Other Poverty Study
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Publication
Transitioning to Better Jobs in the Kyrgyz Republic: A jobs Diagnostic
(Washington, DC, 2015-09-18)This report takes an in-depth look at the development of jobs in the Kyrgyz Republic over the past decade to understand why the country has not realized better job outcomes. Drawing on evidence at the macro, household, and firm level, it examines key shortcomings in the current migration-led, remittance-driven development model that have weakened the country’s ability to create sufficient and high-quality employment opportunities and are likely to result in deteriorating job outcomes in the future. The report argues that several broad transformations will be needed to develop engines of growth in the Kyrgyz Republic outside remittances and shift to a better jobs path. The distortions and obstacles that currently prevent the expansion of private sector employment need to be unraveled; macroeconomic, regulatory, and logistical impediments to greater, more diversified export orientation need to be strategically addressed; the compensation of public employees must be reformed to reduce the level of corruption that discourages business growth; and the migration phenomenon, which will be a part of the employment mosaic for at least another decade, must be made to contribute to domestic employment creation and the country’s development. -
Publication
Kyrgyz Republic: Food Prices and Household Welfare
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05-28)Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food expenditure. Food price increases of 5, 10, and 15 percent are estimated to increase poverty rates between 2 and 5 percentage points in the baseline scenario. -
Publication
Kyrgyz Republic: Poverty Profile for 2013
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05-21)Over the last decade, the Kyrgyz Republic experienced volatile but positive economic growth. Since the early 2000s, the share of working age population has been growing robustly and foreign labor markets have been an important source of employment. The Kyrgyz Republic has achieved large reductions in poverty over the past decade, but in recent years progress has diminished. During 2003-2012, the Kyrgyz Republic saw significant convergence between urban and rural poverty rates. Poverty reduction during 2003-2013 was driven mostly by growth rather than redistribution. -
Publication
Poverty and Economic Mobility in the Kyrgyz Republic: Some Insights from the Life in Kyrgyzstan Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04-27)This report focuses on the economic mobility of individuals (and corresponding households) belonging to the bottom 40 percent of the Kyrgyz population. This is indeed the target population chosen by the World Bank Group for the achievement of its second and twin goal of shared prosperity (the first one remaining poverty reduction). Moreover, in the specific case of the Kyrgyz Republic total poverty rates in the period under analysis ranged between 34 and 37 percent, thus making the poverty and bottom 40 percent pools almost identical. For each selected transition group, the report depicts a detailed profile of corresponding main socio-economic characteristics. Four transition groups were in particular identified: (i) those who were found to be stuck in the bottom 40 percent in both 2010 and 2011; (ii) those who managed to move up from the bottom 40 percent in 2011; (iii) those who entered the bottom 40 percent in 2011, and (iv) those who managed to stay in the top 60 percent in both years under analysis. The evidence shows a few significant differences among these four groups in terms of both households’ invariant and individual characteristics. -
Publication
Regional Welfare Disparities in the Kyrgyz Republic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04)Kyrgyz Republic is an interesting case to study welfare disparities because of pronounced and long existed differences across various regions, rural, and urban areas of the country in spite of economic growth and overall poverty reduction (World Bank 2011). For instance urban poverty stood at 31 percent versus 40 percent in rural areas in 2011 (national statistical committee). The welfare disparities are particularly striking between the growing capital Bishkek and the other regions. Thus, for example, the poverty in the Naryn region is 50 percent versus 18 percent in the capital. The main goal of this paper is to analyze regional disparities in the Kyrgyz Republic by quantifying and separating the gap in welfare disparities in 2011 into two parts: the first part associated with observable characteristics of households and the second part associated with differences in marginal returns to these characteristics (potentially related to geographic factors). Welfare disparities are analyzed between and within the regions. In addition, the role of returns and characteristics in explaining welfare disparities both at the mean and across the distribution using oaxaca-blinder decomposition and its extensions is quantified. The proposed research is an important source of empirical evidence testing the propositions from the new economic geography. This is also the first empirical paper aimed at explaining regional welfare disparities in a country from the Central Asian region where the urban rural gap is an important component of inequality. The paper is structured as follows: it starts from the background information describing welfare disparities, economic growth and structural differences across different areas. The third section briefly discusses the methodology. The results of the decomposition are presented and discussed in the fourth section. The fifth section concludes. -
Publication
Kyrgyz Republic - Profile and Dynamics of Poverty and Inequality, 2009
(World Bank, 2011-10-03)Poverty reduction is an important goal for governments of many developing countries. This goal is synonymous with economic development and achieving a higher quality of life for all population groups. Thus, monitoring the dynamics of poverty and inequality is implicit in the monitoring of progress in societal development. As the vast literature shows, development progress to a large extent depends on economic and social policies and economic growth. Thus, identifying the relationship between relevant economic variables and poverty and inequality indicators may provide policy guidance on what has furthered the country's progress. The report consists of two main parts. The first part discusses poverty and inequality for 2009 and, thus, from a static perceptive. So, the first section describes and discusses the main features and correlates of the poor. The goal is to provide a brief overview of poverty in the Kyrgyz Republic and describe the characteristics of households and the poor. This is achieved by considering the poverty incidence among households and individuals differentiated by such characteristics as age, household size, employment status, educational attainment, geographic location, gender of the household head, and internal migration status of the household head. This section also incorporates some insights on poverty from a recent study carried out in the Kyrgyz Republic related to the poverty and social impact analysis of selected reforms in the social protection sector. The second section discusses the dynamics of poverty and inequality in the Kyrgyz Republic during 2006-2009. This section relates the trends of macro indicators gross domestic product, or GDP, growth in different sectors of the economy, the consumer price index [CPI], remittances, and social budget expenditures) to changes in micro indicators of interest (poverty and inequality). The objective is to integrate into one coherent picture the recent macro and micro developments. The period of 2006-2009 coincided with the food price volatility and financial crisis of 2008-09. So the distinct feature of this report is that the impact of international instabilities is reflected in the assessment of poverty and inequality. The report uses two types of data: the macroeconomic, national accounts data as regularly reported by the National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic (NSC), Ministry of Finance, and National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic, and microeconomic, primary data derived from the Kyrgyz Integrated Household Survey, or KIHS (also collected by the NSC). These two might not always be consistent with each other, but they do complement one another to provide useful policy insights.