Global Study On Child Poverty And Disparities (PDF) - Social Policy ...

Vatu Millions
shown in Figure 1.5, amounts have increased
significantly in real terms since 2007, due largely
to increased contributions from Australia as well
as infrastructure funding by the United States
through the Millennium Challenge Account.
Figure 1.5: Annual grant aid flows, 2002 to 2009
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 June*
2009
* June 2009 data annualized. Source: Reserve Bank of
Vanuatu 2009.
Vanuatu’s relatively limited outward migration
has kept remittances much smaller in scope
than in a number of other PICs. 4 However, since
2007 Vanuatu has been part of the Recognised
Seasonal Employment scheme with New
Zealand and more recently, the Pacific Seasonal
Workers Pilot Scheme with Australia. As part of
Recognised Seasonal Employment, 2,600 Ni-
Vanuatu have been employed on farms in New
Zealand, bringing back between NZ$5,000 and
NZ$10,000 per worker, with roughly two-thirds of
the money going to rural areas. The Australian
scheme is more recent and smaller in scale but
is also likely to contribute to improving household
incomes in the future. Given the large share
going to rural areas, remittances potentially have
a strong role to play in rural poverty reduction.
Conversely, the prospect of workers moving
overseas may have implications for the domestic
skills base as well as potential negative effects
for some households during the absence of the
worker.
Employment, incomes and inequality
The labour market in Vanuatu is concentrated
in the agricultural sector (Table 1.3). In 1999,
67 per cent of the population were engaged in
subsistence farming, with more females (72.9
per cent) than males (62.5 per cent) working in
this sector. However, only about a quarter of the
workforce was working for pay, salary or profit,
and the majority (about two-thirds) of this group
were males.
Other than the agricultural sector, 5.4 per cent
of labour market participants were technicians
and professionals, including teachers and
nurses, and 5.2 per cent were shop and market
sales workers. Not surprisingly, the proportion
of agricultural workers was much larger in rural
areas (86.2 per cent) than in urban areas (8.3 per
cent).
Table 1.4 provides more up-to-date data on
economic activity in Vanuatu from the 2006
Household Income and Expenditure Survey
(ADB, UNDP and GOV 2006). This shows that
less than 20 per cent of the population age 15
years and over was working for wages and
salaries, mostly full-time. The unemployed
accounted for 10 per cent of the adult population,
but the largest group were those producing for
household consumption, at just under 40 per cent
of the population age 15 years and over.
Table 1.3: Selected occupations in rural and urban areas, 1999
Occupations Rural (%) Urban (%)
Agriculture and fisheries 86.2 8.3
Services and retail 2.4 17.0
Crafts and related 2.0 15.4
Technical and professional 3.6 13.0
Clerical 0.6 9.5
Unemployed 0.6 6.2
Source: VNSO 2000.
4 For example, roughly half the population of Samoa and Tonga lives overseas, and
remittances amount to 14 per cent of GDP in Samoa and 39 per cent in Tonga; in contrast,
remittances to Vanuatu are around 3 per cent of GDP (Ball et al., 2010).
23