|
on Development |
| By: | Gharad Bryan; Shyamal Chowdhury; Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak |
| Abstract: | Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an $8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to temporarily out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22% of households to send a seasonal migrant, their consumption at the origin increases significantly, and treated households are 8-10 percentage points more likely to re-migrate 1 and 3 years after the incentive is removed. These facts can be explained qualitatively by a model in which migration is risky, mitigating risk requires individual-specific learning, and some migrants are sufficiently close to subsistence that failed migration is very costly. We document evidence consistent with this model using heterogeneity analysis and additional experimental variation, but calibrations with forward-looking households that can save up to migrate suggest that it is difficult for the model to quantitatively match the data. We conclude with extensions to the model that could provide a better quantitative accounting of the behavior. |
| JEL: | J61 O1 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20172&r=dev |
| By: | Rafael LaPorta; Andrei Shleifer |
| Abstract: | We establish five facts about the informal economy in developing countries.� First, it is huge, reaching about half of the total in the poorest countries.�� Second, it has extremely low productivity compared to the formal economy: informal firms are typically small, inefficient, and run by poorly educated entrepreneurs.�� Third, although avoidance of taxes and regulations is an important reason for informality, the productivity of informal firms is too low for them to thrive in the formal sector.�� Lowering registration costs neither brings many informal firms into the formal sector, nor unleashes economic growth.� Fourth, the informal economy is largely disconnected from the formal economy.�� Informal firms rarely transition to formality, and continue their existence, often for years or even decades, without much growth or improvement.�� Fifth, as countries grow and develop, the informal economy eventually shrinks, and the formal economy comes to dominate economic life. �These five facts are most consistent with dual models of informality and economic development.� |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:171301&r=dev |
| By: | Bernal, Noelia (Universidad de Piura); Carpio, Miguel A. (Universidad de Piura); Klein, Tobias J. (Tilburg University) |
| Abstract: | Many developing countries have recently increased health insurance coverage at a large scale. While it is commonly believed that this has positive effects, to date, it is not well understood through which channels health insurance coverage contributes to the well-being of individuals. More generally, the effects are usually not quantified at the individual level. There are two main reasons for this. First, we lack detailed data on health care utilization and health outcomes, and second, it is not easy to control for selection into insurance. The second problem means that a regression of utilization or outcome measures on insurance coverage will yield biased results and will not estimate the causal effects of health insurance. In this paper, we make progress in both directions. We use rich survey data to evaluate the impact of access to the Peruvian Social Health Insurance called "Seguro Integral de Salud" for individuals outside the formal labor market on a variety of measures for health care utilization, preventive care, health expenditures, and health indicators. We address the second concern by exploiting a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. A household is eligible for the program if a welfare index that is calculated from a number of variables is below a specific threshold. We base our analysis on a natural experiment that is generated by variation in the index around the threshold. We interpret our results through the lens of a simple model. As expected, and in contrast to studies for a number of other countries, we find strong effects of insurance coverage on measures of health care utilization, such as visiting a doctor, receiving medication and medical analysis. The program does not strongly incentivice individuals or health care providers to invest into preventive care. In line with this, in general, we find no effects of insurance coverage on preventive care. The only exceptions to this are our findings that, controlling for selection into insurance coverage, women of fertile age with insurance are more likely to receive pregnancy care and that insured individuals are more likely to be vaccinated. This is in line with the stark decrease in maternal and child mortality that was observed after the program was introduced. As for health care expenditures, we generally find positive effects on the mean and the variability. We complement these findings with quantile treatment effect estimates that show increases at the high end of the distribution. Our interpretation is that insured individuals are encouraged by health care professionals to undertake important treatments and pay for this themselves. At the same time, we find no clear effects on health outcomes at the micro level. |
| Keywords: | public health insurance, informal sector, health care utilization, health, regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | I13 O12 O17 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8213&r=dev |
| By: | Simon Burgess (Department of Economics, University of Bristol); Matt Dickson (Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath); Lindsey Macmillan (Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact on earnings inequality of a selective education system in which school assignment is based on initial test scores. We use a large, representative household panel survey to compare adult earnings inequality of those growing up under a selective education system with those educated under a comprehensive system. Controlling for a range of background characteristics and the current location, the wage distribution for individuals who grew up in selective schooling areas is quantitatively and statistically significantly more unequal. The total effect sizes are large: 14% of the raw 90-10 earnings gap and 18% of the conditional 90-10 earnings gap can be explained by differences across schooling systems |
| Keywords: | selective schooling, inequality, wages |
| JEL: | I24 J31 |
| Date: | 2014–05–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1409&r=dev |
| By: | Brian Jacob; Max Kapustin; Jens Ludwig |
| Abstract: | Whether government transfer programs increase the human capital of low-income children is a question of first-order policy importance. Such policies might help poor children if their parents are credit constrained, and so under-invest in their human capital. But it is also possible that whatever causes parents to have low incomes might also directly influence children’s development, in which case transfer programs need not improve poor children’s long-term life chances. While several recent influential studies suggest anti-poverty programs have larger human capital effects per dollar spent than do even the best educational interventions, identification is a challenge because most transfer programs are entitlements. We overcome that problem by studying the effects on children of a generous transfer program that is heavily rationed—means-tested housing assistance. We take advantage of a randomized housing voucher lottery in Chicago in 1997, for which 82,607 people applied, and use administrative data on schooling, arrests, and health to track children’s outcomes over 14 years. We focus on families living in unsubsidized private housing at baseline, for whom voucher receipt generates large changes in both housing and non-housing consumption. Estimated effects are mostly statistically insignificant and always much smaller than those from recent studies of cash transfers, and are smaller on a per dollar basis than the best educational interventions. |
| JEL: | H53 H75 I38 J13 J24 R38 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20164&r=dev |
| By: | Katsushi S. Imai; Samuel Kobina Annim; Veena S. Kulkarni; Raghav Gaiha |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:sespap:1409&r=dev |