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on Development |
| By: | Florian Dorn; Clemens Fuest; Niklas Potrafke |
| Abstract: | This paper re-examines the link between globalization and income inequality. We use data for 140 countries over the period 1970–2014 and employ an IV approach to deal with the endogeneity of globalization measures. We find that the link between globalization and income inequality differs across different groups of countries. There is a robust positive relationship between globalization and inequality in the transition countries including China and most countries of Middle and Eastern Europe. In the sample of the most advanced economies, neither OLS nor 2SLS results show any significant positive relationship between globalization and inequality. We conclude that institutions providing income insurance and education, which characterize most advanced economies but are less developed in transition economies, may have moderated effects of globalization on income inequality. |
| Keywords: | Globalization, income inequality, redistribution, instrumental variable estimation, panel econometrics, development levels, transition economies, China |
| JEL: | D31 D63 F02 C26 H11 H20 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_247&r=dev |
| By: | Cristina Cirillo (University of Florence and University of Trento); Giorgia Giovannetti (University of Florence, European University Institute and Luca D'Agliano Center) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an impact evaluation of the Juntos programme on households' decision to invest in livestock and agricultural and non-agricultural assets used for income generating activities. Using Propensity Score Matching and Difference in Difference techniques, we show: i) that beneficiaries are significantly more likely to invest in productive assets and activities with respect to non-beneficiaries; ii) that Juntos is more likely to relax liquidity contraints rather than to be used as an insurance for risky investments; iii) that the program benefits the poor but not the poorest of the poor. Duration and transfers regularity do not produce significant differences between groups of beneficiaries. However, results show a sustained impact of the programme over time. |
| Keywords: | Conditional cash transfers; Impact evaluation; Households investments; Juntos |
| JEL: | I38 H20 O12 H43 |
| Date: | 2018–01–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csl:devewp:433&r=dev |
| By: | Akogun,Oladele B; Dillon,Andrew S.; Friedman,Jed; Prasann,Ashesh; Serneels,Pieter Maria |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates an alternative proxy for individual worker productivity in physical work settings: a direct measure of physical activity using an accelerometer. First, the paper compares worker labor outcomes, such as labor supply and daily productivity obtained from firm personnel data, with physical activity; they are strongly related. Second, the paper investigates the effect of a health intervention on physical activity, using a temporally randomized offer of malaria testing and treatment. Workers who are offered this program reallocate time from lower intensity activities in favor of higher intensity activities when they work. |
| Keywords: | Inequality,Social Protections&Assistance |
| Date: | 2017–10–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8228&r=dev |
| By: | Jérémie Gignoux (PSE - Paris School of Economics); Marta Menéndez (LEDa - Université Paris Dauphine (Paris 9)) |
| Abstract: | We examine the long-term effects on individual economic outcomes of a set of earthquakes – numerous, large, but mostly not extreme – that occurred in rural Indonesia since 1985. Using longitudinal individual-level data from large-scale household surveys, together with precise measures of local ground tremors obtained from a US Geological Survey database, we identify the effects of earthquakes, exploiting the quasi-random spatial and temporal nature of their distribution. Affected individuals experience short-term economic losses but recover in the medium-run (after two to five years), and even exhibit income and welfare gains in the long term (six to twelve years). The stocks of productive assets, notably in farms, get reconstituted and public infrastructures are improved, seemingly partly through external aid, allowing productivity to recover. These findings tend to discount the presence of poverty traps, and exhibit the potential long-term benefits from well-designed post-disaster interventions in context where disasters primarily affect physical assets. |
| Abstract: | Nous examinons les effets économiques à long terme d’une série de tremblements de terre - nombreux, importants, mais pas dévastateurs- ayant eu lieu en Indonésie rurale depuis 1985. A partir des données individuelles longitudinales provenant d’enquêtes ménages largement représentatives, ainsi que des mesures précises de l’intensité des tremblements de terre calculées à partir de la base de données US Geological Survey, nous identifions les effets des tremblements de terre en exploitant leurs variations spatiales et temporelles quasi-aléatoires. Les individus ayant subi les tremblements accusent des pertes économiques à court terme, mais les compensent à moyen terme (après une période de deux à cinq ans), et présentent même des gains économiques à long terme (de six à douze ans). Les stocks de biens de production, notamment dans les exploitations agricoles, sont reconstitués et les infrastructures publiques améliorées, apparemment en partie grâce à l'aide extérieure, ce qui permet de rétablir les niveaux de productivité. Ces résultats tendent à rejeter la présence de trappes de pauvreté, et révèlent les bénéfices potentiels à long terme d'interventions post-catastrophe bien conçues dans un contexte où les catastrophes affectent principalement les actifs physiques. |
| Keywords: | aid and reconstruction,rural Indonesia,long-term effects,welfare,earthquakes,Natural disasters,aide et reconstruction,effets à long terme,bien-être,Catastrophes naturelles,tremblements de terre,Indonésie rurale |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01617385&r=dev |
| By: | Dang, Hai-Anh; Jolliffe, Dean; Carletto, Calogero |
| Abstract: | We offer a review of methods that have been employed to provide poverty estimates of poverty in contexts where household consumption data are unavailable or missing. These contexts range from completely missing and partially missing consumption data in cross sectional household surveys, to missing panel household data. We focus on methods that aim to compare trends and dynamic patterns of poverty outcomes over time. We present the various existing methods under a common framework, with pedagogical discussion on the intuition. Empirical illustrations are provided using several rounds of household survey data from Vietnam. Furthermore, we also offer a practical guide with detailed instructions on computer programs that can be used to implement the reviewed techniques. |
| Keywords: | poverty,mobility,imputation,consumption,wealth index,synthetic panels,household survey |
| JEL: | C15 I32 O15 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:179&r=dev |
| By: | Bou Dib, Jonida; Krishna, Vijesh; Alamsyah, Zulkifli; Qaim, Matin |
| Abstract: | Many tropical regions are experiencing massive land-use change that is often characterized by an expansion of oil palm at the expense of forests and more traditional forms of agricultural cropping. While implications of such land-use change for the environment and for local farm households were examined in previous research, possible effects on the livelihoods of non-farm households are not yet well understood. This study analyzes the role of different types of agricultural and non-agricultural employment income for non-farm households in rural Jambi, one of the hotspot regions of Indonesia's recent oil palm boom. Data from a recent survey show that employment in rubber and oil palm are important livelihood components for non-farm households. Employment in oil palm is more lucrative than employment in rubber, so involvement in the oil palm sector as a laborer is positively associated with total household income. Regression models show that whether or not a household works in oil palm is largely determined by factors related to migration background, ethnicity, and the size of the village area grown with this crop. These results suggest that further expansion of the oil palm area will likely benefit non-farm households through gains in employment income. As non-farm households belong to the poorest segments of the rural population, these benefits should not be ignored when designing policies towards sustainable land use. |
| Keywords: | oil palm,rubber,non-farm households,labor markets,sharecropping,income |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:crc990:21&r=dev |
| By: | Makate, Marshall; Makate, Clifton |
| Abstract: | Abstract: Inequalities in maternal healthcare are pervasive in the developing world, a fact that has led to questions about the extent of these inequalities across socioeconomic groups. Yet, despite a growing literature on maternal health across Sub-Saharan African countries, relatively little is known about the evolution of these inequalities over time for specific countries. This study sought to examine and document the trends in the inequalities in prenatal care use, professional delivery assistance, and the receipt of information on pregnancy complications in Zimbabwe. We assess the extent to which the observed inequalities have been pro-poor or pro-rich. The empirical analysis uses data from four rounds of the nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey for Zimbabwe conducted in 1994, 1999, 2005/06 and 2010/11. Three binary indicators were used as measures of maternal health care utilization; (1) the receipt of four or more antenatal care visits, (2) the use of professional delivery assistance, and (3) the receipt of information regarding pregnancy complications for the most recent pregnancy. We measure and explain inequalities in maternal health care use using Erreyger’s corrected concentration index. A decomposition analysis was conducted to determine the contributions of each determining factor to the measured inequalities. We found a significant and persistently pro-rich distribution of inequalities in professional delivery assistance and knowledge regarding pregnancy complications was observed between 1994 and 2010/11. Also, inequalities in prenatal care use were pro-rich in 1994, 2005/06 and 2010/11 periods and pro-poor in 1999. Furthermore, we stratified the results by rural or urban status. The results reveal a rising trend in observed inequalities in maternal health care use over time. Our findings suggest that addressing inequalities in maternal healthcare utilization requires coordinated public health policies targeting the more poor and vulnerable segments of the population in Zimbabwe. |
| Keywords: | Socioeconomic-related inequality; maternal healthcare utilization; Erreygers concentration index; Zimbabwe |
| JEL: | I12 I14 |
| Date: | 2016–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:83897&r=dev |
| By: | Samuel Bazzi (Boston University, CEPR, BREAD); Matthew Gudgeon (Boston University) |
| Abstract: | Policymakers in diverse countries face the persistent challenge of managing ethnic divisions. We argue that redrawing subnational political boundaries can fundamentally reshape these divisions. We use a natural policy experiment in Indonesia to show that changes in the political relevance of ethnic divisions have significant effects on conflict in the short- to medium-run. While redistricting along group lines can increase social stability, these gains are undone and even reversed in newly polarized units. Electoral democracy further amplifies these effects given the large returns to initial control of newly created local governments in settings with ethnic favoritism. Overall, our findings show that the ethnic divisions underlying widely-used diversity measures are neither fixed nor exogenous and instead depend on the political boundaries within which groups are organized. These results illustrate the promise and pitfalls of redistricting policy in diverse countries where it is not feasible for each group to have its own administrative unit. |
| Keywords: | Conflict, Decentralization, Ethnic Divisions, Polarization, Political Boundaries |
| JEL: | D72 D74 H41 H77 O13 Q34 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2018-005&r=dev |
| By: | Jorge Alvarez |
| Abstract: | A key feature of developing economies is that wages in agriculture are significantly below those of other sectors. Using Brazilian household surveys and administrative panel data, I use information on workers who switch sectors to decompose the drivers of this gap. I find that most of the gap is explained by differences in worker composition. The evidence speaks against the existence of large short-term gains from reallocating workers out of agriculture and favors recently proposed Roy models of inter-sector sorting. A calibrated sorting model of structural transformation can account for the wage gap level observed and its decline as the economy transitioned out of agriculture. |
| Keywords: | Western Hemisphere;Brazil;Agriculture;Human capital;Wage Gaps, Structural Transformation, Sorting, Productivity Gaps, Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure, Agricultural Labor Markets, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility, General, General |
| Date: | 2017–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:17/289&r=dev |
| By: | Chakra Pani Acharya (National Planning Commission Secretariat, Kathmandu, Nepal); Roberto Leon-Gonzalez (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan) |
| Abstract: | Despite a large growth in domestic and international migration and remittances in recent decades, there are limited works that systematically identify and establish interactions between internal and international migration. Using primary data from new urban areas of Nepal, we identify households that had migrated from rural to urban areas, explore their migration practices and educational investment behaviors, and analyze the effects of international migration and remittances on investment in education. The results show that, despite their lower income and consumption, migrant households that have members abroad have higher human capital investment measured by the level and budget share of expenditure on children fs education and the time their children spend for studying at home than do urban-native and other types of migrant households. Our findings suggest that searching for better education is one important motivation for migrating to urban areas among rural households having members abroad. |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ngi:dpaper:17-13&r=dev |
| By: | Alejandra Marroig (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Ivone Perazzo (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Gonzalo Salas (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Andrea Vigorito (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | We present an experimental evaluation of Acompañamiento Familiar y Trabajo de Cercanía, the home visits component of the programme Uruguay Crece Contigo. We assess a wide set of outcomes related to child health and nutritional status, child development, access to social protection schemes and other household well-being outcomes. Our research is based on two surveys specially designed to carry out this evaluation. We find a significant improvement in the nutritional status of children and access to an in-kind transfer, Tarjeta Uruguay Social, in the form of a food card. At the same time, we also find an improvement in child development, specifically in the gross motor component of ASQ:SE. The potential channels explaining these results include home visits, access to resources, increased attendance to child care, changes in parenting styles as well as reduced maternal depression. |
| Keywords: | Experimental impact evaluation, home visits, child development, nutrition, Uruguay, Uruguay Crece Contigo |
| JEL: | I38 I14 C93 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-15-17&r=dev |
| By: | Oswaldo Molina (Universidad del Pacifíco); Mans Söderbom (University of Gothenburg) |
| Abstract: | Empirical results reported by Field (2005) indicate that improved property rights tend to raise average housing investment among poor urban households in Peru. We investigate if this effect varies across households with differing incomes, how it evolves over time, and whether heterogeneous expectations about future tenure security matter for the estimated effects. The results indicate that the investment response among the poorest households represented by our sample is weak and not significant. Among households with higher incomes, the response is quantitatively large and statistically highly significant. The results further indicate that it may take several years until the response of long-run investment to reformed property rights can be found in the data. Finally, even though expectation of treatment affects the behaviour of non-treated households, the treatment effect changes only slightly when we take into account expectations in our previous estimations, indicating that our results are robust to this problem. |
| JEL: | O12 O18 P26 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apc:wpaper:119&r=dev |
| By: | Paola Azar Dufrechou (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; Institute of Economics, Universidad de la República-Uruguay) |
| Abstract: | Based on the compilation of Uruguayan department-level data, this paper argues that the extent of fiscal commitment to primary education during the first half of the 20th century can be explained by the interests of tactically motivated politicians. The empirical test relies on panel data fixed effects models covering 18 Uruguayan departments over 40 years. The main findings reveal that political motivations have had a significant role in schooling provision across the territory. Throughout the period, the incumbent government seems to have used the resource allocation in primary education both to reward its core supporters and to persuade political opponents. |
| Keywords: | primary education, pork-barrel, economic history |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uab:wprdea:wpdea1801&r=dev |
| By: | Sudip Ranjan Basu (Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division, ESCAP) |
| Abstract: | The paper explores empirically whether income inequality has increased over the past decades. To study this hypothesis, the paper aims to create a new income inequality dataset contains 133 countries over the 1990–2014 period. The results indicate that globally income inequality (population-weighted Gini coefficients), on average, increased from 38.6 to 41.8 during the period 1990-2014. The results further highlight the existence of variations in the level of income inequality across regions and group of countries. The reduction in income inequality, among others, remains one of the key challenges of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The paper, therefore, identifies various transmission mechanisms and drivers of the increasing level of income inequality, as well as points out possible forward-looking development policies to reduce income inequality. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Gini coefficient, sustainable development, growth |
| JEL: | D63 Q01 F43 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unt:wpmpdd:wp/17/03&r=dev |