Does Social Medical Insurance Achieve a Poverty Reduction Effect in China?

This paper aims to explore the impact of social medical insurance (SMI) on poverty reduction (PR) in China. Considering the time-varying characteristics of factors, this paper uses the bootstrap Granger full sample causality and subsample rolling window model to find the relationship between SMI and PR. The results highlight that in some periods, there is a bidirectional causal link between SMI and PR. Influenced by the medical insurance reform and medication measures. Social medical insurance does not have a positive impact on poverty reduction in some periods. These results are supported by the Utility Maximization Model of Insurance Consumption, which highlights that individuals make utility maximization choices when choosing insurance. The effect of medical insurance on poverty alleviation depends on whether an individual's investment in medical insurance can maximize its utility. If the proportion of social medical insurance reimbursement is too low, individuals will give up buying social medical insurance. Thus, the anti-poverty effect of social medical insurance is difficult to achieve. Therefore, authorities need to pay attention to specific contexts and social medical insurance policies and further improve the social medical insurance system to promote the realization of the anti-poverty of social medical insurance.

Analyzing the Impact of Foreign Remittances upon Poverty: A Case of Uzbekistan from Central Asia.

Remittances have always played a central role in strengthening the economies of low-income and middle-income developing countries. The remittances have also provided a phenomenal support to the economy of Uzbekistan, which is the third leading recipient country of foreign remittances in the Central Asian region after Kyrgzstan and Tajikistan. There is a strong need to investigate the impact of foreign remittances upon poverty reduction in case of Uzbekistan. This study has empirically investigated the impact of remittances on poverty in Uzbekistan by taking the variables like remittances, poverty size, capital formation, per capita GDP, savings and unemployment for the period of 2008-2019. Ordinary Least Square Regression was applied, and the results show an insignificant relationship between foreign remittances and poverty reduction. The reason could be that remittances in Uzbekistan are not pro-poor as mostly the workers from the rich families migrate to Russia. Furthermore most of the migrant workers prefer to settle down in Russia along with their families.

Assessing The Impacts of TRAIN Law on Consumption, Savings, and Unemployment in the Philippines

The Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) policy intends to make the tax system simpler, fairer, and more efficient while also encouraging investments, job creation, and poverty reduction. This tax reform package 1 lowers personal income taxes, removes VAT exemptions, and changes the excise tax on petroleum goods and automobiles, making the tax system more equitable while simultaneously rectifying injustice. This study determines the relationship between the TRAIN Law and the increase in income on the country's consumption, savings, and unemployment rate. Using the multiple regression analysis, this study proves that TRAIN Law and the additional income positively affect consumption. The savings also has a significant positive relationship with the increase in income; however, it has a significant negative relationship with TRAIN Law. This study also shows that while the unemployment rate in the country decreases when income rises, the TRAIN law, on the other hand, relates to the increase in the unemployment rate. The results of this research suggest that the said tax reform has had a considerable beneficial impact on consumption, it has had an adverse influence on the growth rate of savings and unemployment in the country, hence in order to improve the delivery of essential services and better future social and economic results, the government should consider modifying the TRAIN Law and introducing a tax or policy that would stimulate private savings and employment.

Does the Accessibility of Regional Internal and External Traffic Play the Same Role in Achieving Anti-Poverty Goals?

Traffic development can promote the flow of goods and people, which has long been widely considered to have a poverty reduction effect but, in fact, is not unbreakable. The development of traffic is similar to economic and social development, with internal and external characteristics, but few studies have explored the differences between the effects of their poverty reduction. Taking the land traffic of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone (CCEZ) as an example, this paper represents traffic accessibility at a county level by relying on the average internal and external travel times. Rural poverty was identified by the pentagon of livelihoods to measure the Multidimensional Development Index (MDI). Furthermore, a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model was used to explore the relationship and spatial differentiation characteristics between county traffic accessibility and poverty. The results show that the traffic accessibility of the counties in the CCEZ was quite different. The average internal travel time was between 0.16 and 7 h, and the average external travel time was between 4.2 and 10.6 h. The radiation gradient structure centered on Chengdu municipal districts and the Chongqing main urban area, and the accessibility level needed to be improved. Furthermore, the MDI values of each county in the CCEZ showed the structural characteristics of “large bottom and small top”; additionally, the higher the high-value group of MDI, the stronger the spatial aggregation and the more obvious the characteristics of regional differentiation. Finally, the relationship between traffic accessibility and poverty in counties cannot be generalized. The improvement of external traffic accessibility obviously helped to improve the poverty situation in the CCEZ; the improvement of internal traffic accessibility had a multidimensional impact, but it was mainly due to the occupation or spillover of livelihood capital in rural areas; counties accounting for 82.74% would even reduce the MDI and, thus, aggravate poverty.

Assessing the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program as a conditional income transfer: a search for a conceptual framework

Purpose Ghana has implemented different kinds of pro-poor program and policies since its independence to reduce poverty. The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is one of such program. LEAP is a social cash transfer program and its implementation has been under the auspices of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection since 2008. It provides direct cash and health insurance coverage for extremely poor households across the country to alleviate short-term poverty and encourage long-term human capital development. This paper examines the LEAP program in terms of how it has achieved its aim and the opportunities for improvement.Design/methodology/approach Primary data were obtained from interviews of 110 beneficiaries of the program. The study proposes a conceptual framework that links poverty reduction and social policies to assist researchers analyze pro-poor or social cash transfer program.Findings The findings show that the program is challenged with administrative bureaucracies, irregular inflow of funds, perceived political interferences, inconsistent implementation strategies and low value of the cash transfer (which results in little or no impact on consumption). However, the data also show that LEAP has positive impacts on nonconsumption spending like children's schooling. The program' exit strategy does not impact much on beneficiaries to allow them exit without the tendency of being poor.Practical implications This paper discussed the LEAP program as a social cash transfer to the poor in Ghana. The study constructed a conceptual framework to help researchers and practitioners analyze the implementation of pro-poor interventions. This conceptualization allows for cash transfer program to empower beneficiaries and exits them to allow for other beneficiaries to enroll, ensuring reduction in poverty over time. Generally, the beneficiaries have benefited from the LEAP in the areas of consumption, education and healthcare with few beneficiaries being able to accumulate some few assets. The LEAP program has no exit plan.Originality/value This study adds to literature by offering a conceptual framework to help researchers and policy makers in dealing with social assistance policies to the poor. The study also gave an insight into how pro-poor policy strategies could be crafted.