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on Development |
| By: | Mutsami, Chrispinus; Parlasca, Martin C.; Qaim, Matin |
| Abstract: | Livelihood sources in rural Africa are diverse and dynamic. Using recent primary data from four African countries — Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zambia — we consider regions with different conditions related to climate, agroecology, infrastructure, and nature conservation to analyze the role of various income sources for households and individuals. While most rural households are involved in small-scale farming, we challenge the conventional notion that own agricultural activities still constitute the main source of income. Off-farm sources account for 60% of total household income on average. The off-farm income share increases with total income, meaning that the poorest households are the ones most dependent on agriculture. These patterns are similar across all four countries. While the concrete off-farm activities differ by context, most off-farm jobs are self-employed activities in small informal businesses. More lucrative formal employment opportunities are rare and mostly pursued by individuals with post-secondary education and training. Males are more likely to be involved in wage employment than females. Furthermore, individual social networks and access to road and market infrastructure increase the likelihood of off-farm employment. These results emphasize the policy need to acknowledge the important role of rural off-farm jobs and to invest more into generating inclusive non-agricultural employment. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2024–06–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ubzefd:343385&r= |
| By: | David Lam (University of Michigan); Murray Leibbrandt (SALDRU, University of Cape Town) |
| Abstract: | The world is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the total population and 1.1 billion people to the working-age population between 2020 and 2100. Almost all of the additional working-age people will be added in Sub-Saharan Africa, a dramatic change from previous decades, when the growth of the working-age population was concentrated in Asia. This chapter analyzes the demography of the African labor force in the coming decades using the latest United Nations population projections. We show that by 2050 Africa will be the only region in the world with a growing working-age population and will be the only region in which the ratio of dependents to working-age population is falling. These dramatic differences are the result of Africa’s later and slower fertility decline, with fertility still high in many African countries. Being the only region with a growing working-age population may create opportunities for investment and economic growth in Africa. This growing working-age cohort and especially its females have higher years of schooling than any previous generation. But the quality of their education still lags other regions. On the demand side, Africa needs to produce 2 million jobs per month by 2040 to keep up with the growth of the working-age population. This rate of job creation is similar to that produced in Asia during the period in which its working-age population was growing at similar rates. Still, this remains a daunting challenge for Africa in the coming decades. The dominance of the informal sector in all African labor markets, with the exception of a few upper middle-income contexts, implies that formally measured unemployment rates are not likely to provide telling metrics of African success. Rather, the focus for growth and improved development outcomes has to be on formal sector job creation alongside notably stronger linkages into the informal sector than has been the case to this point. |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:303&r= |
| By: | PHAM PHUONG NGOC (Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Hanoi, Vietnam); DAINN WIE (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan); HANOL LEE (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Sichuan, China) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the impact of a large demand shock on the timing of women’s marital decisions and first childbirth experiences in Vietnam. Using the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) in 2001 as an exogenous shock, we hypothesize that the reduction in women’s and men’s self-employment would delay family formation and childbirth, with the ultimate impact on marriage remaining ambiguous. Analyzing data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys, we find that both men and women are less likely to be self-employed in the face of a substantial trade shock. Notably, the decreasing impact on women's self-employment becomes more pronounced than that for men post-2012, a decade after the agreement's enforcement. Employing the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and survival analysis, we empirically demonstrate that increased exposure to trade postpones women's timing of marriage and first childbirth. On average, in 2013, the BTA resulted in a 4.43- and 4.45%-point decrease in the probability of entering marriage and becoming a mother, respectively. We also present suggestive evidence that increased exposure to trade liberalization eventually increases the likelihood of marriage and the number of children among women over 40. |
| Keywords: | trade liberalization, fertility, marriage, Vietnam |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ngi:dpaper:23-12&r= |
| By: | Sarr, Ibrahima (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees); Dang, Hai-Anh (World Bank); Gutierrez, Carlos Santiago Guzman (University of Oxford); Beltramo, Theresa (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees); Verme, Paolo (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Household consumption or income surveys do not typically cover refugee populations. In the rare cases where refuges are included, inconsistencies between different data sources could interfere with comparable poverty estimates. We test the performance of a recently developed cross-survey imputation method to estimate poverty for a sample of refugees in Colombia, combining household income surveys collected by the Government of Colombia and administrative data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. We find that certain variable transformation methods can help resolve these inconsistencies. Estimation results with our preferred variable standardization method are robust to different imputation methods, including the normal linear regression method, the empirical distribution of the errors method, and the probit and logit methods. We also employ several common machine learning techniques such as Random Forest, Lasso, Ridge, and elastic regressions for robustness checks, but these techniques generally perform worse than the imputation methods that we use. We also find that we can reasonably impute poverty rates using an older household income survey and a more recent ProGres dataset for most of the poverty lines. These results provide relevant inputs into designing better surveys and administrate datasets on refugees in various country settings. |
| Keywords: | refugees, poverty, imputation, Colombia |
| JEL: | C15 F22 I32 O15 O20 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17036&r= |
| By: | Selhausen, Felix Meier zu (Utrecht University); Weisdorf, Jacob (Sapienza University of Rome, CEPR AND CAGE) |
| Abstract: | We use Anglican marriage registers from six major cities in British Africa to examine how colonial educational and occupational opportunities affected gender inequality among the sampled couples in terms of access to schooling and the formal economy. The marriage registers concern more than 30, 000 Anglican converts making up a comparatively advantaged group of urban Africans aspiring to advance their economic and social status during British colonial rule through conversion to Christianity. We use the couple’s signature literacy and occupational descriptors to argue that mission schools and the colonial economy opened up a gender gap in access to formal employment during the early colonial period that declined again after the 1940s through the Africanization and feminization of the civil service. We discern that the gender gap among the sampled couples closed earlier and faster in our West African cities where women’s tradition of financial independence contested Christian missionary ideals of female domesticity more prevalent in our East African locations. Comparison with census data indicates that our sampled couples were forerunners for the educational and occupational developments of the average African in the sampled cities. |
| Keywords: | Africanization, Colonisation, Development, Feminization, Gender, Inequality, Labour, Missionaries, Schooling. JEL Classification: N37, O18, J16 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:711&r= |
| By: | Singh, Tejendra Pratap; Yusuff, Olanrewaju |
| Abstract: | We examine the health effects of the free maternal and child health program (FMCHP) in Nigeria. We leverage variation across states and over time in exposure to the policy in a difference-in-differences (DID) framework. We find that exposure to policy leads to a decline in under-five mortality and children weigh more at birth. We also show that children born after the policy is rolled out are more likely to be delivered at a health facility with assistance from health personnel. Our results are robust to a host of empirical checks and are more pronounced for relatively disadvantaged subpopulations. Having access to healthcare facilities moderates improvement in health outcomes. We highlight increased child immunization, better child nutrition, increased post-natal health checks, improved trust in healthcare providers, and women empowerment as the most likely mechanisms that drive improved health outcomes. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that FMCHP may have averted 405, 425 deaths for children under the age of five. Our findings suggest that in areas with low healthcare use improving access to institutional healthcare during pregnancy can lead to better maternal and child health outcomes. |
| Date: | 2024–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:y6wzt&r= |
| By: | Aymeric Ricome (UMR G-EAU - Gestion de l'Eau, Acteurs, Usages - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - BRGM - Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - AgroParisTech - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement, Cirad-ES - Département Environnements et Sociétés - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Seville]); Jesus Barreiro-Hurle (JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Seville]); Cheickh Sadibou Fall (ISRA - Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles [Dakar]) |
| Abstract: | Most Sub-Saharan countries implement input subsidy programs (ISPs) in an attempt to increase fertilizer use, crop yields and farmers' income and to improve household food security. Senegal is no exception and has had an ISP in place for the last 15 years. This article assesses how access to subsidized fertilizer under the ISP is associated with changes in fertilizer and manure use and gross margin. Using household-level data from two agroecological zones, we employ an endogenous switching regression framework to control for the potential endogeneity of access to subsidized fertilizer. We find that access to subsidized fertilizer is associated with an increase in the total use of fertilizer of +39 % but also with a reduction in the use of commercial fertilizer of 18 %. Access to subsidized fertilizer is also associated with a reduction in the likelihood of using manure of 5 % and an increase in farmers' total gross margin of 11 %. Results are heterogeneous across agroecological zones, with a strong crowding-out of commercial fertilizer where widely available to farmers. In this case, revising the design of the ISP could lead to improved efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Fertilizer subsidies, Crowding-out, Endogenous switching regression, Senegal, Fertilizer subsidies Crowding-out Endogenous switching regression Senegal |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04586374&r= |