• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.222-235
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• 2020

This study examines the poverty progress and its factors which drove the lives of the middle-aged men in Chokbang area. The observed examples are the retired government officials and the self-employed who have been classified as the ones in the economically-middle class but currently as the welfare recipients. According to the results of in-depth interview and observation, the poverty of the observed has undergone the progress of trigger, worsening, breakup, desperation and stabilizing stages. The poverty factors found in this study could be categorized into two factors; circumstantial factors(bankruptcy after IMF, debt guarantee for relatives) and inner factors(the participants' behavior and characteristics). The circumstantial factors worked mainly in the trigger stage and the inner factors contributed to worsening economic crisis and facilitating the progress. According to the result, this study suggests not only individual-scale measures such as encouragement of familial bond or medical treatment of the alcoholism but also social measures including proper regulation of shark loan and opportunity supply to exit from poverty.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.364-367
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• 2011

The levels of unemployment and poverty are extremely high and two of South Africa's most pressing problems. There is also a widely acknowledged need for housing and municipal infrastructure (water supply, sewerage, streets, storm water drainage, and electricity, refuse collection). From a theoretical perspective supported by experience elsewhere in Africa, there are reasons for considering that properly formulated employment creation programmes based on the use of labour-intensive methods could be established to construct and maintain the required physical infrastructure, thus creating employment, skills and institutional capacities. Over the past 30 years several projects have been initiated in South Africa to counter unemployment and poverty. Given the socio-economic conditions and political objectives (regarding development, employment creation and alleviation of poverty), it is anticipated that future large-scale construction projects will be proposed by the public sector (National, Provincial and Local Government). The paper will first examine the main tenets of the implementation of development projects through the use of labour-intensive construction and a description of progress elsewhere in Africa and their potential contribution which public works programmes could make to alleviate the poverty and unemployment problems. The research will then analyse the successes and challenges that have been experienced in South Africa in relation to the implementation of development projects over the past 30 years. The paper closes with recommendations and lessons for the future.

• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.5-16
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• 2013

Purpose - Micro-finance institutions (MFIs) are critical to Vietnam's quest for poverty alleviation among the poor in the rural and agrarian communities. The current study attempts to investigate the impact of microfinance outreach programs undertaken by formal and semi-formal MFIs in Vietnam targeting the poor rural and agrarian communities. Research design, data, methodology - An enquiry was made as to whether the poor and rural communities accessed the micro credit offered by Government supported MFIs and NGOs through their microfinance outreach programs. Furthermore, the current study attempted to explore if the current mode of operations adopted by MFIs in Vietnam is sustainable. Results -The findings indicate that significant progress has been made in Vietnam to alleviate poverty among the poor rural communities through micro finance outreach programs. Conclusions - There are also pointers of MFIs sustainability in Vietnam. However, it still remains to be seen if the current sustainability pointers are long lasting without government subsidies or some international organizations financial support to microfinance outreach programs.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.1559-1575
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• 2009

As the basic old-age pension system was enforced in 2008, the base for old-age income security was founded. However, due to the basic old-age pension played a minor role as assistant allowance, it did not reach to sufficient level to cover full income security system. It is estimated that the dependency on private transfer income among the elderly who are difficult to be economically independent is still high. Therefore the poverty rate of the elderly households, who are not economically active or who are not protected by old-age income security system, is more likely to be higher than that of non-elderly households. Based on the assumption that public transfer income system should become a central means of old-age life guarantee, this study examined the poverty mitigation effects among the elderly households by comparing the private transfer income and the public transfer income. For this purpose, we selected single-elderly-households who have been considered the most vulnerable to poverty. We used 2006- 2008 Household Income and Expenditure Survey dataset that contained single-elderly who were older than 65 years old. To understand the conditions of poverty among single-elderly-households and the degree of poverty-reducing effect originated from income transfer system, we compared the poverty rates of total households and the whole elderly households. Next, we analysed the poverty of the single-elderly-households by social demographic factors such as gender, age, and economic activity. Our major findings are as follows: First, the poverty rate of the whole elderly households were not reduced, even though the basic old-age pension and long-term care management system were enforced in 2008. Second, half of the elderly households including single-elderly-households belonged to the absolute poverty line. Relatively higher level of poverty among the single-elderly-households was found especially those who were female, unemployed, low-educated, older, and rural single-elderly-households. Third, the effect of the public transfer income on mitigating the single-elderly-households poverty showed a little progress. However, even greater poverty reducing effect was found by the private transfer income system. Fourth, in a group of the public transfer systems, the public assistance such as supporting living costs contributed more to reduce poverty of the elderly population than the public pension system did.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.181-194
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• 1998

The inability of the management information systems (MIS) field to progress as a scientific discipline has been attributed to the lack of systematic research and a cumulative tradition, an identity crisis, and the poverty of scientism. While research on the status of MIS is very important in order to enhance the field as a scientific discipline, few have investigated this issue. Following Thomas Kuhn's idea of paradigm, this paper studies other fields to investigate when they progressed, when they did not, and why. After research paradigm was broken down into technology-push and demand-pull types, a model on the science life cycle was developed in an effort to explain the path how a science has progressed. A test of this model in the fields of physics and chemistry with an old historial background reveals that the scientific progress in the area of demand-pull is more desirable if this progress turns out to be in the right direction. An application of the model to the MIS field shows that the research paradigm in this field is mainly of technology-push. In order to shift this paradigm toward the demand-pull area, this paper suggests the research on the relationship among MIS subfields and the adoption of appropriate reference disciplines.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.127-153
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• 2004

In the absence of a male provider the state must decide how far and under what conditions it will provide for the mother and her children. In the case of lone mothers, there are three main possible sources of income: the labour market, the absent father, and the state. However, the relative proportions of these three sources vary significantly from country to country as well as from individual to individual within the group of lone parents. Until very recently the UK has been alone among countries of the EU in allowing lone parents to draw benefits without making themselves available for work so long as they have dependent children. However, in the 1990s, the UK government introduced major changes to his policies regarding lone parents. The UK government attempted to restrict the role of the state as a source of income for lone parent families. At the beginning of the 1990s, the emphasis in the UK was put on securing more money from 'absent fathers' to maintain. However, the policy was unsuccessful and by the mid-1990s attention to the only other possible source of income for lone parent families, the labour market, was stepped up, notwithstanding the ambivalence of politicians about the desirability of women with young children entering employment. From 1998 the Labour government introduced a series of reforms aimed at reducing both worklessness and poverty by raising welfare payments to families both in and out of work, improving financial incentives to work and introducing a more proactive welfare system. The results presented here suggest that these policies have raised the employment rates of lone parents by around 5 percentage points, or 80,000. These employment gains have come from a welfare reform package that does not require lone parents to search for jobs, or uses time limits in welfare programmes. In addition these gains have been achieved despite generous increases in welfare payments for lone parents who do not work. These earnings gains combined with the more generous welfare are making rapid progress in reducing lone parents' poverty.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.209-221
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• 2009

The early childhood education in Korea has made a great progress during the last thirty years. However, understanding the early childhood education is a challenging task because of the diversity of the fields. Currently 38% of 3-5 year old children are enrolled in kindergarten. And several efforts to develop and distribute the standard curricula on a national level were underwent successfully. Researches are rapidly expanding in volume and the topics are becoming diverse. Focuses of researches moved from the area of cognitive development, science and mathematics in 80s, social and emotional aspects in 90s to language, curriculum and teacher education in 2000s. One of the emerging issues is the inclusion of kindergarten to public education system and free kindergarten education for young children. The second issues is more interdisciplinary policies are in need related to the low-birth rate in nation. The third one is about teacher training policy. The fourth one is related to the health, nutrition and safety of young children. And the fifth issue is moving educational system and policies that provide better future of young children while focusing on the children in low income families and children with absolute poverty.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.7-7
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• 2017

Unfavorable weather and soil conditions reduce rice yield and land and water productivity, aggravating existing encounters of poverty and food insecurity. These conditions are foreseen to worsen with climate change and with the unceasing irrational human practices that progressively debilitate productivity despite global appeals for more food. Our understanding of plant responses to abiotic stresses is advancing and is complex, involving numerous critical processes - each controlled by several genetic factors. Knowledge of the physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in signaling, response and adaptation, and in some cases the genes involved, is advancing. Moreover, the genetic diversity being unveiled within cultivated rice and its wild relatives is providing ample resources for trait and gene discovery, and this is being scouted for rice improvement using modern genomics and molecular tools. Development of stress tolerant varieties is now being fast-tracked through the use of DNA markers and advanced breeding strategies. Large numbers of drought, submergence and salt tolerant varieties were commercialized over recent years in South and Southeast Asia and more recently in Africa. These varieties are making significant changes in less favorable areas, transforming lives of smallholder farmers - progress considered incredulous in the past. The stress tolerant varieties are providing assurance to farmers to invest in better management of their crops and the ability to adjust their cropping systems for even higher productivity and more income, sparking changes analogous to that of the first green revolution, which previously benefited only favorable irrigated and rainfed areas. New breeding tools using markers for multiple stresses made it possible to develop more resilient, higher yielding varieties to replace the aging and obsolete varieties still dominating these areas. Varieties with multiple stress tolerances are now becoming available, providing even better security for farmers and lessening their production risks even in areas affected by complex and overlapping stresses. The progress made in these less favorable areas triggered numerous favorable changes at the national and regional levels in several countries in Asia, including adjusting breeding and dissemination strategies to accelerate outreach and enabling changes at higher policy levels, creating a positive environment for faster progress. Exploiting the potential of these less productive areas for food production is inevitable, to meet the escalating global needs for more food and sustained production systems, at times when national resources are shrinking while demand for food is mounting. However, the success in these areas requires concerted efforts to make use of existing genetic resources for crop improvement and establishing effective evaluation networks, seed production systems, and seed delivery systems to ensure faster outreach and transformation.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.49-83
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• 2011

Ever since the UN Summit agreed on the MDGs in 2000, OECD/DAC member countries have taken poverty reduction as the main goal of their aid. To achieve this goal, all donors and recipient countries agreed on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005. To monitor and evaluate the progress in the targets of the Declaration, all donors and recipients got together periodically, and the 2011 conference was held in Busan, Korea. As part of this effort, this paper aims to assess the extent to which DAC donors have allocated their aid to achieve the MDGs during the latest millennium era: 2005-2009. In addition, to compare the aid allocation performance between DAC members and non-DAC emerging donors, this paper also assesses the aid allocation performance of Korea (KOICA) for the same period. The analysis of this paper shows evidence contrary to the recent literature findings that donors tended to select, as their aid recipients, those countries that warranted more aid on account of their acute development needs, and good policies and institutions. The difference between the recent literature and this paper is attributed to the different sample periods and/or the weaknesses of the estimation models and methods adopted in the literature. This paper shows why a different estimation method is adopted and why its estimation results are more reliable and convincing. This paper also shows the difference between DAC and non-DAC donors in the aid allocation performance by analyzing aid allocations by the representative aid agency of Korea (KOICA), and recommends some policy measures to be taken by both DAC and non-DAC donors.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2014

The Kenyan aquaculture sector is broadly categorized into freshwater aquaculture and mariculture. Whereas freshwater aquaculture has recorded significant progress over the last decade, the mariculture sector has yet to be fully exploited. The Kenyan aquaculture industry has seen slow growth for decades until recently, when the government-funded Economic Stimulus Program increased fish farming nationwide. Thus far, the program has facilitated the alleviation of poverty, spurred regional development, and led to increased commercial thinking among Kenyan fish farmers. Indeed, national aquaculture production grew from 1,000 MT/y in 2000 (equivalent to 1% of national fish production) to 12,000 MT/y, representing 7% of the national harvest, in 2010. The production is projected to hit 20,000 MT/y, representing 10% of total production and valued at USD 22.5 million over the next 5 years. The dominant aquaculture systems in Kenya include earthen and lined ponds, dams, and tanks distributed across the country. The most commonly farmed fish species are Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus, which accounts for about 75% of production, followed by African catfish Clarias gariepinus, which contributes about 21% of aquaculture production. Other species include common carp Cyprinus carpio, rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, koi carp Cyprinus carpio carpio, and goldfish Carassius auratus. Recently, Kenyan researchers have begun culturing native fish species such as Labeo victorianus and Labeo cylindricus at the National Aquaculture Research Development and Training Centre in Sagana. Apart from limited knowledge of modern aquaculture technology, the Kenyan aquaculture sector still suffers from an inadequate supply of certified quality seed fish and feed, incomprehensive aquaculture policy, and low funding for research. Glaring opportunities in the Kenyan aquaculture industry include the production of live fish food, e.g., Artemia, daphnia and rotifers, marine fish and shellfish larviculture; seaweed farming; cage culture; integrated fish farming; culture of indigenous fish species; and investment in the fish feed industry.