The Afrobarometer has developed an experiential measure of lived poverty called the Lived Poverty Index (LPI). It measures how frequently people go without basic necessities during the course of a year. This is a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty not captured by existing objective or subjective measures. As an individual measure, the LPI is found to be valid and reliable. However, it exhibits only moderate external validity when compared with absolute measures of national wealth. Contrary to what appears to be the consensus among economists, GDP growth is accompanied by increases in lived poverty, and there is only a weak relationship between LPI and measures of human development or income poverty. At the same time, lived poverty is strongly related to country level measures of political freedom. This supports Sen's (1999) arguments about development as freedom and Halperin et al’s (2005) arguments about the “democracy advantage” in development. This paper concludes that this measure does well at measuring the experiential core of poverty, and capturing it in a way that other widely used international development indicators do not.
Poverty and health
The regressive food policies imposed on poor countries by the World Bank and IMF are codified and enforced by the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). The AoA, as Afsar Jafri of Focus on the Global South writes, is "biased in favour of capital-intensive, corporate agribusiness-driven and export-oriented agriculture." AoA should be abolished, and Third World countries should have the right to unilaterally cancel liberalization policies imposed through the World Bank, IMF, and WTO, as well as through bilateral free trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA.
In the last decade a number of initiatives have been used in Malawi to tackle the issue of household food insecurity. One of the most controversial has been the Starter Pack programme launched in 1998. Initially consisting of a free handout of packs of improved maize seed, legumes and fertiliser to every small holder farm household in Malawi the scheme, under donor pressure, was subsequently scaled down to become a form of targeted social safety net programme. This paper analyses the strengths and weakness of both the original programme and its scaled down version.
The objectives of the study were: to compare the nutritional status of participants (children who participate in the school lunch) and non-participants (children who do not participate in the school lunch) and to assess the diet quality of the school and home lunch. It was hypothesized that the nutritional status of participants was better than that of the nonparticipants. Three hundred and twenty pupils (index children) and their parents were randomly selected for the purpose of the study. Anthropometric measurements, 24-hour recall, interview schedules and observed weighed technique were the instruments used in data collection. The results indicated a positive association between the school lunch and nutritional status. The diet quality of the school lunch and nutritional status of participants were significantly higher than that of the non-participants. More schools and parents in similar environments should therefore be encouraged to venture into the SLP because of their positive outcome on nutritional status as well as the diet quality of participating children.
This article provides evidence on the link between poverty and risky sexual behaviour. It examines the effect of wealth status on age at first sex, condom use, and multiple partners using data from more than 19,000 adolescents from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. The results show that the wealthiest girls in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi have later sexual debut compared with poorer adolescents, but this association was not significant in Uganda. Wealth status is weaker among males and significant only in Malawi, where those in the middle income group had earlier sexual debut. Wealthier adolescents were most likely to use condoms, but wealth status was not associated with the number of sexual partners. The authors conclude that understanding patterns and motivations of early sexual debut, non-use of condoms, and multiple partnerships is an important contribution to HIV prevention strategies. From this study poverty appears to influence early sexual debut, especially among females, and the poor are less likely to be using condoms. Therefore, poverty, by influencing sexual behaviour and access to services, can influence the transmission of HIV infection.
Poverty is the underlying cause of child deaths in South Africa, according to a recent study released by the Medical Research Council. But other sub-Saharan African countries, with less money and fewer resources, have managed to cut their child mortality rates. A recent study in The Lancet reported that deaths in children under age five have been dropping in Tanzania, whereas between 2000 and 2004 child mortality dropped by 24 percent. During this period, the Tanzanian government increased the annual amount spent on healthcare per citizen from 4.70 to 11.70 (about R36 to R89,60). The money was also evenly distributed across the country, rather than favouring richer districts.
This paper explores the prospects of poverty reduction with particular reference to health services to older people in Tanzania. Tanzania’s National Ageing Policy raises a number of questions on the health of older people some of which are answered by the country’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty. This paper aims to analyse and establish the prospects of improvement of health services to older people in Tanzania, including: do the poverty reduction initiatives sufficiently address the obstacles of access to health services by older people; and does the fact that the poverty reduction initiatives are being pursued hand in hand with measures to overcome past failures of the state in planning such as decentralization and participatory strategic planning in the local areas make a difference? The researchers found that while the long term objective of government to make free health services available to older people is not in doubt, it is not yet clear how the objective will be achieved. It is still some way into the future that such bold policies will be translated into action backed by allocation of financial and human resources. Furthermore, the general national strategy for growth and reduction of poverty needs to be operationalised with sector and area specific programmes and plans, in this regard by Health ministry programmes and health plans of Local Governments.
The Essential Nutrition Actions package is an approach to expand the coverage of seven affordable and evidence-based actions to improve the nutritional status of women and children, especially those under two years of age. The Food and Nutrition Technical Assisstance Project (FANTA)'s Review of Incorporation of Essential Nutrition Actions into Public Health Programs in Ethiopia found that the approach has been incorporated into the Ethiopia Federal Ministry of Health system and multilateral and NGO programming, however, improved training and other steps are necessary to further institutionalise the approach. The review, requested by USAID/Ethiopia, examined a number of facilitating and inhibiting factors to ENA integration in the context of Ethiopia’s health system.
COMESA's goal is the establishment of a free trade area, a customs union, a common market and ultimately an economic union. COMESA is home to 10 of the poorest countries in the world - Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Zaire and Zambia. This paper examines the impact of COMESA on the poor. The report finds that while COMESA has liberalised trade in goods and services generally, there is now an urgent need to liberalise intra-regional trade in services and improve relations among its members. Conflicts in COMESA are unsustainable and strong
implementation mechanisms are needed to address non-tariff barriers and other trade restrictions within the region, with decisions on how transfer of sovereignty in some areas of trade policy to regional institutions is done in relation to SADC and COMESA.
The region as a whole is not on track to meet the MDG targets owing to, among others, increased prevalence of communicable diseases. In this paper, authors discuss the Economic impact of the three communicable diseases: HIV and AIDS, TB and Malaria and demonstrate that these diseases negatively affect economic growth. The paper is based on literature review of studies done within and outside the SADC region on the impact of the three communicable diseases.