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on Development |
| By: | Juan Segundo Zapiola (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés) |
| Abstract: | In this study, we investigate the effect drought has on school attendance in Tanzania. To do so, we exploit exogenous rainfall variability to explore its effect on the proportion of school attendance after they experienced a drought shock. We resulted in a positive and significant coefficient, indicating that those with a severe-extreme drought shock are likelier to increase school attendance. Notably, this finding holds across different model specifications, demonstrating the robustness and consistency of our results. |
| Keywords: | Drought, SPI, School Attendance, Tanzania, Education, Agriculture, Rainfall, Grid Cell, Severe-Extreme Drought Shock. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:ypaper:12&r=dev |
| By: | Paola Llamas (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the link between historical rice cultivation and the ‘math quality’ of institutions in Chinese provinces. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we use Rice Suitability as an instrumental variable for rice cultivation. We find strong evidence of causal relationship between historical rice cultivation and institutions ‘math quality’, even after addressing potential endogeneity concerns and micronumerosity issues. Our findings suggest a novel perspective over conventional determinants of educational quality and evidence of a new potential long-term effect of rice cultivation. |
| Keywords: | Rice, Math performance, Instrumental variables, Education |
| Date: | 2023–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sad:ypaper:11&r=dev |
| By: | Orbeta, Aniceto Jr. C.; Araos, Nina Victoria V.; Melad, Kris Ann M. |
| Abstract: | The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program is the government’s primary social protection strategy to break intergenerational poverty by supporting poor households and investing in children’s health and education. Previous impact evaluations demonstrated the program’s success in keeping children healthy and in school. This third impact evaluation seeks to reevaluate the program’s impact on short-term and intermediate outcomes related to health, education, household welfare, and other sociobehavioral domains. The evaluation employs regression discontinuity design to compare the program’s impact on treatment households (Pantawid beneficiaries) and comparison households (non-Pantawid beneficiaries) within specific bandwidths of distance from the poverty threshold that determines program eligibility. Results indicate that the program still positively impacts most of the target education and health outcomes of children and pregnant women. In addition, the program positively impacts household welfare, community participation, awareness of basic means to mitigate vulnerabilities, and children’s grit or determination. However, some results are inconsistent with previous evaluations, such as the negative impact on some nutrition outcomes, maternal healthcare service usage variations, and an insignificant reduction in child labor incidence. The study recommends improving program monitoring, strengthening enforcement of health conditions, and further researching the factors driving some of the unexpected results. It also suggests adjusting program policies or incentives, particularly in terms of reevaluating the cash grant value and using the program’s positive impacts on the behavior of children and adults as a model for other interventions. |
| Keywords: | Pantawid Pamilya;4Ps;cash transfers;human capital;Regression Discontinuity;impact evaluation |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phd:rpseri:rps_2023-06&r=dev |
| By: | Aishwarya Kekre (University of Virginia); Kanika Mahajan (Ashoka University) |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates a maternity support conditional cash transfer (CCT) scheme, launched in October 2011, on short and long-run health outcomes of children in India. We estimate intent-to-treat effects of the program by exploiting a natural experiment arising from select geographical implementation and the eligibility of program benefits for first/second born children using the National Family Health Survey-4 data. We find an increase in birth weight, duration of breastfeeding and long term weight-for-age, with a larger impact on male children. The effects are positive for height-for-age and negative for infant mortality, albeit insignificant, and significantly negative for neonatal mortality but only over a longer time period. These results are in contrast to the existing two studies in the nascent literature that find no positive effect of maternity support CCTs on child health outcomes, thus, showing that institutional factors that ensure supply of healthcare services to meet the conditionalities imposed in a CCT may be important. We show the robustness of our findings to different specifications, test for pre-trends and address the issue of self-reporting of outcomes by households. |
| Keywords: | child health; Maternity Support; UnintendedGendered Effects |
| Date: | 2022–09–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:84&r=dev |
| By: | Aparajita Dasgupta (Ashoka University); Anisha Sharma (Ashoka University) |
| Abstract: | Policy measures that seek to address son preference through restrictions on the tools of sex-selective abortions, without addressing the underlying causes, have been found to generate negative welfare consequences for unwanted surviving girls. Unlike these topdown supply-side measures, demand-side measures that focus on increasing the demand for girls by shifting social norms of son preference can mitigate these adverse welfare consequences. We study the impact of an intervention aimed at reducing discrimination against girls, which has both supply-side and demand-side elements. The intervention, implemented in India between 2015-18 included a mass media campaign designed to increase the perception of the value of a female child, while also tightening the policing of illegal sex-selective abortions. We exploit variation in the timing of exposure to the programme across Indian districts as well as quasi-exogenous variation in the sex of the firstborn child to identify the impact of the programme and find that it led to an increased proportion of female births as well as a reduction in the gender gap in mortality in intensively treated families. The main mechanism that explains our results is a relative increase in health investments in daughters, such as breastfeeding and vaccinations. |
| Keywords: | Infant Mortality; son preference; missing women; health investments; media intervention |
| Date: | 2022–10–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:85&r=dev |
| By: | AlAzzawi, Shireen; Dang, Hai-Anh; Hlasny, Vladimir; Abanokova, Kseniya; Behrman, Jere |
| Abstract: | Various challenges are thought to render female-headed households (FHHs) vulnerable to poverty in the Arab region. Yet, previous studies have mixed results and the absence of household panel survey data hinders analysis of poverty dynamics. We address these challenges by proposing a novel typology of FHHs and analyze synthetic panels that we constructed from 20 rounds of repeated cross-sectional surveys spanning the past two decades from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, Palestine, and Tunisia. We find that the definition of FHHs matters for measuring poverty levels and dynamics. Most types of FHHs are less poor than non-FHHs on average, but FHHs with a major share of female adults are generally poorer. FHHs are more likely to escape poverty than households on average, but FHHs without children are most likely to do so. While more children are generally associated with more poverty for FHHs, there is heterogeneity across countries in addition to heterogeneity across FHH measures. Our findings provide useful inputs for social protection and employment programs aiming at reducing gender inequalities and poverty in the Arab region. |
| Keywords: | poverty, feminization, female-headedness typology, synthetic panels, Arab region, household surveys |
| JEL: | I3 J16 N35 O1 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1363&r=dev |
| By: | Prieto Suarez, Joaquin |
| Abstract: | I propose an empirical framework to identify different degrees of vulnerability to poverty using two vulnerability lines that classify currently non-poor people into risk groups: high, moderate and low risk of falling into poverty in the next period. The latter corresponds to the income secure middle class. My approach makes two contributions. First, it extends recent research that defines the middle class using a vulnerability threshold by introducing a new subdivision of the vulnerable group that would be useful in practice for public policy objectives. Second, it uses two models to predict both the probability of entering poverty and household income as part of the estimation procedures. The former controls for initial conditions effects and attrition bias, and the latter addresses the retransformation problem. I apply my approach to Chile using longitudinal data from the P-CASEN 2006-2009. The resulting vulnerability cut-offs (using the upper-middle-income country poverty line) are $20.0 per person per day for the low vulnerability line and $9.9 pppd for the high vulnerability line (both in 2011 PPP). My vulnerability lines differ significantly from those estimated in previous research on vulnerability and the middle class in Latin America. I argue that previous research has underestimated the size of the population at risk of falling into poverty and overestimated the growth of the middle class. Misclassifying the vulnerable as middle class limits their access to anti-poverty policies. |
| Keywords: | Chile; Latin America; longitudinal data; middle class; poverty dynamics; vulnerability to poverty |
| JEL: | C10 D31 D63 I32 |
| Date: | 2023–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:121085&r=dev |
| By: | Alya Sakinah Zahirah (Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics & Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada); Muhammad Ryan Sanjaya (Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics & Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada) |
| Abstract: | The share of poor families with female heads of household is steadily increasing, from 14.41% in 2013 to 16.72% in 2019. This is in contrast to the declining poverty rate over the same period. We examine whether families with female heads of household tend to be less prosperous than those with male household heads using the wealth index constructed from the 2019 National Socioeconomic Survey data. In contrast to the hypothesized feminization of poverty theory, we find that households with female heads are more likely to be wealthier than those with male heads, even after controlling for sociodemographic factors of household heads as well as household characteristics. This finding sheds some light on the hypothesized feminization of poverty theory in the context of developing Asian countries. |
| Keywords: | gender, feminization of poverty theory, wealth index |
| JEL: | B54 I31 I32 J16 |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gme:wpaper:202312015&r=dev |
| By: | Michael Callen; Miguel Fajardo-Steinh\"auser; Michael G. Findley; Tarek Ghani |
| Abstract: | Global hunger levels have set new records in each of the last three years, outpacing aid budgets (WFP, 2023; FSIN, 2023). Most households experiencing food insecurity crises are now in fragile states (Townsend et al., 2021), making it difficult to support vulnerable, hard-to-reach populations without interference from oppressive governments and non-state actors (Kurtzer, 2019; Cliffe et al., 2023). Despite growing interest in using digital payments for crisis response (Suri and Jack, 2016; Pazarbasioglu et al., 2020; Aiken et al., 2022), there is limited causal evidence on their efficacy (Gentilini, 2022; WFP, 2023). We show that digital payments can address basic needs during a humanitarian crisis. We conducted a randomized evaluation among very poor, mostly tech-illiterate, female-headed households in Afghanistan with digital transfers of $45 every two weeks for two months. Digital aid led to significant improvements in nutrition and in mental well-being. We find high usage rates, no evidence of diversion by the Taliban despite rigorous checks, and that 80% of recipients would prefer digital aid rather than pay a 2.5% fee to receive aid in cash. Conservative assumptions put the cost of delivery under 7 cents per dollar, which is 10 cents per dollar less than the World Food Program's global figure for cash-based humanitarian assistance. These savings could help reduce hunger without additional resources. Asked to predict our findings, policymakers and experts underestimated beneficiaries' ability to use digital transfers and overestimated the likelihood of diversion and the costs of delivery. Such misperceptions might impede the adoption of new technologies during crises. These results highlight the potential for digital aid to complement existing approaches in supporting vulnerable populations during crises. |
| Date: | 2023–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2312.13432&r=dev |