The effect of natural disaster on fertility,birth spacing,and child sex ratio: evidence from a major earthquake in India

Natural disasters can lead to significant changes in health, economic, and demographic outcomes. However, the demographic effects of earthquakes have been studied only to a limited degree. This paper examines the effect of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake on reproductive outcomes. This earthquake killed more than 20,000 people; injured 167,000; and caused massive losses to property and civic assets. Using data from two large-scale District-Level Household Surveys (2002–2004 and 2007–2008), we employ difference-in-difference and fixed-effect regression models to compare the outcomes across earthquake-affected districts and their neighboring districts during 5 years before and after the earthquake. We find that the earthquake led to significant rises in childbirth rates. It also reduced birth spacing among uneducated, tribal, and Muslim women, and the incidence of male births among rural women. We find considerable variation in the demographic effects of the earthquake across location, household socioeconomic status, and parental age and education.     

Perception of HIV risk and the quantity and quality of children: the case of rural Malawi

The empirical literature on the impact of HIV on the quality (Q) and quantity (N) of children provides limited and somewhat mixed evidence. This study introduces individual HIV risk perceptions, as a predictor of mortality, into a Q–N investment model. In this model, higher maternal mortality predicts lower N, while higher child mortality predicts lower Q. Thus, the two effects together make likely negative associations between HIV and both Q and N. Based on longitudinal micro-data on mothers and their children in rural Malawi, our results suggest that higher mothers’ reported HIV risk reduces both child quality, as reflected in children’s schooling and health, and child quantity, when the perceived risk is already moderate or high. The effects are sizable and, in the case of Q (schooling and health), are found for children and teenagers, both boys and girls, while in the case of N, they are found for young and mature women.     

Comments on Montague J. Lord's “distributional effects of international commodity price stabilization: Do the aggregate gains apply to individual producing countries?” [JPM 3:61–75 (1981)]

Lord discusses the impact of international commodity price stabilization on Latin American producing country export revenues. He correctly emphasizes that the directions and magnitudes of such effects may vary substantially across producers, depending on the degree of segmentation of the commodity markets and the nature and distribution of the shocks. However his potential contribution may be lost because of a number of inaccuracies, which I discuss under three general topics.     

The linkage effects of raw material processing in economic development: A survey of modeling and other approaches

Processing of primary raw materials has become an important and widely recommended strategy for economic development. Yet, even as the councils of many LDCs call for primary commodity producers to gain greater participation in downstream activities, there remain doubts on fundamental questions:What comparative advantage and what disadvantages do processing activities have in the LDCs?What linkages do processing activities offer?What is the potential contribution of processing to economic goal attainment in the LDCs?In this article we survey the material on processing, particularly with respect to modeling direct and indirect linkages between processing and the LDC economies. The article examines the following topics: (1) the literature on processing in economic development; (2) modeling processing linkages; and (3) outstanding questions regarding processing linkages.We focus on quantifiable linkages between the processing industry and the rest of the economy. There is also the possibility of other linkages, such as the development of entrepreneurship and management talent and technology, that are more difficult to quantify. It is important to distinguish between micro linkages, which refer to the direct impact on supplier and user sectors, and macro linkages, which include indirect general economic effects transmitted through government revenue and expenditures, the money supply, and foreign exchange availabilities.     

Dynamic Savings Decisions in Agricultural Environments With Incomplete Markets

We develop a methodology for examining savings behavior in rural areas of developing countries that explicitly incorporates the sequential decision process in agriculture. The approach is used to examine the relative importance of alternative forms of savings in the presence and absence of formal financial intermediaries. Our results, based on stage-specific panel data from Pakistan, provide evidence that the presence of financial intermediaries importantly influences the use of formal savings and transfers for income smoothing. We also find that there are significant biases in evaluations of the savings-income relationship that are inattentive to the within-year dynamics of agricultural production.     

Nutritional Status from 1 to 15 Years and Adolescent Learning for Boys and Girls in Ethiopia,India, Peru,and Vietnam

Population Research and Policy Review - There has been little examination of: (1) associations of early-life nutrition and adolescent cognitive skills, (2) if they vary by gender, (3) if...     

Does More Schooling Reduce Hospitalization and Delay Mortality? New Evidence Based on Danish Twins

Schooling generally is positively associated with better health-related outcomes—for example, less hospitalization and later mortality—but these associations do not measure whether schooling causes better health-related outcomes. Schooling may in part be a proxy for unobserved endowments—including family background and genetics—that both are correlated with schooling and have direct causal effects on these outcomes. This study addresses the schooling-health-gradient issue with twins methodology, using rich data from the Danish Twin Registry linked to population-based registries to minimize random and systematic measurement error biases. We find strong, significantly negative associations between schooling and hospitalization and mortality, but generally no causal effects of schooling.     

Partner + Children = Happiness? The Effects of Partnerships and Fertility on Well‐Being

Economic and rational‐choice theories suggest that individuals form unions or have children because these decisions increase their subjective well‐being or “happiness.” We investigate this relation using within‐MZ (identical) twin pair estimates to control for unobserved factors, such as optimistic preferences, that may simultaneously affect happiness, partnerships, and fertility. Our findings, based on Danish twins aged 25–45 and 50–70 years old, include the following. (1) Currently being in a partnership has large positive effects on happiness. (2) A first child substantially increases well‐being, in analyses without controls for partnerships, and males enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness gain from a first‐born son than from a first‐born daughter; however, only females enjoy a happiness gain from the first‐born child with controls for partnerships. (3) Additional children beyond the first child have a negative effect on subjective well‐being for females, while there is no effect for males. (4) Ever having had children does not significantly affect the subjective well‐being of males or females aged 50–70 years.     

Age-Specific Death Rates With Tobacco Smoking and Occupational Activity: Sensitivity to Sample Length,Functional Form,and Unobserved Frailty

In this article, we estimate accelerated time-to-failure and proportional-hazard functions with about 100,000 members of the Dorn sample, finding greater hazards associated with smoking and some dependence on occupational variables that measure risk and physical activity. We answer three questions: (1) How sensitive are the estimates to sample length, using monthly data for the periods 1954–1969 and 1954–1980? The results differ somewhat between these sample periods. (2) How sensitive are the estimates to alternative functions for the hazard? Within a given time period, the estimates are fairly robust to specification changes in the distribution of the hazard in the accelerated time-to-failure models. (3) How sensitive are the estimates to alternative controls for unobserved frailty? Within a given sample period, the estimates are fairly robust to the allowance for parametric or nonparametric heterogeneity in the proportional-hazard models.     

Causal Effects of Single-Sex Schools on College Entrance Exams and College Attendance: Random Assignment in Seoul High Schools

Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul—the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools—to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socioeconomic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take into account various school-level variables, such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.