Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident Due to planned maintenance there will be periods of time where the website may be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .
Login Alert
- > Poverty, Inequality, and Inclusive Growth in Asia
- > Poverty and Inequality in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Symbols
- Tables, Figures, and Boxes
- 1 Poverty, Inequality, and Inclusive Growth in Asia
- Part A Measuring Inequality and Poverty
- Part B Selected Policy Issues for Inclusive Growth
- Part C Country Studies
- 9 Growth, Inequality, and the Labor Market: The Philippines
- 10 Poverty and Inequality in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis
- 11 Decomposing Income Inequality: People's Republic of China, 1990–2005
- 12 Evolution of Income Mobility: People's Republic of China, 1991–2002
- 13 Occupational Segregation and Gender Discrimination in Labor Markets: Thailand and Viet Nam
- 14 Inclusiveness through Food Security: The Philippines' National Food Program
10 - Poverty and Inequality in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis
from Part C - Country Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
Introduction
Nepal made significant progress in reducing poverty between 1995– 1996 and 2003–2004, despite political instability. However, poverty incidence remains high–estimated at about 31% in 2003– 2004–and inequality also increased during this period. Based on the Gini coefficient, inequality rose from about 34.2 in 1995–1996 to about 41.4 in 2003–2004, the highest in South Asia. Such trends seem to suggest the limited inclusiveness of Nepal's recent economic growth. Given that poverty and inequality are considered among the most significant drivers of recent internal conflicts, it is important that a new growth strategy opens up economic opportunity to excluded groups.
Inclusive growth not only generates economic opportunity, but also ensures equal access. Hence, growth is said to be inclusive when it allows all members of society to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the growth process on an equal basis, regardless of individual circumstance (Ali and Zhuang 2007). This is a particularly relevant question for Nepal, where exclusion remains an important development hurdle (World Bank and DFID 2006).
This chapter assesses the inclusiveness of Nepal's recent economic growth and examines what factors helped certain groups of households escape poverty between 1995–1996 and 2003–2004. The findings of the analysis will assist policy makers in formulating measures to enhance the inclusiveness of growth and poverty reduction. The empirical analysis is based on data from the Nepal Living Standards Surveys conducted in 1995–1996 (NLSS I) and in 2003–2004 (NLSS II).
Access options
Save book to kindle.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service .
- Poverty and Inequality in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis
- By Yoko Niimi , Population Anchor Unit, World Bank
- Edited by Juzhong Zhuang
- Book: Poverty, Inequality, and Inclusive Growth in Asia
- Online publication: 05 March 2012
- Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7135/UPO9780857288066.012
Save book to Dropbox
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .
Save book to Google Drive
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .
Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
Provincial Poverty in Nepal
Poverty is not only the severe economic condition of people but it is also the cultural, ethical, social, political, psychological and economic imperative of mankind. It is one of the distressing circumstancesof people in developing countries have to contend with in their daily lives. It is common among the low and middle income class in these countries like Nepal.This research is based on the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) such as those related to education, health, material wellbeing, energy, water and sanitation, structure of house, and access to other services, varies considerably in seven provinces of Nepal. It illustrates the importance of location-specific data in the development of effective poverty reduction strategies of federal and provincial governments.The MPI shows that, the 28.6% of the people of Nepal are still multi-dimensionally poor meaning that their lives are battered by several deprivations simultaneously. This paper also discusses about the trends and me...
Related Papers
Economic Literature
Lekha Bhattarai
Nepal Population Journal
Keshab Adhikari
Journal of Poverty Investment and Development
Trilochan Pokharel
Jean-Yves Gerlitz
Approximately 211 million people reside in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. Although poverty levels in this region are high, there is a lack of cohesive information on the socioeconomic status of its populations that would enable decision makers to understand different manifestations of poverty and help designing effective poverty alleviation programs. Hence, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), in consultation with international and regional partners, has developed the Multidimensional Poverty Measure for the Hindu Kush Himalayas (MPM-HKH). The MPM-HKH aims to identify and describe poor and vulnerable households across the HKH region in a consistent manner - a region that is predominantly rural, mountainous, and covers several of the world's least developed countries. Using Nepal as an illustrative example, this paper documents how the MPM-HKH was developed and demonstrates the utility of this approach by analyzing household survey data of 23 selected districts. The analysis gives important clues about differences in the intensity and composition of multidimensional poverty across these locations. The findings should be useful to decision makers to identify areas of intervention and guide their measures to reduce poverty. It furthermore highlights the need for location-specific poverty alleviation strategies as the manifestation of poverty varies considerably between the surveyed districts. Keywords: mountain poverty, South Asia, developing countries, poverty alleviation, location-specific targeting
The European Journal of Comparative Economics
Sanjaya Acharya
Chirangivi Bista
Management Dynamics
Krishna Acharya
This study focuses on the Poverty Profile by type of house of Households in Nepal among 5,988 households of Nepal. It is based on the Nepal Living Standards Survey-III 2010/11 cross-sectional data. The data were used to analyze descriptive statistics including poverty profiles. The FGT poverty index (index proposed by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke) is employed to examine the head count rate or poverty incidence, poverty gap and severity poverty of Nepal. It reveals that 25.2% of the sample households live below the poverty line (Rs.19261 per individual per year) with an average poverty gap and squared poverty gap of 5.43% and 1.81 % respectively. Households living in Pakki and Non-Pakki houses are 0.8 and 52.4 percent average poor and 0.2 and 1.7 percent core poor respectively.
Journal of Human Development and Capabilities
Udaya Wagle
Gary Woller
Global South Development Magazine
Manoj Bhusal
This short essay discusses the issue of poverty in Nepal. Despite a number of poverty-reduction programs run by a myriad of actors, poverty in Nepal is still rampant, and the country remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In this essay, I argue that many poverty alleviation programs in Nepal failed because they isolated poverty as an economic and growth problem, whereas, poverty should have been identified and tackled as a political and a human rights issue. I begin the essay by briefly sharing my own experience of poverty while growing up in rural Nepal. I, then, explore the overall poverty scenario in Nepal and analyze a few major causes and consequences of poverty in the country. After offering an overview of poverty reduction approaches in Nepal, I conclude the essay with a few recommendations intended for organizations and policymakers formulating poverty-alleviation strategies in Nepal.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
RELATED PAPERS
Prabin Khanal
Devendra Chhetry
Arth prabandh: A Journal of Economics and Management
Badri Aryal
Damaru Ballabha Paudel
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
- Find new research papers in:
- Health Sciences
- Earth Sciences
- Cognitive Science
- Mathematics
- Computer Science
- Academia ©2024
Taking on Poverty and Inequality in Nepal
Faris hadad-zervos.
Nepal’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is underway. Domestic demand for investment and consumption has recovered, tourists are beginning to return to Nepal as borders reopen, and the numbers of migrant workers leaving the country for overseas employment have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
With growth averaging 4.5 percent per year over the last decade, Nepal also achieved lower middle-income status in 2020 and is aiming for graduation from Least Development Country status by 2026. Improvements are visible in access to electricity and drinking water, increasing primary and secondary school enrollment, and reducing infant mortality. Also, the advent of federalism has meant that the Nepali people not only saw their lives improved but can also aspire for something greater for their children.
Yet, that’s not the whole story of Nepal’s development over the last decade.
The lack of official data on poverty since 2010 has hindered our collective understanding of whether and how growth has translated into improvements in economic welfare for Nepali households over the last decade.
The economy has also sustained several shocks over this time, including the Gorkha earthquake and fuel crisis in 2015, floods in 2017, landslides, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
COVID-19 induced substantial jobs and income losses in Nepal, and the recovery has been unequal and is incomplete. By the end of 2021, close to a fifth of job losses had not been recovered, and women and those in agriculture and lower skill occupations, were recovering more slowly.
This recovery is also taking place within a weak domestic labor market that relies overwhelmingly on informal and subsistence jobs, as well as pre-existing spatial inequalities in access to human capital and limited social assistance for the poor.
The Nepali people are well-known for their resilience, and thankfully so. Vulnerability to shocks – both economic and climate – remains an enduring feature of the country’s development story. As risks from climate change and global economic shocks increase, the livelihoods of ordinary Nepali families will continue to be fragile.
So, to sustain development gains, Nepal’s development path must be inclusive of poor and rural households, adapt to a changing climate, and be responsive to shocks. According to the recent Nepal Climate Change Diagnostic Report , about 80 percent of the population is at risk from natural and climate-induced hazards. And vulnerable communities, particularly poorer households and those relying on subsistence agriculture, as well as remote, mountainous municipalities face the highest risks.
To sustain development gains, Nepal’s development path must be inclusive of poor and rural households, adapt to a changing climate, and be responsive to shocks.
An opportunity to capitalize on the promise of federalism How Nepal responds to these dual challenges of vulnerability and inequality will shape its development storyline. This is because these challenges also present opportunities for shifting the nation’s development investments towards green, resilient, and inclusive growth.
These opportunities are further amplified by the move to federalism. The inherent promise of federalism is the potential for more inclusive and pro-poor governance across the country , through more equitable distribution of resources, greater transparency, and accountability.
The development of a federal data ecosystem that can produce the data needed to inform this transition, and the proactive use of this evidence to design the right policies will therefore be critical to deliver on this promise of improved inclusion and resilience in the country.
Charting the Course After a long gap of 12 years, the fourth Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS-IV) is currently being rolled out in the field. Over the course of a year, 9,600 Nepali households will be interviewed on a range of topics – health, education, jobs, migration, social protection – to provide the data for a much-needed update of Nepal’s poverty statistics, including poverty estimates at the provincial level for the first time.
Thus, the NLSS-IV will provide an evidence baseline for a policy framework to support the fight against poverty and inequality. The World Bank, with the UK Government’s Evidence for Development Program are proud partners of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in the implementation of the NLSS IV. Many other development partners are equally engaged and committed to this agenda.
After a long gap of 12 years, the fourth Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS-IV) is currently being rolled out in the field to provide the data for a much-needed update of Nepal’s poverty statistics, including poverty estimates at the provincial level.
The 2015 Constitution also put in place a fundamental shift in Nepal’s data governance architecture, placing local governments at the forefront of date collection, analysis, and reporting. This is a big shift that will take time to be realized as federalism rolls out and takes hold. It will need careful prioritization to design a decentralized data architecture, one that allows for the right data to be generated, transmitted, and used across all three levels of government.
Given that the move from a centralized to a federal system of governance was largely meant to address historical inequalities, it will be critical to ensure that local data systems integrate citizens voices from the start . Such an emphasis can improve the quality of the data and promote participation and accountability within Nepal’s emerging governance system.
Nepal has demonstrated its commitment to address the challenges to inclusive development, including those posed by climate risks. The government and its development partners adopted the Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development (GRID) approach in 2021.
The government at all levels is taking concrete steps to integrate climate strategies and actions into development policies, programs, and budgets. The recent World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Report for Nepal further supports the government’s GRID approach. The end game is to strengthen household and community resilience. Making this happen requires better governance for climate change and disaster risk management.
While federal institutions need to create the right enabling environment and policy frameworks for a green, resilient, and inclusive Nepal, provincial and local governments will be at the forefront taking action – to protect the vulnerable and excluded, to identify and address emerging risks, and to respond in near time to shocks.
And while federal institutions need to create the right enabling environment and policy frameworks for a green, resilient, and inclusive Nepal, provincial and local governments will be at the forefront taking action – to protect the vulnerable and excluded, to identify and address emerging risks, and to respond in near time to shocks.
A concerted effort to strengthen their capacity to use data and evidence to respond to the dual challenges of vulnerability and exclusion could not come at a better time. It also allows the country to engage in regional and global analysis and comparisons of the impacts of climate change and other shocks, an important precursor to taking collective action with other countries. The World Bank is here to support this historic transition.
- Inequality and Shared Prosperity
- End Poverty
World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka
Join the Conversation
- Share on mail
- comments added
- DOI: 10.47604/jpid.2583
- Corpus ID: 270162585
Impact of Microfinance Initiatives on Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh
- Published in Journal of poverty… 29 May 2024
26 References
Fighting poverty with microcredit: experience in bangladesh, systematic review. what is the evidence of the impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor people, income and poverty in the united states: 2013.
- Highly Influential
The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
Federal statistical office germany, 도시가계연보 = annual report on the family income and expenditure survey, related papers.
Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Poverty means sweat. In Nepal, it takes 3 hours and 21 minutes to earn. enough money to buy a kilo of rice, 4 hours and 26 minutes for a liter of. milk, 4 hours and 52 minutes for a kilo of sugar ...
Table 1.1 shows the head count, poverty gap, and squared poverty gap indexes for Nepal as a whole, for the country's three ecological zones, and for the urban vs. the rural sector. At the national level, poverty incidence is estimated at 42%, poverty intensity at 12%, and poverty severity at 0.05%.
This report forms an integral part of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB's) continuing efforts to focus on poverty in Nepal. ADB has launched a series of initiatives to analyze the nature and causes of poverty in Nepal and to develop better approaches to reduce it, following adoption of poverty reduction as ADB's overarching goal in November 1999.
4. Nepal in global poverty map By virtue Nepal belongs to least developed region with high poverty, persistent inequality and deprivation from basic facilities of health, education and economy. Despite the progress Nepal has made in recent days, the stories of poverty and deprivation are still popular and remain popular for other several decades.
Poverty incidence at $2 per day has similarly declined from 89.0% in 1996 to 77.3% in 2004 and 57.3% in 2011 (Figure. 4. Despite the remarkable decline in overall poverty level, poverty in rural Nepal is still higher than urban Nepal, even though rural poverty is declining at a faster pace than urban poverty.
This is a particularly relevant question for Nepal, where exclusion remains an important development hurdle (World Bank and DFID 2006). This chapter assesses the inclusiveness of Nepal's recent economic growth and examines what factors helped certain groups of households escape poverty between 1995-1996 and 2003-2004.
Recent years, poverty in Nepal has famously declined. This is warranted by a sharply decreasing trend in poverty incidence - from 41.8% in 1996 to 30.9% in 2004 and to 25.16% in 2011 (CBS, 2005; 2011). Many economists question this dramatic change in poverty levels. However, the intention of this paper is not to join the debate on the level
The official data as of 2010/11 affirms around 25 percent Nepali live under absolute poverty line. The poverty line is derived at annual per capita earning of $225 as of 2013 December. There are debates whether the poverty line really defines basic necessities of survival. On contrary, the Human Poverty Index shows 44 percent of Nepali are deprived of basic education, health and access to ...
This short essay discusses the issue of poverty in Nepal. Despite a number of poverty-reduction programs run by a myriad of actors, poverty in Nepal is still rampant, and the country remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In this essay, I argue that many poverty alleviation programs in Nepal failed because they isolated poverty as an economic and growth problem, whereas, poverty ...
Nepal has been able to gear up a high growth rate, reduce poverty and macroeco-nomic stability during the period. The peri-odic plans have been focused on promoting growth, employment, infrastructure, human development and building resilience. The current l5th Plan has been fully aligned with the SDGs and provides a clear roadmap to-
The Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. The Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) is the IMF's lending window for low-income countries (for terms of the PRGF, see Box 1). Like all support from the IMF, it is intended to alleviate balance of payments pressures and is not designed to support the government budget.
the poverty level in Nepal from 38% of the population at the beginning of the Plan period to 30% by the end of the Tenth Plan, and to further reduce the poverty ratio to 10% in about fifteen years' time. 2 The reduction of poverty to 30% by the end of the Tenth Plan is a daunting task by itself.
This figure stood at 68% in 1996 and 53.1% in 2004 (CBS 2011). Even when using the national poverty line, poverty has fallen "at an accelerated pace from 41.8% to 30.9% between 1996 and 2004 and further to 25.2% of the overall population in 2011" (Asian Development Bank 2013: 1). The devil, however, is in the details.
Urban Poverty in Nepal. Shivit Bakrania. 2016. This research report tracks various aspects of poverty in Nepal across geographical areas and evaluates the rise of squatter settlements. It also looks at various dimensions of poverty, resilience for the same, and the impact of government policy and planning on urban poverty and vulnerability.
largely been ignored in the assessment of poverty in Nepal. The paper will thus, explore the links between roads and poverty alleviation, its challenges, and opportunities to long term plans, precisely the 15th plan and SDG to attain sustainable poverty reduction. The 15th plan and SDG recognize that sustainable development cannot be complete ...
The article reviews briefly the financial and monetary developments in Nepal since the mid-fifties both in developmental and poverty perspectives. Particularly, the role of the banking sector in rural financing and specific poverty targeted programs is reviewed in detail. Impact analysis is made on the basis of availability of data.
Urban Poverty in Nepal. S. Bakrania. Published 1 February 2016. Geography, Sociology, Economics. This research report tracks various aspects of poverty in Nepal across geographical areas and evaluates the rise of squatter settlements. It also looks at various dimensions of poverty, resilience for the same, and the impact of government policy ...
The poverty rate is a political issue in Nepal because of the multiform data of the government and international organizations like WB, UNDP, ADB etc. They wanted to show the minimum rate of poverty because of their own effort.The official poverty rate is equally sketchy - hovering from 18.7% to 40%.
Taking on Poverty and Inequality in Nepal. Nepal's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is underway. Domestic demand for investment and consumption has recovered, tourists are beginning to return to Nepal as borders reopen, and the numbers of migrant workers leaving the country for overseas employment have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Poverty In Nepal Essay. 770 Words4 Pages. "As long as poverty, injustice, gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest" (Nelson Mandela). Poverty is one distressing situation that majority of people in developing countries have to contend with in their daily lives. It is common among the low and middle class income in ...
1. Introduction. Poverty "is one of the defining challenges of the 21st Century facing the world" (Gweshengwe et al., Citation 2020, p. 1).In 2019, about 1.3 billion people in 101 countries were living in poverty (United Nations Development Programme and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Citation 2019).For this reason, the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals ...
Created Date: 12/21/2018 8:35:56 AM
Purpose: The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of microfinance initiatives on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. Methodology: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research.