Using monthly, seasonal and annual panel data from rural India from 2010 to 2014, we comprehensively analyze how households smooth consumption and adjust their asset portfolios in response to income shocks, identified by exogenous deviations of rainfall from historical patterns. First, we explore intra-consumption adjustments and the role of household assets as a buffer stock. We find that, while households adjust their consumption basket from nonfood to food items in response to income shocks in the short term to smooth consumption, part or all of the income shock is passed through to consumption over the medium to long term. Second, we examine the differential roles of various household assets depending on the initial level of each asset based on a threshold model, and find that asset-rich households tend to use a variety of assets, including machinery, capital assets, and livestock as a buffer stock, while asset-poor households only rely on capital assets as a coping mechanism. Third, we estimate the relative roles of autarkic asset-based strategies and informal village risk-sharing, highlighting the importance of the latter. Our results support the hypothesis that informal risk-sharing mechanisms are an important strategy for rural households to smooth consumption.

This article examines whether the Syrian refugee inflow to Jordan has displaced other immigrant workers in the Jordanian Labor Market. Using data from Jordan, before and after the Syrian refugee influx (in 2010 and 2016), we investigate whether male immigrants’ labor market outcomes, compared to male Jordanian nationals, were affected by Syrian refugees. We control for the geographic sorting of refugees within Jordan using an instrumental variable approach. We find that male immigrants were more likely to be underemployed (i.e., work in the informal sector, work fewer hours, and earn lower monthly wages) in areas with high concentration of Syrian refugees. These findings suggest that the main competition that occurred in the Jordanian Labor Market, between 2010 and 2016, was not between refugees and male Jordanian nationals, but between refugees and male immigrants. These results suggest that studies examining the impact of refugees on the labor market should consider the effects on immigrants who are likely to be more vulnerable than natives.

This chapter examines proximate causes of state fragility and sources of resilience in Lebanon until 2020. Lebanon has endured a turbulent past and continues to suffer its consequences. Lebanon enjoyed an open economy, an open political system, a large degree of diversity and relatively low poverty levels—at least in the years after independence was achieved in 1943. Lebanon has a turbulent past and continues to suffer the consequences. Perched on the edge of the Mediterranean, the country enjoys a strategic location and wealth of natural resources. In October 2019, the Lebanese people took to the streets to protest the injustice, corruption and deteriorating economic conditions and denounce the sectarian rule that exacerbated the weight of Lebanon’s extractive institutions, rentierism and patronage system. In the reconstruction phase, despite many corrupt practices, the government made serious efforts to bring normalcy to people’s lives.

This paper assesses the impact of a human capital and cash transfer intervention on individual disempowerment. Using a randomised controlled trial across 120 villages in Northern Uganda, we take a multidimensional measurement approach to evaluate the impact of Women's Income Generating Support Program on the empowerment of ultra-poor and conflict-affected women. Building on the findings of who find positive effects of the program on microenterprise ownership and income, we investigate the effects of the program on women who were most disempowered through an analysis of the joint distribution of the impacts and the changes in deprivation profiles of the targeted populations. Using a measure of ten indicators in five dimensions, we find that the intervention is successful in reducing the average number of deprivations by 13.6% on average relative to the control group at endline. Our analysis show that the intervention was successful in reducing the incidence and the severity of disempowerment among those who experience it more severely. However, we find that, even at endline, most of the participants in the sample experienced deprivation in at least two of the ten indicators simultaneously and that the group dynamics arm of the program did not have a significant impact on the beneficiaries' empowerment.

The vast majority of refugees globally are hosted in developing countries. In Jordan and Lebanon, nearly one in ten people are refugees. This paper reviews how different policy environments in Jordan and Lebanon have shaped economic outcomes for Syrian refugees, focusing on education, work, social assistance, and welfare outcomes. The review summarizes key research on how to improve refugee economic outcomes. We demonstrate that there can be effective service delivery for refugees, dependent on state capacity. For example, differences in policy led to better education outcomes for Syrian refugees in Jordan than in Lebanon. A variety of interventions can support refugee livelihoods, while generally doing no harm to host communities. Both countries also demonstrate the difficulties of achieving refugee economic self-sufficiency. Although Jordan has allowed (limited) legal work opportunities for refugees, Syrian refugees in both countries remain primarily in precarious work and supported by international aid.

Migration is a politically sensitive topic, and the narrative surrounding it is often not rooted in solid evidence. Yet integrating refugees into labour markets not only benefits refugees, but also host communities and refugee-citizen relationships. Dominik Hangartner, Angelo Martelli, Bilal Malaeb, Domenica Avila and the LSE Maryam Forum Working Group on Human Mobility offer practical ... Continued

Migration is a politically sensitive topic, and the narrative surrounding it is often not rooted in solid evidence. Yet integrating refugees into labour markets not only benefits refugees, but also host communities and refugee-citizen relationships. Dominik Hangartner, Angelo Martelli, Bilal Malaeb, Domenica Avila and the LSE Maryam Forum Working Group on Human Mobility offer practical ... Continued

Uses three waves of phone survey data collected between July 2020 and January 2021 to evaluate the effects of the pandemic on households in Djibouti. The third wave added a subsample of refugee households. A year after COVID-19 struck, Djiboutian households saw an increase in the intensity of economic activity and the variety of their income sources. Vulnerable workers, such as those from village-based refugee and poor national households, prove less able to catch up as inequality and job insecurity remain on the rise. Access to basic goods and health care has improved since August 2020, but not for village-based refugee households. A relatively large fraction of households has an acceptable level of food consumption, unlike refugees who remain more likely to experience food insecurity. Safety nets play a critical role in protecting the most vulnerable, particularly among village-based refugees for whom assistance from international nongovernmental organizations represents the main source of income.

Lebanon is the country with the highest density of refugees in the world, raising the question of whether the host and refugee populations can cooperate harmoniously. We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment in Lebanon studying intra- and inter-group behavior of Syrian refugees and Lebanese nationals in a repeated public goods game without and with punishment. We randomly assign participants to Lebanese-only, Syrian-only, or mixed sessions. We find that randomly formed pairs in homogeneous sessions, on average, contribute and punish significantly more than those in mixed sessions, suggesting in-group cooperation is stronger. These patterns are driven by Lebanese participants. Further analysis indicates that behavior in mixed groups is more strongly conditioned on expectations about the partner's cooperation than in homogeneous groups.

This chapter provides overall evidence of the migration dynamics in Jordan between 2010 and 2016, a period with a large influx of Syrian refugees. It gives a detailed description of immigration with particular focus on the composition, characteristics and labor market activities of immigrants in Jordan. It examines emigration and return migration patterns of Jordanians and the changes in their migration dynamics before and after the Syrian refugee inflow. The chapter provides evidence that temporary international migration of Jordanians decreased, and that almost half of current emigrants had left Jordan with their entire family, suggesting a trend towards permanent migration. It finds that return migration decreased between the two years and also finds a change in immigrants’ geographical distribution in 2016 compared to 2010, with a decreased proportion in Amman. Despite similar distribution across occupations of immigrants and refugees in 2016, a lower share of immigrants in sectors like manufacturing is found, in which refugees were concentrated. Immigrants themselves engaged more in informal work in 2010 relative to 2016 and differed in occupations and economic activities, suggesting that immigrants may have been affected by the refugee influx.

The Syrian refugee influx in Jordan came on top of an additional 1.6 million foreigners residing in Jordan. The non-national population of refugees and immigrants had increased Jordan’s population of 6.6 million by about 45%. This raises an important question on whether the inflow of refugees has displaced immigrants in the Jordanian labor market. In this paper, we use novel data from Jordan from before and after the Syrian refugee influx to test whether economic immigrants were affected by Syrian refugees. We address several threats to identifications: the selectivity of immigrants and the geographic sorting of immigrants and refugees within Jordan using instrumental variable approach. We find that, as a result of the Syrian refugee influx, immigrants were more likely to work in the informal sector, and they worked fewer hours and had lower total wages as a result. The results suggest that the main competition that occurred in the Jordanian labor market was not between refugees and natives, but rather between refugees and economic migrants.

This study offers empirical evidence on the rural-urban gap in the context of growing inequality in Asia. First, China and India explain the trends in regional inequality given their large populations, signifying their importance as major contributors. Overall, China’s income inequality is characterized by rural-urban disparity, but the inequality within rural and within urban areas has worsened, although the country has experienced very high economic growth. India is mainly characterized by high inequality within urban areas, despite a sharp reduction in urban poverty. India’s rural-urban income gap has narrowed in recent years. We also find that the rural-urban income gap has narrowed in many other countries, such as Thailand and Viet Nam. Second, our econometric results on the agricultural and non-agricultural income gap suggest that a higher non-agricultural growth rate tends to widen the rural-urban gap over time, while agricultural growth is unrelated to the rural-urban gap. Third, the rural-urban human resources gap in terms of educational attainment has increased in both China and India. Policies that promote agricultural growth and rural education are deemed important not only for reducing rural poverty but also for narrowing the rural-urban human resources gap.

Remittances have increased in low-income and lower- middle-income countries in recent years, playing an important role as a stable source of finance at the macro-level, and in poverty reduction at the micro-level. Drawing on a critical review of the literature and econometric analyses based on cross-country panel data, this study examines the relationships among remittances, growth and poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific and highlights policy implications to be considered by governments and policy-makers.

This study offers empirical evidence on the rural-urban gap in the context of growing inequality in Asia. First, China and India explain the trends of regional inequality given their large population, signifying their importance as major contributors. Overall, China’s income inequality is characterised by rural-urban disparity, but the inequality within-rural and/or within urban areas has worsened, although it experienced very high economic growth. India is mainly characterised by high inequality within urban areas despite a sharp reduction in urban poverty. Rural-urban income gap has narrowed in recent years. We also find that the rural and urban income gap has narrowed in many countries, such as, India, Vietnam and Thailand. Second, our econometric results on the agricultural and non-agricultural income gap suggest that higher non-agricultural growth rate tends to widen the urban-rural gap over time, while agricultural growth is unrelated to the rural-urban gap. Third, the rural-urban human resources gaps in terms of educational attainment have increased in both India and China. Fourth, remittances are likely to reduce poverty in many countries. Policies which would promote agricultural growth and rural education are deemed important not only for reducing rural poverty, but also for narrowing the rural-urban gap of human resources.

This study provides a critical review of the role of remittances and migration in promoting growth and reducing and poverty and inequality in developing countries in Asia and the Pacific. It also uses the cross-country panel data and examines the effect of remittances on economic growth, poverty and inequality after taking into account the endogeneity of remittances. First, it has been found from our econometric results that remittances will promote economic growth and reduce poverty - both national poverty and rural poverty based on the international poverty lines for the US$1.25 or US$2 thresholds, while the remittances have no inequality-reducing effect. Second, we have suggested the importance of understanding the underlying factors enabling households to undertake migration and remittances in relation with the underlying structural transformation of the rural economy, such as its shift to the non-farm sector, which typically takes place as village infrastructure develops and educational level of the households improves. Third, we argue that the risk-coping roles of remittances at both macro and micro level are important in understanding the poverty-reducing mechanisms associated with migration and remittances. Fourth, poor households outside the village networks should be supported by policy measures. This is important particularly because our result suggests that the remittances increase inequality in rural areas.

Given the importance of agricultural income for rural households, erratic weather conditions pose an austere threat to these households' livelihoods. This thesis explores ways through which households in agrarian economies smooth their consumption, engage in community networks, and readjust their labour allocation in response to shocks. In a setting of inherent risk, absence of institutional insurance, and labour market inefficiencies, poor households are often left to their own devices to cope with risk. The aim of this study is to examine the different risk-coping strategies adopted by households in rural India, assess their effectiveness, and derive implications for public policy. The results suggest that, in an environment characterised by agro-climatic risk, households are able to self-insure and smooth their consumption in the face of income shocks. Their coping mechanisms, however, may reduce their resilience to future shocks. In fact, small landholders tend to rely more heavily on their productive asset stock, while medium landholders find it optimal to preserve and accumulate their productive assets when exposed to exogenous income shocks. Households also change their labour allocation and reduce their self-employment in agriculture. Furthermore, households in rural areas can migrate to urban areas or engage in societal risk-sharing arrangements to mitigate the risk. The results of this thesis suggest that being part of a community network discourages individuals' migration and increases the likelihood of undertaking riskier activities. The findings also confirm the importance of portfolio adjustments and the diversification of household assets in buffering consumption. These conclusions form the basis of several policy implications, the most important of which is providing formal insurance schemes to encourage the accumulation of assets, technology, and skills.

The empirical literature on household savings tends to treat savings simply as the residual of income minus consumption. This paper takes a unique approach to reconstruct the cash and asset balances using detailed household transaction data on farm households in rural India and generates monthly and seasonal ICRISAT panel data for the period 1976-1983. We have found that households - irrespective of their landholding status - cope with temporary shocks quite well by using crop inventory, currency and capital assets, rather than livestock, as buffer assets. The importance of portfolio adjustments in smoothing consumption is also confirmed by the use of a system of equations in which both portfolio and production decisions are made endogenous. It is concluded that not only the level but also the diversification of household assets are important for buffering consumption. As an extension, we have explored the monthly ICRISAT panel data for the period 2009-2012 in the same villages to investigate and compare any changes in behavioral responses to income shocks.

The empirical literature on household savings tends to treat savings simply as the residual of income minus consumption. This article takes a unique approach to reconstruct the cash and asset balances using detailed household transaction data on farm households in rural India and generates monthly and seasonal ICRISAT panel data for the period 1976–1983. We have found that households—irrespective of their landholding status—cope with temporary shocks quite well by using crop inventory, currency, and capital assets, rather than livestock, as buffer assets. The importance of portfolio adjustments in smoothing consumption is also confirmed by the use of a system of equations in which both portfolio and production decisions are made endogenous. It is concluded that not only the level but also the diversification of household assets are important for buffering consumption. As an extension, we have explored the monthly ICRISAT panel data for the period 2009–2012 in the same villages and have found a similar pattern in household portfolio responses to income shocks.