gender bias and economic development in an endogenous growth model abstract this paper develops an endogenous growth model with an explicit gender choice to study interactions between gender bias and economic development both sex preference and differential human capital endowments are possible sources of gender bias human capital and sex ratios of men and women converge to values that are lower in the steady state growth equilibrium than in the stagnant equilibrium when old age support from children is absent and lower than in the steady state growth equilibrium when old age support is present the analysis shows the crucial role of perpetual growth in reducing gender gaps in terms of the sex ratio and human capital ratio of men and women simulation results mimic some important features in the time series of the us economy

marriage bequest and assortative matching in rural ethiopia abstract this article examines the determinants of human and physical capital at marriage using detailed data from rural ethiopia we find that assets brought to marriage are distributed in a highly unequal manner for first unions assets brought to marriage are positively associated with parents wealth indicating that a bequest motive affects assets at marriage parental wealth affects the inheritance of neither groom nor bride sibling competition from brothers affects grooms inheritance but sisters have no effect the marriage market is a major conduit for rural and gender inequality although avenues do exist for couples to accumulate wealth over their life cycle

does microcredit increase household welfare in the absence of microinsurance summary this study answers the question does a combination of microcredit and microinsurance improve the wellbeing of low income households we examine this challenge through heckman sample selection instrumental variable and treatment effect models the findings indicate that households using microcredit in combination with microinsurance derive significant gains in terms of welfare improvement microcredit may be good but its benefit to the poor is enhanced and sustained if the poverty trapping risks are covered with microinsurance to this extent combining microcredit with microinsurance will empower the poor to make a sustainable exit from poverty

child labor and agricultural shocks this paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and child labor in particular we investigate the extent to which transitory income shocks lead to increases in child labor and whether household asset holdings mitigate the effects of these shocks using data from a household panel survey in tanzania we find that both relationships are significant we investigate mechanisms that could account for these results including buffer stocks and borrowing

identification issues in the public private wage gap with an application to italy this paper reviews some of the standard assumptions that are imposed in order to estimate the average public private wage gap and that are mainly related to the possible selection of the sector there are two contributions to the existing public private wage gap literature one is a better understanding of the identified parameters standard estimators identify a local effect late which in general cannot be generalized to the entire population as instead is almost always done the other is the partial identification of the population average treatment effect with an instrumental variable to the best of my knowledge this is the first paper in this literature that employs bounds the technique is applied to male workers in italy for compliers late estimates a wage advantage from working in the public sector greater than 30 this return is within the narrowest bounds on the population average treatment effect that are consistent even with a much smaller gap about 15 or more

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

virtuous interactions in removing exclusion the link between foreign market access and access to education abstract we outline a methodology which aims to give an answer to the widespread demand of impact analyses by regulators or by funding agencies which need to evaluate the current and past performance of development projects and may lack time series evidence we devise a retrospective panel data approach to evaluate the dynamics of the effects of fair trade affiliation on the schooling decisions of a sample of thai organic rice producers across the past 20 years we find that the probability of school enrolment in families with more than two children is significantly affected by fair trade affiliation years we try to ascertain whether our finding is robust to endogeneity of producers choices of local cooperative affiliation and adoption of organic techniques the significant difference between pre and post fair trade affiliation performance documents that fair trade participation generates a significant break in the schooling decisions of affiliated households

economic development and gender equality is there a gender kuznets curve this research note examines the relationship between economic development and gender equality drawing on the concept of the kuznets curve the authors hypothesize that the relationship between economic development and gender inequality is curvilinear s shaped with three distinct stages in the first stage economic development improves gender equality because it enables greater female labor force participation an independent income stream increases women s intrahousehold bargaining power the opportunity to develop human capital confers greater political and social recognition in the second stage labor force stratification and gender discrimination encourage divergent male female income trajectories which decrease the opportunity costs of female labor force withdrawal and lend traction to social resistance against burgeoning gender norms consequently there is a deceleration in initial equality gains in the final stage gender equality again improves as greater educational participation and technological advancement provide new employment opportunities for women increase the opportunity costs of staying home and encourage the evolution of new social institutions and norms that overcome prior discriminatory practices the authors find support for this argument in statistical tests of the relationship between economic development and gender equality on a panel of 146 developing countries for the period 1980 2005 they employ four indicators that reflect distinct dimensions of women s political social and economic status they find economic development positively influences gender equality when per capita incomes are below 8 000 10 000 these equality gains level off or decline slightly in the second stage from 8 000 10 000 to about 25 000 30 000 beyond this level economic development is again associated with improvements in gender equality the key implication is that the effect of economic development on gender equality is contingent on the level of development policymakers and social activists should develop policy correctives to ensure that economic development confers improvements in gender equality across phases of development

financial services for microenterprises principles and institutions abstract this article argues for the use of a financial systems approach in the provision of financial services to the poor the experience of the last decade has produced a successful technology for credit delivery that utilizes sound financial principles as its basis that is understanding the needs of the client increasing efficiency by cutting administrative costs and using various techniques to motivate repayment savings receives equal emphasis as a financial service and several principles for its provision are discussed the institutional dimensions behind this approach focus on the need to achieve self sufficiency which the article frames as a four stage process finally the article outlines various factors related to creating financial institutions that reach the poor and the policy implications that these suggest

monotone instrumental variables with an application to the returns to schooling for fifty years econometric analyses of treatment response have made extensive use of instrumental variable iv assumptions holding that mean response is constant across specified subpopulations of a population of interest 2 yet the credibility of mean independence conditions and other iv assumptions has often been a matter of considerable disagreement with much debate about whether some covariate is or is not a valid instrument in an application of interest there is therefore good reason to consider weaker but more credible assumptions to this end we introduce monotone instlumental variable miv assumptions holding that mean response varies weakly monotonically across specified subpopulations we study the identifying power of these miv assumptions and give an empirical application the findings reported here add to the literature developing nonparametric bounds on treatment effects 3 this paper uses the same formal setup as manski 1997 there is a probability space j x2 p of individuals each member j of population j has observable covariates xi e x and a response function yj t y mapping the mutually exclusive and exhaustive treatments t e t into outcomes yj t e y person j has a realized treatment zj e t and a realized outcome y 1 y zi both of which are observable the latent outcomes yj t

the effect of child labor on learning achievement abstract this paper analyzes the effect of children s work on learning achievement its particular significance is that it goes beyond the analysis of the effects on school enrollment or attendance by using measures of skills learned in reading and mathematics the results show that work outside the household has a substantial effect on learning achievement although they confirm the accepted wisdom they introduce a new view of how that arises a large part of it is direct and not through school attendance the direct link could exist because of exhaustion or because of a diversion of interest away from academic concerns

does increasing women s schooling raise the schooling of the next generation the positive cross sectional relationship between the schooling of mothers and their children is substantially biased upward due to correlations between schooling and heritable ability as well as assortative mating an increase in the schooling of women would not have beneficial effects in terms of the schooling of children increased maternal schooling leads to reduced home time for mothers anticipating the consequences of investing in women s schooling requires attention to the role that schooling plays in the marriage market as well as to opportunities in the labor market for women

who benefits from job corps a distributional analysis of an active labor market program summary using recently developed econometric techniques to estimate quantile treatment effects qte and experimental data we examine the impact of job corps on earnings distribution our results indicate a great deal of heterogeneity in the effects of job corps the qtes show an increasing pattern along the earnings distribution with much more pronounced differences at the upper quantiles for males whites and ages 20 24 moreover we find the qtes to be very small at quantiles below the median for males ages 16 17 and 18 19 and non resident students we propose strong economic conditions and skill hypotheses to explain the heterogeneity observed over the earnings distribution copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

microcredit and the poorest of the poor theory and evidence from bolivia abstract we construct a theoretical framework that describes the social worth of a microfinance organization in terms of the depth worth to users cost to users breadth length and scope of its output we then analyze evidence of depth of outreach for five microfinance organizations in bolivia most of the poor households reached by the microfinance organizations were near the poverty line they were the richest of the poor group lenders had more depth of outreach than individual lenders the urban poorest were more likely to be borrowers but rural borrowers were more likely to be among the poorest

bounds on average and quantile treatment effects of job corps training on wages we review and extend nonparametric partial identification results for average and quantile treatment effects in the presence of sample selection these methods are applied to assessing the wage effects of job corps united states largest job training program targeting disadvantaged youth excluding hispanics our estimates suggest positive program effects on wages both at the mean and throughout the wage distribution across the demographic groups analyzed the statistically significant estimated average and quantile treatment effects are bounded between 4 6 and 12 percent and 2 7 and 14 percent respectively we also document that the program s wage effects vary across quantiles and demographic groups

learning but not earning the impact of job corps training on hispanic youth i introduction job corps jc is a federally funded training program for disadvantaged youth aged 16 24 yr that provides educational and vocational training life skills and job placement services with some exceptions jc participants reside at the corresponding jc facility through this comprehensive approach the goal of jc was to tackle the adverse effects of being raised under low socioeconomic conditions to enable disadvantaged youths obtain and keep well paying jobs from the middle to late 1990s the national job corps study njcs employed a randomized social experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of jc across various dimensions including employment and earnings educational achievement criminal behavior and health outcomes 1 the main finding of the njcs 48 mo after randomization reported in schochet burghardt and glazerman 2001 was that the treatment group earned on average a statistically significant 12 more per week than the control group however this effect was not homogeneous varying from 46 per week for whites and 23 for blacks to 15 for hispanics this last estimate was not statistically significant see their table d 14 2 these differential effects are especially puzzling given similar gains in measurable human capital across the three groups 3 since hispanics represent a significant and growing proportion of the u s population and disproportionately exhibit disadvantaged characteristics it is important to understand the heterogeneous labor market impacts of jc we trace these heterogeneous treatment effects to different local labor market conditions first we note that a higher and statistically significant level of labor market experience is gained by hispanics in the control group relative to the treatment group during the time of the njcs which does not happen among whites or blacks after adjusting for this labor market experience the estimated negative effects of jc for hispanics decrease considerably subsequently we show that the differential labor market outcomes of the three groups is in part due to the distinct local labor market conditions faced on average by each group and importantly due to the differential impact that those labor market conditions have on each group s earnings by randomization status specifically we find that a blacks and hispanics face higher local labor market unemployment rates lur that mitigate the potential gains from jc for them and b jc is able to shield white participants from adverse lur but not blacks and hispanics this study contributes to different strands of literature most labor market program evaluations in the literature generally focus on individuals that have been in the labor market for some time frequently avoiding the inclusion of youths such as in for example heckman et al 1998 and mueser troske and gorislavsky 2007 or doing separate analyses for adults and youths as in for example heckman et al 2000 and heckman and smith 1999 we add to this literature by focusing on young persons and stressing the importance of lock in effects as defined by van ours 2004 local labor market conditions and different early labor market dynamics across racial and ethnic groups recent work in lechner and wunsch 2006 lechner miquel and wunsch 2007 johansson 2001 kluve 2007 and others emphasize that the effects of active labor market programs in europe depend on the state of the economy typically finding a direct relationship between their effectiveness and the unemployment rate for the united states hotz imbens and klerman 2006 present evidence for california pointing to an inverse relationship between the labor market programs and the unemployment rate while most of the previous articles rely heavily on aggregate time series variation of economic conditions e g the unemployment rate we present new evidence for the united states exploiting large cross sectional variation of county specific local unemployment rates

does schooling cause growth a number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries a model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one s elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling the model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on mincerian returns to education the upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one third of the empirical cross country relationship the ability of reverse causality to explain this empirical relationship is also investigated

income and gender inequalities in asia testing alternative theories of development during the 1970s and 1980s debates raged about the effects of economic development on income inequality most dependency theorists viewed economic development as a two edged sword linking increasing income inequalities in third world countries to their high growth rates on the other side of the debate economists following simon kuznets along with sociologists of the modernization school claimed that income inequality increases at an early stage of development and later decreases as with advancing development incomes become more evenly distributed among the population 2 yet a third view held that the latter stage of development generally occurs with structural transformation a term used by hollis chenery as well as bruce f johnston and peter kilby to describe long term changes in the structure of demand production and employment which allows the transformation of a traditional mostly agricultural economy to a modem economic system with strength in agricultural manufacturing and service sectors 3 the empirical work on income inequality has not been related to work on other kinds of inequalities for example gender inequality nor have the results been used to contrast the different predictions of the different theories dependency versus kuznets versus structural transformation on the gender issue most of the empirical work in the women in development wid literature 4 however including our own previous efforts 5 fits within the theoretical framework of the dependency school better than it does within the framework of kuznets or structural transformation this is because most of the evidence documents third world women producers unequal access to modern inputs of production that would increase their yields and incomes if equal access were available to them the most famous of the wid studies have concluded that the benefits of economic development do

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

the pre programme earnings dip and the determinants of participation in a social programme implications for simple programme evaluation strategies the key to estimating the impact of a programme is constructing the counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence this problem becomes more complicated when agents such as individuals firms or local governments self select into the programme rather than being exogenously assigned to it this paper uses data from a major social experiment to identify what would have happened to the earnings of self selected participants in a job training programme had they not participated in it we investigate the implications of these earnings patterns for the validity of widely used before after and difference in differences estimators

child labour a review of recent theory and evidence with policy implications in recent years a growing number of authors have turned their attention to the question of why children work the purpose of this paper is to review some of the more recent theoretical and empirical research into the topic of child labour and to illustrate the fact that no one factor on its own can account for the phenomenon of child labour therefore policies aimed at eradicating child labour will need to address the broad range of underlying factors that contribute to the incidence of child labour such as poverty market imperfections and access to education

long run effects of youth training programs experimental evidence from argentina we study the effect of a job training program for low income youth in cordoba argentina the program included life skills and vocational training as well as internships with private sector employers participants were allocated by means of a public lottery we rely on administrative data on formal employment employment spells and earnings to establish the effects of the program in the short term 18 months but also exceptionally for programs of this type in latin america and in developing countries in general in the medium term 33 months and in the long term 48 months the results indicate sizable gains of about 8 percentage points in formal employment in the short term about 32 higher than the control group although these effects dissipate in the medium and in the long term contrary to previous results for similar programs in the region the effects are substantially larger for men although they also seem to fade in the long run program participants also exhibit earnings about 40 higher than those in the control group and an analysis of bounds indicates that these gains result from both higher employment levels and higher wages the detailed administrative records also allow us to shed some light on the possible mechanisms underlying these effects a dynamic analysis of employment transitions indicates that the program operated through an increase in the persistence of employment rather than from more frequent entries into employment the earnings effect and the higher persistence of employment suggest that the program was successful in increasing the human capital of participants although the transient nature of these results may also reflect better matches from a program induced increase in informal contacts or formal intermediation jel j08 j24 j68 o15

impact of microfinance on schooling evidence from poor rural households in bolivia summary channels for the influence of microfinance programs on a rural household s demand for schooling are identified income growth risk management child labor demand gender empowerment and parent information within a random utility framework a model of household consumption investment in education and borrowing suggests determinants at the individual household and regional levels of the probability of schooling gaps using data from two surveys of households of clients of microfinance organizations in bolivia regression models examine determinants of schooling gaps inferences about otherwise positive microfinance impacts identify potential negative effects of increased child labor demand which challenge usual assumptions and pose dilemmas for policymakers

the policy analysis of child labor a comparative study the policy analysis of child labour c grootaert h a patrinos modelling the determinants of child labour c grootaert child labour in cote d ivoire k cartwright child labour in urban bolivia k cartwright h a patrinos child labour in the philippines c sakellariou a lall policies to reduce child labour c grootaert h a patrinos

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

does health insurance reduce child labour and education gaps evidence from rwanda abstracta common practice of poor households to informally deal with risk is to allocate children s time away from school towards income generating activities or household production focussing on rwanda this study investigates whether the provision of formal health insurance helps to prevent this undesired risk coping strategy we find that children of households enrolled in health insurance work significantly less compared to those of not enrolled families and also have better educational achievements the results suggest that policy interventions which reduce household risk exposure may have additional benefits in terms of lower child labour supply and higher schooling levels

retraining for the unemployed and the quality of the job match in germany retraining is an important measure in active labour market policy providing unemployed individuals with extensive vocational training using administrative data we show that retrainin

do different types of assets have differential effects on child education evidence from tanzania to assess the conventional view that assets uniformly improve childhood development through wealth effects this paper tests whether different types of assets have different effects on child education the analysis indicates that household durables and housing quality have the expected positive effects but agricultural assets have adverse effects on highest grade completed and no effects on exam performance extending the standard agricultural household model by explicitly including child labor the study uses three waves of panel data from tanzania to estimate the effects of household assets on child education the analysis corrects for the endogeneity of assets and uses a hausman taylor instrumental variable panel data estimator to identify the effects of time invariant observables and more efficiently control for time invariant unobservables the negative effect of agricultural assets is more pronounced among rural children and children from farming households presumably due to the higher opportunity cost of their schooling

child labor and schooling responses to access to microcredit in rural bangladesh microcredit has been shown to be effective in reducing poverty in many developing countries however less is known about its effect on human capital formation in this paper we develop a model examining the relation between microcredit and child labour we then empirically examine the impact of access to microcredit on children s education and child labour using a new and large data set from rural bangladesh we address the selection bias using the instrumental variable method where the instrument relies on an exogenous variation in treatment intensity among households in different villages the results show that household participation in a microcredit program may increase child labour and reduce school enrolment the adverse effects are more pronounced for girls than boys younger children are more adversely affected than their older siblings and the children of poorer and less educated households are affected most adversely our findings remain robust to different specifications and methods and when corrected for various sources of selection bias

the effects of job corps training on wages of adolescents and young adults previous evaluations of job corps document disparate effects on the earnings of adolescents aged 16 19 and young adults aged 20 24 these are conjectured to be due to differential human capital accumulation within the program between these groups if correct the effect of the program on wages should be larger than that on earnings since wages more accurately reflect human capital we estimate bounds on average and quantile treatment effects of job corps on wages and find that the relative effects on both outcomes are similar casting some doubt on the conjecture that human capital is driving the disparate effects

commercialization and the balance of women s dual roles in non income pooling west african households barked on structural adjustment programs of which agricultural liberalization has been a major component as previously depressed farmgate prices are allowed to rise increasing incentives for farm households to produce marketed crops such liberalization has the side effect of accelerating commercialization through raising households real incomes it is expected to improve rural peoples physical well being both women and men in west african farm

the mystery of the vanishing benefits an introduction to impact evaluation this article provides an introduction to the concepts and methods of impact evaluation the author provides an intuitive explanation in the context of a concrete application the article takes the form of a short story about a fictional character s on the job training in evaluation ms speedy analyst is an economist in the ministry of finance in the fictional country of labas in the process of figuring out how to evaluate a human resource program targeted to the poor ms analyst learns the strengths and weaknesses of the main methods of ex post impact evaluation

did vietnam veterans get sicker in the 1990s the complicated effects of military service on self reported health abstract the veterans disability compensation vdc program which provides a monthly stipend to disabled veterans is the third largest american disability insurance program since the late 1990s vdc growth has been driven primarily by an increase in claims from vietnam veterans raising concerns about costs as well as health we use the draft lottery to study the long term effects of vietnam era military service on health and work in the 2000 census we find no evidence that military service affected overall employment rates or overall work limiting disability rates that is health conditions that make work difficult at the same time military service sharply increased federal transfer income especially for lower skilled white men among whom there was also a large negative impact on employment and a marked increase in disability rates the differential impact of vietnam era service on low skilled men cannot be explained by more combat or war theatre exposure for the least educated because high school graduates were at least as likely to be exposed to combat or war theatre as the less educated this leaves the relative attractiveness of vdc for less skilled men and the work disincentives embedded in the vdc system as a likely explanation for our findings

impacts of structural adjustment programs on african women farmers and female headed households the structural adjustment programs saps initiated by the international monetary fund imf and the world bank and supported by donors are stimulating many tropical african economies through an infusion of foreign exchange increased agricultural prices devaluation of overvalued currencies improved marketing policies trade liberalization and increased competition from the private sector recently however debates about the pros and cons of saps have ensued

improving identification of demand side obstacles to schooling findings from revealed and stated preference models in two ssa countries summary efforts to expand primary education have shifted from a policy focus on supply building schools to demand side policies human capital theory posits that common demand side obstacles are high direct costs opportunity costs and low perceived benefits constructs that are difficult to measure empirically this study compares strategies to estimate obstacles to schooling through revealed and stated preferences using similar household survey data from two sub saharan african countries the typical determinants of schooling model underestimates demand side obstacles and gender differences and additional useful information for theory testing and policy is derived from analyzing parents stated preferences as well

determinants of nonfarm earnings of farm based husbands and wives in northern ghana the nonfarm work participation decisions of married men and women in rural northern ghana were jointly and separately estimated for married couples through a bivariate probit using recent survey data selectivity bias was corrected for in estimating wage offer and labor supply equations using heckman s procedure education experience infrastructure distance to the capital and population density as well as interactions between education and infrastructure and between education and distance to the city were found to be significantly related to the probability of nonfarm labor market participation wages and the amount of nonfarm labor performed with significant differences by gender

preference heterogeneity power and intrahousehold decision making in rural malaysia abstract this paper examines conjugal household responsibilities roles preference heterogeneity and intrahousehold power relations in rural malay families its three major contributions are to provide an effective initial indicator of separate spheres within the family develop and implement a method for measuring the extent of conjugal preference heterogeneity and illustrate the value of combining this direct measure of preference heterogeneity with a measure of power in estimating household expenditure patterns for three major items food schooling and housing improvement these three measurement innovations applied to the rural malaysia context demonstrate the potential for more direct efforts to model and measure intrahousehold decisions

is a turnaround in africa possible without helping african women to farm a turnaround in africa is not possible in the short run of at least 1 decade without helping women farmers with hand hoes gain equal access to basic agricultural inputs and resources this is so because women are such active participants in farming it is estimated that for 82 countries women constitute 46 of the agricultural labor force in sub saharan africa and 31 of the force in north africa and the middle east in the long run however a turnaround is possible without helping women to farm because women farmers will be displaced as agricultural intensification occurs but because the intensification process will be extremely uneven both within and between african countries the displacement of women farmers will also be uneven thus their displacement will be blocked or slowed down in regions with sufficient land resources and land extensive family systems extensive male out migration lack of control of animal diseases or the presence of gender neutral incentives to produce in conclusion women farmers in these regions will still be the norm while those in other regions will be displaced as intensification required by a turnaround proceeds to insure that women farmers are not displaced policy planners at international national and local levels should communicate with technical experts and extension specialists about the need to incorporate women as agricultural producers with full access to yield increasing inputs in development projects

changes in the distribution of male and female wages accounting for employment composition using bounds this paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of nonrandom selection into work we show that worst case bounds can be informative however because employment rates in the united kingdom are often low they are not informative about changes in educational or gender wage differentials thus we explore ways to tighten these bounds using restrictions motivated from economic theory with these assumptions we find convincing evidence of an increase in inequality within education groups changes in educational differentials and increases in the relative wages of women

the health effects of military service evidence from the vietnam draft i introduction the impact of military service on long term health is reemerging as a vital policy question as the united states conducts major military operations in iraq and afghanistan health professionals have raised concerns that significant numbers of the veterans of these conflicts are experiencing psychological and physical health problems the department of veterans affairs estimates that anywhere from 12 to 20 of servicemen returning from iraq suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder which the medical literature suggests can have a long term adverse effect on an individual s health in the 2005 fiscal year the department of veterans affairs spent about 32 billion dollars on medical care for veterans a substantial liability for the american taxpayer thus understanding the long term health impacts of military service is important both for allocating treatment resources and for correctly estimating the cost of waging these two wars comparing the health of veterans with that of nonveterans may not give us credible estimates of the effect of military service people voluntarily enlisting in the military differ in their observable characteristics from those who do not these observable differences between veterans and nonveterans leave us concerned that cross sectional estimates of the long term health consequences of military service will be biased by systematic differences in the unobservable characteristics of the two groups for this reason we use the draft lottery implemented during the vietnam war as an instrument for military service the draft lottery required randomly selected men born between 1944 and 1952 to report for possible induction into the military we use confidential versions of the 19742004 national health interview surveys nhis 1 to examine the impact of military service on veterans health we focus on the 67 608 men who were born between 1950 and 1952 because as we document this is the cohort most affected by the vietnam draft lottery we begin with a cross sectional comparison of veterans and nonveterans which reveals that veterans are in systematically worse health than nonveterans and that these health disparities increase with age these estimates probably overstate the causal effect of military service because veterans differ systematically from nonveterans on dimensions such as education that are strongly associated with adverse health when we correct for this problem using draft status to instrument for military service we find that despite a very strong first stage relationship between draft eligibility and military service the 2 stage least squares 2sls estimates of the impact of military service on health are fairly imprecise for most of the outcomes we examine the confidence intervals from the 2sls regressions containing both zero and the point estimate from the cross sectional regression this paper makes two contributions to the literature first unlike the cross sectional literature on the impact of military service on health the instrumental variables approach used in this paper provides unbiased estimates second this paper documents that though the vietnam lottery very significantly increased military service it led to only a modest increase in combat exposure 2 in the following section we discuss the existing literature on veterans health and on the impact of the vietnam era draft in section iii we describe our primary data source the nhis in section iv we discuss the research methodology and some of the issues that complicate the use of draft eligibility as an instrument section v discusses our results and section vi concludes ii previous literature there is a significant literature documenting the disproportionate prevalence of health problems among military veterans hoge et al 2004 find that mental health problems are common in veterans who served in iraq and afghanistan

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled does child labour displace schooling evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy conducted between 1995 and 1996 in bangladesh the study observed that the subsidy increases schooling but its effect on child labour is ambiguous the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy the reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys girls represents about one quarter eighth of the increase in their school enrollment rate

risk financial markets and human capital in a developing country this paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation we examine how child school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural india to pinpoint market imperfections we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic as well as to anticipated and unanticipated income shocks our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self insurance but one which does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average

household income and child schooling in vietnam the stronger are the associations between household income and child schooling the lower is intergenerational social mobility and the less equal is opportunity this study estimates the associations between household income and children s school success in vietnam the estimates indicate that these associations are considerable this article also investigates some ways in which policies relate to household incomes school fees are progressive but school fees are only about one third of what households pay directly to schools and are a much smaller proportion of a household s total school related expenditures total household expenditures paid directly to schools increase with household income less proportionately than do school fees alone so the overall structure of such payments is less progressive than is the structure of school fees because school enrollment is positively related to household income moreover the structure of school fees is less progressive for the entire population than for the selected subset that has children enrolled in school further the two school quality measures that have the strongest positive association with children s school success are much more available to higher income households meaning that higher income households have greater school expenditures in part because they are obtaining higher quality schooling and not because charges for the same quality schooling are progressive across income classes

income distribution and development some stylized facts in recent years the relationship between income distribution and the process of development has come under increasing scrutiny much of the debate has focused on the hypothesis originally advanced by simon kuznets that the secular behavior of inequality follows an inverted u shaped pattern with inequality first increasing and then decreasing with development this hypothesis has become so much a part of the conventional wisdom on this subject that it has generated considerable skepticism about the welfare implications of the development process indeed on some interpretations developing countries face the grim prospect not just of increasing relative inequality but also of declining absolute incomes for the lower income groups

rethinking the effects of microcredit on household welfare in cambodia abstractthis article analyses the effects of microcredit on household welfare in terms of household expenditure per capita in cambodia with data from the cambodia socio economic survey carried out in 2014 the analysis describes the effects via formal and informal lending sectors accounting for endogenous selection bias arising from unobserved factors and for structural differences between borrowers and non borrowers in terms of expenditure functions the findings suggest that microcredit in both sectors reduces household expenditure

the impact of microcredit on child education quasi experimental evidence from rural china abstractthis article assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children s educational outcomes by using household panel data 2000 and 2004 in north west rural china the unobservables between borrowers and non borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic regression discontinuity designs the static analysis reveals significant positive impact of microcredit on schooling years in 2000 only and no influence on academic performance for either wave the dynamic analysis shows progressive treatment effects on both longer schooling years and higher average scores formal microcredit improves education in the longer term compared to the short term and hence may help relaxing the grip of educational poverty traps

do parents favor boys in an optimizing model of parental allocation systematic differences in human capital investments betwen the sexes may originate in at least 3 ways 1 parents may respond to expected gender wage differentials 2 parents may respond to systematic differences by gender in the price of human capital investments 3 parental preferences may favor girls or boys in the sense that they value identical outcomes at the same cost more highly for one sex than for the other this paper analyzes the role of parental preferences in general and unequal concern in particular in the allocation of human capital investments among children the authors generalize their earlier model of the human capital investments among children to incorporate the possibility that the returns to such investments may include not only the childs own ecpected earnings but also the expected earnings of his or her spouse thus the model assumes that parents may value returns that accrue trough the marriage market as well as through education the relevant returns to education may include marrying a spouse with higher expected earnings the empirical analysis indicates that gender wage differentials like endowment differentials are mildly reinforced by the parental allocation of human capital investments marriage market outcomes are significant determinants of the allocation of human capital investments among children there is no evidence that parental preferences favor boys this study shows that parental preferences either exhibit equal concern or slightly favor gils

sri lanka can conditional cash transfer programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study can conditional cash transfer cct programs serve as safety nets in keeping children at school and from working when exposed to shocks conducted the program started in 1997 and still exists today in sri lanka the study observed that income shocks on poor households are known to induce parents to take their children out of school and send them to work when other risk coping instruments are insufficient cct programs where the condition is on school attendance have been shown to be effective in increasing educational achievements and reducing child work shocks are highly prevalent and children have irregular periods of school enrollment children who are taken out of school are less likely to re enroll

training wages and sample selection estimating sharp bounds on treatment effects this paper empirically assesses the wage effects of the job corps program one of the largest federally funded job training programs in the u s even with the aid of a randomized experiment the impact of a training program on wages is difficult to study because of sample selection a pervasive problem in applied microeconometric research wage rates are only observed for those who are employed and employment status itself may be affected by the training program this paper develops an intuitive trimming procedure for bounding average treatment effects in the presence of sample selection in contrast to existing methods the procedure requires neither exclusion restrictions nor a bounded support for the outcome of interest identification results estimators and their asymptotic distribution are presented the bounds suggest that the program raised wages consistent with the notion that the job corps raises earnings by increasing human capital rather than solely through encouraging work the estimator is generally applicable to typical treatment evaluation problems in which there is nonrandom sample selection attrition copyright wiley blackwell