The book paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Martina Larroude ◽  
Gustavo Ariel Budmann

Ocular tuberculosis (TB) is an extrapulmonary tuberculous condition and has variable manifestations. The incidence of TB is still high in developing countries, and a steady increase in new cases has been observed in industrial countries as a result of the growing number of immunodeficient patients and migration from developing countries. Choroidal granuloma is a rare and atypical location of TB. We present a case of a presumptive choroidal granuloma. This case exposes that diagnosis can be remarkably challenging when there is no history of pulmonary TB. The recognition of clinical signs of ocular TB is extremely important since it provides a clinical pathway toward tailored investigations and decision making for initiating anti-TB therapy and to ensure a close follow-up to detect the development of any complication.


1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (4I) ◽  
pp. 327-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Lipsey

I am honoured to be invited to give this lecture before so distinguished an audience of development economists. For the last 21/2 years I have been director of a project financed by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and composed of a group of scholars from Canada, the United States, and Israel.I Our brief is to study the determinants of long term economic growth. Although our primary focus is on advanced industrial countries such as my own, some of us have come to the conclusion that there is more common ground between developed and developing countries than we might have first thought. I am, however, no expert on development economics so I must let you decide how much of what I say is applicable to economies such as your own. Today, I will discuss some of the grand themes that have arisen in my studies with our group. In the short time available, I can only allude to how these themes are rooted in our more detailed studies. In doing this, I must hasten to add that I speak for myself alone; our group has no corporate view other than the sum of our individual, and very individualistic, views.


1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (4I) ◽  
pp. 411-431
Author(s):  
Hans-Rimbert Hemmer

The current rapid population growth in many developing countries is the result of an historical process in the course of which mortality rates have fallen significantly but birthrates have remained constant or fallen only slightly. Whereas, in industrial countries, the drop in mortality rates, triggered by improvements in nutrition and progress in medicine and hygiene, was a reaction to economic development, which ensured that despite the concomitant growth in population no economic difficulties arose (the gross national product (GNP) grew faster than the population so that per capita income (PCI) continued to rise), the drop in mortality rates to be observed in developing countries over the last 60 years has been the result of exogenous influences: to a large degree the developing countries have imported the advances made in industrial countries in the fields of medicine and hygiene. Thus, the drop in mortality rates has not been the product of economic development; rather, it has occurred in isolation from it, thereby leading to a rise in population unaccompanied by economic growth. Growth in GNP has not kept pace with population growth: as a result, per capita income in many developing countries has stagnated or fallen. Mortality rates in developing countries are still higher than those in industrial countries, but the gap is closing appreciably. Ultimately, this gap is not due to differences in medical or hygienic know-how but to economic bottlenecks (e.g. malnutrition, access to health services)


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3676
Author(s):  
Paul Nduhuura ◽  
Matthias Garschagen ◽  
Abdellatif Zerga

Many developing countries in Africa face a “double tragedy” when it comes to electrification. Electricity access rates are low, while those who have access to electricity face frequent outages. There are ongoing efforts aimed at increasing access to electricity on the continent. However, the need to improve the reliability of electricity supply receives limited attention. Unreliable electricity impacts users by limiting electricity utilization and the benefits that should accrue from having an electricity connection. Using data from 496 household survey questionnaires, this study examines the impacts of electricity outages in urban households in Accra, Ghana. The study applies correlation and regression analyses to identify which household characteristics are associated with or predict households reporting outage impacts. Outages were found to impact household safety/security, access to food, and access to social services and were found to cause appliance damage as well. Factors that are significantly correlated with reporting certain outage impacts include respondent’s annual income and employment status, frequency of electricity outages, and household size. Significant predictors of reporting outage impacts are socioeconomic disadvantage, high exposure to outages, and living in a large family setting. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions to eliminate, or at least minimize, electricity supply interruptions in developing countries if sustainable social and economic development is to be achieved.


Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 520
Author(s):  
Roberto Cárcamo-Calvo ◽  
Carlos Muñoz ◽  
Javier Buesa ◽  
Jesús Rodríguez-Díaz ◽  
Roberto Gozalbo-Rovira

Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe acute childhood gastroenteritis, responsible for more than 128,500 deaths per year, mainly in low-income countries. Although the mortality rate has dropped significantly since the introduction of the first vaccines around 2006, an estimated 83,158 deaths are still preventable. The two main vaccines currently deployed, Rotarix and RotaTeq, both live oral vaccines, have been shown to be less effective in developing countries. In addition, they have been associated with a slight risk of intussusception, and the need for cold chain maintenance limits the accessibility of these vaccines to certain areas, leaving 65% of children worldwide unvaccinated and therefore unprotected. Against this backdrop, here we review the main vaccines under development and the state of the art on potential alternatives.


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