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on Development |
| By: | Alex Armand (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Navarra (Spain)); Orazio Attanasio (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London); Pedro Carneiro (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London); Valérie Lechene (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children attending secondary school. The recipient of the transfer is randomized across municipalities to be either the household head or the mother. Using data collected to evaluate the conditional cash transfer program, we show that the gender of the recipient has an effect on the structure of expenditure shares. Targeting transfers to women increases the expenditure share on food by about 4 to 5%. To study the allocation of expenditures within the food basket, we estimate a demand system for food and we find that targeting payments to mothers induces, for different food categories, not only a significant intercept shift, but also a change in the slope of the Engel curve. |
| Keywords: | CCT, intra-household, gender, expenditure |
| Date: | 2016–08–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:16/14&r=dev |
| By: | Brollo, Fernanda (University of Warwick); Kaufmann, Katja Maria (University of Mannheim); La Ferrara, Eliana (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | We study the implementation of Bolsa Familia, a program that conditions cash transfers to poor families on children's school attendance. Using unique administrative data, we analyze how beneficiaries respond to the enforcement of conditionality. Making use of random variation in the day on which punishments are received, we find that school attendance increases after families are punished for past noncompliance. Families also respond to penalties experienced by peers: a child's attendance increases if her own classmates, but also her siblings' classmates (in other grades or schools), experience enforcement. As the severity of penalties increases with repeated noncompliance, households' response is larger when peers receive a penalty that the family has not (yet) received. We thus find evidence of spillover effects and learning about enforcement. |
| Keywords: | enforcement, conditional welfare programs, learning, Brazil |
| JEL: | I25 I38 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10654&r=dev |
| By: | Djavad Salehi-Isfahani (Virginia Tech); Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooei |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of a nation-wide unconditional cash transfer program on labor supply in Iran. In 2011, the government started monthly deposits of cash into individual family accounts amounting to 29% of the median household income. We use panel data and fixed effects to study the causal effect of the cash transfers on labor supply using the exogenous variation in the intensity of treatment, which we define as the value of cash transfers relative to household income in the year before transfers. We also use a difference-in-differences methodology that relies on exogenous variation in the time households first started receiving transfers. With the exception of youth, who have weak ties to the labor market, we find no evidence that cash transfers reduced labor supply, while service sector workers appear to have increased their hours of work, perhaps because some used transfers to expand their business. |
| Date: | 2017–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1090&r=dev |
| By: | Raymond B. Frempong; David Stadelmann |
| Abstract: | A majority of people in developing countries spend about 60 percent of their income on food, even though most of them are farmers. Hence, a change in food prices affects both their revenue as well as expenditure, and thereby their labor market decisions. Using the Uganda National Panel Survey and monthly regional food prices, this paper examines the effect of exogenous changes in food prices on child labor. The econometric evidence shows that an increase in food prices leads to an increase in the probability and intensity of child labor. We find the effect of food price increases to be smaller among landowning households, which is consistent with the view that landowning households can better compensate for price shocks. The results suggest that periodic shocks in food prices may have longer lasting effects on human capital development and poverty in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Development; Child labor; Exogenous shock; Food prices |
| JEL: | O12 Q18 J20 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2017-06&r=dev |
| By: | Conrado, Vilma; Tuscano, Jocelyn; Oñate, Beatriz; Torio, Erwin; Umengan, Jane; Paat, Nina Klare |
| Abstract: | This study aims to evaluate the impact of agricultural insurance of the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) on corn farmers in the Cagayan Valley Region, Philippines. A total of 500 corn farmers were classified into the following treatments: 250 corn farmers with insurance (118 with indemnity claims and 132 without indemnity claims) randomly taken from PCIC agricultural insurance subscribers for 2014 and 2015 matched with 250 without insurance from the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture list. These treatment groups were further divided according to farm size groups. Regression analysis was used to determine the demand on agricultural insurance and the t-test was used to test the difference on net farm income on corn production between treatment groups. The results show that the factors affecting the probability of PCIC insurance availment by corn farmers are farm size, government transfer income, adoption of hybrid variety, land tenure, and the distance of farmer to PCIC office. Farmers with crop insurance tend to have significantly higher adoption rate of hybrid variety than farmers without crop insurance. The larger the farm size, the higher the probability of getting insurance for their corn farms. Corn farmers who do not own the land they farm and those who received higher government transfers tend to have higher probability of getting agricultural insurance. Farmers with insurance with claim have significantly higher net incomes per hectare than those without insurance. When farmers were not grouped by farm size, farmers with insurance with claims have higher net incomes than farmers with insurance but without indemnity claims in 2014 and 2015. Similar result was found in large farms (greater than 1.0 ha) when farmers were grouped according to farm size. Therefore, there is significant impact of receiving indemnity claims on the net farm income of farmers in corn production. Hence, it is recommended that policies, programs, and efforts of the government and the PCIC be directed toward enhancing the factors that increase the availment of and review of indemnity coverage of agricultural insurance. |
| Keywords: | Philippines, impact evaluation, Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation, crop insurance, agricultural insurance, corn, PCIC, corn production, Cagayan Valley, Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phd:dpaper:dp_2017-12&r=dev |
| By: | Emla Fitzsimons (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute of Education, University of London); Bansi Malde (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Marcos Vera-Hernandez (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London) |
| Abstract: | Community-based interventions, particularly group-based ones, are considered to be a cost-effective way of delivering interventions in low-income settings. However, design features of these programs could also influence dimensions of household and community behaviour beyond those targeted by the intervention. This paper studies spillover effects of a participatory community health intervention in rural Malawi, implemented through a cluster randomised control trial, on an outcome not directly targeted by the intervention: household consumption smoothing after crop losses. We find that while crop losses reduce consumption growth in the absence of the intervention, households in treated areas are able to compensate for this loss and perfectly insure their consumption. Asset decumulation also falls in treated areas. We provide suggestive evidence that these effects are driven by increased social interactions, which could have alleviated contracting frictions; and rule out that they are driven by improved health or reductions in the incidence of crop losses. |
| Keywords: | participatory community interventions, spillovers, consumption smoothing, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | E21 G22 O12 O13 |
| Date: | 2016–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:16/18&r=dev |
| By: | Mendolia, Silvia (University of Wollongong); Nguyen, Thi (University of Wollongong); Yerokhin, Oleg (University of Wollongong) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the relationship between parental health shocks and children's engagement in education and labour market, using a panel data survey of Vietnamese families, interviewed between 2004 and 2008. While there is substantial evidence showing the intergenerational transmission of health, the literature investigating the impact of parental health on children's educational and labour market outcomes is limited, especially in developing countries. We use child fixed effects and control for a detailed set of household and local area characteristics. Our main findings show that maternal illness substantially decreases chances of being enrolled in school for children between 10 and 23 years old and, at the same time, increases the children's likelihood of entering the labour market and working more hours for children aged 10-15 years old. The effect is particularly pronounced for girls, who seem to experience worst adverse consequences in terms of education and labour market engagement. |
| Keywords: | children's education, child labour, parental illness |
| JEL: | I10 I14 I24 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10651&r=dev |
| By: | Christophe Muller (Aix-Marseille Univ. (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), CNRS, EHESS and Centrale Marseille) |
| Abstract: | For the first time in Indonesia, we jointly analyse several economic statistics and ethnic diversity indicators at national and local levels. Nationally, we find very high levels of economic inequality, measured from household asset values or consumption expenditure. In contrast, the levels of ethnic diversity, while non-negligible, are much lower, whether they reflect fractionalization, polarization, or horizontal inequity based on individual living standards. All horizontal inequity indicators surged after the Asian economic crisis. Horizontal inequity based on education is much lower and decreasing. Finally, we provide tentative explanations of local horizontal inequity in regressions that show a mixed pattern of socioeconomic influences. |
| Keywords: | community activities, ethnic diversity, Inequality, Indonesia |
| JEL: | D71 H42 I32 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1715&r=dev |
| By: | Felipe Barrera-Osorio; Leigh L. Linden; Juan Saavedra |
| Abstract: | We show that three Colombian conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for secondary schools improve educational outcomes eight and 12 years after random assignment relative to a control group. Forcing families to save a portion of the transfers until they make enrollment decisions for the next academic year increases on-time enrollment in secondary school, reduces dropout rates, and promotes tertiary enrollment and completion in the long-term. Traditionally structured bimonthly transfers improve on-time enrollment and high school exit exam completion rates in the medium term, but do not affect long-term tertiary outcomes. A delayed transfer that directly incentivizes tertiary enrollment promotes secondary school on-time enrollment and enrollment—only in lower-quality tertiary institutions—in the medium term but not the long term. |
| JEL: | C93 I21 I38 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23275&r=dev |
| By: | Shoji, Masahiro |
| Abstract: | This study employs unique household data collected in cyclone-affected communities in Bangladesh to uncover the impact of religious fractionalisation on victimization to crime after the disaster. The identification strategy relies on two natures of the study area: 1) the religious composition is stable; and 2) the pre-disaster socio-economic status of households is uncorrelated with religious fractionalisation and disaster damage, after controlling for the observed characteristics. The findings suggest that following a natural disaster, households in disaster-affected and religiously fractionalised communities are more likely to be victims than those in non-fractionalised communities. This is caused by the misallocation of disaster reliefs in fractionalised communities. |
| Keywords: | crime, religious fractionalisation, natural disaster, Bangladesh |
| JEL: | K42 O12 Z12 |
| Date: | 2017–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:78702&r=dev |