Kravdal, Øystein. "Child mortality in India: Individual and community effects of women's education and autonomy." No. 112. Abstract: When assessing health benefits of increased education in developing countries, many researchers have been concerned about the omission of important determinants of education from the models. This study illustrates that one should also be concerned about the limitations of the individual-level perspective. According to a model based on NFHS II data, the average education among women (but not men) in the census enumeration area has a strong impact on child mortality, net of the mother's own education. The relatively low child mortality associated with women's autonomy explains some of this community education effect. In addition, it operates partly through health knowledge, reproductive behavior and more proximate determinants of mortality, such as the use of maternity and other preventive health services, the child's nutrition, and the mother's care for a sick child. http://www2.ewc.hawaii.edu/pop/pop54000.htm
George, Asha. "Accountability in Health Services : Transforming Relationships and Contexts." HCPDS Working Paper Series, Volume 13 Number 1. Abstract: Accountability mechanisms ideally mediate relationships between two unequal partners with the aim of redressing the imbalances between them. In order to do this accountability measures must contest power relations, legitimise marginalised groups, and transform the actors involved. These elements endear accountability to people at the margins of society and to health issues marked by social inequalities and stigma, thus making it particularly useful to sexual and reproductive health, but also to other areas like mental health and disability. An emphasis on information, dialogue, and negotiation can ground this approach to accountability within efforts to improve health service delivery. I review case studies that highlight these elements and conclude that efforts to improve accountability cannot just rely on instituting asocial mechanisms. They must support iterative processes and constructive relationships that together transform their social contexts. Here in lie their limitations but also their dynamic power. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hcpds/workingpapers.html
Bazen, Stephen and Patrick Moyes. "International Comparisons of Income Distribution." No. 341. Abstract: When incorporating differences in household characteristics, the choice of equivalence scale can affect the ranking of income distributions. An alternative approach was pioneered by A.B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon (G.R. Feiwel (Ed.), Arrow and the Foundation of the Theory of Economic Policy, Macmillan, New York, 1987), who derive a sequential Lorenz dominance criterion for com-paring distributions with an identical population structure. In order to make their approach applicable to international comparisons, we extend their criterion to the case of different marginal distributions of household types, and derive a sequential stochastic dominance criterion that highlights the importance of first order dominance of the marginal distribution of household characteristics for obtaining consistent rankings of income distributions. Comparisons of distributions are made using the Luxembourg Income Study database for a number of countries. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Solt, Frederick. "Revisiting the Origins of Democratic Quality in Italy." No. 340. Abstract: What determines the responsiveness and effectiveness of democratic governments in meeting their citizens’ needs? Based on his 1993 study of the twenty Italian regions, Robert Putnam argued that “civic community,” a self-reinforcing syndrome of social engagement and political participation, is the explanation. A re-examination of Putnam’s data reveals little evidence of such a syndrome, but confirms that where more citizens participate in politics outside of networks of clientelistic exchange, more effective democratic government results. To discern the causes of variation in this self-motivated political participation, I then test Putnam’s measures of social engagement against aspects of Italian socio-economic structure. Economic development and the historical distribution of land, not social engagement, are found to be powerful predictors of self–motivated political participation and in turn democratic quality. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Burtless, Gary and Christopher Jencks. "American Inequality and Its Consequences." No. 339. Abstract: Income inequality has risen sharply in the United States over the past generation, reaching levels not seen since before World War II. But while almost two-thirds of Americans agree with the statement that “income differences in the United States are too large,” policies aimed at reducing income differences command relatively little popular support. In most rich countries sizeable majorities “agree strongly” that the government ought to guarantee each citizen a minimum standard of living. Only one American in four agrees strongly with this proposition. The same pattern holds in Congress, where legislators show little interest in policies aimed at taxing the rich, raising the wages of the poor, taxing inherited wealth, or guaranteeing shelter and health care to all Americans. The first three sections of this paper describe how the distribution of income has changed in the United States since the 1970s, why it changed, and why it is more unequal than the distribution in other rich democracies. We then assess the evidence on whether changes in economic inequality affect four other things that Americans care about – economic growth, equality of opportunity for children, longevity, and the distribution of political influence. Section 4 concludes that inequality probably does not have a consistent effect, either positive or negative, on economic growth in rich democracies. Section 5 shows that college attendance became more related to parental income as economic inequality increased in the United States, but it does not find much evidence that a father’s economic status has had more influences on his children’s economic prospects in the United States than in other rich countries where incomes were more equal. Section 6 argues that increases in economic inequality probably slow the rate of improvement in longevity, but the effect is very small. Thus, we conclude that rising inequality may have lowered life expectancy, but only by a few months. Section 7 discusses the impact of economic inequality on the distribution of political power, arguing that increases in economic inequality tend to increase the political power of the rich, at least in the United States. We conclude by arguing that since the effects of inequality on economic growth, health, and equality of opportunity are modest and uncertain in rich countries, these countries should decide how much economic inequality they are willing to tolerate largely on the basis of what they think is just. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Sierminska, Eva and Thesia I. Garner. "A Comparison of Income, Expenditures, and Home Market Value Distributions using Luxembourg Income Study Data from the 1990s." No. 338. Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review recent data made available through the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) that include expenditures and asset valuations. The LIS data are augmented with comparable data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey. The surveys with expenditure data are reviewed in terms of collection units and variable definitions. Inequality statistics are produced and compared using income, expenditures, and market value of owned home. Rankings of countries by income and expenditure inequality are similar but not the same across the countries studied. Suggestions are made for the LIS to improve the expenditure data available following the COICOPS framework. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Cantillon, Bea, Ive Marx, and Karel Van den Bosch. "The Puzzle of Egalitarianism: About the Relationships between Employment, Wage Inequality, Social Expenditures and Poverty." No. 337. Abstract: In the social policy debate, fundamentally different ideas prevail about the interlinkages between such key variables as employment, low pay, social transfers and poverty. This paper presents basic empirical evidence on the validity of these ideas and the policy prescriptions that follow from them, mainly drawing on cross-country comparative analysis. We show that clear and striking cross-country correlations prevail, but not, as is often so readily suggested, between low pay (wage compression) and employment performance, or between employment performance and poverty. Instead we find a strong and positive cross-country correlation between the incidence of low pay and the incidence of relative poverty, and we also find a strong but negative cross-country correlation between the level of social spending and the incidence of poverty. In addition, the incidence of low wage employment and social expenditure are also strongly and (negatively) related. We examine these correlations in more depth, particularly the link between the level of social spending and poverty. Since there is such a clear and strong negative link between the level of social expenditure and the level of poverty, it is tempting to think that more social spending offers an easy route to less poverty. However, a simple simulation exercise using Luxemburg Income Study data from the mid 90's suggests that putting more money in social transfer systems as they currently exist in the EU would not have positive outcomes on poverty rates in all countries. The final section of the papers sets out an agenda for further research. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Cantillon, Bea and Karel Van den Bosch. "Social Policy Strategies to Combat Income Poverty of Children and Families in Europe." No. 336. Abstract: In the EU there is growing concern about poverty among children, and among families with children. In most OECD countries, income poverty among children now exceeds that among the elderly, who traditionally were the demographic group most at risk of poverty (Jäntti and Danziger, 2000). However, the policy response of most industrialized countries in the past decades towards poverty among the elderly - extending coverage and levels of pension benefits - is less obvious as a policy option as regards poverty among families with children. There are two basic reasons for this. First of all, there is a consensus that increases in social spending are to be avoided, in view of the expected upward pressure on government budgets resulting from the ageing of the population in the coming decades. Secondly, in contrast to the elderly, families with children are supposed to be 'self-reliant', i.e. to be able - in normal circumstances - to earn sufficient income through their own efforts to escape poverty. Benefit dependency is seen as economically inefficient, as socially and morally degrading, and also as ultimately an ineffective route to escape poverty. Given this starting point, this paper tries to reach some general policy recommendations for combating income poverty among children and families. It is organised as follows. In the next section, families with children are most at risk of poverty are identified. Single parents obviously belong to this category, but - what is less well known - so do families with three or more children. There is then discussion of some of the new social risks leading to child poverty, which are related to low skills and to the current impossibility of many parents to combine care for children and paid work. In the fourth and final section, there is suggestions for possible policy responses which would support families in meeting the direct and indirect costs of children. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Duclos, Jean-Yves, Joan Esteban, and Debraj Ray. "Polarization: Concepts, Measurement, Estimation." No. 335. Abstract: The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we develop the measurement theory of polarization for the case in which asset distributions can be described using density functions. Second, we provide sample estimators of population polarization indices that can be used to compare polarization across time or entities. Distribution-free statistical inference results are also derived in order to ensure that the orderings of polarization across entities are not simply due to sampling noise. An illustration of the use of these tools using data from 21 countries shows that polarization and inequality orderings can often differ in practice. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Osberg, Lars. "Time, Money and Inequality in International Perspective." No. 334. Abstract: Across OECD countries there are large differences in the average level and trend of working hours and there is persuasive evidence that attitudes to paid employment, particularly for women, differ significantly. This paper therefore asks the question: "How much of the difference between countries in inequality of the distribution of money income can be explained by differing probabilities of paid employment?" Luxembourg Income Study data on the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France and Sweden is used to simulate the income distributions that other countries would have if they had the US (or German) female, and total, employment rate. In every case, measured trans-Atlantic differences in the inequality of money income increase - hence observed differences understate the extent of differences in well being. Put simply, in the US the less affluent have to work harder, and still end up relatively poorer, than in other countries. http://www.lisproject.org/publications/wpapersg.htm
Barbi, Elisabetta. "Assessing the rate of ageing of the human population." WP-2003-008. http://www.demogr.mpg.de/?http://www.demogr.mpg.de/Publications/working.htm
Kim, Sukkoo and Robert A. Margo. "Historical Perspectives on U.S. Economic Geography." NBER Working Paper No. w9594. Abstract: We review historical patterns of economic geography' for the United States from the colonial period to the present day. The analysis is framed in terms of two geographic scales: regions and cities. The compelling reason for studying geographic areas of different scales is that models that explain the location of economic activities at one scale many not apply to other scales. We consider the process of settling the frontier'; the development of national markets in goods and factors and, more generally, the convergence (and divergence) of regional economies; the growth of cities and the relationship between urbanization and trends in aggregate economic structure, such as industrialization; and changes in the internal spatial structure of cities. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Costa, Dora L. "Race and Pregnancy Outcomes in the Twentieth Century: A Long-Term Comparison." NBER Working Paper No. w9593. Abstract: Differentials between blacks and whites in birth weights and prematurity and stillbirth rates have been persistent over the entire twentieth century. Differences in prematurity rates explain a large proportion of the black-white gap in birth weights both among babies attended by Johns Hopkins physicians in the early twentieth century and babies in the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey. In the early twentieth century untreated syphilis was the primary observable explaining differences in black-white prematurity and stillbirth rates. Today the primary observable explaining differences in prematurity rates is the low marriage rate of black women. Maternal birth weight accounts for 5-8 percent of the gap in black-white birth weights in the recent data, suggesting a role for intergenerational factors. The Johns Hopkins data also illustrate the value of breast-feeding in the early twentieth century -- black babies fared better than white babies in terms of mortality and weight gain during the first ten days of life spent in the hospital largely because they were more likely to be breast-fed. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Hersch, Joni. "A Workers' Lobby to Provide Portable Benefits." NBER Working Paper No. w9591. Abstract: How can workers have a voice in the face of declining unionization and rising nontraditional career paths? To demonstrate how a new labor market institution can emerge, I develop a model of fundraising by a workers' organization in which the founder must allocate resources between the provision of public goods, which attracts foundation grants, and the provision of private goods, which attracts individual members. My case study for analyzing the performance of the model is Working Today, a new organization founded with the objectives of representing all workers and shifting employment rights from the current employer-based regime to one that assigns rights to individuals. Working Today has evolved from an organization funded by foundation grants that attempted to represent all workers, to primarily serving as an intermediary to provide group health insurance for independent workers. In order to examine the market for health insurance supplied by an organization such as Working Today, I provide statistics on the insurance coverage status and demographic characteristics of non-standard workers and traditional employees. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Appelbaum, Eileen and Larry W. Hunter. "Union Participation in Strategic Decisions of Corporations." NBER Working Paper No. w9590. Abstract: This paper reviews workforce participation in strategic decisions - those that affect the basic direction of the company - when workforce interests are represented collectively through unions. We consider the problem of corporate governance and review the rationale for what we term strategic partnerships' between management and labor. The paper describes the prevalence of such partnerships in the U.S., focusing on two institutions through which unions have engaged in discussion of strategic issues: negotiated union-management partnership agreements, and union representation on corporate boards. We offer detailed accounts of specific strategic partnerships and of union involvement on corporate boards, showing that unions face a range of challenges in constructing partnerships that extend possibilities for effective representations of workers' interests. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Dee, Thomas S. "Are There Civic Returns to Education?" NBER Working Paper No. w9588. Abstract: The hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education. In this study, I present evidence on whether these externalities exist. I assess and implement two strategies for identifying the effects of educational attainment. One is based on the availability of junior and community colleges; the other, on changes in teen exposure to child labor laws. The results suggest that educational attainment has large and statistically significant effects on subsequent voter participation and support for free speech. I also find that additional schooling appears to increase the quality of civic knowledge as measured by the frequency of newspaper readership. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Hurd, Michael and Susann Rohwedder. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: Anticipated and Actual Declines in Spending at Retirement." NBER Working Paper No. w9586. Abstract: The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires consumption smoothing.' However, British and U.S. households apparently reduce consumption at retirement and the reduction cannot be explained by the life-cycle model. An interpretation is that retirees are surprised by the inadequacy of resources. This interpretation challenges the life-cycle model where consumers are forward looking. However, data on anticipated consumption changes at retirement and on realized consumption changes following retirement show that the reductions are fully anticipated. Apparently the decline is due to the cessation of work-related expenses and the substitution of home production for market-purchased goods and services. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Kennan, John James R. Walker. "The Effect of Expected Income on Individual Migration Decisions." NBER Working Paper No. w9585. Abstract: The paper develops a tractable econometric model of optimal migration, focusing on expected income as the main economic influence on migration. The model improves on previous work in two respects: it covers optimal sequences of location decisions (rather than a single once-for-all choice), and it allows for many alternative location choices. The model is estimated using panel data from the NLSY on white males with a high school education. Our main conclusion is that interstate migration decisions are influenced to a substantial extent by income prospects. On the other hand we find no evidence of a response to geographic differences in wage distributions. Instead, the results suggest that the link between income and migration decisions is driven by a tendency to move in search of a better locational match when the income realization in the current location is unfavorable. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Milligan, Kevin, Enrico Moretti and Philip Oreopoulos. "Does Education Improve Citizenship? Evidence from the U.S. and the U.K." NBER Working Paper No. w9584. Abstract: Many economists and educators of diverse political beliefs favor public support for education on the premise that a more educated electorate enhances the quality of democracy. While some earlier studies document an association between schooling and citizenship, little attempt has been made to address the possibility that unobservable characteristics of citizens underlie this relationship. This paper explores the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the US and the UK. We find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries. For voter turnout, we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the US, but not for the UK. Using the information on validated voting, we find that misreporting of voter status can not explain our estimates. Our results suggest that the observed drop in voter turnout in the US from 1964 to 2000 would have been 10.4 to 12.3 percentage points greater if high school attainment had stayed at 1964 rates, holding all else constant. However, when we condition on registration, our US results approach the UK findings. This may indicate that registration rules present a barrier to low-educated citizens' participation. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Black, Sandra E., Lisa Lynch and Anya Krivelyova. "How Workers Fare When Employers Innovate." NBER Working Paper No. w9569. Abstract: Complementing existing work on firm organizational structure and productivity, this paper examines the impact of organizational change on workers. We find evidence that employers do appear to compensate at least some of their workers for engaging in high performance workplace practices. We also find a significant association between high performance workplace practices and increased wage inequality. Finally, we examine the relationship between organizational structure and employment changes and find that some practices, such as self-managed teams, are associated with greater employment reductions, while other practices, such as the percentage of workers involved in job rotation, are associated with lower employment reductions. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Weil, David. "Individual Rights and Collective Agents : The Role of Old and New Workplace Institution in the Regulation of Labor Markets." NBER Working Paper No. w9565. Abstract: Implementation of workplace policies--whether through enforcement of laws or administration of programs--raises the question of the interaction between institutions created to carry out laws and the activities of workplace based agents that directly (e.g. unions) or indirectly (e.g. insurance companies) represent the interests of workers. This paper argues that there are two distinctive roles required for agents in the implementation of workplace policies. First, the agent must somehow help solve the public goods problem inherent in workplace regulation. Second, the agent must be able to reduce the marginal cost of exercising rights conferred to workers that are an important feature of most regulatory programs. This article examines these issues in regard to implementing workplace policies in the U.S. and analyzes the comparative effectiveness of different workplace agents- from labor unions to alternative dispute resolution systems- in fulfilling these roles. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Pencavel, John. "The Surprising Retreat of Union Britain." NBER Working Paper No. w9564. Abstract: After expanding in the 1970s, unionism in Britain contracted substantially over the next two decades. This paper argues that the statutory reforms in the 1980s and 1990s were of less consequence in accounting for the decline of unionism than the withdrawal of the state's indirect support for collective bargaining. The principal goal of the reforms was to boost productivity so the paper examines the link between unions and productivity finding only a small association by the end of the 1990s. Private sector unionism has become highly decentralized which renders it vulnerable to the vagaries of market forces. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Hanson, Gordon H. "What Has Happened to Wages in Mexico since NAFTA?" NBER Working Paper No. w9563. Abstract: In this paper, I examine the impacts of trade and investment liberalization on the wage structure of Mexico. Part one of the paper surveys recent literature on the labor-market consequences of Mexico's economic reforms in the 1980?s. Mexico's policy reforms appear to have raised the demand for skill in the country, reduced rents in industries that prior to reform paid their workers high wages, and raised the premium paid to workers in states along the U.S. border. These changes have resulted in an increase in wage dispersion in the country. Part two of the paper examines changes in Mexico's wage structure during the 1990's. In the last decade, Mexico has experienced rising returns to skill, which mirror closely wage movements in the United States. There is, however, little evidence of wage convergence between the two countries. Regional wage differentials in Mexico have widened and appear to be explained largely by variation in regional access to foreign trade and investment and in regional opportunities for migration to the United States. I discuss implications of Mexico's experience for the rest of Latin America in the event a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas is enacted. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Collins, William J. "The Housing Market Impact of State-Level Anti-Discrimination Laws, 1960-1970." NBER Working Paper No. w9562. Abstract: This paper measures the housing market impact of state-level anti-discrimination laws in the 1960s using household-level and census-tract data. State-level fair-housing' laws attempted to bar discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and national origin in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, and they were the direct antecedents of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. Their influence on the housing market outcomes of African Americans has not been assessed in previous work by economists, but policy variation across states during the 1960s provides an opportunity to pursue such estimates. During the 1960s, blacks' housing market outcomes improved relative to whites', and the proportion of exclusively white census tracts declined markedly. But I find little evidence that the fairhousing laws contributed to those changes. Rather, the bulk of the evidence indicates that the laws' effects on blacks' housing market outcomes, on residential segregation, and on the value of property in predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods were negligible. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Cawley, John, Sara Markowitz and John Tauras. "Lighting Up and Slimming Down : The Effects of Body Weight and Cigarette Prices on Adolescent Smoking Initiation." NBER Working Paper No. w9561. Abstract: This paper examines the influence of body weight, body image, and cigarette prices in determining adolescent smoking initiation. Adolescents who desire to lose weight may initiate smoking as a method of appetite control. Such behavior may undermine the goals of tobacco control policies that seek to prevent smoking initiation. Using a nationally representative panel of adolescents, we show that smoking initiation is more likely among females who are overweight, who report trying to lose weight, or who describe themselves as overweight. In contrast, neither objective nor subjective measures of weight predict smoking initiation by males. Higher cigarette prices decrease the probability of smoking initiation among males but have no impact on female smoking initiation. These gender-specific differences may help explain the mixed and inconclusive evidence of the impact of price on smoking initiation found in previous literature. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Meer, Jonathan, Douglas T. Miller and Harvey S. Rosen. "Exploring the Health-Wealth Nexus." NBER Working Paper No. w9554. Abstract: The casual links between health and economic resources have long concerned social scientists. We use four waves of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to analyze the impact of wealth upon an individual's health status. The difficulty in approaching this task that has bedeviled previous studies is that wealth may be endogenous; a priori, it is just as likely that changes in health affect wealth as vice versa. We argue that inheritance is a suitable instrument for the change in wealth, and implement a straightforward instrumental variables strategy to deal with this problem. Our results suggest that the causal relationship running from wealth to health may not be as strong as first appears. In the data, wealth exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on health status, but it is very small in magnitude. Instrumental variables estimation leaves the point estimate approximately the same, but renders it insignificantly different from zero. And even when the point estimate is increased by twice its standard error, the quantitative effect is small. We conclude that the wealth-health connection is not driven by short run changes in wealth. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Long, Bridget Terry. "The Impact of Federal Tax Credits for Higher Education Expenses." NBER Working Paper No. w9553. Abstract: The 1997 creation of the Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits marked a dramatic shift in the way in which federal support for college expenses is distributed to students and their families. However, unlike other aid programs, the tax credits have exceptionally broad eligibility requirements, and there is a significant delay between when a recipient enrolls in college and when they receive the benefit. This study examines the impact of the tax credits on students, families, colleges, and states using a variety of data sources. The analysis suggests that the tax credits benefited families with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 the most. Insufficient tax liability due to low income levels and the interaction of the credits with other aid programs prevents many low-income individuals from qualifying for a benefit. Additionally, many eligible students did not claim a credit. Further analysis finds no evidence of increased postsecondary enrollment among eligible students in spite of the stated goal to increase access to higher education. On the other hand, there is some support for the notion that the credits encouraged students to attend more expensive colleges. Finally, some colleges appear to have responded to incentives to increase tuition prices. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Lee, Chulhee. "Labor Market Status of Older Males in the United States, 1880-1940." NBER Working Paper No. w9550. Abstract: This paper examines the labor market status of older males in the era of industrialization, focusing on the question of how the extent of pressure toward retirement varied across different occupations, and how it changed over time. A comparison of hazard of retirement across occupations shows that men who had better occupations in terms of economic status and work conditions were less likely to retire than were those with poorer jobs. This result tends to reject the recent view that retirement was more voluntary than forced as early as a century ago. The difficulty faced by older workers in the labor market, as measured by the relative incidence of long-term unemployment, was relatively severe among craftsmen, operatives, and salesmen. In constrast, aged farmers, professionals, managers, and proprietors appear to have fared well in the labor market. The pattern of shifts in the occupational structure that occurred between 1880 and 1940 suggests that industrialization had brought a growth of the sectors in which the pressure toward departure from employment at old ages was relatively strong. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Troesken, Werner. "Lead Water Pipes and Infant Mortality in Turn-of-the-Century Massachusetts." NBER Working Paper No. w9549. Abstract: This paper considers a largely unknown public-health practice in the United States: the use of lead pipes to distribute household tap water. Municipalities first installed lead pipes during the late nineteenth century. In 1897, about half of all American municipalities used lead water pipes. Using data from 1900 Massachusetts, this paper compares infant death rates and stillbirth rates in cities that used lead water pipes to rates in cities that used non-lead pipes. In the average town in 1900, the use of lead pipes increased infant mortality and stillbirth rates by 25 to 50 percent. However, the effects of lead water lines varied across cities, and depended on the age of the pipe and the corrosiveness of the associated water supplies. Age of pipe influenced lead content because, over time, oxidation formed a protective coating on the interior of pipes. As for corrosiveness, acidic water removed more lead from the interior of pipes than did non-acidic water. Consequently, infant death rates and stillbirth rates in Massachusetts towns employing old lead lines, and non-acidic water supplies, were no higher than in towns employing non-lead pipes. But in cities using new pipes and distributing acidic water, lead pipes increased infant mortality rates and stillbirth rates three- to fourfold. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Carneiro, Pedro, Karsten T. Hansen and James J. Heckman. "Estimating Distributions of Treatment Effects with an Application to the Returns to Schooling and Measurement of the Effects of Uncertainty on College." NBER Working Paper No. w9546. Abstract: This paper uses factor models to identify and estimate distributions of counterfactuals. We extend LISREL frameworks to a dynamic treatment effect setting, extending matching to account for unobserved conditioning variables. Using these models, we can identify all pairwise and joint treatment effects. We apply these methods to a model of schooling and determine the intrinsic uncertainty facing agents at the time they make their decisions about enrollment in school. Reducing uncertainty in returns raises college enrollment. We go beyond the Veil of Ignorance' in evaluating educational policies and determine who benefits and who loses from commonly proposed educational reforms. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Angrist, Joshua D. and Jonathan Guryan. "Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality? Evidence from State Certification Requirements." NBER Working Paper No. w9545. Abstract: The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions. Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the National Teacher Examination. Although any barrier to entry is likely to raise wages in the affected occupation, the theoretical effects of such requirements on teacher quality are ambiguous. Teacher testing places a floor on whatever skills are measured by the required test, but testing is also costly for applicants. These costs shift teacher supply to the left and may be especially likely to deter high-quality applicants from teaching in the public schools. We use the Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the effect of state teacher testing requirements on teacher wages and teacher quality as measured by educational background. The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Goldman, Dana P., Neeraj Sood and Arleen Leibowitz. "The Reallocation of Compensation in Response to Health Insurance Premium Increases." NBER Working Paper No. w9540. Abstract: This paper examines how compensation packages change when health insurance premiums rise. We use data on employee choices within a single large firm with a flexible benefits plan; an increasingly common arrangement among medium and large firms. In these companies, employees explicitly choose how to allocate compensation between cash and various benefits such as retirement, medical insurance, life insurance, and dental benefits. We find that a $1 increase in the price of health insurance leads to 52-cent increase in expenditures on health insurance. Approximately 2/3 of this increase is financed through reduced wages and 1/3 through other benefits. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Galenson, David W. "The Life Cycles of Modern Artists : Theory, Measurement, and Implications." NBER Working Paper No. w9539. Abstract: There have been two very different life cycles for important modern artists: some, including Picasso, have made their greatest contributions early in their careers, whereas others, like C‚zanne, have produced their best work late in their lives. Art's young geniuses have worked deductively to make conceptual innovations, while its old masters have worked inductively, to innovate experimentally. These two life cycles emerge from quantitative analysis of a wide range of evidence, and recognizing the differences between them allows a new understanding of a number of issues in art history. The two life cycles are furthermore not limited to painting, for the association between deduction and early achievement, and that between induction and late creativity, also clearly appear in quantitative studies of the careers of important economists and poets. Understanding the careers of modern artists therefore leads to a deeper understanding of the life cycles of human creativity in general. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Lang, Kevin. "The Effect of the Payroll Tax on Earnings: A Test of Competing Models ofWage Determination." NBER Working Paper No. w9537. Abstract: Under the standard competitive model, a tax change affecting workers with highly inelastic labor supply, will lower earnings by the entire nominal employer share of the tax increase. If wages play a motivational role but the market still clears, the range of possible outcomes is broader but wages should still not rise if the tax is nominally divided 50/50. In contrast, because there is excess labor (involuntary unemployment) in equilibrium, efficiency wage models resemble models in which labor supply is perfectly elastic, and thus earnings rise by more than the worker's nominal share. The 1968, 1974 and 1979 increases in the taxable earnings base for FICA provide good opportunities to test the models. This tax increase affected only those workers earning significantly more than the median earnings for male full-time/year-round workers. Such workers' labor force participation is likely to be highly inelastic. The results support models in which the motivational effects of wages are important but cannot clearly distinguish between the efficiency wage and market-clearing versions of those models. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
Shimer, Robert. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies: Evidence and Theory." NBER Working Paper No. w9536. Abstract: This paper argues that a broad class of search models cannot generate the observed business-cycle-frequency fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies in response to shocks of a plausible magnitude. In the U.S., the vacancy-unemployment ratio is 20 times as volatile as average labor productivity, while under weak assumptions, search models predict that the vacancy-unemployment ratio and labor productivity have nearly the same variance. I establish this claim both using analytical comparative statics in a very general deterministic search model and using simulations of a stochastic version of the model. I show that a shock that changes average labor productivity primarily alters the present value of wages, generating only a small movement along a downward sloping Beveridge curve (unemployment-vacancy locus). A shock to the job destruction rate generates a counterfactually positive correlation between unemployment and vacancies. In both cases, the shock is only slightly amplified and the model exhibits virtually no propagation. I reconcile these findings with an existing literature and argue that the source of the model's failure is lack of wage rigidity, a consequence of the assumption that wages are determined by Nash bargaining. http://www.nber.org/new.html#latest
McDonnell, Ida, Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte and Liam Wegimont.
"Public Opinion Research, Global Education and Development Co-operation
Reform: In Search of a Virtuous Circle." Webdocs No. 10.
Abstract: Public opinion and international development co-operation in
OECD DAC Member countries, summary of trends: 1. Public support in OECD
DAC Member countries for helping poor countries has remained consistently high
for almost two decades: there is no aid fatigue. 2. Donations from the
public to development and emergency NGOs have been increasing, mostly in
reaction to emergencies and natural disasters in developing countries. 3.
Concern among the public about aid effectiveness exists alongside continued high
support for aid. 4. The relationship between public support and ODA
volumes is complex, but a positive correlation exists at the national level
between satisfaction with ODA volume, and reaching or bypassing the UN target of
0.7 per cent of Gross National Income. 5. People's understanding of
poverty and development issues remains very shallow. Public awareness about ODA
and development co-operation policies is also low. 6. Awareness does
increase significantly as a result of global education, awareness raising
campaigns, public debate and media focus. 7. The majority of people
identify the media as a primary source of information about
developing countries, although there is some evidence of scepticism about the
nature of the information. 8. Official expenditure on global education and
on information about national aid programmes has been increasing in some OECD
countries, but remains very low. 9. Better educated, more aware, young and
urban dwelling individuals are stronger supporters of development
co-operation.... http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
Bussolo, Maurizio and Jeffery I. Round. "Poverty Reduction Strategies in a Budget-Constrained Economy : The Case of Ghana ." Webdocs No. 8. Abstract: Analyses of responses to reforms in Ghana seem to indicate that current policies may be benefiting different segments of society disproportionately. Also, experience in the 1990s suggests that recurring budget deficits may adversely affect reform and poverty alleviation programmes. The aim of this paper is to carry out some experiments using variants of a stylised CGE model, to ascertain the possible effects on poverty of a range of budget-neutral redistributive income transfers. The analysis is based on a social accounting matrix (SAM) for Ghana for the year 1993, which has been substantially modified for the present application. The CGE model is a real-side, static model and therefore excludes the monetary and financial sectors and is designed in the tradition of other OECD Development Centre models. The experimental design follows one employed by Adelman and Robinson (1978) for Korea and Chia, Wahba and Whalley (1992) for the Côte d'Ivoire. However the experiments are designed with a view to examining the sensitivity of the results to alternative specifications, within otherwise broadly similar, SAM-based model structures. The main outcome is to show that the results are very sensitive to (long and short run) closure rules, to the financing rules in a budget-neutral setting, and to the method of computing poverty ratios (parametric and nonparametric approaches). A new decomposition method is introduced to assist in interpreting the results. A wide range of simulations demonstrates that poverty is not eradicated via redistributive income transfers, and may even increase, especially in the short run, after taking into account the secondary effects. http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
Breierova, Lucia and Esther Duflo. "The Impact of Education on Fertility and Child Mortality: Do Fathers Really Matter Less than Mothers?" Webdocs No. 5. Abstract: This paper takes advantage of a massive school construction program that took place in Indonesia between 1973 and 1978 to estimate the effect of education on fertility and child mortality. Time and region varying exposure to the school construction program generates instrumental variables for the average education in the household, and the difference in education between husband and wife. We show that female education is a stronger determinant of age at marriage and early fertility than male education. However, female and male education seem equally important factors in reducing child mortality. We suggest that the OLS estimate of the differential effect of women's and men's education may be biased by failure to take in to account assortative matching. http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
O'Connor, David, Fan Zhai, Kristin Aunan, Terje Berntsen, Haakon Vennemo. "Agricultural and Human Health Impacts of Climate Policy in China: A General Equilibrium Analysis with Special Reference to Guangdong." Technical Papers No.206. Abstract: China's climate policy over the coming decades will be crucial to efforts to slow global warming. While CO2 emissions growth slowed in the 1990s, it is too early to know if this represents the beginning of a long-term downward trend in the carbon intensity of China's economy. This study of health and agricultural productivity effects of a carbon tax shows that there is considerable scope for slowing emissions growth without diminishing economic welfare. http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
"Pharmaceutical Use and Expenditure for Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke : a Study of 12 OECD Countries." OECD Health Working Papers No.1. Abstract: This study presents the results of a joint analysis of patterns of consumption, expenditure, and unit expenditure for a core set of drugs aimed at preventing and treating cardiovascular disease. The current study examines the relationships among three pharmaceutical variables (expenditure, volume of drug use, and unit expenditure) classified according to eight therapeutic categories which are specific for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and stroke. It covers an 11-year time period, and specifies relevant country-specific structural features in a sample of 12 OECD countries. http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
"Career Interruptions due to Parental Leave : A Comparative Study of Denmark and Sweden." Abstract: Parental leave mandates are associated with high female employment rates, but with reductions in relative female wages if leave is of extended durations. If fathers were given longer periods of leave, would it shorten the career breaks of women? We analyze the impact of family policies of Denmark and Sweden on women's career breaks due to childbirth. These countries are culturally similar and share the same type of welfare state ideology, but differ remarkably in pursued family policies. Compared to Denmark, leave provisions in Sweden are more generous in terms of both duration and payment rates, and allow for flexible use until the child is 8 years old. In both countries childcare coverage rates are high, but very young (age 0-2) Danish children are more likely to be in day-care than in Sweden. This setting provides us with a fruitful point of departure to analyze explicitly the effects of different family policy regimes on job retention of Danish and Swedish mothers. Our analysis takes advantage of the availability of comparable longitudinal data and allows us to estimate parallel models across the two countries. The impact of family policies and economic incentives on the probability of returning to the labour market is estimated with a flexible model of parental leave duration. Our results show that economic incentives affect the behaviour of mothers in both countries. However, the parental leave mandates as such are very important determinants for the observed behaviour. The role of the fathers differs considerably between the two countries. In Sweden, fathers have much longer parental leave periods than fathers in Denmark. A striking result from the policy simulations is that if fathers were given more parental leave, it would promote the labour supply of women. For Denmark, we do not observe this substitution effect among the parents. http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,EN-documents-0-nodirectorate-no-10-no-0,00.html
Ofstedal, Mary Beth, Zachary Zimmer, Grace Cruz, Angelique Chan, and Yu-Hsuan Lin. "Self-Assessed Health Expectancy Among Older Asians: A Comparison of Sullivan and Multistate Life Table Methods." Elderly in Asia Report 03-60. Abstract: Self-assessed health has been found to be a strong predictor of changes in health and of mortality and has been included in many surveys of health and aging around the world. In this paper, we estimate expectancies in self-assessed health and compare these among older adults across four Asian settings (the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia), making use of data from several national panel surveys conducted in the mid to late 1990s. All of these societies are undergoing rapid population aging and social and economic change, and there is much concern among policymakers about of the potential implications for future disease burden and associated informal and formal care demands. Yet, very little health expectancy research has been conducted in these settings. This paper is the first of a series of planned health expectancy analyses based on these panel surveys that will focus on alternative indicators of physical and mental disability. In the current analysis, self-assessed health is dichotomized into categories reflecting negative health ratings (e.g., poor/not good at all) versus positive or neutral health ratings (excellent to good/average/fair). In the first stage of the analysis we calculate health expectancy using the Sullivan method based on data from a single wave of each survey to compare trends in self-assessed expectancies by age and sex across settings. In the second stage we take advantage of the panel data by calculating health expectancy using multistate life table methods and compare these estimates with the Sullivan estimates. Results suggest that despite differences in the proportion reporting negative health across settings, patterns by age and sex are similar. Sullivan and multistate estimates also compare closely, except for Singapore, where there are very large transition rates from favorable to negative self-assessed health over the survey period. Datasets: Philippine Survey of the Near Elderly and Elderly, 1996-2000. National Survey of Senior Citizens in Singapore, 1995-1999. Indonesian Family Life Survey, 1993-1997. Taiwan Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle-Aged and Elderly, 1996-1999. http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/search-results.shtml?query=seriesList&seriesCode=ea
Ono, Hiromi. "Assortative Mating of the Divorced and the Never Married in the United States, 1970-1988." PSC Research Report 03-533. Abstract: "I investigate whether there is an underlying tendency for divorced and never married persons to marry within their marital history group in the United States. A theory of assortative mating suggests that if the never married and the divorced were to intermarry, their mismatched characteristics would create inefficiencies in the marriage; in order to avoid the inefficiencies, they tend to be homogamous. I apply log-linear models to marriages from the Vital Statistics Marriage Files, 1970-1988, to investigate the presence of the homogamous tendency. Consistent with the theory, the never married and the divorced are more likely to marry within their group than to intermarry, even when removing the influences of relative group size and controlling for spousal education and age. Additional findings indicate that: a) in general, the tendency toward homogamy weakened between 1970 and 1988; and b) no evidence is available that the divorced and the never married engage in status exchange in order to intermarry and hence are groups ordered on a social hierarchy. Implications of the findings are discussed." http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/series.html#rr
Gyimah, Stephen Obeng. "Women's Educational Attainment and the Timing of Parenthood in Ghana : A Cohort Perspective." Discussion Paper 03-04. http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp2003.html
Beaujot, Roderic. "Effect of Immigration on the Canadian Population : Replacement Migration?" Discussion Paper 03-03. http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp2003.html
Bah, Suliaman. "Multiple causes-of-death statistics in South Africa: Their utility and changing profile over the period 1997 to 2001." Discussion Paper 03-02. http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp2003.html
Beaujot, Roderic. "Demographics and the Changing Canadian Family." Discussion Paper 03-01. (English version of “Desigualdad en los papeles familiares y extrafamiliares, y politica familiar en Canada,” pp. 73-99 in Manuel Ribeiro, Gilles Rondeau and Santos Hermandez (editors), La familia en America del Norte: Evolucion, problematica y politica. Mexico: Trillas.) http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp2003.html
Bollinger, Chris and Paul Hagstrom. "Food Stamp Program Participation of Refugees and Immigrants: Measurement Error Correction for Immigrant Status." DP 1262-03. Abstract: In 1996, after two decades of increasing participation in cash and noncash public assistance programs by immigrant households (Borjas and Hilton, 1996), the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) drastically altered the availability of federal public assistance to legal immigrants but ostensibly not to refugees. Refugees were given a 5-year exemption from rules that applied to other legal immigrants. Yet, since 1996 the participation rate of refugees in public assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), SSI, General Assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid has fallen at least as fast as for other foreign-born residents. From 1994 to 1997, refugee participation in TANF fell by 27 percent and participation in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) fell by 37 percent (Fix and Passel, 1999). During the same period participation in the FSP dropped by 30 percent for immigrants and 21 percent for natives. This paper consistently estimates the effect of refugee status on participation in FSP even with measurement error in the identification of refugees and misreporting of food stamp participation. Specifically, this research seeks to accomplish three goals: (1) to estimate the impact of refugee status on take-up of the FSP using the March CPS for the years 1994-2001; (2) to demonstrate the impact of the PRWORA reform on the refugee effect; and (3) to correct for errors in measurement for refugee and legal permanent resident (LPR) status using methods that will help future researchers obtain consistent estimates when the key explanatory variable is known to be measured with error. We draw conclusions from this paper along two dimensions. The first is methodological. The typical approach to measuring refugee status grossly underestimates the effects of refugee status on participation in the FSP. Additionally, failure to account for response error in program participation additionally understates the effects of all variables on participation. Hence studies failing to account appropriately for these problems are biased and cannot be used for policy analysis. The far important dimension is that the story of FSP participation among immigrants and refugees is a complex one. A simple dummy variable for immigrant and refugee status fails to capture important aspects of the story. Refugees are more likely to participate in the FSP near the time of arrival, but their participation rates are declining with the time in the United States. Also, refugees are more sensitive to the economic climate than are U.S. citizens and other immigrants. Finally, there is clearly a differential effect between citizens and noncitizens. Immigrants who opt for citizenship are more likely to participate in welfare programs than those who do not. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/dp/dplist-03.htm
Wilson, Franklin D. "Labor Specialization, Ethnicity, and Metropolitan Labor Markets." DP 1261-03. Abstract: This paper provides an empirical assessment of the extent to which co-ethnic workers are under- or overrepresented in industry and occupation-based employment sectors based on the characteristics of workers themselves, attributes and resources of ethnic groups in which workers are affiliated, and characteristics of metropolitan areas. Specifically, the paper evaluates two claims found in the literature of economic sociology. The first claim is that ethnic affiliation, as reflected in group-based attributes and resources, affects the relative concentration of co-ethnic workers in employment sectors. The second is that metropolitan labor markets provide the context within which members of ethnic populations are sorted into employment sectors on the basis of worker characteristics, group-based resources, and supply and demand conditions prevailing in local labor markets, including the presence of similarly endowed members of other groups. Results partly confirm these claims and indicate that indicators of ethnic affiliation and local labor market conditions substantially affect the under- or overrepresentation of co-ethnic workers in employment sectors.. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/dp/dplist-03.htm
Moffitt, Robert A. "Milton Friedman, the Negative Income Tax, and the Evolution of U.S. Welfare Policy." DP 1260-03. Abstract: The negative income tax represents one of the fundamental ideas of modern welfare policy. Based on a simple application of elementary price theory, it has a powerful lesson for work incentives in welfare programs. The academic literature on the negative income tax has raised two difficulties with it, one concerning work disincentives arising from an increase in the eligibility point, and the other concerning the possible superiority of work requirements. Actual welfare policy developments in the United States over the last 30 years have exhibited strong trends both consistent and inconsistent with the negative income tax ideal. On the one hand, the Earned Income Tax Credit has produced a negative income tax-like program that exceeds in generosity anything that Friedman ever imagined; on the other hand, the rise of a work requirement philosophy and the increasing categorization of the population into different, multiple programs represent the antithesis of the negative income tax. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/dp/dplist-03.htm
Swann, Christopher A. "The Dynamics of Prenatal WIC Participation." DP 1259-03. Abstract: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides food vouchers, nutritional counseling, and health care referrals to low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women and their young children. Understanding the factors, including program rules, that affect the timing and duration of participation may help target resources toward women who are most likely to enroll in WIC late in their pregnancies or not enroll at all. In this paper I apply survival analysis techniques to data from the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey and the 1988 Survey of WIC Program Characteristics. The hazard rate analysis shows that socioeconomic characteristics such as low education, Hispanic ethnicity, low income, and participation in other welfare programs are correlated with a higher likelihood of participation in WIC. Additionally, characteristics of the WIC program, including the ability to self-declare income and adjunctive eligibility for AFDC and Medicaid recipients, significantly increase the probability of participation. The results show that the hazard rate for participating in WIC is generally increasing during the first 4 months of pregnancy and decreasing thereafter. Finally, although the analysis is only suggestive because of data limitations, women who have participated in WIC during a previous pregnancy are about three times more likely to participate in WIC than women who have not participated in the past. Recent policy changes have mandated income documentation and have expanded presumptive eligibility. The model estimates are used to simulate survivor curves under the 1988 rules and under the present rules, and these simulated outcomes are compared to assess the impact of the policy change. The simulated effect of the new policy is estimated to be about a 1 percentage point increase in the probability of participation over the course of a 40-week pregnancy. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/dp/dplist-03.htm
Murrugarra, Edmundo and Jose Signoret. "Vulnerability in Consumption, Education, and Health : Evidence from Moldova during the Russian Crisis." Working Paper No. 3010. Abstract: Murrugarra and Signoret analyze the widespread effects of the financial crisis in Russia to explore the vulnerabilities of households in Moldova. They show that the crisis had differential impacts on households, affecting most the urban and better-off. Households’ decisions about education and health resulted in decreased utilization and expenditures. The enrollment of young children from better-off households did not improve while others did. Secondary school enrollment of children from better-off households decreased after the crisis, in part because of the need to release labor supply. Health utilization decreased mainly for primary health care (not for hospitals), both for better-off households and in rural areas. Some of these changes are due to limited household resources (health), decreased public spending (health and education) or the need to increase households’ labor supply (education of teenagers). Social benefits played a very limited role in mitigating these effects, solely in health care use. Households’ assets helped to offset some of the negative effects of declining incomes. This paper—a product of the Human Development Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region—is part of a larger effort in the region to understand the effects of crises on human development. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Sakellariou, Chris N. and Harry Anthony Patrinos. "Technology, Computers, and Wages : Evidence from a Developing Economy." Working Paper No. 3008. Abstract: Increasing returns to schooling and rising inequality are well documented for industrial countries and for some developing countries. The growing demand for skills is associated with recent technological developments. Sakellariou and Patrinos argue that computers in the workplace represent one manifestation of these changes. Research in the United States and industrial countries documents a premium for computer use. But there is recent evidence suggesting that computer skills by themselves do not command a wage premium. The authors review the literature and use data from a survey of higher education graduates in Vietnam. The results support the unobserved heterogeneity explanation for computer wage premiums. They suggest that computers may make the productive workers even more productive. However, given the scarcity of computers in low-income countries, an operational strategy of increasing computer availability and skills would seem to offer considerable hope for increasing the incomes of the poor. This paper—a product of the Education Sector Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region—is part of a larger effort in the region to document the determinants of earnings. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Bento, Antonio, Maureen L. Cropper, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, and Katja Vinha. "The Impact of Urban Spatial Structure on Travel Demand in the United States." Working Paper No. 3007. Abstract: Bento, Cropper, Mobarak, and Vinha combine measures of urban form and public transit supply for 114 urbanized areas with the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey to address two questions: (1) How do measures of urban form, including city shape, road density, the spatial distribution of population, and jobs-housing balance affect the annual miles driven and commute mode choices of U.S. households? (2) How does the supply of public transportation (annual route miles supplied and availability of transit stops) affect miles driven and commute mode choice? The authors find that jobs-housing balance, population centrality, and rail miles supplied significantly reduce the probability of driving to work in cities with some rail transit. Population centrality and jobs-housing balance have a significant impact on annual household vehicle miles traveled (VMT), as do city shape, road density, and (in rail cities) annual rail route miles supplied. The elasticity of VMT with respect to each variable is small, on the order of 0.10–0.20 in absolute value. However, changing several measures of form simultaneously can reduce annual VMT significantly. Moving the sample households from a city with the characteristics of Atlanta to a city with the characteristics of Boston reduces annual VMT by 25 percent. This paper—a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the group to examine factors affecting travel behavior. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Gauri, Varun. "Social Rights and Economics: Claims to Health Care and Education in Developing Countries." Working Paper No. 3006. Abstract: Gauri analyzes contemporary rights-based and economic approaches to health care and education in developing countries. He assesses the foundations and uses of social rights in development, outlines an economic approach to improving health and education services, and then highlights the differences, similarities, and the hard questions that the economic critique poses for rights. The author argues that the policy consequences of rights overlap considerably with a modern economic approach. Both the rights-based and the economic approaches are skeptical that electoral politics and de facto market rules provide sufficient accountability for the effective and equitable provision of health and education services, and that further intrasectoral reforms in governance, particularly those that strengthen the hand of service recipients, are needed. There remain differences between the two approaches. Whether procedures for service delivery are ends in themselves, the degree of disaggregation at which outcomes should be assessed, the consequences of long-term deprivation, metrics used for making tradeoffs, and the behavioral distortions that result from subsidies are all areas where the approaches diverge. Even here, however, the differences are not irreconcilable, and advocates of the approaches need not regard each other as antagonists. This paper—a product of Public Services, Development Research Group—is a background paper for the 2004 World Development Report. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Vawda, Ayesha Yaqub and Varun Gauri. "Vouchers for Basic Education in Developing Countries : A Principal-Agent Perspective." Working Paper No. 3005. Abstract: Voucher programs consist of three simultaneous reforms: (1) allowing parents to choose schools, (2) creating intense incentives for schools to increase enrollment, and (3) granting schools management autonomy to respond to demand. As a result, voucher advocates and critics tend to talk past each other. A principal-agent framework clarifies the argument for education vouchers. Central findings from the literature, including issues related to variance in the performance measure, risk aversion, the productivity of more effort, multiple tasks, and the value of monitoring are found relevant for an analysis of vouchers. An assessment of findings on voucher programs in industrial countries, as well as a review of voucher or quasi-voucher experiences in Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Czech Republic support the usefulness of the analytic framework. Gauri and Vawda conclude that vouchers for basic education in developing countries can enhance outcomes when they are limited to modest numbers of poor students in urban settings, particularly in conjunction with existing private schools with surplus capacity. The success of more ambitious voucher programs depends on an institutional infrastructure challenging to industrial and developing countries alike. This paper—a joint product of Public Services, Development Research Group, and the Education Team, Human Development Network—is a background paper for the 2004 World Development Report. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Palacios, Miguel. "Options for Financing Lifelong Learning." Working Paper No. 2994. Abstract: How should lifelong learning be financed? Palacios attempts to answer the question by creating a framework for analyzing different education financing mechanisms in light of particular characteristics of lifelong learning. The framework compares the different financing alternatives on four dimensions: (1) who ultimately pays for the education, (2) who finances its immediate costs, (3) how payments are made, and (4) who collects the payments. The author uses specific characteristics of lifelong learning to determine which among the financing alternatives are most useful. The characteristics are that the individual should decide what and where to study, carry a significant part of the financial burden, and be encouraged to continue learning through all life stages. Palacios analyzes the financing alternatives according to who ultimately pays for the education. Hence, the alternatives are classified either as cost-recovery or cost-subsidization alternatives. Cost-recovery alternatives include traditional loans, a graduate tax, human capital contracts, and income-contingent loans. Subsidization alternatives are those in which the state directly subsidizes institutions or in which the state gives vouchers to students. The author concludes that combining income-contingent loans and human capital contracts with vouchers is the most efficient and equitable method for financing lifelong learning. The author discusses the role of governments and multilateral organizations in improving the financing of lifelong learning. He assesses shifting toward cost-recovery alternatives, focusing on collection of payments, and aiming for the involvement of private capital as key issues that should be addressed to ensure that lifelong learning will be available for all equitably and efficiently. This paper—a product of the Education Team, Human Development Network—is part of a larger effort in the network to support the analytic work in lifelong learning in the global knowledge economy. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Adenew, Berhanu, Klaus Deininger, Mulat Demeke, Samuel Gebre-Selassie, and Songqing Jin. "Market and Nonmarket Transfers of Land in Ethiopia : Implications for Efficiency, Equity, and Nonfarm Development." Working Paper No. 2992. Abstract: The authors use data from Ethiopia to empirically assess determinants of participation in land rental markets, compare these to those of administrative land reallocation, and make inferences on the likely impact of households’ expectations regarding future redistribution. Results indicate that rental markets outperform administrative reallocation in terms of efficiency and poverty. Households who have part-time jobs in the off-farm sector are significantly more likely to expect land to be taken away from them through administrative means. Eliminating the scope for administrative land reallocation may thus be a precondition for more vigorous development of the off-farm sector. This paper—a product of Rural Development, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the impact of land policies on equity and productive development. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Klein, Michael. "Ways Out of Poverty : Diffusing Best Practices and Creating Capabilities—Perspectives on Policies for Poverty Reduction." Working Paper No. 2990. Abstract: Fundamentally, poverty reduction is about bringing growth processes to poor areas. Because poor areas can benefit from technical and organizational innovations made elsewhere in the world, it is possible today to create productive jobs faster and in greater quantity than ever before. The puzzle is what helps spread such “best practices.” Saving, investment, education, resources, and new technology are all needed—and fairly easy to obtain. What is hard to obtain are the institutions that allow these factors of production to be combined and translated into productive job creation. Firms are the key vehicles that spread best practices and productive jobs to areas where poor people live. Because we can never be sure which firm will be successful, it is necessary that new firms can enter markets, that substandard firms are allowed to fail, and that good firms face few barriers to growth. This is the definition of competition, and competition is what selects good firms and thus drives the spread of best practice and productive jobs. Governments need to provide the framework in which capable firms can emerge. Yet, the right mix of state activity and how it best interacts with firms are not fully understood. Some selection mechanism, which allows for policy experiments and selects successful ones, is valuable for national, provincial, and local governments. Thus competition among jurisdictions and firms is an integral part of dynamic social systems that hold promise for creating wealth and ending poverty. This paper—a product of the Private Sector Advisory Services Department—is part of a larger effort in the department to study private sector development and growth processes. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
Khaleghian, Peyvand. "Decentralization and Public Services : The Case of Immunization." Working Paper No. 2989. Abstract: Khaleghian studies the impact of political decentralization on childhood immunization, an essential public service provided in almost all countries. He examines the relationship empirically using a time-series data set of 140 low- and middle-income countries from 1980 to 1997. The author finds that decentralization has different effects in low- and middle-income countries. In the low-income group, decentralized countries have higher coverage rates than centralized ones, with an average difference of 8.5 percent for measles and DTP3 vaccines. In the middle-income group, the reverse effect is observed: decentralized countries have lower coverage rates than centralized ones, with an average difference of 5.2 percent for the same vaccines. Both results are significant at the 99 percent level. Modifiers of the decentralization-immunization relationship also differ in the two groups. In the low-income group, development assistance reduces the gains from decentralization. In the middle-income group, democratic government mitigates the negative effects of decentralization, and decentralization reverses the negative effects of ethnic tension and ethno-linguistic fractionalization, but institutional quality and literacy rates have no interactive effect either way. Similar results are obtained whether decentralization is measured with a dichotomous categorical variable or with more specific measures of fiscal decentralization. The study confirms predictions in the theoretical literature about the negative impact of local political control on services that have public goods characteristics and inter-jurisdictional externalities. The author discusses reasons for the difference between low- and middle-income countries. This paper—a product of Public Services, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the group to study the delivery of essential health services. http://econ.worldbank.org/resource.php?type=5
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