Publication: Georgia Indebtedness Poverty Note: Analysis Based on Integrated Household Survey
Loading...
Published
2018-11-05
ISSN
Date
2019-06-11
Editor(s)
Abstract
There is considerable public concern about the level of household indebtedness in Georgia. The new regulation expected to come into force on November 1, 2018 addresses this concern by enforcing the responsible credit framework targeting commercial banks. The objective of this note is twofold. First, the note presents micro-level evidence using the nationally representative household survey to understand households’ borrowing patterns with supporting evidence from perceptions surveys. Second, the note examines plausible causal effects of over-indebtedness on household’s welfare. This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides macroeconomic indicators and findings from perception survey as the background evidence. Section 3 illustrates the prevalence of borrowing among the households and identifies type of households that borrow from different sources. Section 4 shows results from the causal impact analysis of bank loans on household welfare. Section 5 concludes with directions for future research.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Nozaki, Natsuko Kiso; Fuchs Tarlovsky, Alan; Cancho, Cesar A.. 2018. Georgia Indebtedness Poverty Note: Analysis Based on Integrated Household Survey. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31831 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication COVID-19 Armenia High Frequency Survey Brief, February 2021(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02-11)This report summarizes the main findings from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Armenia high frequency survey, wave 1, surveys I and II (COVID-19 AHFS-1 (I & II)) as of February 2021.Publication Time to Quit(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)This paper uses an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of tobacco tax increases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis considers the effect on household income of an increase in tobacco prices, changes in medical expenses, and the prolongation of working years under various scenarios, based on data in three waves of the national Household Budget Survey. One critical contribution is a quantification of the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. The results indicate that a rise in tobacco prices generates positive income variations across the lowest income groups in the population (the bottom 20 percent). At the same time, tobacco price increases have negative income effects among middle-income and upper-income groups. These effects are larger, the higher the income level. If benefits through lower medical expenses and an expansion in working years are considered, the positive effect is acerbated among the lowest income groups. The middle of the distribution sees the income effect turn from negative to positive, and the top 40 percent, although continuing to experience a negative effect, see the magnitude of this effect diminish. Altogether, these effects mean that increases in tobacco prices have a pro-poor, progressive effect in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These results also hold within entities and across urban and rural areas.Publication Impacts and Sources of Air Pollution in Tbilisi, Georgia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-20)Air pollution profoundly impacts welfare, causing more deaths globally than malnutrition, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, air pollution levels exceed international standards and surpass levels in other cities in the region. The average monthly PM2.5 concentration in Tbilisi is 20 µg/m3, four times higher than the World Health Organization’s annual recommended limit. This paper uses multiple data sources — administrative data, satellite imagery, private real estate transactions, and traffic data — to estimate the impact of air pollution on the health and productivity of people in Tbilisi. It estimates that a 1 percent increase in PM2.5 levels corresponds to a 0.24 percent increase in respiratory hospitalization rates. A 1 percent increase in PM2.5 is also associated with a 0.2 percent decrease in rental prices. All the estimates are lower bounds of the total impact of air pollution as they only account for short-term consequences. The study shows that traffic and industrial activity are significant drivers of air pollution in Tbilisi. The paper also estimates the positive co-benefits of potential carbon pricing policies from air pollution reduction. Adopting a carbon tax of $25 per ton would reduce hospitalizations by 0.44 percent per district by 2036, while increasing rental prices by 0.38 percent.Publication Distributional Impacts of Taxes and Benefits in Post-Soviet Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10)This study compares the distributional impacts of the main tax and social spending programs in eight countries of the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and Ukraine) by applying a state-of-the-art fiscal incidence analysis based on the Commitment to Equity methodology. The region is highly interesting due to a unique combination of strong elements of path dependency (socialist legacies) with radical liberalization and welfare state retrenchment. The study examines the actual outcomes in terms of inequality and poverty and assesses the extent to which these outcomes can be attributed to various welfare state policies in these countries. It examines the extent to which taxes and social spending are progressive (whether the average transfer declines with income) and equalizing (whether they reduce inequality). In contrast to the majority of fiscal incidence studies, which are typically limited to the assessment of the impact of direct taxes and transfers, the study estimates the cumulative impact of the tax-benefit system as a whole, including direct and indirect taxes, cash transfers, and transfers in kind such as public education and health care.Publication The Welfare and Distributional Effects of Increasing Taxes on Tobacco in Vietnam(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)This paper assesses the welfare and distributional effects of raising taxes on tobaccoin Vietnam. Tobacco taxes are recognized as effective policy tools to reduce tobaccoconsumption and to improve health outcomes. However, policy makers often hesitateto use them because of claims of their potentially regressive effects. According to thoseclaims, poorer households are particularly hurt by tobacco tax policies, as cigarettepurchases represent a larger share of their budgets relative to higher-income smokers.The paper argues that the claims on the regressive effects of tobacco tax policies arebased on naive, shortsighted, and incorrect estimations. Tobacco-related illnessesdamage health outcomes and the quality of the lives of smokers and their families, whilethey also cost billions of dollars in medical expenditures and losses in human capital andproductivity every year. Tobacco consumption imposes heavy economic burdens onhouseholds and governments, in addition to its well-known negative health and socialimpacts. Raising taxes on cigarettes dissuades consumption, hence improving healthoutcomes, adverting premature deaths, and reducing direct and indirect economic costs.The analysis applies the Extended Cost Benefit Analysis (ECBA) methodology to simulateempirically the costs, as well as the benefits of increasing the prices on cigarettes onthe welfare of Vietnamese households. Following a well-established body of literature,the ECBA acknowledges that there may be short-term direct negative effects of raisingprices on tobacco, as smokers can struggle to continue to purchase tobacco with theirunchanged household budgets. However, the model also incorporates two of the mainbenefits of reducing tobacco consumption by increasing taxes: (a) the reduction insmoking-related medical expenses borne by households and (b) the additional incomesthat households can earn by preventing years of productive life lost due to smoking attributablepremature deaths. A critical contribution of the ECBA is to incorporate decile-specific price elasticities of demand for cigarettes, to quantify the behavioral responses or sensitivity of smokers in different income groups to changes in cigarette prices. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first available empirical exercise to estimate price elasticities by income decile in Vietnam. Consistent with the literature and with empirical findings in other countries, the price elasticities of demand for cigarettes are larger for lower-income households. Lower income smokers are likely to reduce their tobacco consumption more drastically, when faced with a price increase. The ultimate distributional effect on welfare of the increasein the price of cigarettes due to tax increases will then depend on assessing the potentialbenefits against the short-term costs.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Doing Business 2014 : Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-28)Eleventh in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 185 economies, Doing Business 2014 measures regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Closing a business, Employing workers. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2013, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business”, and analyzes reforms to business regulation – identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. The Doing Business reports illustrate how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. Doing Business is a flagship product by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies use the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 870 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication World Development Report 2011(World Bank, 2011)The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.