extended producer responsibility for waste televisions and computers a regulatory evaluation of the australian experience abstract high annual volumes of television and computer waste presents a challenge to australian communities resulting in the development of extended producer responsibility epr legislation this study aims to establish through the use of public interest theory whether epr legislation in australia was in the public interest using a regulatory analysis the results show that during the first 3 years of the scheme over 130 liable parties joined co regulatory arrangements each year to fund upstream recycling services for television and computer waste in program terms the scheme has been highly successful recycling over 130 000 tonnes of metals leaded and non leaded glass plastics and other materials while limiting landfill transfers to approximately 6900 tonnes all at a cost of a 50 60 million per annum to producers the scheme has also seen a range of upstream recycling partnerships established between the co regulated administrators and formal technical and social enterprise waste management organizations however while the upstream material recovery rate is steady at approximately 95 the results suggests that exporting waste for downstream processing will continue in the future analysis also points to substantial funding for over target collections downstream recycling infrastructure and landfill diversion strategies as critical for averting severe environmental impacts from e waste dumping the study concludes by suggesting that while the successes of epr scheme are in the public interest its potential deficiencies could limit such benefits and therefore need to be addressed notably the scheme could be enhanced through the application of improved recycling target methodologies including the estimation and forecasting of domestic waste electrical and electronic equipment weee stock levels

identifying the efficiency status in network dea abstract data envelopment analysis dea is commonly employed to evaluate the efficiency performance of a decision making unit dmu that transforms exogenous inputs into final outputs in such a black box dea approach details of an internal production process of the dmu are typically ignored and hence the locations of inefficiency are not adequately provided in view of this dea researchers have recently developed various network approaches by looking into the black box where the inputs that enter the box and the outputs that come out of it are only considered however most of these network approaches evaluate divisional efficiency by using an optimal solution of their respective optimization problem if such an optimal solution is used in the case when there are multiple optima then managerial guidance based on this solution alone may be inappropriate because more appropriate targets from the viewpoint of management may be ignored taking this fact into account therefore we propose a network approach for identifying the efficiency status of each dmu and its divisions this approach provides a practical computational procedure

reducing child malnutrition how far does income growth take us how rapidly will child malnutrition respond to income growth this article explores that question using household survey data from 12 countries as well as data on malnutrition rates in a cross section of countries since the 1970s both forms of analysis yield similar results increases in income at the household and national levels imply similar rates of reduction in malnutrition using these estimates and better than historical income growth rates the article finds that the millennium development goal of halving the prevalence of underweight children by 2015 is unlikely to be met through income growth alone what is needed to accelerate reductions in malnutrition is a balanced strategy of income growth and investment in more direct interventions

socio economic status health and lifestyle abstract the role of lifestyle in mediating the relationship between socio economic characteristics and health has been discussed extensively in the epidemiological and economic literatures previous analyses have not considered a formal framework incorporating unobservable heterogeneity in this paper we develop a simple economic model in which health is determined partially by lifestyle which depends on preferences budget and time constraints and unobservable characteristics we estimate a recursive empirical specification consisting of a health production function and reduced forms for the lifestyle equations using maximum simulated likelihood msl for a multivariate probit mvp model with discrete indicators of lifestyle choices and self assessed health sah on british panel data from the 1984 and 1991 health and lifestyle survey hals we find that sleeping well exercising and not smoking in 1984 have dramatic positive effects on the probability of reporting excellent or good sah in 1991 and that these effects are much larger having accounted for endogeneity the failure of epidemiological analyses to account for unobserved heterogeneity can explain their low estimates of the relevance of lifestyle in the socio economic status health relationship indicators for prudent alcohol consumption and eating breakfast in 1984 are not found to be statistically significant determinants of sah in 1991

tallest in the world native americans of the great plains in the nineteenth century historians often portray native americans as merely unfortunate victims of european disease and aggression with lives in disarray that followed the arrival of columbus and other explorers or conquerors the data we analyze on human stature show in contrast that some native americans such as the equestrian plains nomads were remarkably ingenious and adaptive in the face of exceptional demographic stress using anthropometric data originally collected by franz boas we show that the plains nomads were tallest in the world during the mid nineteenth century we link this extraordinary achievement to a rich and varied diet modest disease loads other than epidemics a remarkable facility at reorganization following demographic disasters and egalitarian principles of operation the analysis provides a useful mirror for understanding the health of euro americans this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

what happens to diet and child health when migration splits households evidence from a migration lottery program the impact of migration on food security and child health is likely to differ depending on whether children themselves migrate or whether they remain behind while other household members migrate however existing studies have not been able to examine how impacts differ in these two scenarios because parallel data are required for both the sending and receiving country moreover self selection into migration makes unbiased estimation of either impact difficult we overcome these problems by using a unique survey of tongan households that applied to migrate to new zealand through a migrant quota which selects households through a random ballot this survey covers both migrant children in new zealand and non migrant children in tonga with the migration policy rules providing a source of exogenous variation for identifying impacts our estimates of short run impacts show that diets diverge upon migration children who migrate experience improvements while diets worsen for children who remain there is also suggestive evidence of a divergence in health outcomes with increases in weight for age and height for age found for migrant children and decreases found for children who remain behind while other household members migrate

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research longitudinal studies of health this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

stature and the standard of living research on the standard of living now emphasizes alternatives or supplements to the national income accounts this paper reviews the results of two decades of research using stature as a measure of health aspects of human welfare after comparing and contrasting stature with per capita income i consider height patterns discovered by economic historians that challenge traditional beliefs about the past including long term trends cycles in heights and the dreadfully small stature of slave children that was followed by catch up growth the paper concludes with comparisons to work in development economics and suggestions for research

wash and nutrition synergies the case of tunisia abstractthis paper develops a simple econometric strategy to operationalise the united nations children s fund s unicef s conceptual framework for nutrition it estimates the extent to which chil

measuring the distribution of material well being u s trends abstract economists with a few exceptions have automatically assumed that the important measure of well being is income in contrast economic historians have broadened the measure of well being with particular interest in mortality morbidity nutrition education and leisure when one takes this broader view of the standard of living there appears to be a strong trend toward more equality in the distribution of well being since the industrial revolution gini coefficients calculated for the distributions of lifespan and educational attainment have declined dramatically since the mid nineteenth century for the united states mortality and educational differentials have also declined inequality of leisure time and consumption though not as consistently measured also show trends toward equality over the twentieth century these trends toward equality in well being as measured by indicators other than income and wealth seem to be generated by provision of public goods natural boundaries to lifespan educational attainment and leisure and by the growth in mean per capita income the divergent trends in the distributions of income and the other measures of well being caution against reliance on the distribution of income to interpret trends in inequality

productivity and customer satisfaction in swedish pharmacies a dea network model this paper presents a data envelopment analysis dea network model that allows inclusion of customer satisfaction in efficiency and productivity measures the network consists of a production node and a consumption node and offers flexibility in modelling the production and consumption process where a firm specific allocation of input resources to production and customer oriented activities is allowed the proposed model is applied on a sample of swedish pharmacies with organizational objectives that necessitates a monitoring of efficiency and productivity as well as customer satisfaction estimation results from the network model and a direct productivity model without customer satisfaction are compared and indicate that the technical efficiency is lower under the network model the productivity results indicate productivity progress under both models albeit with a slower rate of change under the network model

productivity health and inequality in the intrahousehold distribution of food in low income countries a model is formulated incorporating linkages among nutrition labor market productivity health heterogeneity and the intrahousehold distribution of food and work activities in a subsistence economy empirical results based on a sample of households from bangladesh indicate that despite considerable intrahousehold disparities in calorie consumption households are averse to inequality furthermore consistent with the model the results also indicate that both the higher level and greater variance in the calories consumed by men relative to women reflect in part the greater participation by men in activities in which productivity is sensitive to health status copyright 1990 by american economic association

the market evaluation of criminality evidence from the auction of british convict labor in america 1767 1775 approximately 50 000 british convicts were sentenced to servitude and forcibly transported to america between 1718 and 1775 1 this transatlantic market for british convict labor was a vast experiment in privatizing posttrial criminal justice by the early eighteenth century removal of criminals from society was seen as a more effective deterrent to recidivism than physical chastisement removal of noncapital offenders through mass hangings or employment as chain gangs in england was considered too barbaric and too politically risky removal through imprisonment was too expensive given the absence of penitentiaries designed for long term incarceration thus banishment overseas became the preferred policy 2 convict transportees were given one of only three possible sentences namely 7 years 14 years or a lifetime of banishment 74 24 and 2 percent respectively which in turn became the length of their servant contracts in america 3 to minimize the cost of overseas disposal the british government channelled convicts through the existing transatlantic market for voluntary servant labor 4 the government fixed the length of all convict labor contracts prior to embarkation and then turned the convicts over to the private shipping market thereafter government penal policy exerted little direct influence the transportation and disposal of convict labor was handled by the private sector for profit shippers auctioned convicts upon arrival in america to the private employers who bid the highest with the monies received going to defray the shippers transportation expenses the trade was competitive numerous shippers from many british ports transported convicts and auctioned them in populated american markets such as annapolis and baltimore convicts also competed directly with voluntary indentured servants for cargo space on ships leaving britain 5 in addition upon landing in america convict labor competed with european immigrant servant and african department of economics university of delaware newark de 19716 e mail grubbf be udel edu brian golden anne pfaelzer de ortiz and jianmin zhang provided research assistance and anne pfaelzer de ortiz provided editorial assistance preliminary versions were presented at the university of delaware harvard university university lumiere lyon 2 france university pompeu fabra spain the university of virginia and the economic history society meeting bristol u k the author thanks the participants of these seminars and pieter emmer claudia goldin leslie goldstein bernard harris saul hoffman kyle kauffmann john murray ralph shlomowitz and richard steckel for helpful comments 1 they represented roughly a quarter of all british arrivals and half of all english arrivals in this period the 1717 transportation act was passed in response to the crime wave accompanying the end of queen anne s war see a roger ekirch 1987 p 27 peter w coldham 1992a pp 1 6 aaron s fogelman 1998 pp 55 71 2 in the absence of penitentiaries designed for long term incarceration ciiminals were punished by physical chastisement e g whipping branding in the hand or hanging this menu of punishment left little middle ground for adjusting punishment to fit variation in the severity of a given crime forced servitude overseas provided that middle ground for those convicted of noncapital crimes e g larceny mitigating circumstances could lead to a whipping or branding in the hand whereas those considered to deserve less mercy or to be a continuing menace to society were sentenced to 7 or 14 years of servitude overseas for those convicted of capital crimes e g horse or sheep stealing grand larceny murder etc mitigating circumstances could lead to sentences of 7 years 14 years or a lifetime of servitude overseas whereas those considered to deserve no mercy or to be a continuing menace to society were hanged see baltimore j m beattie 1986 3 see table 1 baltimore grubb 2000b the punishment for returning to britain before the completion of one s sentence was hanging 4 in 1697 the british admiralty demanded eight pounds a head to transport convicts to america by contrast the private sector ended up transporting the majority of the convicts for no subsidy whatsoever and the highest subsidy the crown ever paid a shipper to transport convicts was five pounds per head see abbot e smith 1947 pp 105 11316 frederick h schmidt 1976 pp 35 38 89 ekirch 1987 pp 70 74 grubb 2000b 5 many shippers carried both convict and voluntary indentured servants on the same voyage see annapolis baltimore cheston galloway papers grubb 2000b

economic growth population theory and physiology the bearing of long term processes on the this lecture sketches a theory of the secular decline in morbidity and mortality that takes account of changes induced in physiological functioning since 1700 the synergism between technological and physiological improvements has produced a form of human evolution biological though not genetic rapid culturally transmitted and not necessarily stable which is still ongoing in both oecd and developing countries thermodynamic and physiological aspects of economic growth are defined and their impact on growth rates is assessed implications of this theory for population forecasting measurement of national income demand for leisure pension policies and demand for health care are considered excerpt

what can be learned from skeletons that might interest economists historians and other social scientists economists and other scholars have long sought to measure and analyze long term trends and differences in social performance average stature supplements and lengthens data series on traditional measures of life expectancy and real gdp per capita this paper presents a methodology for using skeletal remains to greatly extend the chronological and cultural reach of anthropometric measures bones are widely available for study and unlike stature they portray health over the life cycle depicting both childhood and processes of aging and degeneration the paper briefly explains seven skeletal measures widely used in physical anthropology and discusses procedures for summarizing community health in the form of an index results are based on a sample of over 12 000 individuals who lived at 65 localities in the western hemisphere over the past several millennia results challenge conceptions of the pre columbian disease environment and the methods can be used to test models of very long term economic growth and to study important aspects of human welfare during climate change this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the economic effects of the abolition of serfdom evidence from the russian empire we document substantial increases in agricultural productivity industrial output and peasants nutrition in imperial russia as a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1861 before the emancipation provinces where serfs constituted the majority of agricultural laborers lagged behind provinces that primarily relied on free labor the emancipation led to a significant but partial catch up better incentives of peasants resulting from the cessation of ratchet effect were a likely mechanism behind a relatively fast positive effect of reform on agricultural productivity the land reform which instituted communal land tenure after the emancipation diminished growth in productivity in repartition communes

the impact of immigration on child health experimental evidence from a migration lottery program this paper uses a unique survey designed by the authors to compare migrant children who enter new zealand through a random ballot with children in the home country of tonga whose families were unsuccessful participants in the same ballots the authors find that migration increases height and reduces stunting of infants and toddlers but also increases body mass index bmi and obesity among 3 to 5 years old these impacts are quite large even though the average migrant household has been in new zealand for less than 1 year additional results suggest that these impacts occur because of dietary change rather than direct income effects

height and economic development in italy 1730 1980 in this paper i review evidence on the longrun relation between height and economic development in italy this has been done for several countries but not for italy yet several reasons make this country an interesting case to consider after being at the center of the european economy during the renaissance italy went through a long period of decline by the time of political unification in 1861 italy had become a peripheral economy the country did not

affluence and food a simple way to infer incomes accurate and timely measures of cross country real incomes are still a rarity as the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available we use engel s law in reciprocal form to measure affluence analysis of real income data for over 100 countries indicates that this approach is viable to recognize the role of uncertainty in the analysis we present the results in the form of stochastic cross country income comparisons

health human capital height and wages in china abstract we estimate the returns to height using data from 12 chinese cities we present both ordinary least squares ols and two stage least squares tsls estimates in the latter height is instrumented using proxies for health human capital accumulated in childhood and adolescence which influence adult height the tsls estimates are much higher reflecting the fact that the ols estimates are determined by the random genetic factors influencing height while the tsls estimates also take into account returns from investment in health human capital during childhood and adolescence these results imply considerable returns to investment in health human capital

stature skills and adult life outcomes evidence from indonesia abstractwe investigate the effect of height on earnings occupational choices and a subjective measure of wellbeing among indonesian men we explore the extent to which height captures the effects of endowments set before entry in the labour market physical and cognitive skills co determined with stature early in life do not explain much of the height earnings premium directly yet human capital more broadly including cognition educational attainment and other factors related to childhood conditions explains around half of the height premium and does so through occupational sorting indeed taller workers tend to have more education and educated workers tend to work in more lucrative occupations that require brain and social skills not brawn the unexplained share of the height earnings premium may reflect a specific role of stature on social interaction labour market advantages or self assurance we also find a height premium in happiness half of which simply accounts for the educational and e

early childhood nutrition and academic achievement a longitudinal analysis abstract many policymakers propose early childhood nutrition programs as a way to increase students academic achievement this paper investigates the nutrition learning nexus using a unique longitudinal data set that follows a large sample of filipino children from birth until the end of their primary education we find that better nourished children perform significantly better in school partly because they enter school earlier and thus have more time to learn but mostly because of greater learning productivity per year of schooling our cost benefit analysis suggests that a dollar invested in an early childhood nutrition program in a developing country could potentially return at least three dollars worth of gains in academic achievement and perhaps much more

inequality at birth some causes and consequences recent research shows that health at birth is affected by many factors including maternal education behaviors and participation in social programs in turn endowments at birth are predictive of adult outcomes and of the outcomes of future generations exposure to environmental pollution is one potential determinant of health at birth that has received increasing attention a large literature outside of economics advocates for environmental justice and argues that poor and minority families are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards i provide new evidence on this question showing that children born to less educated and minority mothers are more likely to be exposed to pollution in utero and that white college educated mothers are particularly responsive to changes in environmental amenities i estimate that differences in exposure to toxic releases may explain 6 of the gap in incidence of low birth weight between infants of white college educated mothers and infants of black high school dropout mothers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

productivity and intermediate products a frontier approach abstract in recent years it has become popular to measure productivity using non parametric approaches however this has been done while ignoring intermediate products here we develop a non parametric productivity measure that explicitly incorporates such products

welfare measures an international comparison abstract based on previous work by sen and the author alternative welfare measures are proposed that take into account both the level and distribution of income an empirical application shows that there are substantial differences among countries with respect to the level of welfare even among subgroups such as mature capitalist economies

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

numeracy and the impact of high food prices in industrializing britain 1780 1850 abstract using census based data on the ability to recall one s age we show that low levels of nutrition impaired numeracy in industrializing england 1780 to 1850 cognitive ability declined among those born during the napoleonic wars the effect was stronger in areas where grain was expensive and relief for the poor an early form of welfare support was limited nutritional shortages had a nonlinear effect on numeracy with severe shortages impairing numeracy more nutrition during childhood also mattered for labor market outcomes individuals born in periods or counties with low numeracy typically worked in occupations with lower earnings

longitudinal studies of human growth and health a review of recent historical research this paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research we begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast growing field of anthropometric history this literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature we then discuss i systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and ii historical evidence on the relationship between body mass morbidity and mortality we conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health

deriving the dea frontier for two stage processes data envelopment analysis dea is a method for measuring the efficiency of peer decision making units dmus recently dea has been extended to examine the efficiency of two stage processes where all the outputs from the first stage are intermediate measures that make up the inputs to the second stage the resulting two stage dea model provides not only an overall efficiency score for the entire process but as well yields an efficiency score for each of the individual stages due to the existence of intermediate measures the usual procedure of adjusting the inputs or outputs by the efficiency scores as in the standard dea approach does not necessarily yield a frontier projection the current paper develops an approach for determining the frontier points for inefficient dmus within the framework of two stage dea

calculation and decomposition of income inequality in low and middle income countries a survey data analysis this article estimates income inequality in a sample of four low and middle income lmi countries namely albania nepal tajikistan and tanzania using the household survey data nepal living st

wage gains associated with height as a form of health human capital height is consulted as a latent indicator of early nutrition and lifetime health status height is observed to increase in recent decades in populations where per capita national income has increased and public health activities have grown height is determined by genetic make up and realized in part through satisfactory nutrition and health related care and conditions alternative instrumental variables iv are explored which proxy price and income constraints which are expected to influence the latter reproducible human capital investments in height i report ols and iv estimates of the partial effect of height on log hourly wages in recent national surveys from three countries ghana brazil and the united states i conclude that the human capital productivity effect of height estimated by parent education ivs in the us and ghana are many times larger than the ols estimates and in ghana and brazil the regional price ivs estimates also imply a substantially larger human capital wage effects of height compared with the ols estimates the ols estimates of height effects on wages are dominated by the genetic variation in height and appear to understate substantially the human capital returns to health and nutrition inputs which increase adult height this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

moving beyond the patchwork a review of strategies to promote consistency for extended producer responsibility policy in the u s abstract product oriented environmental policy with an emphasis on extended producer responsibility epr frequently referred to as product stewardship in the u s is being applied in the united states for an increasingly broad scope of products including waste electronics and household hazardous wastes such as paint and mercury containing lamps however due to the lack of a unified federal response these efforts are driven by state level policies and regulations this state led approach is frequently characterized as resulting in a patchwork of disparate regulations historically two strategies are often suggested as offering a remedy for this situation 1 federal legislation and 2 model state legislation however another policy strategy has emerged in the u s that of an overall epr policy framework which creates a clear process for selecting and designating products and articulates the roles and responsibilities for the various players along the product chain this article provides an analysis of the experiences and prospects for each of the three strategies to serve as a policy vehicle for greater consistency of epr regulations throughout the u s in part motivated by global extended producer responsibility policy approaches particularly in the canadian provinces efforts are now underway to investigate a similar comprehensive regulatory approach to be implemented by individual states in the u s the article examines the framework model that is envisioned in the u s and outlines the recommend components of this policy concept finally the article provides a comparison with other jurisdictions most notably british columbia which has implemented a broad extended producer responsibility policy

the effect of adolescent experience on labor market outcomes the case of height taller workers receive a wage premium net of differences in family background the disparity is similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps we exploit variation in an individual s height over time to explore how height affects wages controlling for teen height essentially eliminates the effect of adult height on wages for white men the teen height premium is not explained by differences in resources or endowments the teen height premium is partially mediated through participation in high school sports and clubs we estimate the monetary benefits of a medical treatment for children that increases height

income productivity in china on the role of health this study provides empirical evidence regarding the income productivity of health human capital in china we appeal to concepts from human capital theory to support a basic model that treats health as a form of human capital in the income production process our model examines the economic return at the household level from the health of its individual members we estimate this with a longitudinal sample drawn from the china health and nutrition survey chns allowing us to exploit within variation in health and income to address possible unobservables biasing estimates of the impact of health on income in the simple cross sectional setting household income is strongly influenced by the health of its members particularly in rural areas these findings could have important implications for health and economic policy making aimed at reducing the long standing urban rural economic gap and more comprehensively insuring the rural population against health and economic risk

statistical discrimination productivity and the height of immigrants building on the economic research that demonstrates a positive relationship between height and worker ability the author compares wage returns to height for immigrants and for natives to explore possible explanations for the positive wage height gradient using multiple data sets the article presents a robust empirical finding that the wage gains associated with height are almost twice as large for immigrants as for native born individuals this wage relationship occurs because the productivity gap between tall and short immigrants is greater than the productivity gap between tall and short native born workers the author next tests for the possibility that in the relative absence of other sources of information about immigrants employers place more importance on height for immigrants than for native born individuals the evidence does not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination based on height

an incentive model of the effect of parental income on children economists explain the positive relationship between parental income and children s outcomes using an investment model building on work in psychology and sociology this paper emphasizes the importance of child rearing practices which vary with income i argue that parents ability to mold their children s behavior through pecuniary incentives is limited at low incomes leading to lower outcomes and increased reliance on nonpecuniary mechanisms such as corporal punishment my model generates a positive relationship between parental income and children s outcomes especially at low incomes and endogenously produces a relationship between parental income and child rearing practices empirical work confirms these implications

height and earnings the role of cognitive and noncognitive skills we use large scale register data on 450 000 swedish males who underwent mandatory military enlistment at age 18 and a subsample of 150 000 siblings to examine why tall people earn more we show the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as family background and muscular strength for the height earnings relationship in addition we show that a substantial height premium remains after these factors have been accounted for which originates from very short people having low earnings this is mostly explained by the sorting of short people into low paid occupations which may indicate discrimination by stature

biological measures of the standard of living when economists investigate long term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product which has occupied center stage for over 50 years in recent decades however scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives this essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures life expectancy morbidity stature and certain features of skeletal remains to understand levels and changes in human well being people desire far more than material goods and in fact they are quite willing to trade or give up material things in return for better physical or psychological health for most people health is so important to their quality of life that it is useful to refer to the biological standard of living biological measures may be especially valuable for historical studies and for other research circumstances where monetary measures are thin or lacking a concluding section ruminates on the future evolution of biological approaches in measuring happiness

rising food prices and undernourishment a cross country inquiry households welfare in developing countries has been hit by dramatic food prices increases which occurred between 2005 and 2008 in this paper we adopt a partial equilibrium approach to analyze the short time effects of a staple food price increase on nutritional attainments as a measure of welfare the analysis consists of first approximating complete food demand systems and then performing household level micro simulations instead of focusing on a single country profile we provide a more complete snapshot by comparing the evidence through a cross country assessment made possible by the use of nationally representative household surveys comparability is assured by the adoption of the same methodological choices in the treatment of the micro data we find that food price spikes not only reduce the mean consumption of dietary energy but also worsen the distribution of food calories further deteriorating the nutritional status of populations we also discovered that access to agricultural land plays a significant role in ensuring adequate nutritional attainments in rural areas and surprisingly even in urban areas

war and stature growing up during the nigerian civil war the nigerian civil war of 1967 70 was precipitated by secession of the igbo dominated south eastern region to create the state of biafra it was the first civil war in africa the predecessor of many we investigate the legacies of this war four decades later using variation across ethnicity and cohort we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings

how the brazilian government can use public policies to induce recycling and still save money abstract public policies can leverage the recycling of materials however there is no clear guidance on how to use such policies and still spare public funds to fill this gap a multiple case study was undertaken in brazil eleven companies that can produce new products using the waste generated by their customers were investigated the findings contribute by suggesting how governments can economically use taxes sanctions incentives and other public instruments to induce recycling tax exemptions are not required when the waste recycled reduces the manufacturer s costs or generates revenue for customers who produce it and or for the scrap dealers who collect it sanctions or penalties imposed on the manufacturer s customers can increase the recycling efforts of such manufacturers when the recycling is technically feasible but not economically attractive sanctions are ineffective when wastes have a good market value or are widespread over millions of generation points for such cases the public policies should focus on community awareness campaigns and attention on waste pickers incentives for the technological development can be provided to wastes that present a good market value but do not have an economical recycling technology available granting resources to universities and technological institutes will help spread the solution to sme companies by better understanding how to apply public instruments the governments will be able to save funds on tax exemptions better define sanctions focus its community awareness campaigns focus its waste pickers support and better allocate funds to support the development of new recycling technologies

accounting for the effect of health on economic growth i use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on gdp per capita i employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health which i combine with cross country and historical data on height adult survival rates and age at menarche using my preferred estimate eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log gdp per worker by 9 9 percent and reduce the ratio of gdp per worker at the 90th percentile to gdp per worker at the loth percentile from 20 5 to 17 9 while this effect is economically significant it is also substantially smaller than estimates of the effect of health on economic growth that are derived from cross country regressions

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

ironing out deficiencies evidence from the united states on the economic effects of iron deficiency iron deficiency reduces productive capacity in adults and impairs cognitive development in children in 1943 the united states government required the fortification of bread with iron to reduce iron deficiency in the working age population during world war ii this nationwide fortification of grain products increased per capita consumption of iron by 16 percent i find that areas with lower levels of iron consumption prior to the mandate experienced greater increases in income and school enrollment in the 1940s a long term followup suggests that adults in 1970 with more exposure to fortification during childhood earned higher wages

inequality in sub saharan africa new data and new insights from anthropometric estimates reliable information on inequality within countries is highly scarce especially for less developed countries ldcs using anthropometric measures we extend the inequality database for sub saharan africa to no less than 28 countries over six five year periods from 1950 to 1980 and to some 200 regions within those countries in this process we also test in depth the validity of objections against the derivation of inequality measures from height data in a second step we test the determinants of inequality within and between the 200 regions under study our set of explanatory variables includes protein supply cash cropping industrial structure mineral resources distance to the countries capital urbanization education population density and ethnic fractionalization we find that monoculture cash cropping increases inequality whereas diversified cash cropping has the opposite effect

height health and inequality the distribution of adult heights in india this paper explores the relationship between adult heights and the distribution of income across populations of individuals there is a long literature that examines the relationship between mean adult heights and living standards if adult height is set by the balance between food intake and charges to disease in early childhood it is informative about economic and epidemiological conditions in childhood because taller populations are better off more productive and live longer the relationship between childhood conditions and adult height has become an important focus in the study of the relationship between health and wealth here i follow one of the tributaries of this main stream a relationship between income and height at the individual level has implications for the effects of income inequality on the distribution of heights these relationships parallel but are somewhat more concrete than the various relationships between income inequality and health that have been debated in the economic and epidemiological literatures richard g wilkinson 1996 angus deaton 2003 if height is an increasing but concave function of income average height will be negatively related to income inequality richard steckel 1995 income inequality will also have implications for the dispersion of height so that inequality in height might serve as an indicator of inequality of income in the absence of data on the latter just as mean height might serve as an indicator of mean income aravinda m guntupalli and joerg baten 2006 and alexander moradi and baten 2005 differences in height between subpopulations such as lords and vassals or highlanders and lowlanders may also provide information on the distribution of resources between such subpopulations carles boix and frances rosenbluth 2006 in section 2 below i present a theoretical discussion of what to expect in section 3 i provide an analysis of adult heights in india where i can look at the relationship across states between a mean heights and expenditure inequality b inequality in height and expenditure inequality c men s and women s heights the difference in heights between men and women is of considerable importance in its own right india has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world with around 55 percent of young children stunted a leading explanation for this is health discrimination against women vulimiri ramalingaswami urban jonsson and jon rohde 1996 if discrimination starts in early childhood and since all evidence suggests that there are regional differences in the treatment of women there should be clear traces in spatial patterns of relative heights between men and women

does the financing of extended producer responsibility influence economic growth abstract the question of how the financing of extended producer responsibility epr affects the overall performance of the economy is important as products covered by epr comprise an increasing part of the economy in this paper an overlapping generations olg model with endogenous growth is applied to the case and a comparison between two financing schemes an insurance solution and a pay as you go payg solution is made with respect to the effect on the level of production the growth rate the impact of a productivity shock and the risk exposure it is found that in the case of a funded solution both the level of production and the growth rate in production is higher than in the payg case and the short run effect of productivity shock is bigger the policy indication is clear epr should be attached to a financing scheme if welfare is to be maximised

fathers employment and sons stature the long run effects of a positive regional employment shock in south africa s mining industry abstracti exploit the unexpected increase in employment in 1975 1976 and 1977 in the south african homelands to compare the long term adult outcomes of children whose fathers benefited from the employment increase to those who did not using a standard difference in difference approach i find that the shock affected males who were either newborn or in utero at the time providing support to the fetal origins hypothesis and showing the importance of mother s nutrition the income increases did not raise household income above the poverty datum line explaining why older individuals were not affected this study provides previously unmeasured individual level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid an era when african living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection