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Thursday, August 30, 2007

A gendered analysis of ‘time poverty’: the importance of infrastructure

Time poverty in Lesotho: a gendered analysis

By: Lawson, D
Published by: ESRC Global Poverty Research Group, 2007
Via: Eldis

Are there gender differences associated with the impact of infrastructure? This paper uses a large scale nationally representative survey to investigate both socio-economic determinants of time poverty and the impact of infrastructure, using nationally representative data from Lesotho.

The paper finds, amongst other issues, that overall time poverty analysis can be revealing but when adopting such an approach, as with simple monetary-based poverty measures, the results are sensitive to the cut-off points used for time poverty. The main point is that sensitivity analysis is required in the context of such calculations.

The author finds that infrastructure matters, especially for females who have to travel a long way for public transport and water, and these tend to be the poorest individuals. Usage rights over assets and possibilities for women to enter into productive economic work also appears to be more limited than for men, and could also be directly linked to some women, particularly female headed households, being time poor.

The author points out that there are policy consequences of such findings (i.e. targeting of sub groups etc.) but that it is also fairly clear that the importance of infrastructure services is not just connected to reducing monetary based poverty i.e. through health improvements, or by improving water and sanitation, which decreases incidence of illness and reduces productivity. Infrastructure provision such as better transportation and water services, can be very effective in the context of reducing time poverty.

(http://www.gprg.org/pubs/workingpapers/pdfs/gprg-wps-078.pdf)

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