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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2021‒11‒15
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Silber, Jacques; Yalonetzky, Gaston |
| Abstract: | The key challenge in making distributional comparisons with ordinal data is the lack of commensurability of the distances between the ordered categories. This chapter provides a critical review of the most recent theoretical developments addressing this challenge and providing methods for ethical poverty, welfare, and inequality comparisons with univariate ordered multinomial distributions. |
| Keywords: | inequality,ordinal variables,partial ordering,poverty,welfare |
| JEL: | D31 D63 I31 I32 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:962&r= |
| By: | Carlo Lombardo (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Julian Martinez-Correa (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Leonardo Peñaloza-Pacheco (Cornell University and CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Leonardo Gasparini (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & CONICET) |
| Abstract: | The massive displacement of Venezuelan citizens to Colombia is the second most important episode of forced migration in the world. We study the impact of this demographic shock on the Colombian income distribution exploiting the geographical heterogeneity in the intensity of migration. We use RIF regressions in an instrumental variables approach to account for the non-random pattern of location of immigrants. We find that despite the fact that Venezuelan immigrants are relatively skilled compared to native Colombian workers, the exodus had a larger negative effect on the lower tail of the wage distribution, implying increases in income inequality and poverty. We link this result to a sizeable downgrading of (mostly unregistered) Venezuelan recent migrants who work in more routine tasks and earn lower wages than natives with similar characteristics. We also explore a large regularization program for immigrants and find that it was associated to a reduction in the extent of downgrading, and hence, to a mitigation of the unequalizing impact of the exodus |
| JEL: | F14 F22 F16 F23 J61 L60 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0290&r= |
| By: | Jeremy Greenwood (University of Pennsylvania); Nezih Guner (CEMFI); Ricardo Marto |
| Abstract: | The 20th century beheld a dramatic transformation of the family. Some Kuznets style facts regarding structural change in the family are presented. Over the course of the 20th century in the United States fertility declined, educational attainment waxed, housework fell, leisure increased, jobs shifted from blue to white collar, and marriage waned. These trends are also observed in the cross-country data. A model is developed, and then calibrated, to address the trends in the US data. The calibration procedure is closely connected to the underlying economic logic. Three drivers of the great transition are considered: neutral technological progress, skill-biased technological change, and drops in the price of labor-saving household durables. |
| Keywords: | average weekly hours, blue-collar jobs, college premium, fertility, housework, leisure, Marriage, neutral technological progress, price of labor-saving household durables, skill-biased technological change, theory-based identification, user guide, white-collar jobs |
| JEL: | D10 E13 J10 O10 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2021-050&r= |
| By: | Behrman, J.; Parker, S.; Todd, P.; Zhang, W. |
| Abstract: | This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of student enrollment, school choice, academic achievement and grade progression to evaluate the impacts of Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program Prospera on educational outcomes over grades 4-9. Academic achievement is measured by nationwide standardized test scores in mathematics and Spanish. Enrollment decisions are the outcomes of sequential decisions at each age from individuals’ feasible choice sets, determined by the types of schools locally available and local-labor-market opportunities. The achievement production function has a value-added structure. Model parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood using nationwide administrative test-score data (the ENCEL data) combined with survey data from students and parents, census labor-market data, and geo-coded school-location data. The estimation approach controls for selective school enrollment in different types of schools, grade retention and unobserved heterogeneity. The results show that the Prospera program increases school enrollment and academic achievement for program beneficiaries in lower-secondary school grades (grades 7-9). The average test-score impacts are 0.09-0.13 standard deviations in mathematics and 0.03-0.05 standard deviations in Spanish. Students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds experience the largest impacts. The availability of telesecondary distance-learning schools is shown to be an important determinant of the Prospera program’s impacts on educational outcomes. |
| Date: | 2021–11–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2178&r= |