Abstract
Using the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey 2011, this study is to quantify the impacts of disabilities induced by armed conflicts on poverty. Two main empirical findings emerge: First, disabilities aggravate poverty by 12–15%. Especially, disabilities caused by war and land mines exacerbate poverty significantly by 26–27%. In contrast, congenital disabilities or disabilities caused by accidents and diseases do not generate significant impact on poverty. Second, household characteristics, such as the number of household members, residential area, education, and marriage status of household head, are systematically correlated with poverty.
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Notes
Roberts (2011, pp.167–183) lists diverse origins of Cambodia’s mine/UXO. First, the origin of Cambodia’s mines goes back to the US carpet bombing during the Vietnam War (1965–1979). Second, the Royal Government of Cambodia deployed mines to resist Khmer Rouge’s attacks on major cities (1971–1975). Third, with support from the North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, Khmer Rouge deployed mines to preserve its power and to protect its national borders. Fourth, since 1968, Thailand and Cambodia competitively deployed mines to protect their national borders. Finally, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea that was under the control of Vietnam deployed explosives for protection of the country’s borders.
The healthcare system in Cambodia has improved with the support of the WHO since the Health Sector Reform in 1995 (DPHI and MOH 2007, pp. 9–10). Since 2003, the Health Sector Support Project of the World Bank has been assisting Cambodia with improving accessibility and quality of its healthcare system (World Bank, 2013). Yet, the quality of the healthcare system is undermined, and the share of health centers that provides full minimum services was 43% (WHO and MOH 2012, p. 2).
There is limited access to objective information on the socio-economic status of people with disabilities in developing countries. As a result, unlike in advanced nations, it is not easy to evaluate how successful inclusive development policies are in reducing poverty among people with disabilities (Lamichhane and Sawada 2013, p. 85).
Depending on publications and methodology, the share of disabled people in adults ranges from 1.5 to 15% of the population (Thomas 2005, p. 21), and as low as 2% or as high as 15% of Cambodia’s total population are disabled (Zook 2010, p. 51). Nevertheless, Cambodia has one of the highest rates of disability in the developing world (UN ESCAP 2002).
Before examining the relationship between disability and poverty, it is imperative to review the definition of disability. Disability has been regarded as an individual issue and merely as the consequence of certain dysfunctional body parts in the medical perspective. However, under a new definition or a social model of disability, it is deemed that society categorizes people with dysfunctional body parts as disabled (Matsui et al. 2012). Disability, therefore, arises from complex interaction between health conditions and the context in which they exist (Mont 2007, p. 4).
Refer to ILO (2017) for detailed information regarding the calculation method.
This study employed STATA (ver. 13) to estimate the econometric models.
It remains a question as to which is a more proper variable: income or consumption. Under life-cycle or permanent income hypothesis, a consumption fluctuates relatively less than income does over the course of time, and therefore, consumption variable is more appropriate to measure individual welfares (Kang et al. 2013, p. 6).
To control for the differences arising from the characteristics of each region, the average values of observations belonging to the same villages were subtracted from each observation and a regression analysis was conducted.
There are 660 households in the highest 25% region, and among them, 79 households have disabled heads. In the highest 25% region, the proportion of households with disabled heads to total households is 11.97%. There are 1315 households in the lowest 25% region, and among them, 103 households have disabled heads. In the lowest 25% region, the proportion of households with disabled heads to total households is 7.83%.
Refer to Appendix Table 1 for the balancing test results for determining if PSM was properly conducted.
According to results, there is only one treated sample which is not included in common support region.
An important thing is why PSM is used. Usually, PSM is used if samples are selected. The outcome suggests that there is a gap between the average consumption of the two groups even when samples are selected. Covariates of propensity score estimates reveal that the treatment group and control comparison group are properly balanced with the propensity score. That is, compared to the raw score, the mean bias of the matched sample decreased from 31.5 to 3.5 and the median bias decreased from 19.8 to 2.7.
Refer to the webpage of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (2017) for more details on mines and UXOs statistics (http://cmac.gov.kh/en/article/progress-summary-report.htm, retrieved on 25 June 2017).
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Appendix
Appendix
In line with the robustness check in Sect. 3, Appendix Table 8 shows the balancing test results if PSM is properly conducted. The average difference among independent variables of the treatment group and the control group is not statistically significant. Simply put, the average of independent variables of both groups is not different (Fig. 2).
Age of head (disabled vs. non-disabled group)
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Kang, S.J., Sawada, Y. & Chung, Y.W. Long-term consequences of armed conflicts on poverty: the case of Cambodia. Asia-Pac J Reg Sci 1, 519–535 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41685-017-0050-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41685-017-0050-4