Publication: Honduras Poverty Assessment: Toward a Path of Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth
Loading...
Other Files
2,464 downloads
Date
2023-02
ISSN
Published
2023-02
Editor(s)
Abstract
Honduras, already among the poorest countries in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, experienced weak poverty reduction in 2014–19 compared to other countries in the region. The COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricanes Eta and Iota led to a rise in poverty from 2019 to 2020; it is likely that poverty will remain above prepandemic levels in 2021. The economic rebound in 2021, as well as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, led to an increase in food prices; at the same time, Honduras’s population is vulnerable to rising food prices and food insecurity is high. In 2019, the extreme poor spent almost half of their income on food. Additionally, food insecurity was persistently high. A striking feature of Honduras is the deep and widening urban-rural divide in terms of quality of life. There is a wide urban-rural poverty gap for both the moderate and the extreme poor, which reflects significant disparities in access to basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation, and internet usage, as well as lower human capital accumulation and worsen labor market indicators in rural areas. While overall income inequality has been stagnant since 2014, inequality in rural areas has increased while in urban areas it has declined. The country is one of the most unequal countries in LAC. Hondurans continue to face deep and persistent disparities in access to and quality of education, with rural areas heavily penalized, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, despite high spending on education. Subnational disparities are particularly large; poverty continues to be most heavily concentrated in the country’s southwestern areas, in departments with higher shares of ethnic minorities, and in municipalities located in the south and southwest. This report focuses on the factors that have contributed to these observed poverty and inequality trends and patterns in Honduras.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Robayo-Abril, Monica; Rude, Britta; Cadena, Kiyomi; Espino, Ilya. 2023. Honduras Poverty Assessment: Toward a Path of Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39449 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Understanding and Addressing Energy Poverty in Romania(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-17)Addressing energy poverty is paramount for economic development, given its close connection to income poverty. Research indicates that lower-income households are disproportionately affected by energy price increases. Such households lack the financial means to absorb these shocks, which can lead to decreased overall welfare. This vulnerability can result in households’ refraining from using energy or using less efficient and dirtier technologies and sources, particularly during winter, which poses health risks. Moreover, global evidence suggests that residing in energy-deprived circumstances adversely affects overall well-being, human development, and environmental outcomes. The imperative to measure and address energy poverty in Romania is underscored by the potential development benefits and the European Commission’s prioritization of this issue within the European Just Transition context. This report aims to fill that gap by providing evidence on critical questions about the energy status of Romanian households. The report focuses on four key topics, relying on existing official household surveys and new qualitative and quantitative data collected in June–July 2023, with the aim of providing an updated snapshot of energy vulnerability among Romanian households.Publication Conceptualizing and Measuring Energy Poverty in Bulgaria(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-28)Addressing energy poverty has emerged as one of the main challenges for Bulgaria's poverty and social inclusion policy, particularly in the context of the European Green Deal and the current crisis in Ukraine. To tackle the adverse impacts of energy poverty effectively, a crucial initial step involves accurately defining and measuring this issue. Identifying households affected by energy poverty is essential for shaping and implementing targeted policies. This study explores various definitions of energy poverty within the Bulgarian context by (1) systematically reviewing current methodologies and measures employed in the EU context; (2) assessing the feasibility of implementing these measures in Bulgaria based on data availability, comparing the incidence of energy poverty using alternative measures, and presenting characteristics of energy poverty to inform potential policy instruments; and (3) providing policy recommendations for the measurement and monitoring of energy poverty. The way energy poverty is measured and the overlap with income poverty shape the types of policy solutions perceived to be possible and appropriate to address it. The evaluation supports the need to shift from single indicators to multidimensional approaches in measuring energy poverty. Additionally, enhancing the granularity, quality, and frequency of expenditure and income surveys can contribute to easier operationalization of these concepts and a better understanding of the demographics of energy poverty. The study proposes exploring alternative data generation methods, such as smart meters, further to enhance insights into the dynamics of energy poverty.Publication The Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship in Romania(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-29)Although female entrepreneurship is crucial to generating sustainable and equitable growth patterns, international evidence shows that women tend to be underrepresented in entrepreneurship, and this gender gap has exhibited remarkable persistence. In this study, we first measure the gender gap in entrepreneurship in Romania by using various data sources. We observe significant gender gaps, with the average gender gap in self-employment rates being 4.2 percentage points when abstracting from observable characteristics. Even when controlling for observable characteristics, the gender gap is persistent (3.7 percentage points). Other measures, such as the share of firms with female owners and top managers, indicate that the gap could be even larger. Moreover, we observe that the entrepreneurial gender gap varies across income quintiles and between rural and urban areas. In the second step, we analyze the potential drivers of women’s engaging less in entrepreneurship by following the model of the “5 M’s” developed by Brush, De Bruin, and Welter (2009). We find that the following drivers play a role in the entrepreneurial gender gap in Romania: gender gaps in financial inclusion and access to assets, harmful gender norms, motherhood, lack of childcare, and eldercare. Our findings suggest the need for a nuanced approach toward female entrepreneurship that factors in the distinct challenges of different groups of women and consists of a menu of policy interventions. Policies should range from improving women’s access to relevant assets, human capital, and networks to addressing harmful gender norms and sparking an entrepreneurial culture in Romania more generally. Lastly, our evidence indicates that women are more interested in “impact” entrepreneurship. As women entrepreneurs in Romania mainly operate in the primary sector, givingthem a leading role in the green transition has great potential for more sustainable and equitable growth patterns.Publication Quantifying Vulnerability to Poverty in El Salvador(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-02)El Salvador is marked by high vulnerability to risks and hazards, such as crime, natural disasters, and migration. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the vulnerability patterns of its population. This paper applies an innovative approach to estimate the population's vulnerability to poverty and analyze its underlying drivers. The findings show that ex-ante vulnerability to poverty decreased over 2016 to 2019, a parallel trend to the poverty reduction observed in the country during this period. This finding comes hand in hand with an increase in the importance of risk factors relative to a low accumulation of assets driving vulnerability. Additionally, household-level shocks play a more significant role than community-level shocks. To address vulnerabilities in the country, the government should invest in adaptive safety nets and risk mitigation strategies.Publication Poverty Mapping in El Salvador(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-02)Poverty mapping, the spatial representation and analysis of human wellbeing and poverty indicators is becoming an increasingly important instrument for investigating and discussing socioeconomic issues, informing targeting efforts, and guiding the geographic allocation of resources. One approach to addressing poverty is the geographic approach. In the geographic approach, poor people are identified and targeted through poverty maps. Indeed, the geographical approach is one of the methods used worldwide for targeting anti-poverty programs to reduce the gaps in social protection coverage of poor and vulnerable groups, and it has been widely implemented in several countries around the world. In 2020, the Salvador's General Directorate of Statistics and Censuses (DIGESTYC) and the World Bank started working on the project ‘Poverty mapping in El Salvador‘. The project is part of the government and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Programme, which is performed by experts of the National Statistical Institute (NSI) and the World Bank (WB). The main objective is to calculate the shares of households living in moderate and extreme poverty at disaggregated territorial levels (municipalities). Poverty mapping enhances our understanding of the geographic distribution of people living in poverty. This report presents poverty maps at the municipality level based on the Fay-Herriot model for small-area estimations.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.