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on Development |
| By: | Steven M. Radil; Olivier J. Walther |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how political violence in West Africa is distributed between urban agglomerations and their surrounding areas using spatially disaggregated conflict and population data. Covering seventeen countries from 2012 to mid-2025, the analysis shows that political violence remains clearly tied to cities and their peripheries with the majority of violence occurring within and around urban agglomerations. Large cities record the highest number of incidents within their boundaries, while smaller towns, which are more frequently situated near borders, typically experience higher levels of violence outside their boundaries. However, urban-centric violence has also declined since 2012, indicating a progressive ruralization of conflict. These findings provide important regional context to the urbanization of conflict narrative by showing that West African insurgent movements use both urban and rural environments strategically. They also underscore the ongoing vulnerability of peripheral populations and the need for mobile and community-based security approaches outside major cities. Finally, they highlight the importance of strengthening border infrastructure, transport networks, and civic institutions as tools of both development and security. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.03570 |
| By: | Campaña, Juan Carlos; Chomali, Laura |
| Abstract: | This paper examines gender differences in paid work, unpaid work, and care activities among Colombian couples using three Colombian National Time Use Surveys (2012-2013, 2016-2017, and 2020-2021). The analysis focuses on households in which both partners can be identified, both are active in the labour market, and comparisons can be made across urban and rural areas, as well as between households with and without children aged 0-12. Descriptive evidence based on mean equality tests and Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) estimates reveals persistent gender specialization within Colombian households. While gender gaps in paid work narrowed over the period studied, differences in unpaid work remained largely unchanged. In addition, gender inequalities in care activities increased significantly among urban households with children during the period that includes the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that the progress observed in gender gaps in time devoted to paid work has not been matched by an equivalent redistribution of domestic and care responsibilities. |
| Keywords: | Intra-household allocation, gender gaps, paid work, unpaid work, care activities, COVID-19, Colombia |
| JEL: | J16 J22 D13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1804 |
| By: | Arlette Simo Fotso (INED - Institut national d'études démographiques, CEPED - Centre Population et Développement - INED - Institut national d'études démographiques - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5); Jacob Martin (INED - Institut national d'études démographiques); Florian Bonnet (INED - Institut national d'études démographiques) |
| Abstract: | The World Health Organization estimates that that the highest prevalence of disability among individuals below age 60 is observed in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, knowledge of disability remains limited in the region, which is partly due to the lack of robust and comparable measurements of disability. In Sub-Saharan Africa, sub-national and comparable estimates of disability prevalence are limited. This paper aims to use comparable sources of data to estimate and construct an atlas of sub-regional disability prevalence. We take data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys which use the Washington Group on Disability Statistics short set of questions, which is designed to be a 'culturally neutral' disability screening tool. The questionnaire assesses limitations across six functional. We have data for a total of 26 Sub-Saharan African countries which were collected between 2016 and 2022. We aim to estimate the age-specific prevalence of functional limitation in the population aged 18-49 at the second subnational administrative division level in each country. Given the instability of direct estimates at the subnational level, we use recently developed small area estimation techniques that borrow strength over age and space. From our estimates we compute age standardized prevalences of limitation to facilitate comparison between regions and countries. Preliminary results show large heterogeneity between and within countries, but the amount of within-country differences varies from country to country. Overall, we found 682 subnational entities with age standardized disability prevalence significantly above 2.5%, 233 above 5%, and 31 above 10%. |
| Date: | 2026–06–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05716140 |
| By: | Hızıroğlu Aygün, Aysun (Istanbul Technical University); Kirdar, Murat (Koc University); Koyuncu, Murat (Boğaziçi University); Stoeffler, Quentin (Bordeaux School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | A central concern with humanitarian assistance is that unconditional cash transfers might discourage work. Yet refugees differ from the chronically poor in most cash-transfer studies: many retain skills that transfers might help reactivate. We study the world's largest humanitarian cash transfer scheme, the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, which long hosted more refugees than any other country. Using a survey representative of the refugee population, we exploit the program's dependency-ratio eligibility rule in a regression discontinuity design. Far from discouraging work, cash transfers increase the probability that any man in the household works by 13.2 and the share of working men by 19.3 percentage points. We find no evidence of an effect on women's already-low labor supply. A design-based local-randomization analysis with exact finite-sample inference corroborates these effects (9.8 and 17.4 percentage points). Transfers also improve access to information, reduce reliance on harmful food-coping strategies, and raise Turkish-language course enrollment and education spending. These patterns suggest transfers relax the liquidity and information constraints refugees face rather than inducing a shift toward leisure. |
| Keywords: | humanitarian assistance, forced displacement, unconditional cash transfers, social protection, work disincentives, regression discontinuity design, Turkey |
| JEL: | I38 J21 J22 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18879 |
| By: | Banerjee, Souvik (IIT Bombay); Jaiswal, Preeti (IIT Bombay); Mukhopadhyay, Sankar (University of Nevada, Reno) |
| Abstract: | Using nationally representative data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we examine the effects of India’s Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, which extends the paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks on firms’ hiring decisions and gender-specific employment outcomes. We use the institutional variation of the policy mandate, which applies only to firms with 10 or more employees, to define treatment and control firms. Our results reveal that firms respond to the mandate primarily through labour substitution, i.e., replacing female workers with male workers rather than bearing the increased cost of female employment. We find a decline of 8.4% in female workers and 9.5% in female mandays worked, accompanied by an increase of 2.6% in male workers and 2.1% in male mandays. This substitution is concentrated in industries with high female employment shares, while firms in low female-share industries show no female employment effects but exhibit positive spillovers to male wages. Firm output and profit are unaffected, indicating that male workers serve as effective production substitutes. These findings imply well-intentioned maternity leave policies can inadvertently reinforce gender labour market disparities. |
| Keywords: | maternity benefit, female labour, employment |
| JEL: | J13 J33 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18888 |
| By: | David G. Russell; Olivier J. Walther |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between borderlands and political violence in Africa. Using spatiotemporal data on conflict events from 1997 to 2024 alongside the innovative OECD Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi), it suggests that borderlands see more conflict than non-borderlands. Political violence tends to decrease very rapidly with the distance to borders in Africa. The share of violent events recorded in borderlands varies over time and mirrors the cycles of violence that affect specific regions. It was very high in the early 2000s due to the wars in the Gulf of Guinea and Great Lakes region, declined for less than a decade, and increased substantially in the 2010s. Finally, the paper shows that when conflicts diffuse across borders, they tend to occupy a greater spatial extent, rather than relocate from one side of the border to the other. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.03596 |
| By: | Bhattacharya, Leena; Kulshreshtha, Shobhit; van Soest, Arthur |
| Abstract: | Climate change pose significant risks to workers. Although workers in the formal sector can often mitigate heat exposure through climate-controlled workplaces, the same is not true for workers employed in informal and heat-exposed occupations. As a result, the economic costs of rising temperatures are likely to affect these workers disproportionately. This concern is particularly relevant in low- and middle-income countries such as India, where nearly three-quarters of workers are employed in informal jobs. This study examines the impact of high temperature on the labor supply and productivity of daily-wage workers using the 2023-24 Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) of India, which provides a seven-day panel of worker's labor outcomes. We find that when weekly maximum temperatures exceed 35.C relative to 20-25.C, weekly earnings decline by approximately 5%, despite no significant reduction in total hours worked. Furthermore, exploiting the panel structure of data, we find that hours worked decline by approximately 13 minutes per day under extreme heat. In addition, daily earnings fall by 4%, and the probability of working declines by 0.3 percentage points. We do not observe similar effects among salaried or self-employed workers. Our findings highlight the unequal burden of climate change on workers in informal sector and highlight the need for targeted heat adaptation policies to safeguard incomes and worker productivity in a warming climate. |
| Keywords: | Climate change, labor productivity, daily earnings, hours worked, India |
| JEL: | J21 J24 J31 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1807 |
| By: | Olayinka Oyekola (Department of Economics, University of Exeter) |
| Abstract: | Despite substantial improvements in global health, millions of infants continue to die before reaching their first birthday. Using a dataset of 11.5 million births in 78 developing countries, we examine the consequences of aggregate economic fluctuations for infant survival. We exploit oil price shocks and find that, at the sample mean of net oil exposure, a 50% increase in international oil prices corresponds to an increase in infant mortality of approximately 3 deaths per 1, 000 live births, or 4% relative to the sample mean. Infant survival is particularly sensitive to economic fluctuations in poorer countries, rural areas, among first-born children, and among children of older mothers, with little evidence that the effects differ systematically with the direction of the oil price shock. Investigating potential mechanisms, we find that, at the sample mean of net oil exposure, the same change in international oil prices corresponds to reductions in vaccination rates of 0.15-0.31 percentage points and increases in the incidence of low and very low birth weight of approximately 4-5% relative to their respective sample means, while having little effect on maternal healthcare utilization, household resources, or childhood morbidity. The results are robust to alternative specifications and identification strategies, including within-mother comparisons. These findings demonstrate that aggregate economic fluctuations have important implications for early-life health and point to preventive child health investments and birth endowments as potential margins linking economic fluctuations to infant survival in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | economic fluctuations, infant mortality, early-life health, developing countries |
| JEL: | I15 J13 E32 |
| Date: | 2026–09–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:2612 |
| By: | Guy, Johnathan (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | How do financial constraints shape the energy transition in developing countries? I study this question in India, where electricity procurement is governed at the subnational level. Electoral politics motivates state governments to subsidize electricity consumption, resulting in financial stress for electricity distribution utilities (DISCOMs). Using multiple sources of original data on utility and plant operations, I investigate the relationship between financial distress and decarbonization. I theorize that the effect of utility insolvency depends on the margin considered—dispatch vs. capacity investment—and on institutions. Counterintuitively, but consistent with my theory, I find that financial stress is associated in the short run with greater relative procurement of renewable energy and less procurement of fossil fuels. Mechanism tests suggest that coal dispatch is more sensitive to liquidity constraints, as distressed DISCOMs cut back on coal deliveries while renewable energy remains protected by “must-run” dispatch regulations. In contrast, I find at most weak evidence that insolvency raises challenges for decarbonizing electricity in the long run: insolvency shows no relationship with renewable-energy tendering, only suggestive evidence that it slows renewable capacity investment, and similarly weak evidence that it curtails expansion of transmission lines that renewables need to scale. The results qualify the conventional wisdom that electricity utility insolvency is a binding constraint on the energy transition. |
| Date: | 2026–08–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:8m47e_v1 |
| By: | Canavire Bacarreza, Gustavo (World Bank); Puerta-Cuartas, Alejandro (Banco de España); Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos (World Bank); Velez-Ospina, Carolina (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a nonparametric simulation framework to estimate poverty vulnerability under climate shocks. We formalize vulnerability estimation as an out-of-sample prediction problem and show that flexible, regularized machine learning methods for estimating the conditional mean of welfare offer a powerful alternative to conventional linear models. The framework simulates future welfare distributions using historical realizations of climate shocks and household characteristics, enabling the estimation of vulnerability measures and related functions without imposing restrictive parametric assumptions. To interpret the model and quantify heterogeneous impacts, we employ SHapley Additive exPlanations, which decompose predicted vulnerability into contributions from climate shocks and household characteristics. An application to Ecuador reveals a strong geographic concentration of vulnerability and shows that climate shocks act as localized triggers that push marginal households, particularly low-educated informal rural workers into poverty. |
| Keywords: | Poverty Vulnerability, Climate Shocks, Machine Learning. |
| JEL: | I32 I38 C14 C15 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18893 |