In this last decade, poverty in developing countries remains the most important topic of debate at the international level. The main challenge is how to build policies and programs on a gender perspective approach taking into account gender differences in behavior between male and female at the level of the household. This study is undertaken in a context of two earner partners living in mixed farming systems in Senegal where earnings come primarily from crops and livestock. This book provides substantial research focused on household decision-making regarding resource allocation and consumption. Moreover, it attempts to show empirical findings on the analysis of welfare and well-being through an innovative combination of subjective and objective methods. The research shows how important socioeconomic and cultural factors are in determining earnings from agricultural activities. Important determinants of productivity are related to women’s land access, non-labor income (transfers from migrants), and the wife's access to credit and health care. The research illustrates also that women's bargaining power may be strongly linked to their access to livestock resources, their mobility in purchasing food and medicine and their participation in the management of household finance. Analysis of decision-making regarding expenditures shows that women, more than men, value household goods (related to food, health and schooling expenditures) more than private goods. The results suggest that policies aimed at improving household livelihoods must understand gender differences, obligations and priorities.

United Nations sales no. E.90.III.A.2

This book addresses poverty and well-being, equity, and efficiency in selected African countries. The chapters focus on three main topics: studies in the measurement and analysis of well-being and vulnerability to poverty, women's empowerment, and the dynamics and determinants of income and efficiency among smallholders. The chapters in the first section examine poverty, well-being, and vulnerability to poverty, as well as social exclusion, with a focus on households in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. They highlight the need to consider multidimensional measures of well-being and vulnerability to poverty, the need to address the distribution of vulnerability across different segments of the population, as well as the importance of developing public policies aimed at poverty reduction and promoting the well-being of the poor. The next section deals with issues related to women’s empowerment, including a multidimensional case study of women’s empowerment in Ghana and women’s access to microfinance services in Ethiopia. The final section focuses on dynamics and determinants of income and efficiency among farm households in Ethiopia and Uganda. Using a variety of methodologies, this volume provides a multifaceted approach to studying poverty and well-being in a diverse range of locations. As such, it of use to undergraduate and graduate students studying African economics or economics of poverty and well-being, and will be appealing to public policymakers and international aid agencies.

The welfare state has been under attack for decades, but now more than ever there is a need for strong social protection systems—the best tools we have to combat inequality, support social justice, and even improve economic performance. In this book, José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph E. Stiglitz bring together distinguished contributors to examine the global variations of social programs and make the case for a redesigned twenty-first-century welfare state. The Welfare State Revisited takes on major debates about social well-being, considering the merits of universal versus targeted policies; responses to market failures; integrating welfare and economic development; and how welfare states around the world have changed since the neoliberal turn. Contributors offer prescriptions for how to respond to the demands generated by demographic changes, the changing role of the family, new features of labor markets, the challenges of aging societies, and technological change. They consider how strengthening or weakening social protection programs affects inequality, suggesting ways to facilitate the spread of effective welfare states throughout the world, especially in developing countries. Presenting new insights into the functions the welfare state can fulfill and how to design a more efficient and more equitable system, The Welfare State Revisited is essential reading on the most discussed issues in social welfare today.

This book provides insights into how human well-being could be better defined and empirically assessed. It takes stock of and reviews various concepts and measures and provides recommendations for future practice and research.

This volume is a collection of selected studies on poverty and well-being in East Africa. Using a multidimensional approach, the authors hope to provide a broad view of poverty and a thorough account of the variables that contribute to it. As opposed to traditional studies of poverty, which focus mainly on material well-being, this volume includes criteria such as material standard of living, health, education, housing, personal security, access to information, freedom, participation in organization, corruption, trust, and employment. The studies highlighted in this volume are grouped into the following four research areas: child poverty and malnutrition, dynamics and determinants of poverty, multidimensional measures of poverty, and energy-environment-poverty relationships. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive picture of the state of multidimensional poverty, its measurement, causal factors, and policies and practices in Burundi, Cameron, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. The methodology utilized in the studies is diverse as well, ranging from econometric analysis to decision theory, to neoclassical growth models. This book is geared towards students and researchers interested in economic development, welfare, and poverty in Africa as well as policy makers and members of NGOs and international aid agencies.

The new international division of labor and the imposition of structural adjustment on Third World countries has necessitated a reexamination of development policies and a reevaluation of the role of gender in their success or failure. Although women often bear the heaviest burden under structural adjustment, there is also considerable evidence of women being empowered through their responses to the challenges of economic restructuring. Based on case study material from Eastern Europe, the Islamic nations, Africa, China, and Latin America, this volume explores the significant contributions women make to the wealth and well-being of their families and nations. The contributors argue persuasively that women may hold the key to sustainable development, an increasingly critical issue at a time when policymakers are reconsidering the full costs and benefits of a growth-fixated development model. One of the first to embody the new “gender and development” paradigm, this book reports on research at the frontiers of knowledge and theory about the gendered outcomes of economic transformation, restructuring, and social change. By incorporating “voices from the South,” it makes a provocative addition to our understanding of the political economy of development and of the relationship between world ecology and the world economy.

This report highlights that gender inequalities and women's subordination in India are caused by two formidable macro-structures: patriarchy and the exclusion of unpaid work from the macro-economy. The papers have explored pathways to break these structures gradually to achieve gender equality and empower women.

There has recently been an escalated interest in the interface between psychology and economics. The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour is a valuable reference dedicated to improving our understanding of the economic mind and economic behaviour. Employing empirical methods - including laboratory and field experiments, observations, questionnaires and interviews - the Handbook provides comprehensive coverage of theory and method, financial and consumer behaviour, the environment and biological perspectives. This second edition also includes new chapters on topics such as neuroeconomics, unemployment, debt, behavioural public finance, and cutting-edge work on fuzzy trace theory and robots, cyborgs and consumption. With distinguished contributors from a variety of countries and theoretical backgrounds, the Handbook is an important step forward in the improvement of communications between the disciplines of psychology and economics that will appeal to academic researchers and graduates in economic psychology and behavioral economics.