The thesis investigates the policy-making process underpinning the poverty-alleviation programmes created in Chile during the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s. Three programmes developed by the governing Concertacion Alliance during this period are selected. The un-researched characteristic of this subject in Chile is the main reason for choosing this topic. The thesis maps and explains the policy-making process of the three programmes, by identifying main events, actors and mechanisms behind the unfolding of events. Data is obtained from 32 interviews applied to key process actors to obtain their narratives of the processes. The Multiple Streams Model of the policy-making process is employed as theoretical framework. Results highlight that the processes occur in a highly closed fashion inside government. The main actors involved are the President and his ministers who are able to command the events that lead to the creation of a new programme. The political stream plays a fundamental role in the process as the pro-equity approach of the governing coalition creates a window of opportunity for the introduction of poverty-alleviation programmes. The problems stream is also important, thanks to the availability of poverty statistics that are produced every two years by the Concertacion Alliance governments. However, the processes differ from the Multiple Streams Model as no independent policy stream was found to exist. Instead, solutions are created by governments in a punctuated manner and during a short timeframe to accomplish political deadlines, when the government considers that the problem deserves to be addressed. The absence of a policy stream is explained by the policy monopoly that the government enjoys in the poverty arena, where no policy contestants exist. In particular, Chilean social policy experts constitute a small and non-articulated group of individuals usually excluded from the policymaking process, enabling the government to ignore them.

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Further income redistribution is an obvious way of alleviating child poverty. However, whether this effectively improves life chances of children growing up in poverty is debated, and there might be less expensive ways of doing so. Drawing on competing models explaining intergenerational persistence of poverty, this thesis investigates some of the links between childhood poverty and later economic outcomes in the UK. Aiming to identify policy areas where intervention would be helpful, it examines continuities and changes over time in these links and mechanisms that create them, analysing longitudinal data from people born in 1958, 1970 and the 1980s. This thesis shows that a negative effect of childhood poverty on adult earnings remains for the 1970 cohort (although not for the 1958 cohort), even after controlling for educational attainment in particular, and for other individual and family characteristics. This appears to be a reason that intergenerational persistence of poverty is stronger for the younger cohort. Teenage occupational aspirations do not seem to explain this residual effect, but unemployment in early working life contributes to it. An original contribution is the investigation of different effects of childhood poverty on later onset of and exit from unemployment, and the relative strength of the effects of parental worklessness and income poverty on these outcomes. A main finding is that income poverty more strongly affects the rapid onset of unemployment following employment, although parental worklessness appears to be associated with the slow exit from unemployment. The results suggest that policy interventions in education or (potentially cheaper) interventions affecting youth aspirations would not completely remove the disadvantage experienced by children growing up in poverty. There is therefore evidence that further income redistribution would be beneficial in improving their future life chances, while the findings suggest that the design of income redistribution also matters.

Although economic growth has brought significant improvements in the standard of living in the UK over recent decades, there are still individuals living in poverty. Furthermore poverty in the UK is expected to rise. Although monetary poverty has wide ranging impacts such as poor health, low educational attainment and employability and reduced life expectancy, it does not (in the form of a poverty line at 60% of the median equivalised household income) appear to have an impact on wellbeing when the threshold was tested. Instead, multidimensional poverty – that purported by the Capabilities Approach – is a more individually relevant measure of poverty. Using a list, developed by Nussbaum, of core capabilities seen as essential for human life, capability measures were taken from the British Household Panel Survey. In analysis, some are found to be significant determinants of wellbeing, individually and in sum. Furthermore, individuals within the dataset experience loss aversion to capabilities. This thesis concludes that poverty measurement should be meaningful at the individual level, and to that aim, the Capabilities Approach provides a richer and more relevant evaluation of what poverty really means.

This thesis looks at the failure of individual people living in affluent societies to do more to help those living in conditions of extreme poverty at the present moment. Affluent people have the capacity to assist, by contributing additional funds to aid and humanitarian organisations. Given an understanding of what is at stake, the fact that they fail to do so is both morally problematic and difficult to explain. Yet, without an understanding of the causes of inaction, it is difficult to know what measures may be taken to alleviate extreme suffering in the world today. The thesis draws upon different philosophical accounts of practical reason to argue that the conduct of the affluent can only be understood in one of three ways: these people may lack decisive reason to assist, they may be misinformed, or they may be rationally deficient in some regard. Considering each possibility in turn, it advances two central arguments. Firstly, the normative reasons claim is sound: affluent people, who do not incur minor costs by assisting, ought to do more. Secondly, these people tend to have false beliefs about the nature of poverty, to make substantive errors of judgement, and to follow flawed patterns of reasoning when they deliberate about what to do. Taken together, these factors explain their failure to act. Building upon this diagnosis, the thesis then considers how to respond to the problem of inaction, advancing a solution that is institutional in character. It argues for the construction of a division of labour between state and citizen, at the national level, which would see political institutions take on responsibility for poverty eradication, thereby leaving individuals freer to pursue their own personal goals and objectives. In order to perform this function effectively, wealthy nations would have to improve the quantity and quality of assistance that they provide to low-income countries. They would also have to cease partaking in practices that harm the global poor. This approach has a number of advantages over reliance on private philanthropy alone: it forms part of a fair and effective solution to the problem of motivating assistance, the arrangement it proposes is both stable and legitimate, and it is also something that could be achieved in practice. Therefore, it represents part of the best possible way in which to proceed.

This research explores the political factors that affect the allocation of antipoverty funds in Mexican municipalities. Specifically, it analyses whether the adoption of FAISM, a decentralised fiscal fund intended to reduce poverty, did, in fact, help provide better services for the poor or if it was capture by political influence. In this sense, my work addresses a classic question of when and how political institutions can effectively improve the allocation of antipoverty funds. In the last decade, an ambitious decentralisation process was promoted in Mexico as a way to strengthen local governance and hence improve basic service provision. The idea was to limit politician‟s influence on resource allocation and return decision making to the people. By looking at more than 57,000 FAISM projects carried out in 122 municipalities of Estado de Mexico between 1998 and 2006 my work argues that political influence could not be circumvented and clientelism remained as a common political practice to allocate antipoverty funds. My findings demonstrate that the three major political parties relied on FAISM to obtain political benefits through the allocation of private goods. Regarding the effects of democratic institutions, my work demonstrates that greater party competition increases the probability that FAISM was used for public benefit. Similarly, there is a propensity towards greater spending on clientelism during elections. Although these factors influence the allocation of municipal funds, my work does not find concluding evidence to test the impact of fund allocation and poverty reduction. My dissertation makes three important contributions to the literature. Substantively, it qualifies the premise that clientelistic linkages between voters and politicians prevail and shows the conditions under which local politicians strategically allocate antipoverty funds for political gain. A second, methodological, contribution is the use of a more refined measure of social spending at the municipal level by looking at the split between public and private goods. Finally, this dissertation seeks to inform the longstanding debate about the ways in which democratic politics can contribute to effective poverty reduction.

Σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η παρουσίαση των OLS και IV εκτιμήσεων που προκύπτουν απο μια σειρά εμπειρικών μελετών οι οποίες εκτιμούν το βαθμό απόδοσης της εκπαίδευσης. Μέσα απο την ανασκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας και λαμβάνοντας υπόψη προβλήματα που σχετίζονται με το θέμα, όπως η ενδογένεια και το σφάλμα μέτρησης, η εργασία καταλήγει επισημαίνοντας τη σπουδαιότητα που έχει η συνάρτηση αποδοχών του Mincer ακόμα και στις μέρες μας, καθιστώντας την το πιο χρήσιμο εργαλείο των οικονομικών της εκπαίδευσης. / The purpose of this paper is to present the OLS and IV estimates derived from a number of empirical studies that assess the efficiency of education. Through the literature review and taking into account problems associated with it,such as endogeneity and measurement error, the work concludes by pointing out the importance of the Μincer's earnings function even in our days, making it the most usefull tool for the economics of education.

Poverty is an extremely significant issue for Indian society with some estimates suggesting that up to 75% of the Indian population may be poor and deprived of basic necessities to sustain a normally healthy life. Microfinance and social protection are considered as important micro-level strategies to reduce poverty. Literature reveals that both strategies suffer from significant service delivery constraints causing exclusion of a large majority of poor households from access to microfinance, and inclusion and exclusion errors and elite capture of social protection programmes. This research explored whether outreach of microfinance and impact of social protection may be enhanced if microfinance products are built on the provisions of social protection for the poor households, and services of microfinance and social protection are synergistically delivered leveraging on the strengths of each other. The research further explored if it is feasible to employ a State institution, India Post, towards such synergistic service delivery. In order to further these research objectives, financial needs of poor households were estimated, and structures and mechanisms causing the exclusion of the poor from microfinance were investigated, by drawing empirical data from three Indian states. States were sampled while acknowledging that the poor are largely excluded from microfinance in two states of UP and Gujarat, and are almost totally included in the state of AP. This provided me with an opportunity to identify structures and mechanisms excluding the poor from microfinance provisions in UP and Gujarat, and contrast it with the situation in AP to further refine and enrich our understanding. Philosophical basis for design and methodology for this research is provided by critical realism, according to which the goal of social research is to understand the world in order to change it for better. The research is primarily based on the data collected through qualitative research methods as such methods are more suited than quantitative methods to critical realistic intensive studies, attempting to uncover underlying structures and mechanisms causing a social phenomenon. Research findings suggest that the financial needs of poor households in UP and Gujarat either remain unmet, or are met through informal mechanisms which are costly and exploitative. Poor are also not able to entirely access their entitled benefits from social protection programmes; as such programmes generate their own financial needs, which remain largely unmet. It was observed that social protection programmes have a favourable political environment in India and are being increasingly employed as a means to fight poverty. Such programmes therefore constitute an important aspect of the financial environment of the poor. Microfinance programme in AP reaches the poor partly because it is also meeting the financial needs generated by the provisions of social protection and thus the poor households find it useful. Poor also become attractive clients for microfinance due to the assured benefits they receive from the social protection programmes. Thus it addresses both demand and supply side constraints which keep a majority of the poor out of the ambit of microfinance in UP and Gujarat. Such social protection-linked service delivery of microfinance was further observed to be enhancing the impact of social protection as well as of microfinance. It is further argued that India Post is suitably located to deliver such social protection-linked microfinance services due to its close proximity to the rural population, and its personnel being known to and trusted by the local communities. India Post network also has a long and rich experience of delivering financial services. Being a government department, it is in a better position than similarly placed agencies such as banks and NGOs, to coordinate with other government departments offering social protection. Moreover, it has a valuable information-capital on the households that can be leveraged to efficiently identify the prospective recipients of the social protection programmes.

This thesis explores the concepts and measurements of chronic poverty, with application to Kazakhstan. A rigorous analysis of different approaches in the measurement of poverty and chronic poverty is presented in this study. Five matching techniques have been applied for the construction of unintended panel data based on KHBS 2001-2009. The substantial test of reliability, representativeness and robustness of the constructed panel data has examined. The attrition biases of the longitudinal data have been studied rigorously. The appropriate equivalence scale has been determined through regression analysis to the Kazakhstan HBS. The sensitivity of conventional and chronic poverty measures to various poverty lines and equivalence scales studied in this thesis. The stochastic dominance analysis of per adult equivalent consumption expenditures has been presented. The chronic poverty measures and determinants of chronically and transient poor have been estimated. It illustrates that the main correlates of chronic poverty are education, employment status of the head of household, household composition, the ownership of assets such as a dwelling other than main dwelling, a car, access to water in the house and location. The correlates of transient poverty are similar to chronic poverty; however some of them have opposite signs, for example the ethnicity of the head of household, household compositions, an ownership of a dwelling other than main dwelling, location in urban area and repayments of loan in 2008. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis of the gap in consumption expenditures between chronically and transient poor, chronically poor and non-poor explains the differences through returns to endowments. Poverty transitions analysis illustrate improvement in poverty dynamics in later period of the study in 2006-2009. Long durations of poverty prevail among singles with children and couples with children. Poverty exit rates are higher than poverty entry rates for the whole period of 2001-2009. The multivariate hazard regression models are estimated to examine differences in people's experience of poverty over a period of time. For individuals who enter poverty, the total span of time that they spend in poverty consequently depends on both the chances of exit from poverty and the chances of re-entry to poverty. The results confirm the negative duration dependence of the hazards of poverty exit and re-entry for longer lengths of state. The only factor significantly positive influence on poverty exit is a location in Almaty. Many correlates of the model estimation have the same signs for the hazard rate of poverty exit and re-entries. These facts mean that these factors are common for transient poor, who are moving in and out poverty in given period of time. As defined before the existence of children under age six will increase the hazard rate of poverty re-entry.

This thesis is comprised of three distinct chapters, each of which is concerned in some way with the measurement of poverty. The first chapter provides social preference conditions which are both necessary and sufficient for a poverty line to arise endogenously. In so doing, it turns out that the apparently independent 'identification' and 'aggregation' problems in poverty measurement are subtly intertwined. Necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for the existence of both relative and absolute poverty lines. In each case, one of the conditions is a familiar weak monotonicity property. The other conditions are simple consistency requirements.In the second chapter, we propose classes of intertemporal poverty measures which take into account both the debilitating impact of prolonged spells in poverty and the mitigating effect of periods of affluence on subsequent poverty. The weight assigned to the level of poverty in each time period depends on the length of the preceding spell of poverty or of non-poverty. The proposed classes of intertemporal poverty measures are quite general and allow for a range of possible judgements as to the overall impact on a poor period of preceding spells of poverty or affluence. We discuss the properties of the proposed classes of measures and axiomatically characterize them.The third chapter is an empirical application of the intertemporal poverty measures proposed in the second chapter. The new measures, together with an existing intertemporal poverty measure from the literature, are used to analyse intertemporal poverty in Great Britain during the period 1991-2005, using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Previous studies on poverty using this data-set have employed static measures of poverty. We illustrate how the use of intertemporal poverty measures makes it possible to analyse aspects of poverty which cannot be captured by static, annual, measures of poverty. We then model the determinants of intertemporal poverty, conditional upon being poor, using a Heckman two-step selection model.