Publication:
Poverty in the Brazilian Amazon: An Assessment of Poverty Focused on the State of Para

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (2.09 MB)
525 downloads
English Text (200.77 KB)
116 downloads
Date
2004-07
ISSN
Published
2004-07
Author(s)
Abstract
The states in the Brazilian Amazon have made progress in reducing poverty and improving social indicators in the last decade. Despite this progress, the poverty rate in the Amazon is among the highest in Brazil. As of 2000, rural poverty is the greatest challenge. In Par?, not only is the headcount poverty rate of 58.4 percent in rural areas more than 55 percent higher than headcount poverty in urban areas, but also poverty is much deeper in rural areas. The fall in infant mortality and adult illiteracy corroborate the improvement in measured income poverty. Census data from 2000 and 1991 reveal that more people left Par? than came to live in the state during the 1970s, the opposite of the 1980s. In 2000, the Gini coefficient for Par?, as in the Amazon as a whole, was 0.60. The poverty profile reveals that indigenous peoples experience a higher poverty incidence than other groups. Census 2000 data reveal that living in rural areas in Par? does not by itself affect the probability of being poor. Individual and household characteristics are more important than geographical location. The largest statistical differences in poverty reduction between rural and urban areas are found in the effect of education, sector of employment, gender, and family size. PNAD data from 2001 reveal that living in urban areas in Par? does not by itself affect the probability of falling below the poverty line in urban areas in Brazil. The strongest poverty correlates are education, experience, race, rural location, gender, and labor market association.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Verner, Dorte. 2004. Poverty in the Brazilian Amazon: An Assessment of Poverty Focused on the State of Para. Policy Research Working Paper;No.3357. © World Bank, Washington, D.C.. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14164 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Mapping the Risk Posed to Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems by Uncontrolled Access to Photovoltaic Water Pumping in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-01) Zuffinetti, Guillaume; Meunier, Simon
    Photovoltaic-powered groundwater pumping offers a transformative solution for water services in underserved areas. However, without proper regulation, this technology could overexploit groundwater resources, threatening the groundwater-dependent ecosystems that rely on them. Often overlooked in development planning and water allocation, groundwater-dependent ecosystems hold significant socioeconomic and environmental importance. This study maps the risk to groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa from uncontrolled access to photovoltaic groundwater pumping using the analytic hierarchy process. It evaluates risks using data on irradiance, groundwater, and population, and novel data on groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Two scenarios are analyzed to improve the robustness of the findings. The results show that 92 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s groundwater-dependent ecosystems risk overexploitation if photovoltaic water pumping is implemented without proper controls. Groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Southern and Eastern Africa, particularly in South Africa and Namibia, are found to face higher risks, while those in Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and southern Nigeria tend to be less at risk. Comparing these results with populations relying on unimproved water sources highlights regions like southern Nigeria and South Sudan, which could be prioritized for potential photovoltaic water pumping system investments due to their higher groundwater development needs and lower risks to groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Conversely, areas like Namibia and South Africa, with lower groundwater development needs but higher risks to groundwater-dependent ecosystems, should require targeted investments and very close groundwater monitoring. These findings can help policy makers in targeting investments in photovoltaic water pumping systems and identifying regions needing careful monitoring to ensure sustainable groundwater use and minimal impact on groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
  • Publication
    Long-Term and Lasting Impacts of Personal Initiative Training on Entrepreneurial Success
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-01) Campos, Francisco; Frese, Michael; Iacovone, Leonardo; Johnson, Hillary C.; McKenzie, David; Mensmann, Mona
    A randomized experiment in Togo found that personal initiative training for small businesses resulted in large and significant impacts for both men and women after two years (Campos et al, 2017). This paper revisits these entrepreneurs after seven years, and finds long-lasting average impacts of personal initiative training of $91 higher profits per month, which is larger than the 2-year impacts. However, these long-term impacts are very different for men and women: the impact for men grows over time as they accumulate more capital and increase self-efficacy, whereas the impact for women dissipates, and capital build-up is much more limited.
  • Publication
    Using Poverty Lines to Measure Refugee Self-Reliance
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-30) Hoogeveen, Johannes; Hopper, Robert
    Humanitarian models of refugee assistance increasingly promote refugee self-reliance without offering a clear understanding of what constitutes self-reliance, or how to measure it, although measurement is essential to assess whether the promotion of self-reliance has been successful. This paper proposes an approach to measuring self-reliance rooted in global poverty measurement: a refugee is self-reliant if their self-earned income exceeds the locally relevant poverty line. In its empirical application, the paper uses estimates of self-reliance drawn from 11 consumption surveys, which present the universe of data that can be used for such purposes. Refugees in middle-income countries are found to be far more likely to be self-reliant than those in lower income countries, while refugees residing in urban and non-camp settings demonstrate higher levels of self-reliance than those in rural and camp environments, reflecting the presence of greater economic opportunities outside camps and in urban areas. The paper also finds evidence that aid and self-reliance are inversely correlated, with more aid spent in environments where refugee self-reliance is constrained. The paper argues that a different outcome should be envisaged, one in which governments that encourage refugees to be self-reliant receive more aid. Such an approach would be beneficial for refugees, who would gain financial autonomy, and for host country citizens, who often face high levels of poverty and at times are even poorer than refugees.
  • Publication
    Spatial Inequality and Informality in Kenya’s Firm Network
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-30) Wiedemann, Verena; Kirui, Benard K.; Khandelwal, Vatsal; Chacha, Peter W.
    The spatial configuration of domestic supply chains plays a crucial role in the transmission of shocks. This paper investigates the representativeness of formal firm-to-firm trade data in capturing overall domestic trade patterns in Kenya — a context with a high prevalence of informal economic activity. It first documents a series of stylized facts and shows that informal economic activity is not randomly distributed across space and sectors, with a higher incidence of informality in downstream sectors and smaller regional markets. The paper then links granular transaction-level data on formal firms with data on informal economic activity to estimate a structural model and predict a counterfactual network that accounts for informal firms. The findings show that formal sector data overstates the spatial concentration of aggregate trade flows and under accounts for trade within regions and across regions with stronger social ties. Additionally, the higher the informality in a sector and region is, the more formal sector data underestimates its vulnerability to domestic output shocks and overestimate its vulnerability to import shocks.
  • Publication
    Simulating Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Minimum Wage Increases in Romania
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-30) Robayo-Abril, Monica; Zamfir, Mădălina; Wroński, Marcin
    Minimum wages are an essential component of a country's social protection system, aiming to protect vulnerable workers and reduce poverty and wage inequality. Yet, there are risks associated with poor minimum wage design. Higher minimum wages may result in higher earnings for affected workers but fewer job opportunities for others, including the demographic groups they are intended to help, such as those with very low wages and skills and youth, so ex-ante evaluation of potential employment, wage, and distributional impacts is needed. Over the past decade, Romania experienced significant real growth in the minimum wage and a rising minimum-to-median wage ratio. However, when looking at minimum living standards, the analysis shows that the statutory minimum wage is higher than the living wage needed to cover a consumption food basket estimated by the European Commission under the European Reference budget network, but not enough to include non-food components. The microsimulation results using administrative tax data show that tying minimum wage to inflation or the living wage could lead to a slight short-term wage increase for some workers but may cause job loss in the long run, especially for younger workers. The minimum wage increase could have varying impacts across regions and sectors, with the accommodation and food services sector and those living in the Suceava region, which has the highest proportion of affected employees. Moreover, male employees tend to be more affected than their female counterparts.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Associated URLs
Associated content
Citations