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on Demographic Economics |
| By: | Helle M. Alvesson; Menno Mulder-Sibanda |
| Abstract: | The objective of this review was to study where community-based family planning and nutrition programs have been integrated, how this has been accomplished, and what the results have been. Although family planning is a nontraditional intervention in community-based nutrition programs, it can have profound effects on maternal and child health and nutrition. When family planning does not occur, short intervals between pregnancies deplete mothers' reserves of nutrients needed for pregnancy and later for breastfeeding. As a result, short birth intervals are associated with higher maternal and neonatal mortality and malnutrition rates of infants. Family planning, which promotes contraceptive use and the lactational amenorrhea method, can thus improve nutrition outcomes in both mothers and babies. The authors identified a few studies on integrated services in the published literature; thus the main part of the review is built on operational research studies and unpublished smaller scale intervention studies. However, the controlled studies that were identified indicate positive correlation between breastfeeding levels and increased contraception use. Additionally, although the design of the intervention studies did not make it possible to assess the degree to which integration had an impact, the studies did highlight factors that were key to a successful integration process. These are community engagement; multiple and frequent contact points between mothers, community volunteers, and health workers; involvement of husbands; moving implementation decisions closer to the users of the program; and assuring transparency, clarity, and simplicity in the transmission of development objectives to communities. |
| Keywords: | abortion, access to family planning, access to health care, adolescent girls, adolescent pregnancies, adolescents, age of marriage, Antenatal care, antenatal visits, ... See More + vailability of family planning, babies, baby, BASIC HEALTH CARE, Behavior Change, birth control, breast milk, breastfeeding, care during pregnancy, Child Development, child health, child health services, child marriage, Child Mortality, child mortality rate, child mortality rates, CHILD NUTRITION, CHILD SURVIVAL, childbearing, childbirth, children per woman, clinics, Community health, complementary food, condoms, contraception, contraceptive method, Contraceptive prevalence, contraceptive services, contraceptive use, counselors, declines in fertility, delivery care, demographic targets, development objectives, diabetes, diseases, Early childbearing, economic growth, economic status, emergency obstetric care, exchange of information, existing family planning, families, Family Health, Family Health International, FAMILY PLANNING, family planning methods, FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAMS, family planning services, family size, fertility, fertility rate, fertility rates, fewer pregnancies, first pregnancy, forms of contraception, gender issues, global policy, HEALTH CARE, health care providers, health care services, health centers, HEALTH EDUCATION, health facilities, health indicators, health interventions, health messages, health outcomes, health promotion, Health sector, health system, health systems, health workers, high child mortality, HIV, home visits, hospital, hospitals, household surveys, Human Development, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, husbands, hygiene, ill-health, Illness, immunization, Immunizations, Immunodeficiency, individual women, Infant, infant feeding, Infant mortality, Infant mortality rate, infant mortality rates, infant nutrition, INTEGRATING FAMILY PLANNING, international organizations, intervention, iodine deficiency, iron, IUD, IUDs, lactational amenorrhea, lactational amenorrhea method, LAM, large families, laws, live births, local community, longitudinal research, Low-Income Settings, male involvement, malnourished children, maternal care, maternal deaths, maternal health, MATERNAL MORTALITY, Maternal mortality rate, maternal mortality rates, Maternal mortality ratio, maternal nutrition, maternity services, medical facilities, midwife, midwifery, midwives, Millennium Development Goals, Ministry of Health, modern contraceptives, morbidity, mortality, mortality among infants, MORTALITY REDUCTIONS, mother, national Drug, national level, National Population, National Population Policy, neonatal mortality, newborns, number of children, number of women, nurses, NUTRITION, nutrition education, nutritional status, oral contraceptives, outreach workers, peer groups, pill, population control, population growth, postabortion, postabortion care, postnatal care, postpartum period, practitioners, pregnancies, pregnancy, pregnant women, preventive health care, Primary Health Care, progress, promotion of family planning, provision of family planning, puberty, public debate, Public Health, public health services, quality of services, radio, religious leaders, reproductive age, reproductive health, reproductive health services, risk of death, role models, rural areas, safe motherhood, sanitation, scientific evidence, screening, service delivery, sexually active, siblings, skilled personnel, small families, smaller families, social services, stillbirth, surgery, teenage girls, teenage pregnancies, teenagers, UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund, unmarried adolescent, unmarried women, use of family planning, use of family planning methods, vaccination, village chiefs, voluntary family planning, woman, workers, World Health Organization, Young Child, young children |
| Date: | 2013–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hnpdps:85743&r=dem |
| By: | Flatø, Martin (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo); Kotsadam, Andreas (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo) |
| Abstract: | Are African girls more exposed than boys to risk of infant mortality during crises and if so, is the difference due to discrimination? To answer these questions, we combine retrospective fertility data on over 1.5 million births from Demographic and Health Surveys with data on rainfall variability and find a substantial gender difference favouring boys following droughts. We substantiate that this difference has social determinants by showing that the difference is only present in contexts in which we would expect discrimination of daughters. The difference is only present in communities with strong preferences for sons and in areas where fertility desires are low. In areas with low levels of female employment there is a large gender gap following droughts, especially for infants with mothers who are not working. In contrast, there is no gender difference in infant mortality after droughts in areas where many women work, irrespective of the employment status of the individual mother under consideration. No difference is found across mothers with different levels of education, perhaps due to the lower fertility preferences of more educated women. In total, the results indicate a large and socially founded gender bias in infant mortality after crises. They also shed light on factors behind the African exceptionalism of little gender discrimination in infant mortality. As communities with strong son preferences, low fertility preferences, and low female employment display gender bias after crises in Africa, the results are consistent with factors explaining differences in gender biases between countries across the world. |
| Keywords: | Rainfall; Drought; Gender; Infant mortality; Africa |
| JEL: | I15 J13 J16 O55 Q54 |
| Date: | 2014–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:osloec:2014_002&r=dem |
| By: | Battistin, Erich (Queen Mary, University of London); De Nadai, Michele (University of Padova); Padula, Mario (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the role of childcare provided by grandparents for the fertility decisions of their offspring. We exploit a decade of pension reforms in Italy that mandated the grandparental generation to a working horizon longer than they would have had otherwise. We argue that the rise in retirement age meant a negative shock to the supply of informal childcare for the next generation. Our results show that one additional grandparent available in the early child-bearing years increases by about five percent the number of children. We show that the fertility effects of delayed retirement are limited to close-knits with a strong familistic structure. The result is not just the mechanical consequence of delayed exit from parental home, of more investment in education or of more attachment to the labour market. In light of the Italian lowest low fertility we conclude that pension reforms may have had unintended inter-generational effects. This conclusion is consistent with the sharp drop in total fertility documented by official statistics for the most conservative areas of the country. |
| Keywords: | fertility, informal child care, pension reforms |
| JEL: | J08 J13 H42 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8071&r=dem |
| By: | Naghsh Nejad, Maryam (IZA); Young, Andrew (West Virginia University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we model the migration decisions of high-skilled women as a function of the benefits associated with moving from an origin with relatively low women's rights to a destination with a relatively high level of women's rights. However, the costs faced by women are decreasing in the level of women's rights provided. The model predicts a non-linear relationship between the relative levels of women's rights in destination versus origin countries (the women's rights gap) and the gender gap in high-skilled migration flows (the female brain drain ratio). In particular, starting from large values of the women's rights gap (where women's rights are very low in the origin) decreases in the gap may be associated with increases in the female brain drain ratio. However, starting from lower levels of the gap the relationship is positive: a greater gain in women's rights moving from origin to destination is, all else equal, associated with a greater likelihood of migration. Using a cross section of over 3,000 bilateral migration flows across OECD and non-OECD countries and the women's rights indices from the CIRI Human Rights Dataset, we report evidence consistent with the theory. A statistically significant and nonlinear relationship exists between women's rights gaps and female brain drain ratios. The evidence is particularly strong for the case of women's political rights. |
| Keywords: | female brain drain, high skilled female migration, bilateral migration flows, women's rights, institutional quality, gravity models |
| JEL: | F22 J11 J61 J16 O17 O43 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8067&r=dem |
| By: | De Paoli, Anna (University of Milan Bicocca); Mendola, Mariapia (University of Milan Bicocca) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the labor market effect of international migration on child work in countries of origin. We use an original cross-country survey dataset, which combines information on international migration with detailed individual-level data on child labor at age 5-14 in a wide range of developing countries. By exploiting both within- and cross-country variation and controlling for country fixed effects, we find a strong empirical regularity about the role of international mobility of workers in reducing child labor in disadvantaged households through changes in the local labor market. |
| Keywords: | international migration, child labor, factor mobility, cross-country survey data |
| JEL: | F22 F1 J61 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8066&r=dem |
| By: | Berthelon, Matias (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez); Kruger, Diana (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effect of having a child in adolescence on high school completion, educational attainment, and college enrollment in a developing country setting using nine repeated rounds of Chilean household surveys that span the 1990–2009 period. We control for selection bias and household unobservables of teen motherhood with two approaches: different estimation methods – propensity score matching and family fixed effects for a large sub-sample of sisters – and three different samples. Results reveal that adolescent motherhood reduces the probability of high school completion by between 18 to 37 percent. Furthermore, effects are heterogeneous across education groups: teen motherhood has larger negative effects on high school completion and years of schooling among poor and low-education households. Our results imply that policies aimed at reducing early childbearing will have important short-term effects on young women's education outcomes. |
| Keywords: | education, teen pregnancy, adolescent motherhood, youth, high school, Chile |
| JEL: | O15 J13 I25 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8072&r=dem |
| By: | Richard Layard (London School of Economics and Political Science); Andrew Clark (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering); Nattavudh Powdthavee; Francesca Cornaglia |
| Abstract: | If policy-makers care about well-being, they need a recursive model of how adult life satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such a model using the British Cohort Study (1970).The most powerful childhood predictor of adult life-satisfaction is the child’s emotional health. Next comes the child’s conduct. The least powerful predictor is the child’s intellectual development. This has obvious implications for educational policy. Among adult circumstances, family income accounts for only 0.5% of the variance of life-satisfaction. Mental and physical health are much more important. |
| Keywords: | Well-being, Life-satisfaction, Intervention, Model, Life-course, Emotional health, Conduct, Intellectual performance, Success |
| JEL: | A12 D60 H00 I31 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/6ggbvnr6munghes9oc90kh192&r=dem |
| By: | Carbone, Jared C. (Department of Economics, University of Calgary); Kverndokk, Snorre (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health, and that education is better correlated with health than with variables like occupation and income. This can be explained in different ways as the implication may go from education to health, from health to education, and there may be variables that influence health and education in the same direction. The effect of different policy instruments to reduce the social gradient in health will depend on the strength of these causalities. In this paper we formalize a model that simultaneously determines an individual’s demand for knowledge and health based on the mentioned causal effects. We study the impacts on both health and education of different policy instruments such as subsidies on medical care, subsidizing schooling, income tax reduction, lump sum transfers and improving health at young age. Our results indicate that income transfers such as distributional policies may be the best instrument to improve welfare, while subsidies to medical care is the best instrument for longevity. However, subsidies to medical care or education would require large imperfections in the markets for health and education to be more welfare improving than distributional policies. Finally, our simulations suggest that underlying factors that impact both health and education is the main explanation for the correlation shown empirically. |
| Keywords: | Demand for health; Demand for education; Human capital; Numerical modeling; Causality |
| JEL: | C61 D91 I12 I21 |
| Date: | 2014–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:oslohe:2014_001&r=dem |
| By: | Lakshmi Iyer (Harvard Business School; Business, Government and the International Economy Unit); Petia Topalova (International Monetary Fund (IMF)) |
| Abstract: | Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to raise relative poverty, also increased the incidence of violent crimes and property crimes. The relationship between trade shocks and crime is similar to the observed relationship between rainfall shocks and crime. Our results thus identify a causal effect of poverty on crime. They also lend credence to a large literature on the effects of weather shocks on crime and conflict, which has usually assumed that the income channel is the most relevant one. |
| Keywords: | Rainfall, Weather, Crime, Trade Liberalization, India |
| JEL: | D74 I38 Q34 Q56 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:14-067&r=dem |
| By: | Silke Übelmesser (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Marcel Gérard (CESifo, Munich) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at linking cross border mobility of students and graduates with the financing of higher education. Against the background of institutional features and empirical evidence of the European Union and Northern America, a theoretical framework is developed. This allows analyzing the optimal financing regimes for different migration scenarios, comparing them with the regimes in place and discussing possible remedies. In particular, the (optimal) sharing of education costs between students / graduates and tax-payers is studied as well as the (optimal) sharing of the tax-payers' part between the various countries involved: the country which provides higher education (the host country), the country of previous education (the origin country) and possibly the countries which benefit from the improved skills of the workers. Alternative designs exhibiting potentially desirable properties are developed and policy recommendations derived. |
| Keywords: | Mobility of students, Mobility of graduates, Financing of higher education |
| JEL: | F22 H52 I23 |
| Date: | 2014–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2014-009&r=dem |