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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒10‒09
seven papers chosen by Clarence Nkengne Tsimpo University of Montreal and World Bank Group |
| By: | Portner, Claus C; Beegle, Kathleen; Christiaensen, Luc |
| Abstract: | Although reproductive health advocates consider family planning programs the intervention of choice to reduce fertility, there remains a great deal of skepticism among economists as to their effectiveness, despite little rigorous evidence to support either position. This study explores the effects of family planning in Ethiopia using a novel set of instruments to control for potential non-random program placement. The instruments are based on ordinal rankings of area characteristics, motivated by competition between areas for resources. Access to family planning is found to reduce completed fertility by more than one child among women without education. No effect is found among women with some formal schooling, suggesting that family planning and formal education act as substitutes, at least in this low-income, low-growth setting. This provides support to the notion that increasing access to family planning can provide an important, complementary entry point to kick-start the process of fertility reduction. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Adolescent Health,Reproductive Health,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems |
| Date: | 2011–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5812&r=dem |
| By: | Kazuya Wada |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the effects of an improvement in female autonomy on children's welfare in the developing world, taking into consideration intra-household resource allocation through decision-making processes within households. Using a female autonomy index constructed from India's 1998/99 National Family Health Survey, the study tries to capture women's bargaining power and examine the effects on children's health and medical condition. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that often, though not always, children's health and medical condition can be enhanced by improving female autonomy. In addition, the results also imply that fostering female autonomy may play a crucial role in achieving economic development from a long-term perspective. |
| Keywords: | Female Autonomy, Intra-household Resource Allocation, Child Health |
| JEL: | D13 I12 J13 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:ghsdps:gd11-202&r=dem |
| By: | Julio Cáceres-Delpiano (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | Using multiple births as an Instrumental Variable (IV) for family size and data for 43 developing countries, I find evidence that a shock in fertility has a cost for a family as a whole. Mothers are more likely to live under less stable family arrangements and they are more likely to use contraceptives. Children are less likely to receive some vaccines, attend school, live their mother and there is an increase in odds of mortality. The analysis by level of development reveals the cost of fertility comes from those countries with lower level of development. |
| Keywords: | Fertility, Health, Education, Family Arrangements, Developing Countries |
| JEL: | J11 J12 J13 J18 O15 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:1117&r=dem |
| By: | Regina Flake |
| Abstract: | This study analyzes gender diff erences in the intergenerational earnings mobility of second-generation migrants in Germany. The analysis takes into account potential infl uences like assortative mating in the form of ethnic marriages and the parental integration measured by parents’ years since migration. First, intergenerational earnings elasticities are estimated at the mean and along the earnings distribution. The results do not reveal large diff erences in the intergenerational mobility – neither between natives and migrants nor between men and women. Second, intergenerational changes in the relative earnings position are analyzed. The results show that migrants are less likely than natives to worsen their relative earnings position while they have the same probability as natives to improve their earnings position. In summary, migrants are mostly as (im)mobile as the native population. |
| Keywords: | International migration; second-generation migrants; intergenerational mobility; marriage |
| JEL: | F22 J12 J30 J62 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0283&r=dem |
| By: | Sam Schulhofer-Wohl; Yang Yang |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a new way of modeling age, period, and cohort effects that improves substantively and methodologically on the conventional linear model. The linear model suffers from a well-known identification problem: If we assume an outcome of interest depends on the sum of an age effect, a period effect, and a cohort effect, then it is impossible to distinguish these three separate effects because, for any individual, birth year = current year – age. Less well appreciated is that the model also suffers from a conceptual problem: It assumes that the influence of age is the same in all time periods, the influence of present conditions is the same for people of all ages, and cohorts do not change over time. We argue that in many applications, these assumptions fail. We propose a more general model in which age profiles can change over time and period effects can have different influences on people of different ages. Our model defines cohort effects as an accumulation of age-by-period interactions. Although a long-standing literature on theories of social change conceptualizes cohort effects in exactly this way, we are the first to show how to statistically model this more complex form of cohort effects. We show that the additive model is a special case of our model and that, except in special cases, the parameters of the more general model are identified. We apply our model to analyze changes in age-specific mortality rates in Sweden over the past 150 years. Our model fits the data dramatically better than the additive model. The estimates show that the rate of increase of mortality with age among adults became more steep from 1881 to 1941, but since then the rate of increase has been roughly constant. The estimates also allow us to test whether early-life conditions have lasting impacts on mortality, as under the cohort morbidity phenotype hypothesis. The results give limited support to this hypothesis: The impact of early-life conditions lasts for several years but is unlikely to reach all the way to old age. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmsr:461&r=dem |
| By: | M. Grazia Pittau (Sapienza Universita' di Roma); Shlomo Yitzhaki (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Central Bureau of Statistics); Roberto Zelli (Sapienza Universita' di Roma) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we illustrate the potential use of an old/new methodology which combines the use of concentration curves in order to investigate the components that make up a regression coefficient. The illustration is based on examining gender differences in the effect of age on labor market participation in Italy. Women participation rate is substantially lower than men, but their age profile is similar. The most striking difference is in terms of hours of work: while Italian men increase their work effort until the age of 35, Italian women reduce it until the age of 39. These results do not differ substantially when we split the working population into employed and self-employed. Earnings increase with age for both men and women, however the local regression coefficient is negative for Italian women in the age of 38–42. This evidence is accentuated when we focus on the employees. |
| Keywords: | Gini, OLS, Concentration curves, Regression decomposition, Italian labor market. |
| JEL: | C30 J16 J21 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sas:wpaper:20113&r=dem |
| By: | Göbel, Christian; Zwick, Thomas |
| Abstract: | In most industrialised countries, the workforce is ageing rapidly. If ageing workforces affect sectors differently, the total impact of ageing will depend on the industrial structure of an economy. This paper measures the impact of changes in the age structure of establishments on productivity using representative linked employeremployee panel data. We argue that establishment age-productivity profiles might differ for various reasons. For example, the importance of physical strength and possibilities to compensate deficits in skills differ between sectors. We investigate differences in the age-productivity profiles between the (metal) manufacturing and services sectors. However, in our preferred specification that controls for several potential sources of estimation biases, we find no significant differences in the ageproductivity profiles between these sectors. -- |
| Keywords: | Ageing workforce,age,productivity,linked employer employee data,sectors |
| JEL: | J11 J14 J21 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:11058&r=dem |