Economywide Impact of Maize Export Bans on Agricultural Growth and Household Welfare in Tanzania: A Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model Analysis

Export bans have been frequently used by developing countries in recent years in an attempt to ensure domestic food supplies and insulate domestic market prices from international price hikes. This article uses Tanzania to examine the impact of export bans using a computable general equilibrium model. We find that banning cross‐border maize exports has very little effect on the national food price index and that the benefits from lower maize prices are captured primarily by urban households, while maize producer prices decrease significantly. The export ban further decreases the wage rate for low‐skilled labour and the returns to land, while returns to non‐agricultural capital and wage rates for skilled labour increase, further hurting poor rural households and thus increasing poverty for the country as a whole.     

Alternative Economic Strategies in Low‐Income Rural Communities: TANF,Labor Migration,and the Case of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation*

Abstract The premise of current welfare policies is that recipients are avoiding work and that requiring work will end welfare dependency. Unemployment is equated with labor market inexperience and economic inactivity. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a poor rural community with high unemployment, contradicts these assumptions. Many Lakota individuals have off‐reservation wage work experience; there simply are not enough local jobs to absorb their human capital. Lakota households, however, are involved in a complex combination of socially embedded economic activities outside wage work. Imposing the premises of TANF on Pine Ridge results in indirect pressures toward urban migration and cultural assimilation. Furthermore, by imposing rigid notions of work, TANF runs the risk of destroying the economic flexibility that makes survival possible for poor households in Pine Ridge. Welfare and development policies need to reflect the real economies of rural American Indian reservations rather than those of superficially assimilated and economically imagined communities.     

The welfare impact of microcredit on rural households in China

Microcredit has gained worldwide acceptance in recent years as a flexible mechanism to expand individuals’ (especially the poor's) access to financial services, which is considered as an efficient way to achieve poverty reduction and other social development. A large number of empirical studies have been done to examine the welfare effects of microcredit on the borrowers and such effects are well documented in many other countries such as Bangladesh. However, the impacts of microcredit on China rural households’ livelihood are not well documented. This paper attempts to empirically evaluate the impact of microcredit on household welfare outcomes such as income and consumption in rural China. The estimation is based on the difference-in-difference approach which is an increasingly popular method of tackling the selection bias issue in assessing the impacts of microcredit. The study uses a two-year panel dataset, including both primary and secondary data collected through a household survey in rural China. Our empirical results favour the wide belief in the literature that joining microcredit programme helps improve households’ welfare such as income and consumption. Despite the optimistic findings on how microcredit has changed the rural households’ living conditions, our results show that the vast majority of the programme participants are non-poor, which casts some doubts on the social potential (such as poverty reduction) of China's microcredit programmes.     

The impacts of the food,fuel and financial crises on poor and vulnerable households in Nigeria: A retrospective approach to research inquiry

This article examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on poor and vulnerable households in two states of Nigeria: Lagos and Kano. It uses retrospective household‐level data to analyze the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. The results indicate that aggregate shocks have significant adverse effects on household consumption, schooling and child labour decisions, with a degree of impact heterogeneity across regions and rural and urban areas of the country. We find that the coping strategies adopted by the poor to deal with the short‐term effects of the crises can lock households in a low‐income equilibrium or poverty trap. Provided that covariate shocks exacerbate these effects, they become central for policy design.     

SKILLED‐UNSKILLED WAGE INEQUALITY AND URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT

The impact of trade liberalization on the labor market in the North has drawn tremendous attention in the face of the growing skilled‐unskilled wage gap but in the South it has been somewhat neglected. One of the key structural differences between the North and the South is that the South experiences a pronounced rural‐urban migration in the presence of urban unemployment. We introduce this feature in the structure of a simple general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of trade liberalization and fragmentation on employment and the skilled‐unskilled wage differential in the South. In particular, we show that while fragmentation necessarily improves the unskilled wage and the skilled wage, more lucrative global opportunities for the skilled final product, in the absence of fragmentation, can reduce the rural wage and increase urban unemployment. The effect of fragmentation, ceteris paribus, on the skilled‐unskilled wage gap is sensitive to the degree of substitutability between land and unskilled labor. As such, fragmentation can magnify the increase in the skilled‐unskilled wage gap resulting from an improvement in the terms of trade. It is also shown that a technological progress in the intermediate goods sector increases the skilled‐unskilled wage gap and raises urban unemployment. (JEL F1, O1, F11, F12)     

The growing importance of diversification activities for French farm households

Diversification activities, on-farm or off-farm, can allow farmers not to rely exclusively on farming for the household's income. In many rural areas, onfarm tourism and off-farm employment have become an important and steady source of income for farm households. The most significant change over the last 10 years has been the substantial growth in off-farm labour participation by farm spouses. This paper, based on the neoclassical farm-household, is an attempt to characterize the variables that affect the decisions to work off-farm for the French farm households and the decision whether or not to hire labour on-farm. Furthermore the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on the participation in the off-labour market is studied. In a simplified model where male and female labour are perfect substitutes we can show that the reduction in the cereals price and the set-aside would induce a decrease in the reservation wage and hence an increase in the probability of off-farm participation. On the other hand the receipt of compensatory payment would have a negative impact on the probability of off-farm work participation. Empirical results show that while the CAP reform will increase wives' off-farm participation, education and age have a greater positive effect. Furthermore, simulations show that the impact of the CAP reform on off-farm labour market participation is higher for wives who do not have a high school diploma than for those who do.     

Cash Transfers and Children's Education and Labour among Malawi's Poor

This article examines the impact on children's education and labour of monthly cash grants targeted on ultra‐poor households and designed to reduce poverty and enable families to invest in human development. It conducts a randomised community trial, with baseline and endline surveys of intervention and control households; verifies school enrolment; and completes key‐informant interviews and focus‐group discussions. Compared with non‐beneficiaries, intervention children experienced a 5 percentage point difference in enrolment, higher educational expenditures, fewer absences, and a 10 percentage point decrease in labour outside the home. Qualitative data confirm the quantitative findings. Transfers to poor households had a positive impact. However, the Malawian educational system needs to be improved for short‐term impacts to lead to long‐term development in human capital.     

Have cash transfers succeeded in reaching the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean?

We present original estimates of the quality of targeting of conditional cash transfer (CCT) and non‐contributory pension (NCP) programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our contribution is novel because we use both national and international poverty lines; provide differentiated estimates for urban and rural areas; and compare the CCT and NCP programmes. We show that leakage to the non‐poor coexists with pervasive under‐coverage of all poor, including the extreme poor. On average, the CCTs cover only 50.5% of the extreme poor in households with children under 18 years of age. Similarly, the NCPs cover only 50.9% of the extreme poor in households with elderly members who do not receive a contributory pension. At the same time, 40.4% of CCT beneficiaries and 50.1% of NCP beneficiaries are not poor, highlighting the potential need for re‐targeting and re‐certification. In most countries, re‐targeting could produce a substantial double benefit in terms of poverty reduction and fiscal savings.     

Minimum wage effects by gender

Recent criticisms have led some to dismiss time-series analyses in the debate over the minimum wage. We investigate previous time-series studies showing that raising the minimum wage has a smaller impact on females than males. We reanalyze the data in light of recent developments in time-series methods and find that the minimum wage has a similar significant negative impact on both males and females. We conclude that, following a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, both male and female employment drops from between 2 and 4 percent over a two-year period. This employment decrease slowly erodes as economic growth and inflation cause the minimum wage to fall below the market-clearing wage. We thank David Card and Alan Krueger for generously providing the data.     

WHITE, BLACK, AND HISPANIC FEMALE YOUTHS IN CENTRAL CITY LABOR MARKETS

Data from the 1% 1980 Census Public Use Sample are used to estimate the determinants of employment and wage rates for out-of-school female youths residing in central cities. Separate analyses are performed for white/Anglo, black, and Hispanic youths. Independent variables include individual, family background, and local labor market characteristics. The authors find that central city female youths have employment and wage rates substantially below their male counterparts. Their employment rates, however, are responsive to many of the same forces as for other sociodemographic groups in general, and central city male youths in particular. For Anglo females, wage rates are also responsive to many of the effects found for other groups, although they do not follow Anglo male youths in gaining from the "minority threat" effect. On the other hand, the wages for minority females are unresponsive to the usual variables. That is, these workers receive the minimum wage in an essentially undifferentiated manner. Thus, the triple disadvantage of being female, minority, and from a poor household is very much in evidence within 1980 census data.     

Residential Remittances and Food Security in the Upper West Region of Ghana

In recent years, out migration from the Upper West Region to the southern belt of Ghana for farming has become commonplace. The natural question that has arisen is: what is the potential impact of remittances from this migration pattern on food security in the region? Using multivariate ordered logistic regression this study assesses the linkage between remittances and household food security (derived using the HFIAS) among urban and rural households (n=1,438) in the region. The findings show that urban remittance‐receiving households and rural remittance and non‐remittance receiving households were more likely (OR=2.44, p<0.05; OR=2.46, p<0.001; and OR=1.49, p<0.1, respectively) to report being more severely food‐insecure than urban non‐remittance receiving households. The findings demonstrate that household strategies such as migration and remittances on their own are not sufficient to ameliorate the precarious food insecurity situation of the region. The study calls for development of alternative livelihoods in the region.     

Household Composition and Poverty among Female‐Headed Households with Children: Differences by Race and Residence*

Abstract We examine race and residential variation in the prevalence of female‐headed households with children and how household composition is associated with several key economic well‐being outcomes using data from the 2000 5% Public Use Microdata Sample of the U.S. Census. Special attention is paid to cohabiting female‐headed households with children and those that are headed by a single grandmother caring for at least one grandchild, because these are becoming more common living arrangements among female‐headed households with children. We find that in 2000: (1) cohabiting and grandmother female‐headed households with children comprised over one‐fourth of all female‐headed households with children, (2) household poverty is highest for female‐headed households with children that do not have other adult household earners, (3) earned income from other household members lifts many cohabiting and grandparental female‐headed households out of poverty, as does retirement and Social Security income for grandmother headed households, and (4) poverty is highest among racial/ethnic minorities and for female‐headed households with children in nonmetro compared to central cities and suburban areas.     

Crisis of Natural Building Materials and Institutionalised Self-Help Housing: The Case of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh

Traditional rural housing is largely based on the use of locally available natural resources as prime building materials, usually in a process of self-help building undertaken by the community. Such housing is well adapted to a natural environment with widely available resources, and supports people's direct involvement in the construction of their dwellings. However, the advent of a cash economy and current scarcity of natural resources has greatly affected the self-help building process. In rural Bangladesh, affluent households are shifting to manufactured materials and skilled builders, and the quality of housing of low-income households is declining. For the latter, self-help is the only option, and recognition of this fact and of the increasing decline in the quality of their housing has prompted institutional intervention. This paper discusses the Grameen Bank's rural housing programme in Bangladesh which provides loans for manufactured building components for low-income rural households to build houses on a self-help basis. A review of this programme indicates some of its strengths and shortcomings in the context of scarcity of natural building materials and widespread poverty.     

Impacts of male outmigration on women: a case study of Kutum / Northern Darfur / Sudan

This case study of 313 households in the Kutum area in Western Sudan focuses on female headed households with migrant husbands. Free leases of land by women were common. 65% of the sample owned fields, and over 50% had home gardens in town. Among villagers 94% owned fields, and 74% had additional gardens. 28.3% of town owners of fields or gardens employed seasonal wage laborers, of whom 33% were female workers. None of the villages hired agricultural laborers. Labor shortages appeared only during weeding times. Fields were cultivated and housing was repaired mostly by unpaid female labor: a gender-specified role. Strategies for preventing poverty included cash crop cultivation, petty trade, sales of property, seasonal wage labor, and migration. The number of agricultural wage workers increased during famines. Findings show that 69 men migrated to Arab countries and 35 to other areas outside Darfur. 62.5% of the 115 migrants were married, and 20.8% did not send remittances home after more than a 6 months absence. 46.5% of unmarried migrants did not send remittances. 15.6% of the 77 rural women were dissatisfied with remittances. 21.5% of 121 migrants were away for more than a year; 66.1% were away 2-5 years. 12.4% were gone for more than 5 years. Irregular remittances were attributed to high urban living costs, to irregular means of sending money, and to saving for a family chaperone. Remittances satisfied immediate consumption needs. Outmigration was not really a survival strategy but an anti-destitution measure. Higher wage rates were not considered a primary motive for outmigration. Under drought conditions strategies included development of gardening for food and cash production. Out migration resulted in female household heads, in the need for cash income for supplementary items, in an increased work load including the men's activities, in women as the main food producers and thus more subject to environmental effects, and in overwork, which reduced input in children's education and domestic tasks. 37% of El-Tahir women with migrating spouses had trouble meeting basic needs, 25.6% had shortages of family labor, and 17.4% had difficulty with child rearing. Migrants' wives who were separated from extended families suffered from loss of social prestige and income. Women regardless of class or educational level were considered inferior to men. Women's influence was at the individual, household, and informal group level.     

Estimating sex discrimination in professional occupations with the dictionary of occupational titles

Although women have gained entrance into some of the top professional occupations, they appear to have achieved few economic gains from this progress. The extensive occupational segregation existing between men and women in all occupations handicaps investigations of the sources of this persistent inequality. This article proposes an exploratory method for identifying occupations containing comparable work and presents an analysis of male‐female wage differences within a subset of the highly skilled professional occupations. Using a cluster analysis of the characteristics of jobs available in the 1977 Dictionary of Occupational Titles, three clusters of high‐skill occupations are identified. Next, a sample of labor‐force participants, aged 25 to 35 years and employed in these occupations, is used in an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of hourly wages on a standard set of labor market traits. These results are used to decompose the male‐female wage gap. A liberal interpretation of the decomposition estimates is that between 39.9% and 58.8% of the gap is attributed to comparable‐worth discrimination.     

Overcoming the Glass Barriers: Reflection and Action in the ‘Women to the Top’ Programme

Numerous equality programmes have been launched with the aim of promoting a more gender equal work life, yet little substantial action has been reported. This article presents a study of the Women to the Top programme in Sweden, supported by the European Union (EU) and aimed at promoting more women into top management positions. The research suggests that large‐scale projects assembling such heterogeneous actors as industry representatives, politicians and scholars tend to generate further reflection and discussion rather than promoting adequate and highly needed action. Drawing upon Brunsson's distinction between action rationality and decision rationality, the relatively modest effects of large‐scale equality programmes are examined, not in terms of a lack of commitment or competence on the part of the participants but as a matter of the disjunction between reflection and action. Reconciling reflection and action, that is, emphasizing not only reflection on gender inequality but also privileging various forms of practical action (such as new policies, the appointment of female managers, restructuring gendered wage inequalities or new recruitment procedures), is therefore a top priority for policymakers desiring more substantial changes in the gendered outline of industry.     

Off‐farm Work among Rural Households: A Case Study in the Brazilian Amazon

This article analyzes off‐farm work among subsistence‐level farmers in the Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon. We build on the literature on rural livelihoods in the Global South by exploring how the opportunity to work off the farm is embedded in social relationships. We additionally differentiate our analysis by type of off‐farm work, and examine how other characteristics such as human capital, the available labor supply, and access to infrastructure vary by work outcome. In general, the factors that contribute to more secure, relatively higher‐paying work differ from those important in understanding patterns of lower‐paying, daily wage work. We find that on‐farm social capital, measured as the presence of a co‐resident on the property who works off the farm, increases an individual's probability of working off the farm, but has a stronger effect for lower‐wage work. We also find that the farm owner's relationship to households on the farm property plays a significant role in predicting patterns of off‐farm work. These findings suggest that social capital plays an important role in providing access to employment and therefore to cash income, but that farm‐level social capital does not necessarily provide pathways to stable or high‐paying jobs outside agriculture.     

Effects of ‘women empowerment’ on household food security in rural KwaZulu‐Natal province

Understanding the dimensions of ‘women's empowerment’ that influence food security among rural households is crucial to inform policy. This study uses the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) to identify the food security status of 300 primary female‐headed households in Msinga, South Africa. Principal Component Analysis was then used to identify the various dimensions along which the rural women sampled were empowered. Finally, the Ordered Logit model was used to identify the dimensions of women's empowerment that influence their household food security status. It was found that households headed by women with higher levels of economic agency, physical capital empowerment, psychological empowerment and farm financial management skills empowerment were more likely to be food secure.     

The gender pay gap at labour market entrance: Evidence from Germany

The authors investigate wage differentials between German male and female graduates at labour market entrance at all percentiles of the wage distribution. The wage differentials are decomposed using the single‐index approach suggested by DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996) and Fortin and Lemieux (1998), and by endowment, price and returns‐to‐skill function effects. The results reveal higher starting salaries for men at all percentiles of the income distribution, with the pay gap varying in magnitude. The endowment and price effects are favourable for men throughout. The effect of the difference in the returns‐to‐skill function works in favour of female graduates.     

Designing a Programme to Support Smallholder Agriculture in Mexico: Lessons from PROCAMPO and Oportunidades

This article argues that there is a gap in current Mexican rural development policy that could be filled by a smallholder‐targeted programme. The gap exists because agricultural programmes tend to benefit better‐off farmers, while social programmes tend to focus on long‐term investment in human capital, specifically for the children of today's poor. Drawing on lessons from PROCAMPO and Oportunidades, it offers a specific design for such a programme at a time when the government is considering how to reform PROCAMPO, given that, after 15 years, it is due to come to an end.