While Nicaragua over the past decade has ranked among the poorest countries in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP, data from the last three LSMS surveys (1993, 1998, and 2001) has shown a consistent, though modest, decline in the incidence of poverty. Nationally, the incidence of poverty among individuals has fallen from 50.3 to 45.8 percent over this period. Most poverty is concentrated in the rural sector (with an incidence of 67.8 percent) and in particular in the Central region (75 percent) (World Bank, 2002a). Given the dynamism of agriculture over the last decade, it is somewhat surprising that the reduction of rural poverty has not been greater. Further, this apparent slow, but stable decline in overall poverty incidence masks active movement at the household level in and out of poverty, particularly in the rural sector. At the household level it is much more difficult to find and explain an overall march towards increased living standards. In this paper we analyze the dynamic of poor households moving in and out of poverty, using panel data from the 1998 and 2001 LSMS surveys. The availability of panel data offers an opportunity to analyze who and how households escaped or fell into poverty. What were the principal exit strategies used by households? What are the major determinants of exiting poverty and remaining in poverty? How do poor rural households achieve prosperity? While we touch on both the rural and urban poor, we concentrate primarily on rural households, given their much larger numbers and greater heterogeneity. We apply a variety of methodologies in our analysis of poverty exit strategies. In Section II we provide some background information on the rural sector in Nicaragua, and in Section III we analyze changes in asset ownership and use as well as poverty status. We analyze who has left and entered poverty and provide a description of their characteristics. Given insufficient data points to separate chronic and transient poverty by econometric means, we will instead characterize these different groups of households in descriptive terms. In Section III we briefly describe the situation of agriculture, agricultural assets, and agrarian institutions, the basis of the rural economy in Nicaragua. Next, in Section IV we use econometric methods to find the determinants of changes in welfare over the panel period as measured by consumption and income. In the conclusions in Section V, we will bring these three types of analysis together and build a matrix of poverty exit paths combined with policy recommendations for specific categories of rural households. Full results can be found in Appendices II, while a detailed discussion of panel data issues, most importantly that of attrition, can be found in Appendix I.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA) in its series Working Papers with number
02-12.
Length: 57 pages Date of creation: 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:fao:wpaper:0212
Contact details of provider: Postal: Agricultural Sector in Economic Development Service FAO Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00153 Rome Italy Phone: +39(6) 57051 Fax: +39 06 57055522 Email: Web page: http://www.fao.org/es/esa/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Gustavo Anríquez).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Alderman, Harold & Watkins, Susan Cotts & Kohler, Hans-Peter & Maluccio, John A. & Behrman, Jere R., 2000.
"Attrition in longitudinal household survey data,"
FCND briefs
96, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Harold Alderman & Jere Behrman & Hans-Peter Kohler & John A. Maluccio & Susan Watkins, 2001.
"Attrition in Longitudinal Household Survey Data,"
Demographic Research,
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 5(4), pages 79-124, November.
[Downloadable!]
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Benjamin Davis & Paul Winters & Gero Carletto & Katia Covarrubias & Esteban Quinones & Alberto Zezza & Kostas Stamoulis & Genny Bonomi & Stefania DiGiuseppe, 2007.
"Rural Income Generating Activities; A Cross Country Comparison,"
Working Papers
07-16, Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA).
[Downloadable!]
Did you know? You can import bibliographic info in various formats into you bibliographic tool, or just into your word processor. See under "publisher info" on each abstract page.