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on Development |
| By: | Emmanuelle Lavallée (DIAL, Paris); Anne Olivier (DIAL, EHESS); Laure Pasquier-Doumer (DIAL, IRD, Paris); Anne-Sophie Robilliard (DIAL, IRD, Paris) |
| Abstract: | (english) Fiscal constraints and policy changes to improve the effectiveness of programmes in reducing poverty have gradually led the international community to use tools to reach the poor. Poverty reduction policy targeting is one of them. This paper reviews targeted poverty alleviation policies in developing countries and seeks to identify the key factors that affect their performances. _________________________________ (français) Dans un contexte de ressources budgétaires limitées et suite au constat que la croissance et l’aide publique au développement ne bénéficiaient pas forcément aux pauvres, la communauté internationale a eu recours à des outils spécifiques permettant d’atteindre en priorité les pauvres. Le ciblage des politiques de lutte contre la pauvreté est l’un de ces outils. Cet article vise à dresser un bilan des expériences de ciblage menées dans les pays en développement. Il cherche pour cela à dégager les facteurs de réussite ou d’échec de ces expériences et fait le point sur les questions qui font toujours débat. |
| Keywords: | targeting, poverty, redistribution, developing countries, ciblage, pauvreté, redistribution, pays en développement. |
| JEL: | I38 O12 H23 |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201010&r=dev |
| By: | Denis Cogneau (DIAL, IRD, Paris); Sandrine Mesplé-Somps (DIAL, IRD, Paris); Gilles Spielvogel (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 201) |
| Abstract: | In Africa, boundaries delineated during the colonial era now divide young independent states. By applying regression discontinuity designs to a large set of surveys covering the 1986-2001 period, this paper identifies many large and significant jumps in welfare at the borders between five West-African countries around Cote d'Ivoire. Border discontinuities mirror the differences between country averages with respect to household income, connection to utilities and education. Country of residence often makes a difference, even if distance to capital city has some attenuating power. The results are consistent with a national integration process that is underway but not yet achieved. _________________________________ Les frontières actuelles des pays africains ont été tracées durant la période coloniale et délimitent dorénavant des Etats indépendants. Ces frontières séparent des zones dont les caractéristiques géographiques, anthropologiques et précoloniales sont sensiblement identiques. En appliquant la méthode des régressions avec discontinuité à un large ensemble d'enquêtes auprès des ménages couvrant la période 1986-2001, nous identifions de grands écarts de bien-être aux frontières de cinq pays africains (Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinée et Mali). Ces discontinuités aux frontières reflètent les écarts entre moyennes nationales que ce soit en termes de niveau de vie des ménages, d'éducation ou d'accès à l'électricité. Le pays de résidence fait une différence, même si la distance à la capitale exerce un pouvoir d'atténuation. Ces résultats sont cohérents avec un processus d'intégration nationale en cours quoiqu'inachevé. |
| Keywords: | Institutions, geography, Africa, Institutions, géographie, Afrique. |
| JEL: | O12 R12 P52 |
| Date: | 2010–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201012&r=dev |
| By: | Laure Pasquier-Doumer (DIAL, IRD, Paris) |
| Abstract: | (english) As labour income is the first source of income in developing countries, inequalities in the labour markets contribute in a large part to global inequalities. This paper aims at understanding how the socio-economic background of a person determines his opportunities in the labour markets of West- African cities. It seeks to answer the following questions: to what extent one’s position in the labour market is determined by his father’s one and what explains differences between the West-African cities? Does the father’s position influence directly the occupational situation of his children through the transmission of informational, social or physical capital gained in the course of his career? Or does it play an indirect role through determining the educational level of his children that will in turn be responsible for their position in the labour markets? Depending on whether the link between father’s and children’s occupation is direct or indirect, political implications are very different. In the first case, reducing inequality of opportunities means improving labour markets efficiency and in the second case, it means improving educational policy. _________________________________ (français) Comprendre les inégalités sur le marché du travail dans les pays en développement constitue un enjeu important dans la mesure où les revenus du travail y sont la principale source de revenu pour la majorité des ménages. Cette étude vise à identifier dans quelle mesure l’origine sociale des travailleurs détermine leur opportunités sur le marché du travail. Elle compare le degré d’inégalité des chances sur le marché du travail dans sept capitales économiques ouest africaines, définie comme l’association nette entre la position sur le marché du travail des individus et celle de leur père. Cette comparaison permet d’identifier les caractéristiques des pays présentant les degrés les plus élevés et d’apporter des éléments pour évaluer les différentes thèses expliquant les différences entre les pays en termes d’inégalités des chances. Elle estime ensuite pour chacune des villes si la situation professionnelle du père agit directement sur le positionnement sur le marché du travail ou si son effet est indirect, à travers l’éducation. Les implications en termes de politiques publiques sont très différentes selon les deux cas. Dans le premier cas, les politiques visant à égaliser les chances doivent agir directement sur le marché du travail, dans le second cas, elles doivent agir en amont, sur le système éducatif. |
| Keywords: | Inequality of opportunity, informal sector, West Africa, Inégalité des chances, secteur informel, Afrique de l’Ouest. |
| JEL: | J24 J62 D63 |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201009&r=dev |
| By: | Pham Thai Hung; Bui Anh Tuan; Dao Le Thanh |
| Abstract: | school. Using the four high quality household living standards surveys available to date this paper reveals that Vietnam’s rural labour force has been markedly diversifying toward nonfarm activities in the doi moi (renovation) reform period. The employment share of the rural nonfarm sector has increased from 23 percent to 58 percent between the years 1993 and 2006. At the individual level, the results indicate that participation in the rural nonfarm sector is determined by a set of individual-, household-, and community-level characteristics. Gender, ethnicity, and education are reported as main individual-level drivers of nonfarm diversification. Lands as most important physical assets of rural households are found to be negative to nonfarm employment. It is also evident that both physical and institutional infrastructure exert important influences on individual participation in the nonfarm sector. At the household level, a combination of parametric and semi-parametric analysis is adopted to examine whether nonfarm diversification is a poverty exit path for rural households. This paper demonstrates a positive effect of nonfarm diversification on household welfare and this effect is robust to different estimation techniques, measures of nonfarm diversification, and the usage of equivalent scales. However, the poor is reported to benefit less than the non-poor from nonfarm activities. Though promoting a buoyant nonfarm sector is crucial for rural development and poverty reduction, it needs to be associated with enhancing access to nonfarm opportunities for the poor. |
| Keywords: | Rural nonfarm sector, nonfarm diversification, household welfare, Vietnam |
| JEL: | I32 J21 J49 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2010-17&r=dev |
| By: | Patricia Justino; Olga Shemyakina |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of remittances on the labor supply of men and women in post-conflict Tajikistan. We find that on average men and women from remittance-receiving households are less likely to participate in the labor market and supply fewer hours when they do. The negative effect of remittances on labor supply is smaller for women, which is an intriguing result as other studies on remittances and labor supply (primarily focused on Latin America) have shown that female labor supply is more responsive to remittances. The results are robust to using different measures of remittances and inclusion of variables measuring migration of household members. We estimate a joint effect of remittances and an individual’s residence in a conflict-affected area during the Tajik civil war. Remittances had a larger impact on the labor supply of men living in conflict-affected areas compared to men in less conflict-affected areas. The impact of remittances on the labor supply of women does not differ by their residence in both the more or less conflict affected area. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcn:rwpapr:35&r=dev |
| By: | Diego Augusto Menestrey Schwieger |
| Abstract: | In the context of recent legal developments in Namibia promoting the common based management of water resources, the main focus of the project underlying this paper was to gain a detailed impression of how the rural communities in the country were dealing with the development of institutional arrangements for the water access and usage. Based on an anthropological fieldwork this paper aims to describe and to analyse the conflict over water a rural community in North-West Namibia is confronted with. From a theoretical perspective, the objective of this paper is to analyse the role of power in the development of institutions by means of Knight’s (1992) bargaining theory of institutional development. This paper concludes that the case study provides important evidence that the development of institutions at the local level can be the by-product of a strategic conflict and not the result of the users’ attempts to achieve collective goals, as frequently assumed by the mainstream communal natural resource management theory. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcn:rwpapr:34&r=dev |
| By: | Susan Pozo; José R. Sánchez-Fung; Amelia U. Santos-Paulino |
| Abstract: | The paper documents the economic development strategies pursued by the Dominican Republic. The study argues that the country’s success results from the implementation of a three-pronged economic development strategy. The first prong relates to diversifying production and the second to developing special economic zones. These zones operate in parallel fashion to the rest of the economy but with protections from domestic impediments to growth and progress. The third item in the recipe involves maintaining ample economic and social engagement with the rest of the world. The paper also highlights challenges that the country faces going forward. |
| Keywords: | economic development strategies, primary commodities, special economic zones, economic openness, Dominican Republic |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-115&r=dev |
| By: | Thomas Cantens |
| Abstract: | An ethnographic approach is applied to Cameroon customs in order to explore the role and the capacity of the bureaucratic elites to reform their institution. Fighting against corruption has led to the extraction and circulation of legal ‘collective money’ that fuels internal funds. This collective money is the core of the senior officers’ power and authority, and materially grounds their elite status. Nevertheless, when reforming, wilful senior officers face a major problem. On the one hand, the onus is on them to improve governance and transparency, which can challenge the way they exert their authority. On the other hand, goodwill is not sufficient. ‘Reformers’ depend on a violent and unpredictable appointment process, driven by the political will to fight against corruption and the fact that the political authority has to keep a close eye on the customs apparatus that tends towards autonomy, thanks to its internal funds. Violence and collective representations weaken the legitimacy of the senior officers, even the reformers, by pushing individual skills into the background. This paper questions whether Cameroon’s use of official customs data to evaluate individual performance can open up fissures among customs elites such that reformers are distinguished from others. |
| Keywords: | customs, money circulation, elitism, Cameroon |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-118&r=dev |
| By: | Channing Arndt; Andres Garcia; Finn Tarp; James Thurlow |
| Abstract: | While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth-poverty accounting and countries’ different compositions of economic growth. We explore the additional influence of economic structure in determining a country’s growth-poverty relationship and performance. Using multiplier and structural path analysis, we compare the experiences of Mozambique and Vietnam—two countries with similar levels and compositions of economic growth but divergent poverty outcomes. We find that the structure of the Vietnamese economy more naturally lends itself to generating broad-based growth. A given agricultural demand expansion in Mozambique will, ceteris paribus, achieve much less rural income growth than in Vietnam. Inadequate education, trade and transport systems are found to be more severe structural constraints to poverty reduction in Mozambique than in Vietnam. Investing in these areas can significantly enhance the effectiveness of Mozambican growth to reduce poverty. |
| Keywords: | poverty, multipliers, structural path analysis, Mozambique, Vietnam |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-122&r=dev |
| By: | Amelia U. Santos-Paulino |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses views on China and India as country role models. In so doing the article recounts the economic and political reforms pursued by the two countries. The paper also outlines the outstanding reforms and the bottlenecks that could jeopardize economic performance and development going forward, drawing lessons for other developing countries. |
| Keywords: | China, India, reforms, growth, development |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-121&r=dev |
| By: | Smith, James P. (RAND); Shen, Yan (Peking University); Strauss, John (University of Southern California); Zhe, Yang (University of California, Davis); Zhao, Yaohui (Peking University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we model the consequences of childhood health on adult health and socio-economic status outcomes in China using a new sample of middle aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the CHARLS Pilot survey respondents are forty-five years and older in two quite distinct provinces – Zhejiang, a high growth industrialized province on the East Coast, and Gansu, a largely agricultural and poor province in the West. Childhood health in CHARLS relies on two measures that proxy for different dimensions of health during the childhood years. The first is a retrospective self-evaluation using a standard five-point scale (excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor) of general state of one’s health when one was less than 16 years old. The second is adult height often thought to be a good measure of levels of nutrition during early childhood and the prenatal period. We relate both these childhood health measures to adult health and SES outcomes during the adult years. We find strong effects of childhood health on adult health outcomes particularly among Chinese women and strong effects on adult BMI particularly for Chinese men. |
| Keywords: | childhood health, China |
| JEL: | H00 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5318&r=dev |
| By: | Akresh, Richard (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Bagby, Emilie (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); de Walque, Damien (World Bank); Kazianga, Harounan (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Using data we collected in rural Burkina Faso, we examine how children's cognitive abilities influence resource constrained households' decisions to invest in their education. We use a direct measure of child ability for all primary school-aged children, regardless of current school enrollment. We explicitly incorporate direct measures of the ability of each child's siblings (both absolute and relative measures) to show how sibling rivalry exerts an impact on the parent's decision of whether and how much to invest in their child’s education. We find children with one standard deviation higher own ability are 16 percent more likely to be currently enrolled, while having a higher ability sibling lowers current enrollment by 16 percent and having two higher ability siblings lowers enrollment by 30 percent. Results are robust to addressing the potential reverse causality of schooling influencing child ability measures and using alternative cognitive tests to measure ability. |
| Keywords: | child ability, sibling rivalry, education, household decisions, Africa |
| JEL: | O15 J12 I21 J13 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5326&r=dev |
| By: | Bin Dong; Benno Torgler |
| Abstract: | We explore theoretically and empirically whether social interaction, including local and global interaction, influences the incidence of corruption. We first present an interaction-based model on corruption that predicts that the level of corruption is positively associated with social interaction. Then we empirically verify the theoretical prediction using within-country evidence at the province-level in China during 1998 to 2007. Panel data evidence clearly indicates that social interaction has a statistically significantly positive effect on the corruption rate in China. Our findings, therefore, underscore the relevance of social interaction in understanding corruption. |
| Keywords: | Awards; Signals; Status; Anonymity; Globalization |
| JEL: | K42 D72 D64 O17 J24 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2010-22&r=dev |
| By: | (Centre for Global Development) Advisory Faculty |
| Abstract: | The private sector plays a significant role in delivering health care to people in developing countries. By some estimates, more than one-half of all health care—even to the poorest people—is provided by private doctors, other health workers, drug sellers, and other non-state actors.This reality creates problems and potential. By and large, developing-country health policy and donor-supported health programs fail to address the problems, or capture the potential of the private sector in health. Interest is growing, within the donor community and among policymakers in developing-country governments, to find ways to work with the private sector to accelerate progress toward high-priority health objectives. |
| Keywords: | private, sector, significant, health care, developing, health worker, drug seller, policy, potential interest, policymaker, developing country |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:3229&r=dev |
| By: | T. Dinh, Hinh; Mavridis, Dimitris A.; Nguyen, Hoa B. |
| Abstract: | Firms in developing countries face numerous and serious constraints on their growth, ranging from corruption to lack of infrastructure to inability to access finance. Countries lack the resources to remove all the constraints at once and so would be better off removing the most binding one first. This paper uses data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 2006-10 to identify the most binding constraints on firm operations in developing countries. While each country faces a different set of constraints, these constraints also vary by firm characteristics, especially firm size. Across all countries, access to finance is among the most binding constraints; other obstacles appear to matter much less. This result is robust for all regions. Smaller firms must rely more on their own funds to invest and would grow significantly faster if they had greater access to external funds. As a result, a low level of financial development skews the firm size distribution by increasing the relative share of small firms. The results suggest that financing constraints play a significant part in explaining the"missing middle"-- the failure of small firms in developing countries to grow into medium-size or large firms. |
| Keywords: | Access to Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Microfinance,Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform |
| Date: | 2010–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5485&r=dev |
| By: | Ravallion, Martin |
| Abstract: | The 20th Human Development Report has introduced a new version of its famous Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI aggregates country-level attainments in life expectancy, schooling and income per capita. Each year's rankings by the HDI are keenly watched in both rich and poor countries. The main change in the 2010 HDI is that it relaxes its past assumption of perfect substitutability between its three components. However, most users will probably not realize that the new HDI has also greatly reduced its implicit weight on longevity in poor countries, relative to rich ones. A poor country experiencing falling life expectancy due to (say) a collapse in its health-care system could still see its HDI improve with even a small rate of economic growth. By contrast, the new HDI's valuations of the gains from extra schooling seem unreasonably high -- many times greater than the economic returns to schooling. These troubling tradeoffs could have been largely avoided using a different aggregation function for the HDI, while still allowing imperfect substitution. While some difficult value judgments are faced in constructing and assessing the HDI, making its assumed tradeoffs more explicit would be a welcome step. |
| Keywords: | Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Rural Poverty Reduction,Debt Markets,Labor Policies |
| Date: | 2010–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5484&r=dev |
| By: | Luigi Bonatti; Kiryl Haiduk |
| Abstract: | We develop a two-sector growth model distinguishing between a private sector consisting of profit-making firms and a state-controlled sector consisting of subsidized firms. Both sectors produce the same good. The private sector generates learning-by-doing and technological spillovers, while the state-controlled one is technologically obsolete and ‘stagnant’. This distinction allows tracing the dual-economy stage of development observed in transition economies. While in some of them the period in which profit-making and loss-making enterprises coexist was rather brief, some continue to display this pattern because of their industrial legacies and politicoideological preferences. The model predicts that—ceteris paribus—the larger is the initial fraction of the workforce employed in the obsolete sector and the stronger is the degree of ideological hostility towards market forces, the lower is the speed at which a transition economy will converge to the income level of the most advanced countries. |
| Keywords: | Dual economy, endogenous growth, transitional economies |
| JEL: | O1 O4 P28 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpde:1015&r=dev |
| By: | Pia M. Orrenius; Madeline Zavodny; Jesús Cañas; Roberto Coronado |
| Abstract: | Remittances have been promoted as a development tool because they can raise incomes and reduce poverty rates in developing countries. Remittances may also promote development by providing funds that recipients can spend on education or health care or invest in entrepreneurial activities. From a macroeconomic perspective, remittances can boost aggregate demand and thereby GDP as well as spur economic growth. However, remittances may also have adverse macroeconomic impacts by increasing income inequality and reducing labor supply among recipients. We use state-level data from Mexico during 2003–07 to examine the aggregate effect of remittances on employment, wages, unemployment rates, the wage distribution, and school enrollment rates. While employment, wages and school enrollment have risen over time in Mexican states, these trends are not accounted for by increasing remittances. However, two-stage least squares specifications among central Mexican states suggest that remittances shift the wage distribution to the right, reducing the fraction of workers earning the minimum wage or less. |
| Keywords: | Emigrant remittances - Latin America ; Economic development - Latin America ; Economic conditions - Mexico ; Labor market ; Income distribution ; Emigration and immigration |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:1007&r=dev |
| By: | Luojia Hu; Analía Schlosser |
| Abstract: | The paper studies the impact of prenatal sex selection on the well-being of girls by analyzing changes in children’s nutritional status and mortality during the years since the diffusion of sex-selective abortion in India. We use the ratio of male to female births in the year and state in which a child was born as a proxy for parental access to prenatal sex-selection. Using repeated cross-sections from a rich survey dataset, we show that high sex ratios at birth reflect the practice of sex-selective abortion. We then exploit the large regional and time variations in the incidence of sex-selective abortion to analyze whether changes in girls’ outcomes relative to boys within states and over time are associated with changes in sex-ratios at birth. We find that an increase in the practice of sex-selective abortion appears to be associated with a reduction in the incidence of malnutrition among girls. The negative association is stronger for girls born in rural households and at higher birth parities. We find no evidence that sex-selective abortion leads to a selection of girls into families of higher SES, however we do find some evidence of a larger reduction in family size for girls relative to boys. We also find some suggestive evidence of better treatment of girls as reflected in breast feeding duration. On the other hand, sex-selective abortion does not appear to be associated with a reduction in excess female child mortality. |
| Keywords: | Abortion ; Prenatal care |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2010-11&r=dev |
| By: | Alvaro Calzadilla |
| Abstract: | The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) has been widely used to analyze climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. The storylines behind these scenarios outline alternative development pathways, which have been the base for climate research and other studies at global, regional and country level. Based on the global income distribution and poverty module (GlobPov), we assess the implication of the IPCC SRES scenarios on global poverty and inequality. We find that global poverty and inequality measures are sensitive to the downscaling methodology used. Our results show that future economic growth is crucial for poverty reduction. Higher per capita incomes tend to favour poverty reduction, while higher population growth rates delay this progress. Scenarios that combine high economic growth and convergence assumptions with low population growth rates produce better outcomes. China and India play a central role on poverty reduction and global inequality. While high economic growth rates in China and India may lift millions out of poverty, high population growth and stagnation in African economies could offset the situation |
| Keywords: | Global, poverty, income distribution, inequality, emission scenarios |
| JEL: | O50 I32 O15 Q54 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1664&r=dev |
| By: | Bobkova, Nina |
| Abstract: | Deme et al. (2005, DFN) present a general equilibrium model for the case of Lesotho with a rising step skill acquisition function. DFN show that only a large amount of government expenditure on education, training and skill acquisition can pull the economy out of its inertia. As a comment on DFN, Bandopadhyay (2006) develops a similar general equilibrium model and analyzes the impact of government expenditure on skill acquisition. He finds that the outcome on the economy is independent of the amount of the government spending. By comparing the two models I show, that Bandopadhyay's findings replicate one aspect of the findings of DFN and do not add additional insight to the discussion. |
| Keywords: | skill acquisition; economic development; general equilibrium; human capital |
| JEL: | O1 J24 I28 H52 |
| Date: | 2010–11–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:26912&r=dev |