Dads, disease, and death: determinants of daughter discrimination

Existing evidence suggests that girls are differentially affected by income shocks and changes in bargaining power. Most studies, however, ignore household production and confound differential opportunity costs with changes in income or bargaining power. I disentangle these determinants of gender discrimination—preferences, income and time allocation—by comparing households with varying degrees of parental involvement. Results indicate that, controlling for household fixed effects, reducing the time available for household production has a disproportionately negative effect on daughters. But, for a transitory income shock, daughters’ education is less income-elastic. Increasing mothers’ bargaining power is most effective in narrowing the gender gap.     

Subjective Well-being in Rural India: The Curse of Conspicuous Consumption

Using data on 697 individuals from 375 rural low income households in India, we test expectations on the effects of relative income and conspicuous consumption on subjective well-being. The results of the multi-level regression analyses show that individuals who spent more on conspicuous consumption report lower levels of subjective well-being. Surprisingly an individual’s relative income position does not affect feelings of well-being. Motivated by positional concerns, people do not passively accept their relative rank but instead consume conspicuous goods to keep up with the Joneses. Conspicuous consumption always comes at the account of the consumption of basic needs. Our analyses point at a positional treadmill effect of the consumption of status goods.     

Contribution of forest provisioning ecosystem services to rural livelihoods in the Miombo woodlands of Zambia

This paper examines the contribution of forest provisioning ecosystem services (FPES) to rural households and assesses the contributions of forests to the annual incomes of households in Africa’s Miombo woodlands. The study employed focus group meetings, in-depth interviews, and interviews of households, as stratified by wealth class and head of household gender in Copperbelt, Zambia. The results show that FPES are vitally important in providing food, medicine, fodder, and construction materials to rural livelihoods. FPES provided 43.9 % of the average household’s income and contributed a 10 % income equalisation effect among households, as revealed by the Gini-coefficient analysis. Poorer households received a lower mean annual income from forests than did their intermediate and wealthy counterparts, but in relative terms, forest income made the greatest contribution to the total household incomes of poor households. When stratified by gender, forests contributed 44.4 and 41.8 % of the income of male- and female-headed households, respectively. The study indicates that wealth, rather than gender, was the key determinant of a household’s engagement in the sale of FPES. The inter- and intra-community differentiation in the use and sale of FPES, as revealed in this study, enables more effective targeting of forest management interventions and informs efforts to reconcile the goals of poverty reduction and forest conservation.     

Food Poverty,Vulnerability, and Food Consumption Inequality Among Smallholder Households in Ghana: A Gender-Based Perspective

We examined gender-based household welfare differences in Ghana among smallholder households. We measured disparities in welfare outcomes (food poverty, vulnerability, and food consumption inequality) across male and female household heads and identified the set of covariates influencing them. The study utilizes a dataset from a farm household survey undertaken in Northern Ghana from October to December 2018. A multistage sampling approach was adopted in selecting 900 farm households. The Oaxaca–Blinder mean and Recentered Inference Function decomposition techniques highlighted the sources of gender differentials in household welfare outcomes. The findings indicate a significant gap in food consumption expenditure per capita and household dietary diversity scores between male- and female- headed households, and these gaps are as high as 28.2% and 18.1%, respectively. However, there are no statistically significant differences in vulnerability to food poverty between male- and female-headed households. The Lorenz curves confirm inequality in gendered households’ food consumption expenditure and dietary diversity scores. This study highlights the existence of systemic female-headed household vulnerability to food poverty in Ghana. This study provides significant evidence of the need for policymakers to address food systems’ structural deficiencies and inequalities with gender in mind.

     

居民消费增长的路径选择——基于省际面板数据的分析

文章利用1991～2009年中国31个省份城镇和农村居民的人口、消费支出和收入的数据,基于居民总消费分解模型,进行省际面板回归估计。实证结果表明,城镇居民消费支出增长对中国居民总消费增长的贡献率最大;农村居民消费支出增长的贡献率位列第二,但呈现出下降的趋势;农村向城镇人口迁移引起的消费支出增长的贡献率位列第三。考虑到城乡收入和消费支出的差异,文章认为,居民总消费增长的路径将主要依赖于城镇居民消费支出增长和农村向城市的人口迁移,并提出通过制度改革增加居民收入、放宽并完善人口迁移政策等建议。     

Men’s Migration and Women’s Fertility in Rural Mozambique

Labor migration profoundly affects households throughout rural Africa. This study looks at how men’s labor migration influences marital fertility in a context where such migration has been massive while its economic returns are increasingly uncertain. Using data from a survey of married women in southern Mozambique, we start with an event-history analysis of birth rates among women married to migrants and those married to nonmigrants. The model detects a lower birth rate among migrants’ wives, which tends to be partially compensated for by an increased birth rate upon cessation of migration. An analysis of women’s lifetime fertility shows that it decreases as the time spent in migration by their husbands accrues. When we compare reproductive intentions stated by respondents with migrant and nonmigrant husbands, we find that migrants’ wives are more likely to want another child regardless of the number of living children, but the difference is significant only for women who see migration as economically benefiting their households. Yet, such women are also significantly more likely to use modern contraception than other women. We interpret these results in light of the debate on enhancing versus disrupting effects of labor migration on families and households in contemporary developing settings.     

Asset Accumulation And Family Size

Utilizing panel data on families, estimates are made of the effects of children on asset accumulation, asset composition, consumption, and family income. Young children are found to depress savings for young families but to increase savings for marriages of duration greater than five years. The principal channel through which children act to reduce savings is the decline in female earnings associated with the child-induced withdrawal of wives from the labor force. Family consumption actually decreases with the birth of a child, but this reduction is insufficient, for young families, to offset the fall in income. For families in which the wife does not work the estimates suggest that savings may actually increase with children.     

贫困地区劳动力迁移、农户收入与贫困的缓解——基于新疆农户面板数据的实证分析

本文基于新疆30个贫困县、3000个农户、2008-2010年的微观面板数据,在控制了家庭规模、劳动力数量等家庭特征变量和粮食播种面积等村庄特征变量的前提下．运用固定效应法与工具变量法分别考察了劳动力迁移规模、迁移方式与迁移区位对家庭收入的影响．并进一步分析了劳动力迁移对贫困的缓解效应。回归结果表明：劳动力迁移规模虽然对农户农业收入有负向影响．但显著提高了农户人均收入与利他性收入：自发性迁移与政府组织性迁移方式均能显著提高农户收入,且自发性迁移的作用更强;省内县外迁移对农户收入的提高最为显著,其次为县内乡外迁移．省外迁移不影响农户收入：劳动力迁移规模提高了中等收入农户的收入水平。但对贫困户的贫困无缓解效应．也不影响富裕户的收入水平。     

External Shocks,Household Consumption and Fertility in Indonesia

This paper examines the impact of idiosyncratic income shocks on household consumption, educational expenditure and fertility in Indonesia, and assesses whether the investment in human capital of children and fertility are used to smooth household consumption. Using four different kinds of self-reported economic hardships, our findings indicate that coping mechanisms are rather efficient for Indonesian households that perceive an economic hardship. Only in case of unemployment do we find a significant decrease in consumption spending and educational expenditure while fertility increases. These results indicate that households that perceive an unemployment shock use children as a means for smoothing consumption. Regarding the death of a household member or natural disaster we find that consumption per person even increases. These results are consistent with the argument that coping mechanisms even over-compensate the actual consumption loss due to an economic hardship. One important lesson from our findings is that different types of income shock may lead to different economic and demographic behavioral adjustments and therefore require specific targeted social insurance programs.     

The safety net function of NTFPs in different agro-ecological zones of South Africa

Various South African studies have shown that rural households use NTFPs as safety nets in times of misfortune. However being focussed on one or two sites, they do not show the prevalence of NTFP use as safety nets across multiple sites. In addition, they do not show the use of NTFPs as safety nets by rural households in different agro-ecological zones. The results of the study showed that about 79% of the total households interviewed experienced at least one shock of some magnitude in the previous 12 months. The most experienced shocks were illness, death, crop failure, and hunger. The households employed various coping strategies in response to different types of shocks, with the three widely used strategies being assistance from friends and relatives, using cash savings, and using NTFPs. Households in low agro-ecological zones used NTFPs as safety nets more than households in high agro-ecological zones.     

Dads, disease, and death: determinants of daughter discrimination

Existing evidence suggests that girls are differentially affected by income shocks and changes in bargaining power. Most studies, however, ignore household production and confound differential opportunity costs with changes in income or bargaining power. I disentangle these determinants of gender discrimination??preferences, income and time allocation??by comparing households with varying degrees of parental involvement. Results indicate that, controlling for household fixed effects, reducing the time available for household production has a disproportionately negative effect on daughters. But, for a transitory income shock, daughters?? education is less income-elastic. Increasing mothers?? bargaining power is most effective in narrowing the gender gap.     

Labor Migration,Remittances and Economic Well-being of Households in the Philippines

Labor Migration has long been viewed as a strategy adopted by the household unit to allocate family resources rationally to increase the flows of income and to raise family standard of living. The research reported here examines the extent to which remittances sent by Filipino overseas workers increase the income and standard of living of households in the Philippines. Data for the analysis were obtained from a representative sample of 2,388 households drawn in 1999–2000 from four major “labor sending” areas in the Philippines. The analysis compares households with and without overseas workers to estimate the contribution of remittances to household income and to household standard of living (measured once by an ‘objective’ indicator and once by a ‘subjective’ assessment). The data reveal that due to remittances the income of households with overseas labor migrants is considerably higher than the income of households without overseas workers. The data also reveal that remittances are used mostly for consumption purposes (e.g. purchase of food, clothing, education, and goods) and that most of the difference in standard of living (whether measured on the ‘objective’ or the ‘subjective’ scale) between households with and without overseas workers are attributed to remittances. The implications of labor migration and the policy that encourages and supports labor migration for the Filipino society are evaluated and discussed.

Savings–age profiles in the UK

We used UK Family Expenditure Surveys to analyse the relationship between savings and age structure. We address two key problems: the sample selection bias when data refer to households and not individuals, and the treatment of pension income when drawing inferences from individuals' savings–age profiles about the relationship between an economy's savings and age structure. Our principal findings are that household data exaggerate savings rates of young adults and the elderly whilst underestimating those of 45- to 60-year-olds, and individual saving rates follow more closely the ‘hump shape’ of the life-cycle model, although the savings rates of the elderly remain positive for some ages.

Demographics and Consumption Patterns in Urban China

This study examines differences among urban Chinese consumers and their consumption patterns in three major cities—Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin—utilising data from a nationally representative sample survey conducted in 2005. Differences were found in these consumers’ age distribution, education level, household composition, birth and death rates, income, expenditure patterns and consumer durable ownership rates. Beijing and Shanghai, the two most affluent cities in China, exhibited the highest consumer durable ownership rates and the highest cost of living. While previous research has frequently segmented China in terms of a rural versus urban dichotomy or by geographic region, this study suggests that the urban Chinese do not constitute a homogeneous market. Further, it is suggested that both geographic region and income, which varies between rural and urban settings, are sound bases for segmenting this important market.     

Gender and Multidimensional Poverty in South Africa: Applying the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

Recent work has shown that the gender gap in income poverty has widened in post-apartheid South Africa even though overall poverty levels have declined. One of the main criticisms of money-metric studies of gendered poverty differences is that income is only one dimension of poverty and that other measures of welfare may better reflect the relative well-being of women and female-headed households. This article presents a multidimensional approach to measuring the gender poverty gap in post-apartheid South Africa. Using data from the 2008 wave of the South African National Income Dynamic Study, the internationally comparable multidimensional poverty index (the MPI) is used to estimate gender differences in a number of different achievements. The findings suggest that the multidimensional gender poverty gap is similar to the poverty gap measured by the conventional money-metric approach at several national poverty lines. However, the MPI poverty differential between female- and male-headed households is slightly narrower than the income poverty gap between these two household types. In order to explore these findings further, the paper decomposes the components of multidimensional poverty by gender and for both female- and male-headed households. The paper concludes by considering how greater investments in health care delivery and in basic services, particularly in rural areas, may yield progress towards gender equality.     

The impact of extreme weather events on education

This paper provides new evidence on the long- and medium-term impact of extreme weather events on education. Our focus is on Mongolia, where two extremely severe winters caused mass livestock mortality. We use household panel data with information on households’ preshock location, combined with historic district-level livestock census data and climate data. Our econometric strategy exploits exogenous variation in shock intensity across space and time, using a difference-in-differences approach. Results indicate that individuals who experience the shock while of schooling age and living in severely affected districts are significantly less likely to complete mandatory education, both in the long and medium terms. The effects are driven by individuals from herding households, while no significant effects are found for individuals from nonherding households. This finding renders it unlikely that extreme winters affect education through school closures during extreme climatic conditions, to which all children were exposed. Moreover, there is no evidence for a differential impact of extreme weather events by gender. This suggests that the effects are not mainly channeled through increased child labor in herding but rather they are related to reductions in household income.     

The Cost of Disability in China

We describe the degree to which household income is negatively associated with the prevalence of different types of disability (i.e., medical impairments) in China using data from the 2006 Second National Survey of Disabled Persons. We then calculate the extra costs of disability across different types of households and show how these costs differ by the type and severity of disability in both urban and rural areas. Finally, we use nationally representative panel data on persons with disabilities from 2007 to 2009 to examine the degree to which social security is reaching persons with different types and severity of disabilities in both urban and rural areas. We conclude that although the amount and coverage of social security for households with disabilities is increasing rapidly, it is still not enough to offset the income differential between households with and without disabled persons, especially when we account for the extra costs of disability.     

Circular migration, small-scale logging, and household livelihoods in Uganda

Little is known about the contribution of migrant logging to rural livelihoods in East Africa. In this paper, we analyze logging by circular migrants in land constrained and population dense southwestern Uganda. Drawing on a sample of 180 households, including both migrant and non-migrant households, we describe the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of migrant loggers, estimate the contribution of migrant logging to household income portfolios, test several hypotheses regarding why households decide to undertake this relatively risky activity, and explore the role of social networks as a determinant of higher incomes for migrant loggers. We find that household endowments of land, labor, and capital are different for migrant logger and comparison group households. Above all, labor endowments appear to be driving decisions to participate in logging. We find support for two migration hypotheses: higher expected incomes and wages at destination; and relative deprivation at origin. We find strong evidence that migrant logging reduces income inequality in the home community.     

Seasonal migration of rural labor in India

The impact of seasonal migration has been overlooked by students of migration. A unique data set collected in Dungarpur – one of the less developed districts of India – allows us to closely examine both the determinants and impact of seasonal migration. Detailed information was gathered from all members of 624 households, thus enabling analyses at both individual and household levels. The findings indicate that seasonal migration among rural laborers is wide-spread. Rural households in India use migrant labor offered by their members to improve their well-being by both reducing the impacts of inferior conditions and by raising household's income levels. Migrant labor is a compensating mechanism used by households to reduce their disadvantageous position. Migrant households are characterized by lower education levels, lower levels of income from agriculture, and by an inferior geographical location. However, those households sending migrant labor are found to have higher income levels than those not sending migrant labor. Income from migrant labor accounts for almost 60% of total annual income of households sending at least one migrant laborer. Such findings are in accordance with explanations derived from the `new economics of migration'. We can thus learn that migration-related decisions should not evaluated only on the basis of utility maximization of individual migrants, but also on the basis of risk reducing by households.     

Population age structure and consumption growth: evidence from National Transfer Accounts

We assess the effects of the population age structure and the population dynamics on economic growth. Following recent research, we focus on the generational turnover effect to characterize the influence of birth and death rates, depending on the age profile of individual consumption, the extent of annuity market imperfections, and the willingness of households to shift consumption over time. Using data from the National Transfer Accounts on age profiles of consumption for a number of different countries, we assess—in a comparative way—the sign and the magnitude of the generational turnover effect and its impact on economic growth. We find considerable cross-country differences and trace them back to the underlying variation in demography and in the age structure of consumption.