The Singapore Economic Review

This study examines the role of energy security in poverty reduction in the 12 poorest Asian economies from 2000 to 2019. We postulated an energy security index using principal component analysis. We adopted the system generalized method of a moment technique to manage endogeneity and dynamism in the model. For robustness, we applied a panel-corrected standard error (PCSE). We found a negative relationship between energy security and poverty reduction, suggesting that energy security helps reduce poverty. We conclude that energy security promotes sustainable poverty alleviation and recommends feed-in tariffs, net metering, tax credits, and energy resource diversification away from fossil fuels.

It is widely believed that the global economy is experiencing unprecedented challenges by the Covid-19. The main purpose of this research is to explore how the Covid-19 outbreak affected poverty in different Asian regions classified by the United Nations geoscheme, namely South Asia, Southeastern Asia, Central Asia, East Asia and Western Asia. To estimate the coefficients of variables, the panel data framework based on quarterly data over 2010Q1–2020Q2 is employed. Results revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic is a serious challenge for poverty in these regions. The impacts of the pandemic on poverty are smaller for larger or developed economies in Asia than smaller or less-developed economies. Regulating and making a timeline for managing post-coronavirus period is a major policy implication. Another policy implication is that due to the similar findings for Asian countries, they can exchange experiences in controlling the pandemic impacts.

To investigate the impact of natural disasters on energy poverty, this study employs a panel dataset of 113 countries covering the period 2000–2014. We also conduct an asymmetric analysis on the natural disaster–energy poverty nexus. In addition, we analyze the impact mechanism between natural disasters and energy poverty. The main findings indicate that natural disasters deteriorate the energy poverty status, and this impact is asymmetric. Furthermore, technological innovation can reduce the positive impact of natural disasters on energy poverty. Also, renewable energy infrastructure is an important pathway through which natural disasters affect energy poverty.

Poverty reduction and inclusive growth in poor rural areas attracted the increasing attention of governments and scholars around the world. We investigate financial literacy by conceptualizing its impacts on rural households’ poverty reduction, considering current and long-term economic income dynamics. Using a database from 2015 to 2017 China Household Finance Survey, we find that financial literacy has current and long-term effects on promoting rural households’ status by eliminating and effectively improving poverty (dynamic effects). Second, this study reveals that financial literacy and education have a significant complementary effect on rural households’ poverty reduction. The study distinguishes financial literacy from knowledge obtained through general education. Third, financial education is shown to significantly improve rural households’ financial literacy on and enhance poverty reduction. The policy implications of our findings include that the governments and financial institutions are also required to rigorously measure, understand and improve financial literacy. Reform of financial regulatory systems must include a national strategy for education projects and improvement in the quality and supervision of financial products and services.

This paper analyzes the effect of financial deepening on poverty in the emerging Black Sea market economies with new generation causality analysis techniques utilizing panel data from 1996 to 2020. The econometric method of panel data is applied to the six emerging economies. It can be seen that the causal relationship between domestic loans to the private sector (DPS) and per capita household consumption expenditure (HCE) is significant in Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine. In addition, a bidirectional causality relationship is observed in Georgia. Romania, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine are countries where the causality between HCE and DPS is significant. It is concluded that DPS increases per capita HCE and thus effectively reduces poverty.

This study looked at the possibility that South Asian countries’ financial prosperity may lessen poverty. The data presented in this research show that between 1990 and 2019, economic development directly led to a decline in poverty in South Asian nations. Remittances reduce poverty, but financial growth has a huge influence. The model result suggests that financial development strongly affects poverty reduction, regardless of the econometric methodology. The results demonstrated that whereas remittances increase poverty levels for men and women, economic development significantly reduces them. Poverty was decreased considerably by variables such as economic development, foreign direct investment and commercial openness. As a result of these expenditures, the South Asian population was shown to be more vulnerable to poverty. The South Asian population was more susceptible to poverty due to these outlays. The results also refute earlier research suggesting that rising poverty may result from financial instability.

Sustainable development places a premium on recognizing people at risk of energy poverty, defined as the incapability to get a sufficient level of residential energy services. Therefore, this study analyses the relationship between economic development and rural energy poverty in Chinese regions. Using statistics from the China Families Panel Studies, it is observed that the Great Chinese Drought increased the risk of living in poverty. We conclude that there is wide variation in China’s regions regarding economic liberalization and the country’s energy deprivation. In provinces with different degrees of poverty, there is an inverse U-shaped association between economic growth and the country’s energy poverty. The country’s energy poverty reduced or even eliminated by advancing economic development to a specific degree. Many socioeconomic indicators at the home level are connected with energy poverty in various ways depending on the dimension, implying that individualized criteria are required to classify vulnerable families in each size and country-level considerations.

Although the rapid development of financial technology has been realized throughout the Asian countries, research studies seldom focus on the growing impact of financial technology on poverty alleviation. The research paper explores financial technology’s effect on poverty alleviation in the Asian countries. The dataset was collected from Asian countries between 2010 and 2021. A web search technology and frequent word analytics tool are employed to conceptualize variables, and after that, each selected region’s financial technology index is constructed. Given the variation in poverty across selected regions, a novel approach of vector quantile regression is used to quantify the effect of financial technology on poverty allocation. The suggested method’s parametric estimators are employed as “location” measurements of poverty. The findings of this research reveal that despite an uneven index of financial technology development across Asian economies, financial technology significantly impacts poverty alleviation in every selected Asian economy. Furthermore, financial technology strongly impacts poverty alleviation in developing economies than emerging economies of Asian countries. Considering the above findings, practitioners, governments and policy-makers need to foster advanced financial technology mechanisms, specifically in developing economies of the selected Asian economies.

Using manually collected samples on voluntary targeted poverty alleviation of 3418 Chinese firms for the period 2016–2019, we explore the impact of targeted poverty alleviation actions of listed companies on the stock price crash risk. Results show that listed companies participating in targeted poverty alleviation exhibited a lower risk of stock price crash risk; this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. This paper further explored its internal transmission routes. We found that the response of a public company to the targeted poverty alleviation policy will increase its positive coverages and plays the role of information intermediary and public supervision of media. Thus, the company’s behavior of hiding bad news is curtailed, and its future stock price crash risk is significantly reduced. For the government, China’s targeted poverty alleviation strategy is worthy of reference, while getting rid of poverty, the stock price crash risk of participating companies has also been effectively suppressed.

China’s current agricultural policy includes a wide range of agricultural subsidies, but the overall effect and levels of protection are low. China’s continued use of agricultural subsidies to ensure national food security is important in the context of global poverty alleviation. We examine the effect of agricultural insurance financial subsidy policies on food security using a difference-in-difference model with data from 285 Chinese cities from 1978 to 2019. These agricultural insurance subsidies have a significant positive effect on food security, with the most noticeable improvements in the northeast region. Reform and redesign of the subsidy system for greater flexibility and coverage are needed to safeguard China’s food security.

Economic growth necessitates the development of human capital and education. It plays a critical and necessary role in the formulation of income distribution policies and alleviating poverty. This study investigates the relationship through ordinary least square (OLS), fully-modified OLS and dynamic OLS models using panel data from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries from 1990 to 2018. According to the findings, imbalance plays an important role in influencing poverty and concludes that the government should embrace procedures that help improve pay distribution to reduce poverty at the strategy level. Furthermore, the findings state that a bi-directional Granger causality exists between schooling and poverty. In terms of strategy, SAARC countries should continue to increase the proportion of sustainable energy used for financial development, thereby decreasing the use of fossil energy for environmental improvements. Additionally, this study shows that the association of pay disparity hoses the positive effect of financial development on poverty, and it supports the contention that the degree of imbalance reduces the impact of comprehensiveness. Pay disparity is now a critical determinant of poverty.

The impact of Asia’s infrastructure development and inclusive income growth on poverty alleviation from 2000 to 2020 is well-documented in this research by applying the generalized method of moments (GMM). With the use of economic and social indices, it has been established that infrastructure improvement significantly impacts reducing poverty levels. The findings demonstrate the important impact of energy poverty alleviation on income-inclusive growth. It is easier to survive poverty in rural areas with access to water infrastructure and health insurance. Infrastructure and poverty seem to have a bidirectional causal relationship in the long term. To put it another way, boosting infrastructure investment might be a key to promoting poverty reduction. At the same time, greater performance in the public sector may result in a more effective allocation of resources toward building large infrastructure. Thus, it is postulated that with increasing knowledge, infrastructural development in most developing nations, including South Asian countries, is insufficient; fresh and sustained infrastructure investments are crucial for poverty reduction. This research sheds light on the critical role that energy out-of-poverty plays in inclusive development and infrastructure development for all people, regardless of their income level.

This study investigates the impacts of financial inclusion on poverty and income inequality in 27 developing countries in Asia during 2004–2019 based on a composite financial inclusion index (FII) constructed using principal component analysis (PCA). The generalized method of moments (GMM) was employed for the estimation. The results show that financial inclusion can influence the reduction in both poverty and income inequality. The empirical findings also reveal the contribution of such control variables as economic growth in decreasing income disparity and trade openness in helping improve the standard of living of poor households despite its tendency to co-vary with income inequality. The present empirical evidence supporting the role of financial inclusion in reducing poverty and income inequality in developing countries has led to a policy implication that financial sector development should focus on the availability, usage, and depth of credit to cover all poor households or low-income groups to help improve their access to financial services, enable them to increase their income, and reduce the income gap between poor and rich households.

We investigate the impact of the construction of large-scale high-speed railways (HSRs) on regional multidimensional poverty in China. We find that the opening of HSRs can reduce this poverty indicator. This association is robust to a series of checks. Regarding the mechanisms, the opening of HSRs can improve regional accessibility, enhance local tourism, increase labor mobility and promote human capital accumulation, which alleviates multidimensional poverty. Further research indicates the regional heterogeneity of the effect. This research supplements poverty alleviation theory from the perspective of public infrastructure and offers insight into how multidimensional poverty arises and how it can be alleviated.

Globally, everybody deals with poverty as a shared societal issue. It is still unclear how to investigate its causes and create new paradigms for policy, but it offers many promising directions for academic study. The use of technological innovation in this environment for social change to address poverty reduction is also an important issue. Consequently, this study investigates how effective poverty reduction may be accomplished in Asia through technological innovation and financial development. The super-efficiency data envelopment analysis model and system generalized method of moments were utilized in the present study together with data from 2010 to 2020 for an empirical estimate. The data show that different areas have effectively reduced poverty over time. However, Asia’s overall effectiveness in reducing poverty is rather unevenly distributed geographically. The significance of poverty reduction in Asia is positively impacted by technical advancement and financial prosperity. The effects of globalization on the efficacy of poverty reduction are negligible. This study presents some policy insights for decision makers based on the empirical findings.

This paper examines the impact of remittances on poverty alleviation in 15 selected Asian economies. Remittances have been identified as a potential source of income for households in developing countries and a means of reducing poverty. Using panel data from 2000 to 2020, we estimate the effect of remittances on poverty levels in these economies, controlling for other relevant factors such as GDP per capita, inflation rate and population growth. Our results suggest that remittances have a significant and negative impact on poverty levels in these economies, indicating that remittances play a crucial role in poverty reduction. The findings also reveal that the effect of remittances on poverty reduction varies across economies, with some economies experiencing a stronger poverty-reducing effect than others. The findings highlight the potential benefits of policies aimed at facilitating the flow of remittances and ensuring their effective use in reducing poverty in developing countries.

This study focused on the trilemma association of education, income and poverty alleviation: managerial implications for inclusive economic growth in developing countries in Asia to establish the proportion of the poor in the population and further identify its determinants. This research utilized secondary data from 1990 to 2016 by using econometric estimation. The results show that education decreases poverty when evaluated through the poverty gap and poverty headcount ratio and employment and increasing rate of economic development in the form of GDP to reducing poverty. GDP the Gini coefficient show the same signs while the magnitudes of the coefficients. Consequently, improvement in an independent variable will decrease poverty while the results have various levels of contributions through static and dynamic panel data methods, that education can reduce poverty. Results indicate that the level of poverty stood at 62.2%. The level of education, poverty headcount ratio, poverty gap and secondary school enrolment were significant in determining a household’s poverty status. However, land ownership and household head’s occupation were not statistically significant in explaining the probability of a household’s poverty status. From the results, this study recommends that all stakeholders work towards reducing poverty in the study to enhance education and family planning.

This paper aims to find the importance and contribution of spiritual poverty alleviation using people’s subjective evaluation data of deeply impoverished areas. The research is conducted according to the method of five-level scale evaluation and the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, combined with on-site questionnaires with the masses, and interviews with village cadres. The main findings reveal that the spiritual measures are more important than the material measures, and some of the second-level indicators have relatively low recognition of poverty alleviation contribution, which is an important basis for our targeted policies.