Poverty Alleviation and Equitable Growth: the Experience of Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia

Main Article Content

Terry McKinley

Abstract

En el artículo que presentamos a continuación, se examinan los esfuerzos de tres países de industrialización reciente —Chile, Indonesia y Malasia— en torno a la disminución de la pobreza. Mientras que estos tres países —al igual que México— se han apoyado en gran medida en su crecimiento económico para aliviar la pobreza, difieren entre ellos por la naturaleza de su crecimiento, el carácter de la intervención gubernamental para atacar la pobreza y los alcances de sus medidas redistributivas. Los estrategas del gobierno mexicano podrían beneficiarse de la experiencia —tanto positiva como negativa— de estos tres países en sus intentos por reducir la pobreza.ABSTRACTIn the following article I examine the poverty alleviation efforts of three newly industrializing countries: Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia. While all three, like Mexico, have relied heavily on rapid economic growth to alleviate poverty, they have differed in the character of their growth, the nature of government targeting of poverty, and the extent of their redistributive measures. There is much that policy makers in Mexico can leam from their experience, both positive and negative, in attempting to reduce poverty.

Article Details

How to Cite
McKinley, T. (2017). Poverty Alleviation and Equitable Growth: the Experience of Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Frontera Norte, 6(1e), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.17428/rfn.v6i1e.1707
Section
Papers

References

See Carol Graham, From Emergency Employment to Social Investment: Alleviating Poverty in Chile (Washing-ton, D.C.: The Brookings Institution).

Tarsicio Castaneda, Combating Poverty: Innovative Social Reforms in Chile during the 1980s (San Francisco; International Center for Economic Growth, 1992), p. 12.

Pilar Vergara, Políticas hacia la extrema pobreza en Chile, 1973-1988 (Santiago: FLACSO, 1989). The estimate is for 1985.

A. Torche, "Distribuir el ingreso para satisfacer las necesidades básicas," in Desarrollo económico en democracia, ed. Felipe Larrain (Santiago: Catholic University of Chile, 1987).

Patricio Meller, "Adjustment and Social Costs in Chile during the 1980s," World Development 19:11 (November 1991): 1546.

David E. Hojman, "Introduction," in Neo-liberal Agriculture in Rural Chile, ed. D. Hojman (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 5-8.

Keith Griffin, Alternative Strategies for Economic Development (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 176.

Various estimates give a Gini coefficient of over 0.50 for the late 1970s and the 1980s. See Eliana Cardoso and Ann Helwege, "Below the Line; Poverty in Latin America," World Development 20:1 (1992).

Graham, op. cit., p. 3.

Meller, op. cit., p. 1557.

Graham, op. cit., p. 12.

Meller, op. cit., p. 1559.

Meller, ibid., p. 1546.

Frida Johansen, Poverty Reduction in East Asia: The Silent Revolution, World Bank Discussion Paper No. 203 (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1993), p. 4.

Ibid., p. 29.

Anne Booth and R.M. Sundrum, "Income Distribution," in The Indonesian Economy during the Soeharto Era, ed. A. Booth and Pete McCawley (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 182-183.

Gustav F. Papanek, "Income Distribution and the Politics of Poverty," in The Indonesian Economy, ed. G.Papanek (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 58.

Martin Ravallion and Monika Huppi, "Measuring Changes in Poverty: A Methodological Case Study of Indonesia during an Adjustment Period," World Bank Economic Review 5:1 (January 1991): 74.

Erik Thorbecke, "Adjustment, Growth and Income Distribution in Indonesia," World Development 19:11 (November 1991); 1610.

Ravallion and Huppi, op. cit., p. 72.

Monika Huppi and Martin Ravallion, "The Sectoral Structure of Poverty during an Adjustment Period: Evidence for Indonesia in the Mid-1980s," World Development 19:12 (December 1991).

Thorbecke, op. cit., p. 1601.

Rizwanul Islam, "Rural Poverty, Growth, and Macroeconomic Policies: The Asian Experience," International Labour Review 129:6 (1990); 709.

Ravallion and Huppi, op. cit., p. 59.

Huppi and Ravallion, op. cit., p. 1672.

See United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

For a discussion of government efforts to provide health and education services, see Dillon Banerjee, "Indonesia; Human Development Profile and Policy Agenda" (International Development Program, The American University, 1994). Mimeo.

World Bank, Indonesia: Strategy for a Sustained Reduction in Poverty (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1990), pp. 20-21.

Islam, op. cit., p. 709.

For a more detailed description of the broad-based features of Indonesia's growth, see World Bank 1990, op. cit., chap. 2.

Johansen, op. cit., p. 30.

World Bank 1990, op. cit., p. 14.

See Sudhir Anand, Inequality and Poverty in Malaysia: Measurement and Decomposition (New York: Oxford University Press, for the World Bank, 1993), pp. 114, 127. Anand uses a poverty line for 1970 of M$25 per capita per month, which closely corresponds to the poverty line set by the Malaysian Ministry of Welfare Services. The Ministry's line requires an income level necessary to maintain a family in "good nutritional health" and provide it with "minimum conventional" nonfood needs.

Frida Johansen, op. cit., p. 42.

Ismail Mudh Salleh and Saha Dhevan Meyanathan, Malaysia: Growth, Equity, and Structural Transformation (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1993), p. 39.

Johansen, op. cit., p. 54.

Anand, op. cit., pp. 11-12.

"New Ethnic Economics?" The Banker, July 1991, p. 50.

Parvez Hasan, "Growth, Structural Change, and Social Progress," in Malaysia: Growth and Equity in a Multiracial Society, ed. Kevin Young, Willem C.F. Bussink, and P. Hasan (Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins University Press, for the World Bank, 1980), p. 44.

Alice Galenson, "Agriculture and Rural Poverty," in Malaysia: Growth and Equity in a Multiracial Society, ed. Kevin Young, Willem C.F. Bussink, and P. Hasan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, for the World Bank, 1980), p. 250.

Johansen, op. cit., p. 16.

Anand, op. cit., p. 127.

World Bank, World Development Report 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, for the World Bank), tables 14, 16.

Lionel Demery and David Demery, "Poverty and Macroeconomic Policy in Malaysia, 1979-87," World Development 19:11 (1991), p. 1621.

Ibid.

World Bank 1993, op. cit., table 2.

Johansen, op. cit., annex tables.