Poverty In Madagascar Research Articles

The Delay in the Demographic Transition Perpetuates Rural Poverty in Madagascar

The Delay in the Demographic Transition Perpetuates Rural Poverty in Madagascar

Multivariate Granger Causality among tourism, poverty and growth in Madagascar

This note examines the causal relationships among tourism development, economic growth and poverty in Madagascar within a Granger trivariate framework. Findings indicate that Granger Causality runs from tourism development and poverty to growth and from growth and poverty to tourism development. Neither growth nor tourism development Granger-cause poverty in the case of Madagascar.

Thetélèphone malgache: Transnational gossip and social transformation among Malagasy marriage migrants in France

Deepening poverty in Madagascar leads Malagasy coastal women to marry Frenchmen as a way to migrate to France. The telephone malgache, an informal organizational and communicative structure, connects these marriage migrants to each other and to their families in Madagascar. Drawing from studies of gossip, on the one hand, and telecommunications, on the other, I argue that the telephone malgache creates highly unstable social ties that regulate and transform Malagasy matrimonial migrants’ relationships with one another, their French families, and their Malagasy families back home. I show how the relations that women maintain with one another in France and with their kin in Madagascar are aspects of a single process. Far from simply connecting people to their homelands, these relationships also shape migrants’ integration into French society.

Applying genetic techniques to study remote shark fisheries in northeastern Madagascar

Background and aims. The shark fisheries of Madagascar remain largely unstudied. Remoteness makes fisheries monitoring challenging while the high value of shark fins combined with the extreme poverty in Madagascar creates intensive pressure on shark resources.Materials and methods. We use DNA barcoding and species-specific PCR assays to characterize shark fisheries in Antongil Bay in northeastern Madagascar.Results. The 239 samples taken from individuals collected in 2001 and 2002 correspond to 19 species. The four most common species were Sphyrna lewini, Rhizoprionodon acutus, Carcharhinus brevipinna, and C. sorrah. Antongil Bay may be a breeding area for C. brevipinna, C. leucas, and S. lewini.Conclusion. Local names are generally not a useful proxy for monitoring the species harvested in the fishery. Conservation efforts should characterize species exploitation at present, create spatial and temporal fishing restrictions to protect endangered species, and restrict large mesh gillnets.

Changes in Poverty in Madagascar: 1993-1999

This paper takes advantage of nationally representative cross-sectional household data sets from 1993, 1997 and 1999, to examine changes in poverty in Madagascar. The authors find that poverty in this Indian Ocean country rose from an already high level of 70 percent in 1993, to 73.3 in 1997, before falling to 71.3 in 1999. This pattern of change, which corresponds to the evolution of macroeconomic policy during this period, was restricted primarily to urban areas. Populations in rural areas witnessed persistent increases in poverty despite market reforms, as structural constraints affected their ability to escape poverty. A strong correlation between remoteness (as measured by various proxies) and high levels of poverty support this finding. Small scale agricultural households were hit particularly hard in the 1990s, and the data suggest that these are the very households that have been extending their land use by clearing and cultivating increasingly fragile lands. The use of models of household consumption to decompose changes in poverty into returns and endowment effects, substantiate the hypothesis that decreases in land productivity among these small-holders contributed to increases in poverty. These decompositions also reveal that increased access and returns to education between 1993 and 1999 contributed to declines in poverty.

The Evolution of Groupwise Poverty in Madagascar, 1999-2005

This paper explores whether there exist differences in groupwise poverty in Madagascar; that is, whether there is a pattern over time of consistently poorer performance among sub-populations readily identifiable by one or more identity markers. Three key messages come out of this analysis. First, there exists a core type of household that remained persistently poor over the period 1999--2005. These households were largely not members of the dominant ethnic group, land poor, lived in remote areas, and were headed by uneducated individuals, most commonly women. Second, in addition to establishing the existence of persistent differences in poverty across groups, relative differences in returns to education, land and remoteness underscore the existence of differences within groups, as one characteristic affects the returns to another. Third, persistent differences in groupwise poverty are associated with multiple different identities, some of which are offsetting and some of which are reinforcing. For example, women's higher education tends to offset the disadvantages associated with being a head of household, while remoteness compounds the disadvantages associated with living in female-headed households. Copyright 2010 The author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Farmers' Adaptation Capacities in the Eastern Rainforest of Madagascar

Since 1996, contractual forest management involving the local population has been proposed as a solution to deforestation and poverty in Madagascar. This article highlights the way in which two contrasting farming systems can be adapted to conservation constraints without threatening sustainability. The authors show that farmers' adaptation capacities are heterogeneous among local communities and that a knowledge of the factors influencing this variability can help in the design of guidance for farms to enable them to develop sustainably in line with current perceptions of agriculture's role in land management and forest conservation.

Agricultural Technology, Productivity, and Poverty in Madagascar

Summary This paper uses a unique, spatially-explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in Madagascar. We show that, controlling for geographical and physical characteristics, communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies and, consequently, higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices, higher real wages for unskilled workers, and better welfare indicators. The empirical evidence strongly favors support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the high poverty and food insecurity rates currently prevalent in rural Madagascar.

Robustness of subjective welfare analysis in a poor developing country: Madagascar 2001

We analyse the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. We base our analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. We extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty lines on the basis of categorical consumption adequacy questions. Based on this methodology, we calculate the household-specific, subjective poverty lines. We are able to compare between the results of subjective poverty analysis using several types of subjective welfare questions. Our results show that the aggregate poverty measures derived from consumption adequacy questions accord quite well with the poverty measures based on objective poverty lines. We demonstrate that the subjective welfare analysis can be used in poor developing countries for evaluating socio-economic and distributional impacts of various policy interventions.

Agricultural Technology, Productivity, Poverty and Food Security in Madagascar

This paper uses a unique, spatially-explicit dataset to study the link between agricultural performance and rural poverty in Madagascar. We show that, controlling for geographical and physical characteristics, communes that have higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies and, consequently, higher crop yields enjoy lower food prices, higher real wages for unskilled workers and better welfare indicators. The empirical evidence strongly favors support for improved agricultural production as an important part of any strategy to reduce the high poverty rates currently prevalent in rural Madagascar.

Agricultural Productivity Growth, Rural Economic Diversity, and Economic Reforms: India, 1970–2000

A salient theme in D. Gale Johnson’s work is the importance of agricultural development for general prosperity and for economic diversification (e.g., Johnson 2000). Johnson has also noted that most of the world’s poor are engaged in farming, so that a key focus of development policy is to raise the incomes of farmers. From a global perspective, increasing the productivity of agriculture, given the fixity of land, is necessary for both poverty reduction and the development of the nonagricultural sector. At the level of the world, agricultural productivity gains, poverty reduction, and the growth of the nonfarm sector are complements. However, the question remains whether these observations imply that every poor country should focus its public resources on agricultural development in order to raise the incomes of people now engaged in farming and whether such a policy is necessary for obtaining economic diversity. In this article, we use the experience of India over the past 30 years to address the issue of whether agricultural technical change actually leads to economic diversification and income growth within the rural sector in the context of an open-economy country in which there are cross-area trade and capital flows. We focus in particular on the rural sector because this is the sector in which linkages between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are thought to be the strongest. We exploit the fact that India has maintained a policy of openness with respect to agricultural technology over this period, permitting and actively supporting agricultural development, and has moved to a reformed regime in which goods are traded and capital is more mobile in the 1990s. Evidence on the relationship between agricultural growth and nonfarm

Transactions Costs and Agricultural Productivity: Implications of Isolation for Rural Poverty in Madagascar

This paper examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into poverty in Madagascar using household survey data combined with a census of administrative communes. Given the importance of agriculture to the rural poor, where nine out of ten poor persons is engaged in farming, we concentrate on isolation manifesting itself in the form of high transaction costs such as the cost of transporting agricultural commodities to major market centers. We find that (a) the incidence of poverty in rural Madagascar increases with remoteness; (b) yields of major staple crops fall considerably as one gets farther away from major markets; (c) and the use of agricultural inputs declines with isolation. Simulation results using output from rice production function estimates suggest that halving travel time per kilometer on major highways (feeder roads) will increase primary season rice production by 1.3 (1.0) percent.

Agricultural Production, Agricultural Land and Rural Poverty in Madagascar

Rural areas dependent on agricultural income, are often among the poorest in developing countries. However, little distinction is generally made within the agricultural sector. This lack of distinction hinders targeting of agricultural investments towards poorer farmers. This paper illustrates, using a production function analysis with flexible marginal returns, how agricultural production activities and returns to agricultural production factors differ by poverty level in the case of Madagascar. The results show that access to primary education is relatively more beneficial for poorer agricultural households while additional secondary education has no effect on agricultural productivity. Returns to agricultural inputs are significantly higher for poorer agricultural households. Land inequality increases as land sales markets benefit the richer households and as the rich engage more in extensification while rental markets improve agricultural efficiency and may thus benefit poor and rich alike. Land titling has little effect on improved agricultural productivity. More formal land titling is therefore not sufficient to change the bad performance of agriculture of the last decades.

Seasonal poverty in Madagascar: magnitude and solutions

Seasonal reductions in food consumption pull about one million Malagasy below the poverty line during the lean season. There they join the nine million more who remain chronically undernourished throughout the year. Because the seasonality of food shortages coincides with the increased prevalence of diarrhea and other diseases during the rainy season, the resulting lean season exacts a heavy toll in the form of increased rates of malnutrition and child mortality. Combining the results of recent field studies with a seasonal multi-market model, this paper measures the probable impacts of three common interventions aimed at combatting seasonal food insecurity. We find the most promising interventions to be those that increase agricultural productivity of the secondary food crops such as cassava, other roots and tubers, and maize.

Fighting Rural Poverty in Latin America: New Evidence of the Effects of Education, Demographics, and Access to Land

Fighting Rural Poverty in Latin America: New Evidence of the Effects of Education, Demographics, and Access to Land

IMPACT OF GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION ON POVERTY IN MADAGASCAR

Poverty in Madagascar has increased between 1962 and 1980 both in the rural and urban areas based on a comparison of some poverty measures, but decreased based on others. However, it remains predominantly a rural phenomenon. Distributional inequality is the major determinant of the variation in rural poverty, while the changes in urban poverty are due to the lack of economic growth. Thus, the urban bias introduced in government policies in the mid‐1970s was not justifiable on strictly poverty‐reduction grounds. A reduction of sectoral disparities would have led to a significant reduction of aggregate poverty.

Changes in Income Distribution in Poor Agricultural Nations: Malaŵi and Madagascar

Previous articleNext article No AccessChanges in Income Distribution in Poor Agricultural Nations: Malaŵi and MadagascarFrederic L. PryorFrederic L. Pryor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 39, Number 1Oct., 1990 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/451851 Views: 10Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1990 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Carlos Oya Agricultural Maladjustment in Africa: What Have We Learned after Two Decades of Liberalisation?, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25, no.22 (May 2007): 275–297.https://doi.org/10.1080/02589000701396355Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh Resource development and inequality in indigenous societies, World Development 26, no.33 (Mar 1998): 381–394.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(97)10060-2B. Essama-Nssah IMPACT OF GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION ON POVERTY IN MADAGASCAR, Review of Income and Wealth 43, no.22 (Jun 1997): 239–252.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.1997.tb00217.xWilliam M. Epstein Economic development and social welfare in the third world: The end of romance, Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare 10, no.22 (Jul 1994): 107–136.https://doi.org/10.1080/17486839408414908