Public policy has important implications for the lives of the poor. This dissertation analyzes how three types of policy impact the poor in developing countries. First, tax and transfer systems can benefit many poor while still making some poor worse off, and this phenomenon is overlooked by measures currently used to assess transfers in tandem with the taxes used to pay for them. I show that comparisons of poverty before and after taxes and transfers, as well as measures of horizontal equity and progressivity---which are often used to analyze anti-poverty policies in tandem with the taxes used to pay for them---can fail to capture an important aspect: that a substantial proportion of the poor are made poorer (or non-poor made poor) by the tax and transfer system. I call this fiscal impoverishment, and axiomatically derive a measure of its extent. Second, the government's choice of how to measure poverty---specifically, the choice between a unidimensional (usually income or consumption-based) measure and a multidimensional measure that incorporates other dimensions such as health and education---can affect the strategic interactions between government ministers, leading to changes in the amount of resources spent to alleviate poverty. In a game-theoretic framework, I show that despite introducing free riding, a multidimensional measure usually leads to an increase in total antipoverty spending; antipoverty expenditures can be further increased by publishing partial dimensional indices alongside the scalar multidimensional one. Third, efforts to digitize government transfer programs through savings accounts and debit cards can enable the poor to build trust in financial institutions and save more. I study a natural experiment in which debit cards were rolled out to beneficiaries of a Mexican conditional cash transfer program, who were already receiving their transfers in savings accounts through a government bank. Using a rich combination of administrative and survey data, I find beneficiaries initially used their cards to check their balances and build trust in the bank, after which they used the account to save. Formal and overall savings increased, and this effect was higher for women with low baseline bargaining power who may have the most difficulty saving at home. / Sean Higgins
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_51502 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Contributors | Higgins, Sean (author), Lustig, Nora (Thesis advisor), School of Liberal Arts Environmental Studies Program (Degree granting institution) |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Embargo |
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