Determinants of Well‐being and Poverty Changes in Cameroon: 2001–2007

Abstract

This paper identifies and decomposes sources that explain household economic well‐being in Cameroon. It uses the 2001 and 2007 Cameroon Household Consumption Surveys, synthetic variables constructed by the multiple correspondence analysis and econometric approaches that correct for potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity in a step‐wise manner and simultaneously. Sources of well‐being that explain poverty are then decomposed into growth and redistribution components. Variables that significantly explain household economic well‐being are education, health, household size, fraction of active household members, working in the formal sector and area of residence. Decomposition analysis shows that the growth components largely account for changes in deprivation in terms of each regressed‐income source. With the exception of the income source education, redistribution components slowed down progress in alleviating shortfall in other regressed‐income sources. These results have implications for public interventions that affect education and health for all, labour market participation and infrastructure development.

Can policy deviance reduce poverty? A critical analysis of self‐return migration in Cameroon

“…However, over 90 per cent of all households live in poverty. This supports previous contentions that poverty in Cameroon is principally a rural phenomenon, which is the main outcome of two national surveys in 1996 and 2001 in the country (Fambon and Baye ) and an analysis of the evolution of national poverty in 2007 (Epo and Baye ). In addition, widespread poverty amongst targeted beneficiaries may be indicative of serious failure of the government's policy in dealing with the natural hazard.…”

“…The topical literature conceptualises two categories of poverty: absolute and relative poverty. In absolute terms, one is poor when the assessment of one's (money-metric) resources are below the poverty line, generally constructed based on a basket of goods and services required for a "normal" life (Atkinson 1970;Epo and Baye 2012;Forster et al 1985;Sen 1976). Relative poverty describes the availability of resources in relation to those at the disposal of others (Henry et al 2003;Sen 1983).…”

Does social capital really determine poverty? Evidence from a Cameroon household survey

“…The variable ownership of television is a decision variable and as argued in Epo and Baye (2012), to reduce the potential for endogeneity, this household variable is transformed into cluster variables. The reason is that a single individual (household in our case) cannot influence a societal variable (community variable), thus considering the proportional shares in each primary sampling unit reduces potential endogeneity (Epo and Baye 2012;Mwabu 2009). With this same idea, household ownership of farmland and the instruments for social capital are also transformed in cluster variables in the model.…”

“…To take care of (i) potential endogeneity, (ii) non-linear interactions of unobservable variables with the household economic well-being regressors and (iii) potential complementary behaviour between household well-being and education, Equation 2 can be adapted to give Equation 4. This is a control function specification which takes the following form as inspired by Epo and Baye (2012); Garen (1984) and Mwabu (2009):…”

Multi‐asset Deprivation and Pro‐poor Growth in Cameroon

“…In Cameroon, several studies attempt to link poverty, inequality and growth (Epo and Baye, ; Fambon, ; Baye and Khan, ; Baye, ,b; Government of Cameroon, ). Overall, growth accounts more for changes in poverty than inequality.…”