how reliable are household expenditures as a proxy for permanent income implications for the income nutrition relationship using short run expenditures from household surveys as a proxy may create attenuated estimates of the impact of permanent income on economic outcomes we use repeated observations to calculate reliability ratios and estimate errors in variables regressions of the impact of income on nutrition we find significant responses to income in contrast to previous influential studies

nonparametric and parametric analysis of calorie consumption in tanzania abstract the empirical literature on the demand for calories in developing countries suggests mixed results regarding the role of income and other socioeconomic characteristics on calorie demand this study employs both nonparametric and parametric methods to examine the impact of household expenditure and other socioeconomic variables on household demand for calories in tanzania using recent survey data the parametric methods include estimation strategies that ensure consistent estimates in the presence of behavioral endogeneity and measurement error under each estimation strategy we employ we find a strongly significant and positive relationship between household expenditure and calorie demand lending support to conventional wisdom that income growth can alleviate inadequate calorie intake the results also show a negative and significant relationship between food prices and calorie demand suggesting that effectively targeted food subsidies for very poor households may play a role in improving their calorie intake

crises food prices and the income elasticity of micronutrients estimates from indonesia the 2008 global food price crisis and more recent food price spikes have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion the effects of such shocks on poverty and malnutrition analysis of the income elasticities of micronutrients and their changes during food price crises can shed light on the potential effectiveness of cash transfer and nutrition supplement programs this article examines these issues using data from two cross sectional household surveys in indonesia taken before 1996 and soon after 1999 the 1997 98 economic crisis which led to a sharp increase in food prices first using nonparametric and regression methods the article examines how the income elasticity of calories from starchy staples as a share of total calories differs between the two survey rounds second the article estimates income elasticities of important nutrients in indonesia the analysis finds that although summary measures such as the income elasticity of the starchy staple ratio might not change during crises this stability masks important differences across individual nutrients in particular income elasticities of some key micronutrients such as iron calcium and vitamin b1 are significantly higher in a crisis year than in a normal year yet the income elasticities of others such as vitamin c remain close to zero these results suggest that cash transfer programs might be even more effective during crises to ensure the consumption of essential micronutrients but to ensure that all key micronutrients are consumed nutrition supplement programs are also likely required jel classification codes i12 o12 d12 e31 keywords income elasticity crisis prices micronutrients vitamin c starchy staple ratio

impact of income on nutrient intakes implications for undernourishment and obesity the relationship between income and nutrient intake is explored nonparametric panel and quantile regressions are used engle curves for calories fat and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase elasticities range from 0 10 to 0 25 with fat having the highest elasticities countries in higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in lower quantiles results predict significant cumulative increases in calorie consumption which are increasingly composed of fats though policies aimed at poverty alleviation and economic growth may assuage hunger and malnutrition they may also exacerbate problems associated with obesity

food preferences and nutrition in rural bangladesh t he dietary choice of households near subsistence levels of nutrient intake is one of obvious policy importance in many countries such as bangladesh national goals are set in terms of nutritional intake and there is heavy intervention in the markets for foods however little is known about the manner in which food preferences vary with food expenditure and nutrient intake the design of efficient programs to aid nutritionally deficient households in attaining minimal levels of nutrient intake requires information on all ownand cross price elasticities for both target and non target groups the net effect of a food price subsidy on the consumption of food nutrients cannot be predicted without knowledge of the complete elasticity matrix results presented below demonstrate that substitution effects can be so strong that the subsidization of certain foods quite often reduces nutrient consumption in this study demand equations for nine foods which allow for extremely flexible consumer price response are estimated from the individual budgets of 5 750 rural bangladeshi households estimation at the household level is preferred because it more readily permits the incorporation of household composition variables into the demand analysis such as household size occupation and employment status that are typically lost in aggregation there is also a greater range and variation in expenditure levels than found in grouped data this is of particular importance in the study of nutritional well being as it is the poorest households which are of special interest moreover the household sample provides sufficient degrees of freedom to estimate a simple varying parameter model which requires the estimation of 270 parameters previous econometric analysis of income class specific dietary choice has been limited and not altogether satisfactory pinstrup anderson de londono and hoover 1976 estimated complete sets of price elasticities for different income strata using frisch s scheme in order to study the impact of changes in relative prices on nutrient consumption their results are suspect because of the assumption of want independence necessary for this methodology to be valid alderman and timmer 1980 who were also concerned with studying the relationship between food price policy and nutrient intake by income classes econometrically estimated separate price coefficients for each income group by including slope dummy variables in their demand equations for rice and cassava in indonesia the inclusion of these dummy variables revealed surprisingly large differences in compensated price response across income groups although their results support the notion that poorer households respond differently to prices than the rich the limitations of their data constrained them to consider only two foods and to specify changes in price response which are discontinuous with respect to income i the formulation and estimation of the food demand equations is discussed in section ii below section iii presents the results of the estimation and discusses the nutritional implications of movements in relative food prices and other exogenous variables section iv summarizes our findings

international migration and trade agreements the new role of ptas this paper provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between preferential trade agreements ptas and bilateral migration flows building on the empirical literature on the determinants of migration flows i estimate a modified gravity model to assess the role of ptas and their content on bilateral migration flows using a sample of 29 oecd destination countries over the period 1998 2008 i show a strong positive effect of ptas on bilateral migration flows i find that the content of ptas also matters when visa and asylum and labour market related provisions are included in ptas this further stimulates bilateral migration flows different estimation strategies including instrumental variables are employed to address the potential endogeneity bias problems related to ptas and their content

nutritional status during an economic crisis evidence from russia between 1996 and 1998 russia experienced a spectacular decline in economic activity which was followed by a dramatic rebound between 1998 and 2000 we use panel data to examine the impact of variation in household resources on six dimensions of nutritional status distinguishing longer run from short term fluctuations in resources nutritional status is very resilient to short term variation in household resources gross energy intake adult weight and child stature change very little as expenditure deviates from its long run average longer run resources have a substantively large positive and significant effect on energy intake diet quality adult weight and child stature the evidence indicates that individuals and households are able to weather short term fluctuations in economic resources at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake increased globalisation has resulted in many less developed countries becoming more integrated into world markets this integration carries both benefits and costs for the populations of those countries an oft cited cost is elevated risk of exposure to economic fluctuations which has been manifest in several spectacular economic crises across the globe in the last few decades there is however little evidence on the extent to which individuals and families are able to mitigate deleterious effects of these economic upheavals on their well being in spite of its importance for understanding the consequences of globalisation this article provides new evidence on this issue specifically we examine the relationship between several dimensions of nutritional well being and variation in household resources during the russian economic crisis in the late 1990s the economies of the former soviet bloc have been especially volatile since the transition to market based economies which began in the early 1990s nowhere has this been more true than in russia where in the last half of 1998 real gdp collapsed by around 30 and then rapid growth brought the economy back to its pre crisis level by 2000 the time path of changes in gdp is closely mimicked by changes in the incomes and expenditures of russian households using extremely rich longitudinal household survey data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms we examine the impact of these large fluctuations in household resources on nutrient intake and on anthropometric markers of nutritional status at the individual level in so doing we address an important issue in the literature regarding the extent to which households in low income settings are able

iceland on the rocks the mass political economy of sovereign debt resettlement we undertake an individual level analysis of mass political behavior toward sovereign debt resettlement by leveraging the unique circumstances of a 2011 referendum on debt repayment in iceland this allows us to engage broader questions about mass international political economy against the recent thrust of a growing literature we find evidence of material economic pocketbook effects self interest on voting behavior operating alongside symbolic sociotropic and partisan political logics contrary to expectations these self interest effects are not conditional on voter sophistication we conclude that conventional sampling frames may be inappropriate for understanding contemporary democratic contestation over international economic policy

who is against immigration a cross country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants abstract this paper empirically analyzes economic and noneconomic determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries the two survey data sets used covering a wide range of developed and developing countries make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country level attributes in particular theory predicts that the correlation between pro immigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it otherwise results based on direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition are consistent with these predictions noneconomic variables also are correlated with immigration attitudes but they don t alter significantly the labor market results

an analysis of childhood malnutrition in rural india role of gender income and other household characteristics there are controversies regarding the role of individual and household characteristics in childhood nutritional status measured by anthropometric indicators using a nutrition index based on weight for age of children in rural india the paper re examines this issue ordered probit estimates of nutritional status suggest female literacy improves the nutritional status of boys at the cost of girls while higher per capita current income improves that of both boys and girls though the impact is higher for boys however effect of income is not robust when we use instruments of longer run income but more income and literacy give more ways to discriminate between boys and girls

no man left behind effects of emigration prospects on educational and labour outcomes of non migrants the development impacts of emigration are largely determined by the education of those who stay behind departure of workers leads to a direct loss of human capital but opportunities for emigration also raise expected returns to education i examine these effects by considering the introduction of education as a selection criterion to recruit nepalese men in the british army this change raised educational investments by 1 15 years and increased the average education of men living in nepal even after allowing for emigration despite not being selected in the british army or emigrating elsewhere these non migrants benefited directly from additional schooling

humanitarian crises and adolescent well being knowledge gaps and prospects adolescence constitutes the second and final window of human growth and a period of specific vulnerabilities such as early pregnancy early marriage hiv infection suicide violence alcohol and drugs only a limited body of research investigates the effects of humanitarian crises on the human capital and well being of adolescents the evidence focuses on the short term effects of conflict and to a lesser extent natural disasters on education physical health and nutrition but not on mental health most analyses examine the situations of individuals exposed in utero and young childhood but rarely during adolescence typically missing are robust empirical identification strategies and estimates on heterogeneous effects across age or gender the lack of quality data and challenges in defining adolescence establishing causality or ensuring ethical research explain the knowledge gaps possible ways to expand the evidence base include mixing georeferenced data on individual location with georeferenced data on crises sharpening quasi experimental analytical techniques and reconsidering the current timing of demographic data collection now spanning 4 or 5 year intervals the failure to make such adjustments will end by ignoring specific vulnerabilities among adolescents and render sustainable progress in well being globally narrowing inequalities and guaranteeing human rights to all more difficult to achieve

catastrophic natural disasters and economic growth this paper examines the short and long run average causal impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth by combining information from comparative case studies the counterfactual of the cases studied is assessed by constructing synthetic control groups taking advantage of the fact that the timing of large sudden natural disasters is an exogenous event it is found that only extremely large disasters have a negative effect on output both in the short and long run however this result appears in two events where radical political revolutions followed the natural disasters once these political changes are controlled for even extremely large disasters do not display any significant effect on economic growth it is also found that smaller but still very large natural disasters have no discernible effect on output

international trade agreements and international migration despite large potential economic gains bilateral and multilateral negotiations focusing on liberalisation of migration have not shared the high profile of international trade negotiations and agreements migration and trade have been traditionally viewed rather separately and the relevance of the many and complex interdependencies has been given remarkably little attention in the literature to date in this article we focus on the two way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross border trade and investment liberalisation of international trade in services and in the movement of people potentially offers much greater economic gains than liberalisation of remaining barriers to goods trade however progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty the world trade organization s general agreement on trade in services gats has yielded little real progress so far and negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalising the movement of labour we discuss a range of specific examples focusing particularly on the interesting case of new zealand we find that trade agreements are increasingly including agreements on migration though typically favouring temporary migration and involving numerically modest quotas we conclude that migration regulatory frameworks are likely to be further and more strongly linked to trade and investment agreements in the future particularly given changing economic and demographic forces the primary focus of migration policies may nonetheless remain different from that of trade policies while further migration liberalisation is likely to be through bilateral and regional agreements it will be important to try to lock in the gains of such agreements while simultaneously working to consolidating these in a way that will help to facilitate future multilateral agreement

the economics of food aid under subsistence farming with an application to malawi abstract we investigate how food aid affects price and production of staple food with a partial equilibrium model with non separable production and consumption the model captures the key characteristics of sub saharan africa subsistence economies simulations generate negative but also positive food aid elasticities of production conditions are identified which mitigate the negative impact and support a positive impact the share of domestic food production in total staple food demand and the share of income from staple food production in total household income are key determinants price and production equations estimated with a panel of district data of the malawi maize market for the period 1999 2010 show a small positive impact of food aid large negative impacts of food aid are not likely given production and income shares and behavioural responses

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

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

long run effects and intergenerational transmission of natural disasters a case study on the 1970 ancash earthquake abstract this study estimates the effects of the 1970 ancash earthquake on human capital accumulation on the affected and subsequent generation 37 years after the shock using peruvian census of 1993 and 2007 the main finding is that males affected by the earthquake in utero completed on average 0 5 years less schooling while females affected by the earthquake completed 0 8 years less schooling moreover those affected by the earthquake also fare far worse in the marriage market and become parents at a much younger age in addition children of mothers affected at birth by the earthquake have 0 4 less years of education while those whose fathers were affected at birth show no effects other outcomes also suggest that welfare of the affected individuals has been negatively impacted in the long run this research supports previous literature on shocks in early childhood providing evidence of the existence of intergenerational transmission of shocks

does the welfare state affect individual attitudes toward immigrants evidence across countries abstract this paper analyzes welfare state determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries and their interaction with labor market drivers of preferences we consider two mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of immigration under the first model immigration has a larger impact on high income individuals while under the second one low income individuals are those most affected individual attitudes are consistent with the first welfare state model and with labor market determinants in countries where immigration is unskilled income is negatively correlated with pro immigration preferences while skill is positively correlated with them these relationships are reversed in economies characterized by skilled migration

estimating the demand for calories in india this article examines the long run relationship between per capita calorie intake per capita income and food prices using aggregate data for india 1961 1992 cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0 34 while the food price elasticity is insignificant thus economic growth in india as measured by increasing per capita income has significantly improved calorie intake future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition however significant improvements in calorie intake cannot be made directly by food subsidies a further result is that calorie intake is granger caused by income and not vice versa income generation is unconstrained by calorie intake

preferences for international redistribution the divide over the eurozone bailouts why do voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries despite the prominence of public opinion in the ongoing debate over the eurozone bailouts voters preferences on the topic are poorly understood we conduct the first systematic analysis of this issue using observational and experimental survey data from germany the country shouldering the largest share of the eu s financial rescue fund testing a range of theoretical explanations we find that individuals own economic standing has limited explanatory power in accounting for their position on the bailouts in contrast social dispositions such as altruism and cosmopolitanism robustly correlate with support for the bailouts the results indicate that the divide in public opinion over the bailouts does not reflect distributive lines separating domestic winners and losers instead the bailout debate is better understood as a foreign policy issue that pits economic nationalist sentiments versus greater cosmopolitan affinity and other regarding concerns

what determines individual trade policy preferences abstract this article provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade policy preferences using individual level survey data for the united states there are two main empirical results first we find that factor type dominates industry of employment in explaining support for trade barriers second we find that home ownership also matters for individuals trade policy preferences independent of factor type home ownership in counties with a manufacturing mix concentrated in comparative disadvantage industries is correlated with support for trade barriers this finding suggests that in addition to current factor incomes driving preferences as in standard trade models preferences also depend on asset values

trade aid and migrations some basic policy issues the link between trade policy and international migration is explored using data from the united states and europe we conclude that restrictive trade policies in industrialised countries have most likely added to migration pressures we then turn to the broader question of the effects of income growth in the sending countries on the propensity to migrate we argue that in relatively poor countries an increase in income will be associated with higher migration flows for middle income countries however income growth will lead to lower migrations in the medium run therefore the relationship between development levels as measured by gdp per capita and the propensity to migrate follows an inverse u pattern econometric analysis of aggregate migration flows from southern europe provides considerable support for such conjecture excerpt

bridging trade theory and labour econometrics the effects of international migration this paper surveys current theoretical and empirical research on international migration with a particular emphasis on the links between trade theory and labour empirics

the effect of price and income changes on food energy intake in sri lanka data is used to analyze the food acquisition behavior of households from a 1980 81 survey designed to be nationally sectorally and regionally representative of sri lanka the poor are shown to be much more responsive to price and income changes than other income groups the urban population generally exhibits lower income elasticities of demand for food commodities the poor appear to efficient substitutors thereby mitigating the effects of a price change on caloric intake the important exception is rice whose elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to price was about 4 times higher than for any other commodity the reluctance of households to substitute for rice even when faced with rising prices coupled with its large budget share show rice to be the most important consumption good higher rice prices are an important determinant of poverty for landless and urban workers moderating food prices preferably through technological change is a key ingredient to raising consumption among the poor simulations show that even if there are rapid and proportional increases in expenditures of all income groups this will not dramatically increase caloric intake among the poor however if the absolute value of the increase in real expenditures were distributed equally to all households there would be a marked increase in the of households consuming an adequate diet

the indian public distribution system as provider of food security evidence from child nutrition in andhra pradesh abstract we study whether a sudden increase of the price of rice supplied by the indian public distribution system in andhra pradesh a large indian state had a negative impact on child nutrition a few months after the price increase a health survey started to record weight for a large sample of children the data collection continued for several months so that children measured later lived for a longer period of time in a less favorable price regime using different estimation techniques we find that longer exposure to high prices are not accompanied by worse nutritional status as measured by weight for age

should we have a wto for international migration the international movement of labour remains much more restricted than movement of goods or capital and the worldwide economic gains to liberalizing migration are large this paper asks whether those gains could be realized through better international cooperation on migration along the lines of the wto for trade although public opinion is marginally more negative towards the liberalization of migration than of trade the key impediment is the lack of a basis for reciprocity in negotiations over migration and this is because migration is largely driven by absolute advantage rather than by comparative advantage as in the case of trade consequently there is no basis for wto style negotiations over migration and therefore no grounds for reforming the international architecture in the hope of fostering liberalization timothy j hatton

joint determination of food consumption and production in rural sierra leone estimates of a household firm model abstract this paper investigates the determination of food consumption for rural households in sierra leone that produce the foods which they consume a household firm model is estimated with seven commodities including five foods non foods and labor as compared to three commodities in past studies such food disaggregation permits tracing of the effects of socioeconomic variables on household nutrient availability household specialization in production is such that censored data is a problem a tobit approach is used to correct for this for most crops the own price effects on consumption remain negative when a price change is allowed to shift the budget constraint by effecting the profits from home production elasticities of calorie availability with respect to toal expenditure are found to be sizeable varying little by expenditure group the price elasticities of calorie availability are generally positive however an important exception occurs for price of the staple food rice this exception has several important policy implications which are explored

program conditionality and food security the impact of progresa and procampo transfers in rural mexico this paper examines the progresa and procampo cash transfer programs in mexico and evaluates their impact on household food security and nutrition these two programs differ in their targeting and design progresa is aimed at women and program conditionality is linked to current consumption and human capital investment procampo benefits male farmers and program conditionality is linked to agricultural production the main question addressed by the paper is whether a cash transfer program geared to agricultural production can have the same impact on food security as a cash transfer program geared to consumption through purchases our results suggest that monetary payments linked to a productive asset land can have as large or larger impact on food security as cash transfers not linked to a productive asset we show that both programs boost total food consumption and caloric intake in similar proportions however increased food security is achieved through different channels for progresa through purchases while for procampo through investment in home production this suggests that the choice of program design depends on objectives beyond total food consumption and caloric intake such as consumption from specific food categories diversity of food consumption investment in agricultural production and the degree of access to retail food markets

village banking and maternal and child health evidence from ecuador and honduras abstract many microcredit institutions bundle credit with health education or other programs this paper reviews arguments on such tie ins and concludes that net benefits are possible but requires empirical testing quasi experimental data from project hope s health banks and credit only village banks are then examined the paper presents evidence that health practices do not improve automatically with greater wealth in honduras results show that health bank participation is robustly associated with reduced subsequent conditional child diarrhea probability but in no specification does credit only bank participation have this effect in ecuador results suggest a larger effect of credit only banks in both countries health bank participation significantly raises subsequent healthcare over credit only participation and at least reduces the tendency to switch from breast feeding to bottle feeding as income rises effects on expenditures are ambiguous there is no clear link between tie ins and bank performance

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

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

investment in schooling and the marriage market we present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns the labor market return resulting from higher wages and a marriagemarket return defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles this asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses when the labor market returns to schooling rises home production demands less time and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken more women may invest in schooling than men

assessing the nonlinearity of the calorie income relationship an estimation strategy with new insights on nutritional transition in vietnam abstract assessing the nonlinearity of the calorie income relationship is a crucial issue when evaluating policies aimed at fighting against malnutrition a natural choice would be to adopt a fully nonparametric specification of the relationship in order to let the data reveal its nonlinearity but we would be faced with the problem of the curse of dimensionality due to the presence of many control variables in addition to income here we first propose to estimate generalized additive models where only income is supposed to enter nonlinearly in the specification second we use a recent cross validation procedure in order to choose among various competing specifications including the parametric double log specification widely used in the literature in addition to gam specifications this methodology is implemented for each of the six waves of the vietnam household living standard survey from 2004 to 2014 the calorie income relationship is nonlinear whatever the wave a strong response of calorie intake to an increase in income for poorest households is highlighted showing that there is still room for income based policies to fight against malnutrition a byproduct of this methodology is the decomposition of the evolution of average calorie intake between the two waves in the part due to population change and that coming from the change in calorie income relationship shedding new light on the nutritional transition in vietnam

why are people more pro trade than pro migration i analyze individual attitudes towards trade and immigration in comparative terms i find that individuals are on average more pro trade than pro immigration across several countries i identify a key source of this difference the cleavage in trade preferences absent in immigration attitudes between individuals working in traded as opposed to non traded sectors

food demand studies in sub saharan africa a survey of empirical evidence abstract the recent empirical food demand studies on sub saharan africa show significant advances in demand specification and methodology especially in the application of less restrictive and theoretically consistent flexible functional forms the findings to date establish some broad patterns on effect of income household demography and life cycle location and prices on food demand patterns however the numerical values of the demand estimates are less generalizable because of an insufficient number of data points to separate the true demand component from other confounding factors which are linked to differences in modeling and estimation of demand relations the priority for future research is to generate sufficiently detailed demand estimates that have a high utility for disaggregated policy analysis but are based on a theoretically consistent and comparable methodology

farm level pathways to improved nutritional status global national and local policies and programs for agricultural development arerecurrently justified based on their alleged role in improving food and nutrition security however strikingly little evidence is available to prove that a direct household level linkbetween agricultural production and improved nutrition exists the objective of thisspecial issue is to systematically and empirically test using data from africa and southasia whether a relationship between household agricultural production and nutrition canbe found overall the studies in this special issue support the hypothesis that householdagricultural production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns andnutrition

a referendum on trade theory voting on free trade in costa rica research on mass opinion in international political economy overwhelmingly relies on survey data this poses problems of external validity especially for a frequently low salience issue such as trade policy to examine whether survey findings about attitudes toward economic openness apply outside of surveys this note considers patterns of voting in the 2007 costa rican plebiscite about joining the central american free trade area several extant theories appear to explain voting patterns but the results are less in line with traditional economic models based on locally important economic sectors

does it matter how we survey demand for food evidence from kenya and the philippines abstract this article examines the reliability of food quantity information collected from expenditure surveys and finds that measurement errors will very often be systematically correlated with income such that the response of food intakes to increases in income is seriously overstated this may be firstly because food quantities are not measured independently of income if total expenditures are the proxy used for income and secondly because food transfers in the form of guest and hired worker meals are under recorded these biases are illustrated using household surveys from kenya and the philippines

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

calories and poverty during a prolonged crisis abstract we study how calorie intake changes during prolonged crises by studying the calorie intake of households when exposed to short term and long term income and price shocks we use data from household surveys of mexican households during the income and price crises periods of 1994 to 1998 and 2006 to 2010 our focus is on low income mexican households those with the lowest 25 of expenditure per capita there is little effect on calorie intake following an income decline in the short run once households are exposed to reduced incomes for a longer period calorie intake falls households are able to weather short term fluctuations in income by shifting consumption to food items that are cheaper per calorie such as staple foods by consuming more foods at home instead of outside the home and by postponing expenditures on durable and semi durable goods when exposed to the income shock over a longer period of time we posit that households are not able to defer durable and semi durable purchases any more so their calorie consumption drops our results suggest that mexican households may be able to sustain calorie intake when faced with an income shock but it is less likely that they are able to do so if the income shock persists the government may want to support poor constituents when they are faced with prolonged crises

estimating the average treatment effect of social safety net programmes in bangladesh since the famine in 1974 the bangladesh government and some national and international agencies have been providing food or cash or both to poor households through the social safety net programmes i seek to estimate how much these programmes affect the well being of poor households most previous studies have estimated impacts of these programmes on calorie consumption simply computing the raw differential however both observed and unobserved characteristics bias this treatment effect using fuzzy regression discontinuity rd design i control for these selection effects

food quality calories and household income the authors investigate the relationship between calories food quality and household per capita expenditure using regression and semi parametric methods on a sample of poor households from rural mexico where programa de apoyo alimentario pal a targeted nutritional program is operating the semi parametric method yields an estimate of the elasticity between calorie and expenditure of 0 39 below the median and 0 28 above the corresponding estimates of the elasticity of the calorie price are 0 48 below the median and 0 45 above the authors also examine the extent to which the expenditure elasticity of the calorie price is explained by substitution between and within major food groups it is found that there is a very high incidence of substitution within cereals especially for poor households and that between group substitution explains at most 59 percent of the income elasticity for food quality these estimates suggest that the potential of a cash transfer program to have a positive impact on the food diversity and the nutritional status of households is quite limited the paper is organized as follows section one gives introduction section two describes the data the econometric specification and estimation approaches used and presents and discusses descriptive evidence on the intake of calories and the price of calories in the sample the relationship between calories the cost of calories and household expenditure is studied using regression and semi parametric methods in section three section four concludes by summarizing the policy implications of findings

income variability evolving diets and elasticity estimation of demand for processed foods in nigeria we present evidence on evolving dietary patterns in nigeria using six rounds of household consumption data from the nigerian general household survey panel between 2011 and 2016 first following conventional definitions in the literature we show that nigeria has not shown any aggregate increase in consumption of highly processed foods over this period contrary to patterns observed elsewhere in the region in fact consumption of highly processed foods at home has declined while food consumed away from home often assumed to be highly processed has risen substantially we then show that estimates of food expenditure elasticities of different food types are highly sensitive to different estimation approaches and raise concerns about some frequently used methods in the literature in the absence of credible exogenous variation we argue for the importance of panel methods and household fixed effects to control for time invariant factors likely to confound cross sectional estimates finally we examine semiparametric engel curves for different food groups and find that apparent curvature in the relationships between food budget shares and overall food expenditure levels in the raw data become nearly linear when removing variation explained by time invariant household factors

analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in malawi simulating household entitlements to food the 2007 2008 food price crisis and the following global economic recession has temporarily increased the number of people to suffer from hunger while the impacts can be measured with precision only ex post for policy makers it is critical to get a sense of likely impacts ex ante in order to plan approaches to mitigate these impacts in this paper we adopt a very simple micro based simulation approach to analyze how changes in prices of specific food groups such as maize prices or prices for staple foods as well as how negative short term household level income shocks affect the entitlements to calorie consumption of individuals and how these changes affect overall food poverty we illustrate our approach using household survey data from malawi we find that food poverty is of serious concern with large within country variations we find that price shocks for staple foods have a considerable impact on food security with particularly strong effects on poor net food buyers in rural and urban areas this paper demonstrates that it is possible to estimate food security impacts of price and income shocks ex ante in a relatively straightforward fashion that can be done relatively quickly and that is suitable for cross country assessments of the likely impacts of shocks on food security and the design of appropriate response measures

why are some people and countries more protectionist than others we analyze two cross country data sets that contain information on attitudes toward trade as well as a broad range of socio demographic and other indicators we nd that pro trade preferences are signi cantly and robustly correlated with an individual s level of human capital in the manner predicted by the factor endowments model preferences over trade are also correlated with the trade exposure of the sector in which an individual is employed individuals in non traded sectors tend to be the most pro trade while individuals in sectors with a revealed comparative disadvantage are the most protectionist third an individual s relative economic status has a very strong positive association withpro trade attitudes finally non economic determinants in the form of values identities and attachments play an important role in explaining the variation in preferences over trade high degrees of neighborhood attachment and nationalism patriotism are associated withprotectionist tendencies c

diet transformation in africa the case of ethiopia africa s food systems are changing fast amid rapid economic growth emerging urbanization and structural transformation in this study we use four rounds of nationally representative data from ethiopia to document changes in household food consumption patterns over a period of unprecedented economic growth we find that while the share of food in the total consumption basket is declining food quantities and calorie intakes have considerably increased between 1996 and 2011 a decomposition analysis suggests that this was mostly driven by improvements in household incomes a finding that is consistent across the calorie distribution also the content of the food basket is changing with a gradual shift toward high value foods such as animal products fruits and vegetables and processed foods overall this diet transformation has important implications for the food security debate and for agricultural and food policy in the country

immigration wages and compositional amenities economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade since the two policies have symmetric effects on wages unlike trade however immigration changes the composition of the local population imposing potential externalities on natives while previous studies have focused on fiscal spillovers a broader class of externalities arise because people value the compositional amenities associated with the characteristics of their neighbors and co workers in this paper we present a new method for quantifying the relative importance of these amenities in shaping attitudes toward immigration we use data for 21 countries in the 2002 european social survey which included a series of questions on the economic and social impacts of immigration as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows we find that individual attitudes toward immigration policy reflect a combination of concerns over conventional economic impacts i e on wages and taxes and compositional amenities with substantially more weight on composition effects most of the difference in attitudes to immigration between more and less educated natives is attributable to heightened concerns over compositional amenities among the less educated

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

identification and panel data models with endogenous regressors this paper provides sufficient conditions for the identification of both static and dynamic models containing endogenous regressors from panel data by utilizing the restrictions across time periods on the parameters it is shown that identification is achieved under quite weak conditions even in the presence of a general pattern of correlation between the errors and the time varying variables efficient estimation procedures for the models considered and some specification tests are outlined finally static formulations relating individuals intakes of nutrients in the previous 24 hours to household incomes are estimated using icrisat panel data from rural india

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded