Child Benefit Portfolios Across OECD Countries

Current research on the cross-national pattern of investment in child benefits mostly adopts the total resources approach and the model family method. The total resources approach conducts a broad comparison of the aggregate expenditure of different types of child benefit across countries. The model family method adds sophistication by comparing the values of child benefit packages of different countries, which combines different levels of spending in each type of child benefit, based on different family types with certain assumed characteristics. To complement the existing approaches, this study uses cluster analysis to classify countries into groups of similar investment strategies by simultaneously counting the different types and levels of child benefits of all countries. The findings show that four types of child benefit investment portfolio, namely Active, Moderate, Conservative, and Minimal, can be identified across OECD countries. While some studies have focused on the effects of individual types of child benefit on child outcomes, little is known about the effects of child benefits as a whole. The pattern of child benefits as investment portfolios could serve as a basis facilitating further investigation into its relationship with child outcomes. Preliminary findings indicate that child poverty, health, and satisfaction with school life differ significantly across investment portfolios, especially Active Investment outperforms Minimal Investment consistently.     

Skills Heterogeneity Among Graduate Workers: Real and Apparent Overeducation in the Spanish Labor Market

This paper takes account of skills heterogeneity among workers with a higher education degree and proposes a new measure to differentiate between real and apparent overeducation based on the level of cognitive skills actually achieved by the individuals. This proposal is applied to the study of the wage effects of overeducation in the Spanish labor market using data from PIAAC. The results suggest that between a quarter and a half of the graduate workers who appear to be overeducated in the Spanish labor market could be considered as being only apparently overeducated since they show a lower level of skills than that corresponding to their educational level or, alternatively, a level of cognitive skills which is commensurate with their job. Different returns are found for each group of overeducated individuals both when compared with adequately educated peers within a similar level of education (with greater wage penalties for apparently overeducated workers) and when the comparison is done with well-matched co-workers doing a similar job (with a wage premium for real overeducation but no significant returns for apparently overeducated workers). These different returns by skill levels beyond what overeducation measures implies that the market distinguishes between education and skills and that educational attainment per se does not perfectly align with acquired skills, meaning that traditional measures of overeducation would overstate the actual level of skills mismatch in the labor market.     

Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001–2013: A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators

Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.     

Students Mobility: Assessing the Determinants of Attractiveness Across Competing Territorial Areas

A central question for education authorities has become “which factors make a territory attractive for tertiary students?” Tertiary education is recognised as one of the most important assets for the development of a territory, thus students’ mobility becomes a brain drain issue whenever there are prevalent areas that attract students from other territories. In this paper, we try to identify the most important factors that could affect student mobility in Italy. In doing that we analyse students’ flows across competing territorial areas which supply tertiary education programs. We will consider a wide range of determinants related to the socio-economic characteristics of the areas as well as resources of the universities in the territories in terms of variety and quantity of the degree programs there available, financial endowments provided by Central Government, and services available to students. The Bradley–Terry modelling approach based on pair comparisons has been adopted to define the attractiveness of competing territories and assess how much the detected divergences can be attributed to factors directly related to the considered characteristics of the universities in the territory and how much is ascribable to inherent characteristics of the areas where the universities are located such as the labour market conditions. Furthermore, the adopted approach allows us to consider uncertainty in defining territorial attractiveness and making comparisons. In this way, we would like to provide some evidences to assess if the rules currently used by the Central Government to finance public universities on the basis of their capabilities to attract students really reward the efforts made by the university system in the area to improve their standard of quality or, on the contrary, reward the territorial features.     

Exploring the Eligibility Criteria of the Child Support Grant and its Impact on Poverty

One of the most important policy objectives in the post-apartheid South African economy is to reduce poverty. Although economic growth and job creation are the preferred sources of alleviating poverty and inequality, social grant spending has contributed significantly to reduce poverty (Van der Berg et al. in Poverty trends since the transition: what we know. Stellenbosch Economic Working Papers: 19/09. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, 2009). Recently proposals were tabled by the Department of Social Development of South Africa (Fin24 in R3.3bn plan to extend child support grant to 21. http://www.fin24.com/Economy/R33bn-child-care-grant-extension-to-21-on-cards-20150316. Accessed August 7, 2015, 2015) to extend the age eligibility of the child support grant (CSG) to 21 years (at the time of writing children aged up to 18 years are eligible). This sparked an interest to investigate the impact on poverty of changes to the eligibility criteria of CSG, as well as its fiscal implications. Using person and household data from the 2010/2011 Income and Expenditure Survey, various simulations are performed to assess the impact on poverty rates and changes to social spending, given the following changes: (1) if all age-eligible children applied; (2) if all beneficiaries received the grant amount for the full 12-month duration; (3) if the age eligibility criterion is extended; and (4) if the monthly child grant income amount is revised upwards. We also examine how changes in the eligibility criteria affect the income distribution.     

Internet Use and Subjective Well-Being in China

Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, we analyze the association between Internet use and various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) in a sample of 16- to 60-year-old Chinese. Our analysis shows that although intensive Internet use is significantly associated with lower levels of SWB, we hardly observe any associations when the focus is on participation in specific online activities. Nevertheless, SWB depends on the reasons for using the Internet and the extent to which individuals feel that their Internet use is displacing other activities. Our results suggest that, contrary to previous findings, differences in beneficial outcomes (the third level digital divide) do not necessarily arise from individuals’ actual Internet use (the second level digital divide) but rather may result from their subjective perceptions of such usage. Our findings also point to a possible cultural factor that puts Chinese Internet users at psychological risk.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

Best Practice Principles for Community Indicator Systems and a Case Study Analysis: How Community Indicators Victoria is Creating Impact and Bridging Policy,Practice and Research

Numerous community indicator projects have been developed over the past 30 years and are now present in many countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. However, creating influence and action using community indicators requires long-term effort strengthened by partnership, policy applications, training and research. This paper provides a reflective case study analysis that reviews the development of the community indicator system of Community Indicators Victoria in Australia. The analysis includes a review of best practice indicator principles guiding the development of current and future community indicator systems and describes how these factors influenced the development, establishment, and expansion of the Community Indicators Victoria system.     

Highlighting Methodological Limitations in the Steps of Composite Indicators Construction

The paper opens the debate on the need to find a stable methodological framework in the construction of composite indicators (CIs) in order to address the methodological challenges including those of sensitivity and uncertainties related to methods used. As CIs are well-known to be essential in public debate, their methodological construction must be known by a large public. Illustrating CIs’ construction steps by a simple indicator, the paper aims to “democratize” this disciplinary field which is still a black box for some researchers but also to show how composite scores are sensitive to methods used and then, its impacts on policies. For example, in the Sustainable Development Indicator case, the geometric aggregation system is favorable to emerging countries which lead the ranking table whereas high income countries (which are leaders in the linear and equal weight system) except Australia, are misclassified. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis confirm these results showing that the indexes’ scores seem to be influenced by the orientation (implied theoretical framework) given by its sponsors including policy makers. Regarding the validity of the index, correlation tests with some lights and well known indicators, reveal very consistent results.     

A PPI-MVM Model for Identifying Poverty-Stricken Villages: A Case Study from Qianjiang District in Chongqing,China

To support China’s national poverty alleviation strategies, it is urgent to develop a scientific method for identifying the poverty-stricken villages and the contributing factors. Based on the anti-poverty plan of “Entire-Village Advancement” of China and the human-environment interaction perspective, the paper proposes a participatory poverty identification model that utilizes geographic information system to quantify and integrate various contributing factors for poverty at the village level. First, a set of poverty identification factors are determined from the human-environment interaction perspective. Secondly, the game theory is used to combine the participatory subjective weight method and the objective entropy method to weight the factors, and a participatory poverty identification with minimum variance model is developed to identify the poverty-stricken villages and their contributing factors. Finally, the model is applied to Qianjiang District in Chongqing, and the case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the model. The model not only identifies the poverty-stricken villages systematically but also helps guide policies for effective poverty interventions.