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on Central and South America |
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Issue of 2022‒08‒15
five papers chosen by |
| By: | Nestor Gandelman (Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales. Departmento de Economía) |
| Abstract: | Using micro data on expenditure and income for sixteen Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries we present stylized facts of saving behavior by age, education, income and place of residence. We compute counterfactuals saving rates by imposing the saving behavior, the population distribution or the income distribution of two benchmark economies (USA and Korea). Our results suggest that the difference in national saving rates between LAC and the benchmark economies can mainly be attributed to differences in saving behavior of the population and to a lower degree to differences in the distribution of the population by educational levels. Other demographic or income distribution differences are not quantitatively important as explanations of saving rates. |
| Keywords: | saving rates, Latin America |
| JEL: | C81 D12 D14 D91 E21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:avs:wpaper:101&r= |
| By: | Natalia Porto (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Pablo (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Manuela Cerimelo (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to identify and characterize the potential of green jobs in Argentina, i.e., those that would benefit from a transition to a green economy, using occupational green potential scores calculated in US O*NET data. We apply the greenness scores to Argentine household survey data and estimate that 25% of workers are in green jobs, i.e., have a high green potential. However, when taking into account the informality dimension, we find that 15% of workers and 12% of wage earners are in formal green jobs. We then analyze the relationship between the greenness scores (with emphasis on the nexus with decent work) and various labor and demographic variables at the individual level. We find that for the full sample of workers the green potential is relatively greater for men, the elderly, those with very high qualifications, those in formal positions, and those in specific sectors such as construction, transportation, mining, and industry. These are the groups that are likely to be the most benefited by the greening of the Argentine economy. When we restrict the sample to wage earners, the green potential score is positively associated with informality. |
| JEL: | E20 Q50 J80 |
| Date: | 2022–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0301&r= |
| By: | Adriana Camacho-González; Jorge Enrique Caputo-Leyva; Fabio Sánchez-Torres |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the effect of the Free Housing Program (PVG) on the well-being of beneficiary households. This program is an initiative of the Colombian Government to provide free houses to the most vulnerable households in the country. To estimate causal impacts of the program, we exploit that 38% of the beneficiaries were selected through housing lotteries. We show that most of recipients still reside in the houses provided in the program (5-6 years after the housing lotteries), which have adequate conditions of structure, space, and access to public services. Also, we show that program improves the labor conditions of beneficiary households, either through greater labor participation (in women), or by changing the type of work or economic sector (in men) and even earning more income (both). As a result of the previous impacts, the beneficiary households were able to restructure their expenses, acquire more durable goods, save more money, and escape extreme poverty. The main mechanism that explains these results is that the beneficiaries were relocated to places with a greater provision of public goods, closer proximity to complementary services and more economic activity. |
| Keywords: | free public housing, poverty, employment, income |
| JEL: | I38 J22 O18 R28 R31 |
| Date: | 2022–07–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:020303&r= |
| By: | Ahsan, Md. Nazmul; Emran, M. Shahe; Jiang, Hanchen; Han, Qingyang; Shilpi, Forhad |
| Abstract: | We present credible and comparable evidence on intergenerational educational mobility in 53 developing countries using sibling correlation as a measure, and data from 230 waves of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). This is the first paper, to our knowledge, to provide estimates of sibling correlation in schooling for a large number of developing countries using high quality standardized data. Sibling correlation is an omnibus measure of mobility as it captures observed and unobserved family, community, and school factors shared by siblings when growing up together. The estimates suggest that sibling correlation in schooling in developing countries is much higher (average 0.59) than that in developed countries (average 0.41). There is substantial spatial heterogeneity across regions, Latin America and Caribbean with the highest (0.65) and Europe and Central Asia with the lowest (0.48) estimates. Country level heterogeneity within a region is more pronounced. The evolution of sibling correlation suggests a variety of mobility experiences, with some regions registering a monotonically declining trend from the 1970s birth cohort to the 1990s birth cohort (Latin America and Caribbean and East Asia and Pacific), while others remained trapped in stagnancy (South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa). The only region that experienced monotonically increasing sibling correlation is Middle East and North Africa. We take advantage of the recent approach of Bingley and Cappellari (2019) to estimate the share of sibling correlation due to intergenerational transmission. We find that relaxing the homogeneity and independence assumptions implicit in the standard model of intergenerational transmission makes the estimated share much larger. In our sample of countries, on average 74 percent of sibling correlation can be attributed to intergenerational transmission, while there are some countries where the share is more than 80 percent (most in Sub-Saharan Africa). This suggests a dominant role for the parents in determining educational opportunities of children. Evidence on the evolution of the intergenerational share, however, suggests a declining importance of the intergenerational transmission component in many countries, but the pattern is very diverse. In some cases, the trend in the intergenerational share is opposite to the trend in sibling correlation. |
| Keywords: | Sibling Correlation,Intergenerational Mobility,Education,Years of Schooling,Developing Countries,Intergenerational Share,Decomposition,DHS |
| JEL: | J0 D3 J62 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1123&r= |
| By: | Andrés Blanco (University of Michigan); Bernardo Diaz de Astarloa (Universidad de Buenos Aires); Andrés Drenik (University of Texas at Austin); Christian Moser (Columbia University); Danilo Trupkin (Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política de Buenos Aires - UBA - CONICET) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies earnings inequality and dynamics in Argentina between 1996 and 2015. Following the 2001–2002 crisis, the Argentine economy transitioned from a low- to a high-inflation regime. At the same time, the number of collective bargaining agreements increased, and minimum wage adjustments became more frequent. We document that this macroeconomic transition was associated with a persistent decrease in the dispersion of real earnings and cyclical movements in higher-order moments of the distribution of earnings changes. To understand this transition at the micro level, we estimate processes of regular wages within job spells. As the Argentine economy transitioned from low to high inflation, the monthly frequency of regular-wage adjustments almost doubled, while the distribution of regular-wage changes morphed from having a mode close to zero and being positively skewed to having a positive mode and being more symmetric. |
| Keywords: | Earnings inequality, Earnings volatility, Earnings mobility, Wage rigidity, Inflation |
| JEL: | D31 E24 E31 J31 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ake:iiepdt:202269&r= |