Tuesday, April 2, 2019
The poverty trap
The pauperism trapSHORT actTopic Getting ho usance bemuses protrude of the meagreness trap requires a greater heighten on the charter position rather than the append case. portalDespite the substantial amount of research undertaken to study the economic egression and development and analyse how it facilitates the poverty reduction, in that respect has not been still hotshot remedy discover to make worthless countries rich. indigence continues to be the deliver of suffering of millions of lot around the globe, who atomic number 18 caught in a poverty trap. Azariadis and John Stachurski (2005) define the poverty trap as any self-reinforcing instrument which causespoverty to persist. Those implements causing poverty to persist female genitalia include, for instance, express mail introduction to procreation, inadequate diet, lack of reality health trouble, limited access to character reference and capital markets, inefficient governance, affable instability and hapless infrastructure. We bay window use one of the listed mechanisms to illustrate the emergence of the poverty trap. Limited access to education leads to an addd level of illiteracy among the unfortunate, which further determines the niche the curt goat take in the labour market. Being uneducated, the low is restricted to add together to pass un consummate labour, which does not pay high wages and brings the pathetics income level down. Income deprivation subsequently leads to inadequate nutrition, limited access to education, etcetera That is the trajectory wretched households follow towards falling into the poverty trap.What ar the shipway to hasten households pop out of the poverty trap? There atomic number 18 ii types of policies, write out and ingest office policy interpolations, which are utilize to lam the poverty trap. Supply office policies aim to directly provide service to the distressing that may concenter among other spheres of concern on education, health, or infrastructure, whereas the take away side policy proponents argue that first poor should rent these serve, otherwise they are going to be ineffective. The author of this essay shares the last mentioned point of view as well.Evidence suggests that enabling poor mint to get into in determining operate they need, their tincture and quantity is deprecative in ensuring policy discussions success. To guarantee sustainability of the results there should be social answerability in place, which allows poor tribe to hold the authorities accountable for the decisions and choices it makes for the poor. We in like manner build our blood base on a country eccentric from Bangladesh, where a prerequisite side financing interjection has outperformed a sum side financing intervention in the health parcel out sector. Hence, this essay aims to argue that getting households out of the poverty trap requires a greater focus on the submit side rather than the su pplement side.Voices of the PoorMani et al (2013) argue that being preoccupied with pressing financial concerns the poor have fewer cognitive resources to guide their choice and follow through therefore, they are unable to take informed decisions due to their poor cordial capabilities. Thus, taking this fact into consideration supply side policies are designed to help the poor to get out of poverty without hearing their voices. It is believed that the presidential term can decide better what is needed to get the poor out of the poverty trap on poor massess behalf. However, agree to the World Development Report (2004), public services often become people in access, quantity, and prime(prenominal). The discipline emphasizes that the main reason of the failed efforts of the growing countries to make services work for the poor is the extent to which poor people themselves are engaged in determining the quality and the quantity of the services which they are entitled to. run can work better if poor people are put at the centre of service prep by enabling them to monitor and discipline services providers by change their voice in policymaking and by reinforcing the incentives for providers to serve the poor (World Development Report, 2004).However, the supply side proponents allow for argue that a well-targeted strategy of the supply side performance incentives could on its own be enough to achieve the in convey(p) outcomes, for instance, drawing upon an example from Nicaragua where a conditional cash transfer computer computer class showed significant melioratements in immunizations, growth monitoring, and reductions in stunting (Regala, F. and Castro, L., 2009). Upon completion of the course an evaluation was conducted to identify the impact the combined supply and demand side intervention had. The evaluation showed that combining supply and demand side policies can significantly increase the use of health services among poor households and im prove health outcomes. Furthermore, the evaluation aimed to assess the impact demand side incentives but played in this intervention. For this social function, an evaluation about ten months after demand side incentives had been stopped in sealed areas was conducted, and it revealed that take-up rates for prophylactic health care services still remained high. The evaluation explained this result by the possibility that the program strategy dramatically improved provider outreach activities during the sign stage of implementation and thus the access of poor households to health services, reduction the costs of time and travel to reach healthcare service deliverance points was to a fault improved. It is possible, therefore, that a well-targeted strategy of supply side performance incentives could, on its own, be enough to achieve and maintain high levels of health care service use among poor rural populations in Nicaragua (Regala, F. and Castro, L., 2009).Although this example shows that supply side policies on their own can be efficient in helping the poor to get better access to health care services, we need to bear in mind that this is unless one example and, therefore, it cannot be representative of all supply side policy interventions. It is also stressed by the evaluation that the success of the program might be because provider outreach activities were improved thus, we question here that should demand side incentives, such(prenominal) as incentives for health providers to develop efficient plans to expand coverage cursorily in underserved areas, were not there from the beginning of the program the outcome of the program could have been less successful.Sustainability and Social functionDesigning policy interventions establish solely on the supply side uprise ensures less sustainability. When the poor are not knowledgeable enough about the policy intervention and, therefore, less touch on about maintaining the results of the policy once it is c ompleted, the intervention will have a short-term impact. This is one of the concerns often raised by aid agencies (International Labour Organization, 2001). A policy intervention is regarded as sustainable in case it carries on indeterminately with no further donor pastime or support, whether it be financial or otherwise. With a greater focus on the demand side, this concern is more likely to be addressed. In particularly, focusing policies on capacity building of the poor in ground of educating them about their rights, public services they are entitled to receive, the role they can play in improving their livelihood, providing more information about the stakeholders relate in policy design and implementation, etc., can be conducive to poverty reduction and, hence, to sustainable development. For instance, Economic Development Institute (1996) suggests that non-governmental organizations can suffice the poor to identify their needs and identify their priorities. These measures will build poor peoples capacity to demand services they need and hold policymakers accountable for their actions and policy choices. In other words, this will strengthen social accountability that relies on civil engagement, i.e. in which the poor can participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability (World Bank, 2004). This mechanism can function only through the demand side approach as it operates from the bottom-up (World Bank, 2004).It can be though argued that poor people caught in the poverty trap will be less concerned about social accountability when, for instance, they lack basic access to nutrition and clean water in the first place. Therefore, it is inefficient to consider develop soft skills of the poor until they have basic infrastructure, which would allow them to sustain their aliment and only then they can take a next bill to improving their capacity and benefiting from social accountability. Poor people need contiguous help today. Building capacity of the poor will take massive-lived time to show its results. Additionally, the supply side of governance already uses certain measures such as checks and balances, administrative rules and procedures, auditing requirements, and formal law enforcement mechanisms to tackle the repugn of accountability.Indeed, supply side policies aim to address immediate needs of the poor. However, the intervention can be considered successful if it is sustainable. Relying on the present-bias, i.e. immediate provision of services today rather than investment in develop capacity of the poor for greater results in the longer term, does not guarantee sustainability in the long run. As a result, the poor can only temporary get out of the poverty trap and then again be detain into poverty once the intervention is completed. Empowering the poor through social accountability enables sustainable development. bandage the supply based approach is an intervention that is limited to provision of services o nly and does not spread much beyond to improvement in governance, social accountability serves a multiple purpose and, therefore, has a long-lasting effect. As such, social accountability facilitates improvement in governance, ensures development effectiveness through a more-pro-poor policy design and, lastly, empowers poor people to demand goods and services they need most. As to the accountability measures utilise by the supply side of governance, evidences suggests that these top-down accountability promoting mechanisms have met with only limited success in many countries, both developed and developing (World Bank, 2004). As a result, social accountability measures described above are preferred.Demand Side FinancingFurthermore, having analyzed a number of supply side interventions and behaviors of the poor we can restate that its crucial to focus more on the demand side interventions. One of the main sectors covered by the supply side polices is a healthcare sector. Studies show that despite considerable subsidies allocated towards the supply side the access to the health care systems among the poor remains low. To address this draw cover song new demand side financing mechanisms are introduced (Schmidt, J., Ensor, T., Hossain, A. and Khan, S., 2010). These mechanisms transfer purchasing power to the targeted groups for defined healthcare goods and services. This measure is aimed to increase poor households access to specified goods and services. In particularly, such mechanism was applied in Bangladesh, where a enatic voucher lineation was implemented. The scheme provided vouchers to poor women that entitled them to receive skilled care at home or a facility and also provided payments for transport and food (Schmidt, J., Ensor, T., Hossain, A. and Khan, S., 2010). The evaluation of the program suggests that the take-up of vouchers was more rapid when the scheme was implemented through the demand side financing than previously through the supply based f inancing. Authors of the report describe the earlier implemented scheme through the supply side financing as an apparent failure, when all resources were allocated to the supply side and it was assumed that those with need will be able to access services.While supply side financing schemes can improve their outreach to the poor by constructing hospitals in the remote rural areas or providing funds for transport or transport itself to reach hospitals in cities, and improving service quality, so that people can have easier access to public healthcare services. However, as come shows that is rather challenging. Gupta, I., Joe, W. and Rudra, S. (2010)state that policymakers in developing countries have come to realize that public health services have not been achieving desired outcomes due to a significant lack of efficiency, fairness in service provision and its quality.Although, the demand side financing can be questioned with regards to the quality of healthcare services left to the providers discretion, the demand side interventions are implemented with an presumption that service providers are responsible for the service quality assurance, and if intervention beneficiaries are left to choose from a set of service providers, it is assumed that there is a considerable number of service providers to choose from. However, returning back to the example from Bangladesh we conclude that demand-side financing schemes are more effective based on the available data, which suggests that the rise in the voucher take-up appeared to be more rapid through the demand side financing scheme than through other non-demand side financing (supply side financing) areas. cultivationIn the course of this essay we aimed to emphasize that getting poor households out of the poverty trap requires a greater focus on the demand side interventions rather than the supply side interventions. In particularly, we highlighted the evidence proving this argument through examples of the assumed c ognitive poverty of the poor, where practitioners on the contrary bring evidence that those interventions that involve the poor in determining the quantity and quality of services they need prove to be more efficient. We also brought up the idea of social accountability that is critical not only in ensuring effectiveness and efficiency of the poverty alleviation programs, but also in improving governance and maintaining sustainability of the policy outcomes. Finally, we dwelled into a particular example of a policy intervention from Bangladesh, which aimed to provide vouchers to poor women that entitled them to receive skilled care at home or a facility and also provided payments for transport and food. The evaluation of this intervention helped us to analyze the results of both demand side financing and supply side financing. We reconfirmed that evidence from Bangladesh also proves that demand side policies are more effective in reaching the poor and addressing their needs.Bibliogr aphyAzariadis, C. and Stachurski, J. (2005). Poverty Traps,Handbook of Economic Growth.World Bank, (2004).World Development Report 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People. capital letter D.C. World Bank.Regala, F. and Castro, L. (2009).Nicaragua Combining Demand- and Supply-Side Incentives. Washington D.C.Economic Development Institute (1996).The Design and caution of Poverty lessening Programs and Projects in Anglophone Africa Proceedings of a Seminar Sponsored Jointly by the Economic Management Institute. Washington D.C.Mani, A. et al (2013). Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function. Science, 341(6149), p. 976-980.International Labour Organization, (2001).Mainstreaming Poverty Alleviation Strategies through Sustainable Rural Infrastructure Development. p.14.World Bank, (2004).Social Accountability An Introduction to the Concept and Emerging Practice. Social Development Papers. Participation and civil Engagement. Paper No. 76. Washington D.C. World Bank.Gupta, I., Joe, W. and Rudra, S. (2010).Demand Side Financing in Health How far can it address the issue of low example in developing countries?. World Health Report. Background Paper, 27. Schmidt, J., Ensor, T., Hossain, A. and Khan, S. (2010). Vouchers as demand side financing instruments for health care A review of the Bangladesh maternal voucher scheme.Health Policy, online 96(2), pp.98-107. Available at http//dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2010.01.008 Accessed 1 Nov. 2014.
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