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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒10‒01
ten papers chosen by Clarence Nkengne Tsimpo University of Montreal and World Bank Group |
| By: | Monstad, Karin (University of Bergen); Propper, Carol (University of Bristol); Salvanes, Kjell G. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | There is relatively little research on peer effects in teenage motherhood despite the fact that peer effects, and in particular social interaction within the family, are likely to be important. We estimate the impact of an elder sister’s teenage fertility on the teenage childbearing of their younger sister. To identify the peer effect we utilize an educational reform that impacted on the elder sister’s teenage fertility. Our main result is that within families, teen births tend to be contagious and the effect is larger where siblings are close in age and for women from low resource households. |
| Keywords: | Teenage pregnancy; spillover effects; education. |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–07–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2011_012&r=dem |
| By: | Anna Matysiak; Daniele Vignoli (Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we compare Italy and Poland, two countries where the country-specific obstacles to work and family reconciliation are similarly strong, but which differ in terms of the history of women’s labour force participation and of household living standards. We adopt a life course perspective, and trace women’s employment choices around the first and the second birth. On the one hand, our findings suggest the presence of a strong conflict between women’s paid work and childbearing in both countries. On the other, our results show that women’s employment clearly inhibits childbearing in Italy, while in Poland women tend to combine the two activities. Overall, we find that countries characterised by similarly strong institutionally or culturally driven tensions between work and family may differ in how women’s fertility and employment behaviours are interrelated. |
| Keywords: | work and family reconciliation, fertility, women’s employment, Poland, Italy |
| JEL: | J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isd:wpaper:41&r=dem |
| By: | Nicholas Wilson (Williams College) |
| Abstract: | Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) interventions reduce the cumulative probability of transmission from a HIV positive woman to her child by as much as 40 percentage points. This paper is the first economic analysis of the behavioral effects of PMTCT. I examine fertility responses to the scale-up of PMTCT in Zambia, a country where approximately 15 percent of adults age 15-49 are HIV positive. My results suggest that the local introduction of PMTCT reduced pregnancy rates by up to 20 percent, that the fertility response was greater among women who were more likely to be HIV positive, and that PMTCT substantially increased breastfeeding rates. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; HIV/AIDS; PMTCT; reproductive technology; Zambia |
| JEL: | I10 J13 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2011-13&r=dem |
| By: | Gonzalez, Libertad (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) |
| Abstract: | I study the impact of a universal child benefit on fertility and family well-being. I exploit the unanticipated introduction of a new, sizeable, unconditional child benefit in Spain in 2007, granted to all mothers giving birth on or after July 1, 2007. The regression discontinuity-type design allows for a credible identification of the causal effects. I find that the benefit did lead to a significant increase in fertility, as intended, part of it coming from an immediate reduction in abortions. On the unintended side, I find that families who received the benefit did not increase their overall expenditure or their consumption of directly child-related goods and services. Instead, eligible mothers stayed out of the labor force significantly longer after giving birth, which in turn led to their children spending less time in formal child care and more time with their mother during their first year of life. I also find that couples who received the benefit were less likely to break up the year after having the child, although this effect was only short-term. Taken together, the results suggest that child benefits of this kind may successfully increase fertility, as well as affecting family well-being through their impact on maternal time at home and family stability. |
| Keywords: | child benefit, policy evaluation, fertility, regression discontinuity, labor supply, consumption |
| JEL: | D1 H5 J1 J2 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5994&r=dem |
| By: | Miguel Sánchez Romero (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Computable OLG growth models and "convergence models" differ in their assessment of the extent to which demography influences economic growth. In this paper, I show that computable OLG growth models produce results similar to those of convergence models when more detailed demographic information is used. To do so, I implement a general equilibrium overlapping generations model to explain Taiwan's economic miracle during the period 1965-2005. I find that Taiwan's demographic transition accounts for 22% of per capita output growth, 16.4% of the investment rate, and 18.5% of the savings rate for the period 1965-2005. Decomposing the demographic effect into its components, I find that fertility alone explains the impact of demographic changes in per capita output growth, while both fertility and mortality explain investment and saving rates. Assuming a small open economy, I find that investment rates increase with more rapid population growth, while saving rates follows the dependence hypothesis (Coale and Hoover, 1958). Under a closed-economy, the population growth rate has a negative influence on economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Taiwan, demography, economic growth |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2011-015&r=dem |
| By: | Nguyen Viet, Cuong |
| Abstract: | This study provides an analysis of access to public services of ethnic minority children. The main data sets are from a Baseline Survey of the Program 135-II in 2007, Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2004 and 2006, and the 15-percent sample of the Population and Housing Census 2009. It will provide analysis of ethnic minority children’s welfares including education, health care services, living conditions and labor, nutrition and leisure. We found that although ethnic minority children’s welfares improved overtime, their welfare remain very low compared with Kinh children. |
| Keywords: | Children; Public Services; Household Survey; Development; Vietnam |
| JEL: | J13 R20 O12 |
| Date: | 2010–12–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33611&r=dem |
| By: | Paola La Guardia Zorzin (Sebrae-MG); Simone Wajnman (Cedeplar/UFMG); Cássio Maldonado Turra (Cedeplar/UFMG) |
| Abstract: | We examine how Social Security affects the distribution of resources between racial groups in Brazil. To do this, we apply two methodological perspectives. Using a life-cycle perspective, we compare contributions and benefits accrued over the life cycle of representative individuals of each racial group. From a period or cross-sectional perspective, we compare social security transfers in a specific year. The goal is to measure how differences in age composition affect transfers between groups, each period. The results show that the social security perform three important roles that are inextricably linked: in the life cycle perspective, recourses are transferred from whites to blacks, buffering the effects of racial labor income differences during active years; in the cross-sectional perspective, social security transfers reduce income inequality and poverty among black and balance the participation of both racial groups in the social security budget, despite the larger proportion of young people among blacks. |
| Keywords: | ocial security, population aging, race disparities. |
| JEL: | H50 J11 J15 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td448&r=dem |
| By: | Kohlin, Gunnar; Sills, Erin O.; Pattanayak, Subhrendu K.; Wilfong, Christopher |
| Abstract: | This report reviews the literature on the links between energy access, welfare, and gender in order to provide evidence on where gender considerations in the energy sector matter and how they might be addressed. Prepared as a background document for the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development, and part of the Social Development Department's ongoing work on gender and infrastructure, the report describes and evaluates the evidence on the links between gender and energy focusing on: increased access to woodfuel through planting of trees and forest management; improved cooking technologies; and access to electricity and motive energy. The report's main finding is that energy interventions can have significant gender benefits, which can be realized via careful design and targeting of interventions based on a context-specific understanding of energy scarcity and household decision-making, in particular how women's preferences, opportunity cost of time, and welfare are reflected in household energy decisions. The report focuses on the academic peer-reviewed literature and, although it applies fairly inclusive screening criteria when selecting the evidence to consider, finds that the evidence on many of the energy-gender linkages is often limited. There is thus a clear need for studies to evaluate interventions and identify key design elements for gender-sensitive project design. |
| Date: | 2011–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5800&r=dem |
| By: | Fairlie, Robert W. (University of California, Santa Cruz); Hoffmann, Florian (University of British Columbia, Vancouver); Oreopoulos, Philip (University of Toronto) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses detailed administrative data from one of the largest community colleges in the United States to quantify the extent to which academic performance depends on students being of similar race or ethnicity to their instructors. To address the concern of endogenous sorting, we use both student and classroom fixed effects and focus on those with limited course enrolment options. We also compare sensitivity in the results from using within versus across section instructor type variation. Given the computational complexity of the 2-way fixed effects model with a large set of fixed effects we rely on numerical algorithms that exploit the particular structure of the model's normal equations. We find that the performance gap in terms of class dropout and pass rates between white and minority students falls by roughly half when taught by a minority instructor. In models that allow for a full set of ethnic and racial interactions between students and instructors, we find African-American students perform particularly better when taught by African-American instructors. |
| Keywords: | race, education, minorities, college |
| JEL: | I23 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5983&r=dem |
| By: | Gopi Shah Goda; John B. Shoven; Sita Nataraj Slavov |
| Abstract: | Despite the presence of Medicare, out-of-pocket medical spending is a large expenditure risk facing the elderly. While women live longer than men, elderly women incur higher out-of-pocket medical spending than men at each age. In this paper, we examine whether differences in marital status and living arrangements can explain this difference. We find that out-of-pocket medical spending is approximately 29 percent higher when an individual becomes widowed, a large portion of which is spending on nursing homes. Our results suggest a substantial role of living arrangements in out-of-pocket medical spending; however, our estimates combined with differences in rates of widowhood across gender suggest that marital status can explain only one third of the gender difference in total out-of-pocket medical spending, leaving a large portion unexplained. On the other hand, gender differences in widowhood more than explain the observed gender difference in out-of-pocket spending on nursing homes. |
| JEL: | I11 J12 J14 J16 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17440&r=dem |