News
January 2010 - ESRC Research Grant for project on poverty and undernutrition in rural India
Dr Katsushi Imai, a Faculty Associate of BWPI has secured a research grant (£59, 473, 1st April 2010-31st March 2011) from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a project entitled “On the Change of Poverty and Undernutrition in Rural India”.
The main objective of the project is to shed new light on the empirical puzzle: why per capita calorie consumption has declined across all households with different income levels in both rural and urban areas despite high rates of income and consumption growth in recent India (Deaton and Dreze, 2008). They argue that 'the calorie Engel curve', which plots per capita total calories or cereal calories and household per capita expenditure, has shifted consistently downwards during 1983-2005, based on National Sample Survey (NSS) data. However, if we focus on the rural wage earners, the possibility of poverty nutrition trap exists, that is, the labour productivity and wage rates are affected by nutritional intakes and thus those undernourished tend to be trapped in poverty. We will investigate why calorie intake declined over time (and why the improvement of anthropometric indicators has been slow) and whether it is largely due to decline of the calorie requirement. Also examined are the effects of activity intensities, poverty interventions, such as, Rural Public Works, and other determinants of calorie requirements, on calorie intakes by linking three different survey data, that is, NSS, NFHS and NCAER data in the recent three rounds, in 1992-4, 1998-2000 and 2004-6.
Overseas collaborators/ consultants are Prof. Raghav Gaiha (University of Delhi), Prof. Raghbendra Jha (Australian National University) and Dr. Veena S. Kulkarni (Arkansas State University). Woojin Kang at the School of Social Sciences will work as a research officer for the project.
December 2009 - Professor Kunal Sen awarded Pathfinder Research Grant from the ESRC
Professor Kunal Sen of IDPM (and Professorial Fellow, BWPI) has been awarded a prestigious Pathfinder Research Grant from the ESRC, with two co-investigators based in India, Dr Vinish Kathuria of IIT-Mumbai and Dr Rajesh Raj Natarajan of CMDR, Dharwad. Pathfinder Research Projects are aimed at supporting the ESRC in pursuit of its international agenda by broadening the outreach of the Council in strengthening international research networks, joining social scientists in Brazil and India with UK counterparts; and helping in building capacity in quantitative methods in the social sciences within Brazil and India. The specific objective of Professor Sen’s research grant is to understand the micro-foundations of pro-poor growth by examining how economic restructuring has affected the performance of manufacturing firms in India, especially those based in the informal sector, using state-of-the-art econometric methodologies. As part of the communications strategy, a network will be created among academics, statistical agencies and policy makers in the UK, India and other countries in the production and analysis of firm-level data, with the specific objectives of improving the quality of firm level data and to contribute to the making of evidence based policies in the areas of industrial and regulatory economics in developing economies. An international conference on the micro-foundations of pro-poor growth in developing countries is planned in Mumbai in April 2011.
December 2009 - Launch of the report Moving Forward in Zimbabwe - reducing poverty and promoting growth, with special guest Dr Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe Minister of Finance.
Friday 11th December, 3pm, Lecture Theatre A, University Place.
Presentation of the report by Dr Admos Chimhowu (BWPI) with discussant Dr Desire M. Sibanda, Zimbabwe Secretary for Economic Planning and Investment Promotion.
Question and Answer session chaired by Professor David Hulme, followed by drinks reception.
Click here to go to the Report.
Media Coverage
BBC World Service - 12 December 2009 - listen to the programme
BBC Today Programme - 12 December 2009 - listen to the programme
December 2009 - Is the microloan bubble about to burst?
In Business, BBC Radio 4, 9:30pm Sunday 6th December
Microloans have brought credit to millions of poor people shunned by the conventional banking system, but now commercial financial institutions are jumping on the microlending bandwagon.
This programme incluces commentary from a number of people, including BWPI Honorary Senior Fellow Stuart Rutherford and Syed Hashemi of the BRAC Development Institute.
Listen to the programme
Book publication: Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective
Edited by Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers, 2009, Palgrave Macmillan.
BWPI Senior Research Fellow Dennis Rodgers is co-editor of this book on gangs and youth violence in Latin America.
'Criminal violence has come dramatically to the forefront in contemporary Latin America, to the extent that it is widely considered the critical social concern of the present. Youth are among the principal victims but also the primary perpetrators of this new panorama of brutality. At the same time, the phenomenon remains profoundly misunderstood, as sensationalist myths and stereotypes abound, uncritically associated with issues such as poverty, underdevelopment, and psychological deviance. Through the juxtaposition of wide-ranging, cutting-edge studies focusing specifically on youth gangs and the dynamics of juvenile justice, this volume provides a balanced and systematic comparative overview of the reality of present-day Latin American youth violence'.
Praise for Youth Violence in Latin America
"These studies, in an original and comparative framework, offer creative and inspiring approaches to understanding youth violence, opening the way for new perspectives to address the needs and rights of the youth in Latin America and all over the world".--Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Independent Expert of the UN Secretary-General for the global study on violence against children and Author of the World Report on Violence against Children (2006)
"This ground-breaking volume on youth violence in Latin America is holistic and balanced in scope, and contributes definitively to a complex and often contentious debate. It is highly recommended for researchers and policy makers alike".--Caroline Moser, Professor of Urban Development, Global Urban Research Centre, University of Manchester, UK
For further details, see the Palgrave Macmillan website