|
on Demographic Economics |
|
Issue of 2011‒08‒15
fourteen papers chosen by Clarence Nkengne Tsimpo University of Montreal and World Bank Group |
| By: | Macunovich, Diane (University of Redlands) |
| Abstract: | This study tests the effect of relative income – younger people's earning potential relative to their aspirations, as approximated by older families' income – on two measures of fertility: the proportion of women with an own child under one year of age, and the proportion of women with at least one own child under eighteen. The results are highly supportive of the Easterlin relative income hypothesis, finding a dominant negative effect of older family income that extends due to postponement effects even into groups 11-15 years out of school. Increases in older family income are found to account for 42% of the decline in the proportion of women with a newborn, and 37% of the decline in the proportion with at least one own child, among women 0-5 years out of school. In addition, the study finds a strong but changing effect of the female wage: positive among women 0-5 years out of school, although slowly declining over time, but negative among the older women with a dominant positive time trend that has produced a positive effect in the last decade. It is hypothesized that the observed pattern of increases in fertility among women with higher levels of education over the last decade has been a function of this emerging positive effect of the female wage, among older more educated women. |
| Keywords: | fertility, relative income, relative cohort size, Easterlin hypothesis |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5885&r=dem |
| By: | Claudia Trentini (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) |
| Abstract: | It is widely accepted that disparities in education contribute to the poor labor market outcomes experienced by ethnic minority groups and consequently to their poverty. However, incentives to invest in education are significantly diminished if individuals are discriminated in the labor market and precluded from access to employment. In this paper we analyze differential educational benefits in Bulgaria and compare Roma returns to education with the majority population and the Turkish minority. We show that both ethnic minority groups have lower educational levels and employment rates than the majority population and that they also have lower returns to education. However, the gap in returns to education is much wider for the Roma with respect to both employment and labour-market earnings. The evidence suggests that this group is more vulnerable to discrimination, with a high percentage of the employment gap unexplained by differences in observable skills or characteristics. |
| Keywords: | minorities, Roma, discrimination, returns to education, transition |
| JEL: | J15 J7 P36 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ece:dispap:2011_1&r=dem |
| By: | Blau, Francine D. (Cornell University); Kahn, Lawrence M. (Cornell University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we use New Immigrant Survey data to investigate the impact of immigrant women's own labor supply prior to migrating and female labor supply in their source country to provide evidence on the role of human capital and culture in affecting their labor supply and wages in the United States. We find, as expected, that women who migrate from countries with relatively high levels of female labor supply work more in the United States. Moreover, most of this effect remains when we further control for each woman’s own labor supply prior to migrating, which itself also strongly affects labor supply in the United States. Importantly, we find a significantly negative interaction between pre-migration labor supply and source country female labor supply. We obtain broadly similar effects analyzing the determinants of hourly earnings among the employed in the United States, although the results are not always significant. These results suggest an important role for culture and norms in affecting immigrant women's labor supply, since the effect of source country female labor supply on immigrant women's US work hours is still strong even controlling for the immigrant’s own pre-migration labor supply. The negative interaction effects between previous work experience and source country female labor supply on women's US work hours and wages suggest that cultural capital and individual job-related human capital act as substitutes in affecting preparedness for work in the US. |
| Keywords: | gender, immigration, labor supply, human capital |
| JEL: | J16 J22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5890&r=dem |
| By: | Kirdar, Murat G. (Middle East Technical University); Tayfur, Meltem Dayioglu (Middle East Technical University); Koc, Ismet (Hacettepe University) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the impact of the extension of compulsory schooling in Turkey from 5 to 8 years on the marriage and fertility behavior of teenage women in Turkey using the 2008 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey. We find that the new education policy reduces the probability of marriage and giving birth for teenage women substantially: the probability of marriage by age 16 is reduced by 44 percent and the probability of giving birth by age 17 falls by 36 percent. The effects of the education policy on the time until marriage and first-birth persist beyond the completion of compulsory schooling. In addition, we find that the delay in the time until first-birth is driven by the delay in the time until marriage. After a woman is married, the rise in compulsory schooling years does not have an effect on the duration until her first-birth. Finally, we find that the education policy was more effective in reducing early marriage than a change in the Civil Code aimed for this purpose. |
| Keywords: | age at marriage, fertility, education, compulsory schooling |
| JEL: | J12 J13 I20 D10 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5887&r=dem |
| By: | Wen-Jen Tsay (Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan); C. Y. Cyrus Chu (Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan) |
| Abstract: | Treating female labor force participation (LFP) and coresidence with the hus-band's parents as two endogenous decisions, we estimate the duration of first birth using data on Taiwanese married women. Technically, we propose a full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimator for a duration model with endogenous binary switching variables, which solves the problem mentioned by Schultz (1997, p. 375). Our first result shows that female LFP significantly delays the timing of first birth and is in line with that found in Heckman et al. (1985) where the status of female LFP is assumed to be exogenous. Our second result is completely opposite to the finding of previous literature in that coresiding with the husband's parents postpones the timing of first birth after controlling the endogeneity of coresidence status. We explain why this is so. |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sin:wpaper:11-a005&r=dem |
| By: | Francine D. Blau; Lawrence M. Kahn |
| Abstract: | In this paper we use New Immigrant Survey data to investigate the impact of immigrant women’s own labor supply prior to migrating and female labor supply in their source country to provide evidence on the role of human capital and culture in affecting their labor supply and wages in the United States. We find, as expected, that women who migrate from countries with relatively high levels of female labor supply work more in the United States. Moreover, most of this effect remains when we further control for each woman’s own labor supply prior to migrating, which itself also strongly affects labor supply in the United States. Importantly, we find a significantly negative interaction between pre-migration labor supply and source country female labor supply. We obtain broadly similar effects analyzing the determinants of hourly earnings among the employed in the United States, although the results are not always significant. These results suggest an important role for culture and norms in affecting immigrant women’s labor supply, since the effect of source country female labor supply on immigrant women’s US work hours is still strong even controlling for the immigrant’s own pre-migration labor supply. The negative interaction effects between previous work experience and source country female labor supply on women’s US work hours and wages suggest that cultural capital and individual job-related human capital act as substitutes in affecting preparedness for work in the US. |
| JEL: | J16 J22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17275&r=dem |
| By: | Macunovich, Diane (University of Redlands) |
| Abstract: | This study tests the effect of relative income – younger people's earning potential relative to their aspirations, as approximated by older families' income – on the proportions married, by sex, in the first fifteen years out of school. It finds that relative income has become a better measure to use, than relative cohort size, because of a disconnect that has developed between the two as a result of rising female labor force participation among older women that has inflated older families’ income faster than older men's earnings. The results are highly supportive of the Easterlin relative income hypothesis, finding a dominant negative effect of older family income that extends due to postponement effects even into groups 11-15 years out of school. But in addition it finds a strong but changing effect of the female wage: positive among women 0-5 years out of school, although slowly declining over time, but negative among the older women with a dominant positive time trend that has produced a positive effect in the last decade. The elasticity with respect to older family income suggests that it was responsible for 16% of the observed decline in the proportion of women 0-5 years out of school who were married, and 23% of the proportion for the men in the same group. There is in addition, however, a very strong negative time trend. |
| Keywords: | marriage, relative income, relative cohort size, Easterlin hypothesis, marriage squeeze |
| JEL: | J12 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5886&r=dem |
| By: | ANGELINI, V.;; CAVAPOZZI, D.;; CORAZZINI L.;; PACCAGNELL O.; |
| Abstract: | Self-reported life satisfaction is highly heterogeneous across similar countries. This phenomenon can be largely explained by the di¤erent scales and benchmarks adopted by individuals when evaluating themselves. We use cross-sectional data on the population aged 50 and over in ten European countries to compare estimates from a model in which reporting styles are assumed to be constant across respon- dents with those from a model in which anchoring vignettes are used to correct for individual-speci?c scale biases. We ?nd that variations in response scales explain a large part of the di¤erences found in raw data. Moreover, the cross-country ranking in life satisfaction signi?cantly depends on scale biases. |
| Keywords: | Life satisfaction, scale biases, anchoring vignettes, counterfactuals |
| JEL: | C42 D12 I31 J14 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:11/20&r=dem |
| By: | Joshua Congdon-Hohman (Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross); Victor Matheson (Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross) |
| Abstract: | A number of authors have identified the determinants of success in international sporting competitions such as the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup. This paper serves to update past work on international women’s soccer performance given the rapid development of the game over the past decade. We compare the determinants of men’s international soccer team performance with that of their female counterparts and find that a different set of variables are important in explaining success for the two genders. While economic and demographic influences hold for both, the impacts of specific political and cultural factors diverge. In particular, Latin heritage predicts men’s success but not women’s, Muslim religious affiliation reduces women’s success but not men’s, and communist political systems tend to improve women’s performance but reduce men’s performance. Several measures of gender equality improve soccer performance for both men’s and women’s soccer suggesting these indicators of gender equality reflect overall levels of development while other measures of equality, particularly those related to women’s access to education, improve women’s soccer performance without enhancing men’s performance. |
| Keywords: | soccer, football, gender inequality, FIFA World Ranking |
| JEL: | I00 J16 L83 Z13 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hcx:wpaper:1107&r=dem |
| By: | Chaaban, Jad; Cunningham, Wendy |
| Abstract: | Although girls are approximately half the youth population in developing countries, they contribute less than their potential to the economy. The objective of this paper is to quantify the opportunity cost of girls'exclusion from productive employment with the hope that stark figures will lead policymakers to reconsider the current underinvestment in girls. The paper explores the linkages between investing in girls and potential increases in national income by examining three widely prevalent aspects of adolescent girls'lives: early school dropout, teenage pregnancy and joblessness. The countries included in the analysis are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Burundi, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Paraguay, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The authors use secondary data to allow for some comparability across countries. They find that investing in girls so that they would complete the next level of education would lead to lifetime earnings of today's cohort of girls that is equivalent to up to 68 percent of annual gross domestic product. When adjusting for ability bias and labor demand elasticities, this figure falls to 54 percent, or 1.5 percent per year. Closing the inactivity rate between girls and boys would increase gross domestic product by up to 5.4 percent, but when accounting for students, male-female wage gaps and labor demand elasticities, the joblessness gap between girls and their male counterparts yields an increase in gross domestic product of up to 1.2 percent in a single year. The cost of adolescent pregnancy as a share of gross domestic could be as high as 30 percent or as low as 1 percent over a girl's lifetime, depending on the assumptions used to calculate the losses. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Adolescent Health,Gender and Development,Primary Education,Gender and Education |
| Date: | 2011–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5753&r=dem |
| By: | Giacomo De Luca; Petros G. Sekeris; Juan F. Vargas |
| Abstract: | We propose a model where an autocrat rules over an ethnically divided society. The dictator selects the tax rate over domestic production and the nation's natural resources to maximize his rents under the threat of a regime-switching revolution. We show that a weak ruler may let the country plunge in civil war to increase his personal rents. Inter-group fighting weakens potential opposition to the ruler, thereby allowing him to increase fiscal pressure. We show that the presence of natural resources exacerbates the incentives of the ruler to promote civil conflict for his own profit, especially if the resources are unequally distributed across ethnic groups. We validate the main predictions of the model using cross-country data over the period 1960-2007, and show that our empirical results are not likely to be driven by omitted observable determinants of civil war incidence or by unobservable country-specific heterogeneity. |
| Date: | 2011–08–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000092:008893&r=dem |
| By: | Bruna Atayde Signorini (FACE/UFMG); Bernardo Lanza Queiroz (Cedeplar/UFMG) |
| Abstract: | The Bolsa Família Program is a Conditional Cash Transfer Program that was implemented in Brazil in 2003. Since the implementation of the program some of its effects were studied, but its effects on fertility decision has drawn a little attention. The objective of this paper is to evaluate if there is an impact of Bolsa Família Program in the fertility of beneficiaries. We use the Household Sample National Survey (PNAD) for the years 2004 and 2006 and estimate the first-differences for each year, to find the average treatment effect on treated (ATT). To find comparable groups of treatment and control, we use Propensity Score Matching methods. We compared the ATT outcomes for the two years and its estimated confidence intervals and found that there are no statistical differences between the ATT results in 2004 and 2006. |
| Keywords: | fertility, conditional cash transfer, propensity score, Brazi. |
| JEL: | J10 J13 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td439&r=dem |
| By: | Hossain, M. I. ; |
| Abstract: | In this paper we investigate the impact of health related programmes on health outcomes of women and children by applying the method of difference-in-differences on repeated cross-sectional datasets. Health outcomes are measured using an anthropometric indicator: weight-for-height z-score. We find a positive impact, due to financial protection and social safety net programmes in a seasonally famine-affected area in Bangladesh, on the health outcome of children. We also find that the BRAC Healthcare Programme (BHP), a healthcare programme run by a reputable NGO, BRAC, has a positive impact on the health outcome of its members living in urban slums. We apply a simple decomposition approach to measuring the contributions of the programmes in lowering or increasing the inequalities in the distribution of outcomes and find that none of the programmes analysed has made the inequalities in health worse. Our key objective in this study is to show that, in developing countries, where programme-specific data are rare, using broad data like the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS) etc. it is possible to identify relevant groups and periods in order to assess the performances of several government and non-government programmes. |
| Keywords: | Difference-in-differences; Weight-for-height z-scores; Decomposition. |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:11/24&r=dem |
| By: | Ed Hopkins (University of Edinburgh) and V. Bhaskar (University College London) |
| Abstract: | We study the incentive to invest to improve marriage prospects, in a frictionless marriage market with non-transferable utility. Stochastic returns to investment eliminate the multiplicity of equilibria in models with deterministic returns, and a unique equilibrium exists under reasonable conditions. Equilibrium investment is efficient when the sexes are symmetric. However, when there is any asymmetry, including an unbalanced sex ratio, investments are generically excessive. For example, if there is an excess of boys, then there is parental over-investment in boys and under-investment in girls, and total investment will be excessive. |
| Keywords: | marriage, ex ante investments, gender differences, assortative matching tournament, sex ratio |
| JEL: | C72 C78 D62 H31 J12 |
| Date: | 2011–08–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:edn:esedps:210&r=dem |