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In this study, the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction for Botswana is examined using the annual data from 1990 to 2021. The study was motivated by the need to establish if access to electricity could be a panacea on poverty reduction in Botswana. Given that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals deadline is fast approaching, and Botswana being one of the signatories, is expected to end poverty in all its forms – Goal 1. Establishing the role that electrification plays in poverty alleviation, helps in refocusing Botswana’s poverty alleviation strategies on factors that have high impact on poverty. The main objective of this study, therefore, is to investigate the relationship between poverty alleviation and access to electricity in Botswana.

The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to investigate the nature of the relations. Two poverty proxies were used in this study namely, household consumption expenditure and life expectancy.

The study found access to electricity to reduce poverty in the long run and in the short run, regardless of the poverty measure used. Thus, access to electricity plays an important role in poverty alleviation and Botswana is recommended to continue with the rural and urban electrification initiatives.

The study explores the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction in Botswana, a departure from the current studies that examined the same relationship using energy consumption in general. This is on the back of increasing dependence of economic activities on electricity as a major source of energy.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.

Using cross-sectional household survey data, this paper aims to determine the impact of food price increases on poverty in Indonesia.

This paper uses the quadratic almost ideal demand system applied to the 2013 Indonesian household survey data. The impact of food price increase on household welfare is calculated using a welfare measure, compensating variation.

Three food groups with the most outstanding price impact on poverty, rice, vegetables and fish, were studied. The 20% increase in the price of each food group causes an increase in the headcount ratio by 1.360 points (rice), 0.737 points (vegetables) and 0.636 points (fish). Maintaining food price stability for these food groups is very important because the more the price increases, the more the impact on poverty. Food price policies in rural areas are also more critical than in urban areas because the impact of food price increases in rural areas is higher.

This paper does not consider the positive impact of rising food prices on food-producing households.

Implementing appropriate poverty alleviation policies through food policies for main food groups and social protection.

Promoting rural development policies and agricultural growth.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical results regarding the impact of domestic food prices increase on poverty in Indonesia.

This study examines the roles of cross-sectional dependence, asymmetric structure and country-to-country policy variations in the inflation-poverty reduction causal nexus in selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1981 to 2019.

To account for cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity and policy variations across countries in the inflation-poverty reduction causal nexus, this study uses robust Hatemi-J data decomposition procedures and a battery of second-generation techniques. These techniques include cross-sectional dependency tests, panel unit root tests, slope homogeneity tests and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel Granger non-causality approach.

Unlike existing studies, the panel and country-specific findings exhibit several dimensions of asymmetric causality in the inflation-poverty nexus. Positive inflationary shocks Granger-causes poverty reduction through investment and employment opportunities that benefit the impoverished in SSA. These findings align with country-specific analyses of Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Mauritania, South Africa and Togo. Also, a decline in poverty causes inflation to increase in the Congo Republic, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. All panel and country-specific analyses reveal at least one dimension of asymmetric causality or another.

All stakeholders and policymakers must pay adequate attention to issues of asymmetric structures, nonlinearities and country-to-country policy variations to address country-specific issues and the socioeconomic problems in the probable causal nexus between the high incidence of extreme poverty and double-digit inflation rates in most SSA countries.

Studies on the inflation-poverty nexus are not uncommon in economic literature. Most existing studies focus on inflation’s effect on poverty. Existing studies that examine the inflation-poverty causal relationship covertly assume no asymmetric structure and nonlinearity. Also, the issues of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity are unexplored in the causal link in existing studies. All panel studies covertly impose homogeneous policies on countries in the causality. This study relaxes this supposition by allowing policies to vary across countries in the panel framework. Thus, this study makes three-dimensional contributions to increasing understanding of the inflation-poverty nexus.

Using real-time data from the University of Luxembourg’s COME-HERE nationally representative panel survey, covering more than 8,000 individuals across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden, the author investigates how income distributions and poverty rates have changed from January to September 2020. The author finds that poverty rates increased on average in all countries from January to May and partially recovered in September. The increase in poverty is heterogeneous across countries, with Italy being the most affected and France the least; within countries, COVID-19 contributed to exacerbating poverty differences across regions in Italy and Spain. With a set of poverty measures from the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke family, the author then explores the role of individual characteristics in shaping different poverty profiles across countries. Results suggest that poverty increased disproportionately more for young individuals, women, and respondents who had a job in January 2020 – with different intensities across countries.

This paper aims to focus on non-poor households that during the Great Recession experienced economic stress (ES). That is, whose economic comfort was reduced taking into account their previous living standards. The paper seeks to determine how the crisis has affected this extensive (and key) social group.

The analysis has been performed in a dynamic way. The non-poor households ES situation and its changes are studied throughout the period 2008-2016 by taking the four-year intervals provided by the longitudinal Spanish Living Conditions Survey. The authors discuss and select the circumstances to determine whether ES has occurred. To identify which variables determine the probability of suffering ES the authors use a standard logit model.

The main variable is the tenure status of the dwelling: property with a mortgage or rented multiply the risk of ES by up to 3.5 times. ES falls as the household’s work intensity increases. However, an improvement in the employment situation cannot be associated with a reduction in ES probability. The main socio-demographic variables behave as predicted: woman householder, grow in the number of household members and bad health increase the risk of ES, and the higher the level of education of the householder, the lower the risk.

There are very few studies regarding the people above the poverty line. Exploring and analyzing the factors determining the sensitivity of the largest part of the population to the crisis is very relevant, as the pace of the economic recovery depends largely on them.

Unequal social conditions that provide people with unequal opportunities to live healthy lives are considered unjust and associated with “health inequity”. Governing power is impacting people's lives through laws, policies and professional decisions, and can be used intentionally to combat health inequity by addressing and changing people's living- and working conditions. Little attention is paid to how these ways of exercising governing power unintentionally can structure further conditions for health inequity. In this paper, the authors coin the term “governance determinants of health” (GDHs). The authors' discussion of GDHs potential impact on health inequity can help avoid the implementation of governing strategies with an adverse impact on health equality. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The authors identify Governance Determinants of Health, the GDHs. GDHs refer to governance strategies that structurally impact healthcare systems and health equality. The authors focus on the unintended, blind sides of GDHs that maintain or reinforce the effects of socioeconomic inequality on health.

The power to organize healthcare is manifested in distinct structural approaches such as juridification, politicalization, bureaucratization and medical standardization. The authors explore the links between different forms of governance and health inequalities.

The authors' discussion in this article is innovative as it seeks to develop a framework that targets power dynamics inherent in GHDs to help identify and avoid GDHs that may promote unequal access to healthcare and prompt health inequity. However, this framework has limitations as the real-world, blurred and intertwined aspects of governing instruments are simplified for analytical purposes. As such, it risks overestimating the boundaries between the separate instruments and reducing the complexity of how the GDHs work in practice. Consequently, this kind of theory-driven framework does not do justice to the myriad of peoples' complex empirical practices where GDHs may overlap and intertwine with each other. Nevertheless, this framework can still help assist governing authorities in imagining a direction for the impacts of GDHs on health equity, so they can take precautionary steps to avoid adverse impacts.

The authors develop and explore – and demonstrate – the relevance of a framework that can assist governing authorities in anticipating the impacts of GDHs on health inequity.

In this study the authors aim to explore the factors that contribute to the formation of locavorism as a form of consumer ideology.

In this study, the authors adopt an inductive approach by preselecting locavore consumers and conducting 43 semi-structured interviews, following the prescriptions of narrative-enquiry research.

The authors reveal that individual-level (i.e. values, beliefs and experiences) and social-level (i.e. groups, local communities and society) influences and exogenous factors can affect the formation of locavorism. Furthermore, the authors’ findings corroborate the concept advanced by prior studies that reinforcing loops exist among the three belief dimensions of locavorism.

Food producers can use these findings to shape their marketing strategies more effectively to target locavore consumers and/or stimulate the consumption of local food.

Identifying the influences of social- and individual-level factors on the formation of locavorism can contribute to the understanding of demand shifts towards local food consumption. Additionally, by revealing the modes of thought that formulate the ideologies of locavore consumers, the authors offer guidance in the development of policies that can safeguard local economies and traditions and reduce transport pollution and food waste in favour of sustainable local consumption.

In the present article the authors explore the psychological and contextual mechanisms that contribute to the formation of locavorism.