Mohammad Niaz Asadullah

Over the past few decades, the global production landscape has shifted from nationally confined manufacturing systems to integrated global value chain (GVC) networks. In this, each location special...

At the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) campaign in 2015, stunting among under 5-year-olds remained a major challenge in South Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia lagging behind—a phenomenon known as the “Asian enigma.” This paper revisits the issue, focusing on progress achieved during the first half of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) era. Using microdata from eight countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, each with at least one pre-2015 and one post-2015 round of Demographic and Health Surveys, we compare stunting outcomes across pre-MDG, MDG, and SDG cohorts. Our findings indicate that children born in the SDG era exhibit better height-for-age outcomes compared to earlier cohorts, although significant disparities persist across countries. In particular, we provide new evidence of the “Indian enigma,” characterized by a persistently high prevalence of child stunting in the SDG era compared to Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal. The paper concludes with a preliminary exploration of policy-related factors that may explain the observed country-level differences in progress.

This chapter assesses the interactions among SDGs for the case of women’s economic empowerment. For illustration purposes, we single out two forms of hidden gender inequalities within education (i.e., gender bias in learning materials and educational leadership) that may potentially undermine interlinkages between SDGs 4 and 5. Descriptive secondary evidence on the broken and intact interlinkages between female schooling and women’s employment is presented and is followed by a discussion of the policy lessons from South Asia vis-à-vis Southeast Asia-two regions with contrasting experience in harnessing synergistic developments and positive interlinkages for women’s development. In sum, if gender inequality within the production of education is overlooked, schooling girls will not be enough for economic empowerment of women and may even reinforce the broken links between SDGs 4 and 5.

Family and intergenerational relationships are becoming increasingly important as sources of support and care for the elderly population in rapidly ageing Asian societies. However, this has also raised concerns over reinforcement of cultural preference for sons as a source of old-age security. This paper therefore revisits the question—what determines happiness in old age—by investigating the role of adult children’s gender in the context of Thailand, an ageing Asian country with no legacy of sex-preference in fertility. We employ nationally representative data to examine the association between old-age happiness and presence of a co-residing child. Compared to living alone, living with at least one child is found to positively associate with older persons’ happiness. However, this result is specific to daughters. Moreover, compared to older men, women systematically benefit from a “daughter effect”. Co-residing daughters with university education and those who maintain a good relationship with their parents help explain the positive happiness effect on older persons. Co-residing daughters are also positively linked to reduced loneliness; improved self-rated health; and improved economic conditions of older parents. Our findings suggest that policies that increase human capital of the girl child and enhance family solidarity are likely to have long term intergenerational wellbeing benefits.

This article critically examines regional differences in poverty reduction in Malaysia with a focus on political economy factors. More specifically, we focus on the East–West regional divide in income poverty, between four historically poorer the West Malaysia and two states of Eastern Malaysia–Sabah and Sarawak during 1970–2019. Between 1970 and 1990, Malaysia implemented the New Economic Policy (NEP), arguably the longest and most ambitious race-based affirmative action programme in the world. In this context, we also assess whether and how its affirmative action policies succeeded in closing regional gaps. During the NEP, Sarawak saw greater and earlier reductions in income poverty and inequality than the resource-rich states of Sabah and Terengganu, where poverty largely persisted. We argue that politics played a key role in explaining Sabah’s different trajectory vis-à-vis Sarawak, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu. The ethnicity-targeted policies of the NEP meant the Malays and Muslims were given priority over all other groups. The faster decline in poverty in Sarawak coincided with Muslim control since 1970. On the other hand, when Sabah was under the non-Muslim rule, there was little progress on poverty alleviation. The situation reversed when Sabah fell under Muslim control. The key lesson is that politics do matter during the implementation phase of poverty alleviation programme in Malaysia.