historical note on height and parental consumption decisions abstract with fertility a measure of the relative price between the quality versus quantity of children trade off parental consumption decisions allocating nutritional resources between generations are important in the income height relationship this paper uses data from nine european nations to explore this hypothesis

economic shocks wealth and welfare the immediate effects of the asian crisis on the well being of indonesians are examined using the indonesia family life survey an on going longitudinal household survey there is tremendous diversity in the effect of the shock for some households it was devastating for others it brought new opportunities a wide array of mechanisms were adopted in response to the crisis households combined to more fully exploit benefits of scale economies in consumption labor supply increased even as real wages collapsed households reduced spending on semi durables while maintaining expenditures on foods rural households used wealth particularly gold to smooth consumption

the determinants of teenage schooling in jamaica rich vs poor females vs males the belief that schooling is an important way to reduce poverty and increase social mobility has lead to large government sponsored investment in education in developing countries jamaica has an impressive literacy and primary enrolment rate yet the ability of its secondary school system to enhance social mobility and reduce inequality is limited regression results from a nationally representative household survey show that family background variables parental education and income are important determinants of secondary school enrolment and income is the single most important determinant of enrolment in an elite high school with the impact being twice as large for females part of the income effect is shown to represent unobserved community heterogeneity one conclusion is that the recent cost sharing education policy of the jamaican government if applied selectively to the elite academic high schools will fall disproportionately upon rich households

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

economies of scope and the cash crop food crop debate in senegal abstract the government of senegal plans to achieve national food self sufficiency by inducing farmers to switch away from cash crops toward food crop production this paper examines selected economic consequences of the planned substitution using empirical data recently collected in southeastern senegal cost function estimates suggest that farmers are currently producing too much food crop and too little cash crop output given existing technology and observed relative prices moreover economies of scope in producing both food crops and cash crops on the same farm result in a 22 cost saving relative to growing both types of crops on separate specialized farms

the economics of forced migration abstract this article reviews the economics literature on the impacts of forced migration the literature is divided into two parts impacts on forced migrants and impacts on host communities studies exploring the impact of forced migration due to wwii suggest that the long term impact is often positive the literature for developing countries suggests that there are serious consequences of forced migration for those forced to migrate these consequences range from worse labour market outcomes to less consumption smoothing the impact on host communities seems to be mixed and there are winners and losers the article provides suggestions for future research

markets transportation infrastructure and food prices in nepal we study transportation infrastructure and food markets in nepal over the period 2002 to 2010 combining monthly price data from thirty seven local and regional markets and seven indian border markets we use a series of autoregressive models to study price determination spatial and temporal price transmission and price variance we account for district level agricultural production correcting for bi directional causality between output and prices using ground station rainfall data in addition to test hypotheses regarding the importance of transportation infrastructure we incorporate information on road and bridge density and fuel costs for both rice and wheat we find strong evidence of local price intertemporal carryover and very weak evidence of price transmission from regional central and border markets to local markets suggesting very low degrees of market integration fuel costs are positively correlated with food prices and road and bridge density are negatively correlated with prices we find evidence of asymmetric effects positive price shocks are correlated with higher subsequent price volatility compared with negative price shocks of similar magnitude roads and bridges are important for moderating price levels and price volatility in nepal s rice and wheat markets which explains roughly half of the spatial and temporal variation in price mark ups between regional and local markets

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

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

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

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

credit markets in northern nigeria credit as insurance in a rural economy this article addresses the issues of imcomplete markets and imperfect information in the context of credit markets in rural northern nigeria in much recent theoretical literature the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection are assumed to be decisive for the organization of agrarian institutions in contrast it is found that in the four villages surveyed credit transactions take advantage of the free flow of information within rural communities information asymmetries between borrower and lender are unimportant and their institutional consequences the use of collateral and interlinked contracts are absent credit transactions play a direct role in pooling risk between households through the use of contracts in which the repayment owed by the borrower depends on the realization of random production shocks by both the borrower and the lender

winners and losers among a refugee hosting population abstractthe impact of a sudden mass influx of forced migrants on the hosting economy is understudied and not well understood using a household panel data set for the kagera region in tanzania we test the impact of the mass refugee presence on the welfare of the local population our identification strategy exploits variations in the timing of arrival as well as the spatial distribution of rwandese and burundi refugees we find a positive and aggregate effect but households are affected differently depending on their main initial occupation

decomposing world health inequality this study explores global inequality in health status and decomposes it into within and between country inequality we rely on standardized height as our health indicator since it avoids the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity mortality and life expectancy it also avoids measurement problems associated with using monetary variables such as income or expenditure across time or place to compare welfare our calculation of world height inequality indicates that in contrast with similar research on income inequality within country variation is the source of most inequality rather than the differences between countries

short criminals stature and crime in early america abstractwe consider the extent to which an individual s height affected the age at which he entered into criminal activity in early america using data on prisoners incarcerated in pennsylvania s nineteenth century prisons we show that prisoners were short relative to the contemporary population then using weibull continuous time duration econometric models we show that age at entry into criminal activity was negatively associated with an individual s height after controlling for several individual characteristics the results are consistent with recent research showing that shorter individuals face less attractive legitimate labor market opportunities because lower stature is associated with lower cognitive ability and because of general discrimination against shorter people

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

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

the impact of piped water provision on infant mortality in brazil a quantile panel data approach abstract we examine the impact of piped water on the under 1 infant mortality rate imr in brazil using a recently developed econometric procedure for the estimation of quantile treatment effects with panel data the provision of piped water in brazil is highly correlated with other observable and unobservable determinants of imr the latter leading to an important source of bias instruments for piped water provision are not readily available and fixed effects to control for time invariant correlated unobservables are invalid in the simple quantile regression framework using the quantile panel data procedure in chen and khan chen s khan s semiparametric estimation of non stationary censored panel model data models with time varying factor econometric theory 2007 forthcoming our estimates indicate that the provision of piped water reduces infant mortality by significantly more at the higher conditional quantiles of the imr distribution than at the lower conditional quantiles except for cases of extreme underdevelopment these results imply that targeting piped water intervention toward areas in the upper quantiles of the conditional imr distribution when accompanied by other basic public health inputs can achieve significantly greater reductions in infant mortality

price leadership and dynamic aspects of oligopoly in u s manufacturing this study which covers a sample of 314 four digit industries taken from an exhaustive set of 450 four digit industries shows that increases in concentration associated with rising productivity occur mainly in low concentration industries while decreases in concentration associated with rising productivity occur mainly in high concentration industries the empirical results of this study indirectly lend support to a plausible hypothesis that a small group of firms makes a big impact on the productivity of an initially unconcentrated industry and thereby concentrates it later the small firms imitate the now big firms and concentration goes down while productivity keeps rising

welfare and economic growth in kenya 1914 76 abstract in this paper we present estimates of per capita income income distribution and poverty in kenya for the period between 1914 and 1976 the estimates indicate that per capita incomes mostly increased up to 1974 inequality increased most of the time until 1950 then fell and increased again until 1971 and then finally fell poverty declined until 1964 but has since then increased slightly a decomposition analysis shows that modern sector enrichment contributed more to growth than modern sector enlargement and that traditional sector enrichment was of greater importance to the poor than modern sector enlargement

welfare implications of oligopoly in u s food manufacturing a statistical procedure is used to show that increased concentration in u s food manufacturing industries is associated with increased total input productivity a price leadership model is employed in order to estimate total welfare loss if an elasticity of 1 is assumed deadweight loss to society is estimated at 0 5 of food value if an elasticity of 0 5 is assumed total loss to consumers amounts to 6 11 of food value which is 10 billion in 1975 the increase in total factor productivity which is linked to concentration is roughly sufficient to offset the entire loss to consumers

physiology and development why the west is taller than the rest we hypothesise that the timing of the fertility transition is an important determinant of comparative physiological development in support we provide a model of long run growth that elucidates the links between population size average body size and income during development industrialisation is shown to be accompanied by a reduction in family size and an intensification of nutrition per child early transition countries are therefore expected to be more developed today economically and physiologically empirically the timing of the fertility transition is strongly correlated with average body size across countries

making sense of the labor market height premium evidence from the british household panel survey we use data from the british household panel survey to examine the labor market premium in height most of the premium is explained by higher average educational attainment and sorting into higher status occupations and industries by those who are taller

dynamic gains and static losses in oligopoly evidence from the beer industry i introduction more than 40 years ago arnold harberger 1954 estimated the welfare loss due to monopoly in the united states harberger s finding that the welfare loss caused by monopoly is surprisingly small sparked a lively debate that enriched the economic literature enormously the articles by david schwartzman 1960 david kamerschen 1966 frederick bell 1968 dean worcester 1973 and john siegfried and thomas tiemann 1974 constitute but a small sample out of the vast number of studies of this issue later keith cowling and dennis c mueller 1978 found some higher values of deadweight losses ten times as large as harberger s in a subsequent study i was able to lend support to harberger s results by analyzing the interactions between the minority of large firms in an industry that act as independent oligopolists and most of small firms that behave as price takers 1986 the exploration of the dynamic relationship between concentration and prices started with schumpeter 1949 who hailed the entrepreneur who can produce more cheaply make a profit that remains in his pocket until others who follow him copy his model the process eventually results in the annihilation of the surplus over costs when the new business form has become part of the circular flow 1949 133 in a related set of studies demsetz 1973 peltzman 1977 and lustgarten 1979 explored the relationship between concentration ratios and increased efficiencies in manufacturing industries and found them to be positively correlated i could lend support to this conclusion by postulating a dynamic process of cause and effect cast in a price leadership model 1984 in a recent study salinger 1990 concluded from a cross sectional study that large changes in concentration whether negative or positive are associated with price reductions the present paper builds on past research to demonstrate that while innovation may lead to increases in market share and market concentration the price increases that might be expected to follow from increased concentration are likely to be offset by the price decreases that bring the increased concentration into being 1 if so estimating deadweight losses by subtracting the static consumers losses from producers gains is misleading because it ignores intertemporal consumers gains the dynamic link among efficiency falling prices concentration and welfare losses suggests that a very useful method of evaluating an industry s contribution to welfare would be to study its economic history if today an industry is heavily concentrated an appropriate starting point for a historical study would be an earlier year when the industry was still relatively less concentrated this paper presents first a welfare theory of dynamic evolution of an industry that becomes progressively more concentrated over time second an empirical study based on the history of the beer industry that focuses on the calculus of dynamic social gains from technological change and third an examination of a small group of industries that became more heavily concentrated between 1963 and 1982 the last section sets forth the conclusions to be drawn from this research ii dynamic gains and static losses suppose a concentrated industry was unconcentrated 40 years ago the industry s firms were small but not atomistic and they sold their product in nearly perfectly competitive markets practically causing no deadweight losses the dynamic process begins when initially a group of pioneering firms invests in the development of a new technology that reduces costs and by lowering the price to consumers succeeds in increasing its market share the gain to consumers flows directly from this intertemporal decline in price the increase in the share of the innovating firms can initially mitigate the downward pressure on prices but in the long run reversing it is not likely

is variety the spice of life implications for calorie intake the income elasticity of calories generally is substantially smaller than the income elasticity of food expenditure one reason may be an increasing concern for food variety as incomes increase food variety can be linked with two characteristics of food indifference curves 1 curvature and 2 location of the curves relative to the axes estimates suggest increasing taste for variety as food budgets increase therefore such taste for variety apparently underlies in part the low income elasticities for calorie demand which in turn cast doubt on the world bank assertion that the nutrient intakes of poor populations will improve rapidly with income copyright 1989 by mit press

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

height health and cognitive function at older ages research across a number of disciplines has highlighted the role of early life health and circumstance in determining health and economic outcomes at older ages nutrition in utero and in infancy may set the stage for the chronic disease burden that an individual will face in middle age david j barker 1998 barker et al 1989 johann eriksson et al 2001 childhood health may also have significant effects on economic outcomes in adulthood collectively a set of childhood health measures can account for a large fraction of the explained variance in employment and social status observed among a british cohort followed from birth into adulthood anne case angela fertig and christina paxson 2005

the impact of forced displacement on host communities a review of the empirical literature in economics the paper reviews 49 empirical studies that estimate the impact of forced displacement on host communities a review of the empirical models used by these studies and a meta analysis of 762 separate results collected from them are the main contributions of the paper coverage extends to 17 major forced displacement crises that occurred between 1922 and 2015 to host countries at different levels of economic development and different types of forced migrants the focus is on outcomes related to household well being prices employment and wages all studies can be classified as ex post quasi natural experiments the analysis on empirical modeling shows a preference for partial equilibrium modeling differences in differences evaluation methods and cross section econometrics with all these choices largely dependent on the type of data available the meta analysis on household well being shows that between 45 and 52 percent of the results are positive and significant indicating a net improvement in household well being an additional 34 to 42 percent of the results are found to be nonsignificant and 6 to 20 percent show a decrease in household well being the analyses on employment and wages show positive and significant improvements for 12 to 20 percent of the results nonsignificant results in 63 percent of the cases and negative and significant results for 22 to 25 percent of the results negative results on employment and wages relate to young and informal workers in middle income countries the results on prices show asymmetric behavior across types of products overall the probability of having a negative outcome for host communities in the consumer and labor markets is below 20 percent

determinants of food consumption in rural sierra leone abstract this paper reports the application of a quadratic expenditure system with demographic variables to the household consumption leisure choice component of a household firm model a system of seven commodities is estimated including five foods non food and leisure appropriate for such a level of disaggregation a demand system is used the quadratic expenditure system which allows for a flexible relationship between full income and commodity expenditures without sacrificing parsimony in parameters demographic data on households are explicitly incorporated into the model allowing for a richer specification than can be achieved by using per capita variables the data are from a cross section survey of households in rural sierra leone price variation exists by region permitting estimation of a complete demand system engel curves are found to be significantly non linear with marginal expenditure on rice the major staple declining with higher income most foods are found to be reasonably price responsive with sizeable own price substitution effects declining with higher income aggregate labor supply is found to be price inelastic

wealth risk and activity choice cattle in western tanzania abstract imperfect credit markets force households to use their savings for investment profitable activities often require lumpy investments limiting entry by poorer households resulting in increasing welfare differences in tanzania cattle are a profitable but lumpy investment and a liquid asset for consumption smoothing richer households own substantial cattle herds while poorer households specialize in low return low risk activities a dynamic programming model and simulations are presented to analyze entry into asset accumulation under income risk the evidence suggests that households with lower endowments are less likely to own cattle and returns to their endowments are lower

beyond balanced growth balanced growth models are commonly used in macroeconomics because they are consistent with the well known kaldor facts regarding economic growth these models however are inconsistent with one of the most striking regularities of the growth process the massive reallocation of labour from agriculture into manufacturing and services this paper presents a simple model consistent with both the kaldor facts and the dynamics of sectoral labour reallocation

market concentration contestability and sunk costs this paper provides an exploratory assessment of the theory of contestability that is based on a diverse sample of industries and introduces a new important determinant of market concentration the results of the paper indicate that the variables determining the degree of contestability of markets are significant correlates of market concentration sunk costs account for a substantial portion of the sample variance of concentration even after technological factors are controlled for copyright 1990 by mit press

the labor market impacts of forced migration during the 1990s the kagera region of tanzania experienced a forced migration shock a series of geographical barriers led to a higher concentration of forced migrants in some parts of the region relative to others resulting in a natural experiment using panel data pre and post forced migration shock we find that greater exposure to the refugee shock resulted in tanzanians having a lower likelihood of working outside the household as employees however employees more affected by the shock had a higher probability of being in professional occupations and being part of a pensions program

does natural resource abundance increase latin american income inequality abstract why is income inequality higher in latin america than in east asia is this phenomenon related to the region s natural resource abundance is it a contributor to latin america s slow and narrowly focused human capital accumulation if so can anything be done to reverse the latin american trends or should we think of the region s fate as unalterable to help answer these questions this paper draws upon standard trade theory and cross sectional empirical analysis to demonstrate that natural resource intensive sectors particularly permanent agriculture absorb capital that might otherwise flow to manufacturing this depresses workers incentive to accumulate skill and delays industrialization

high quality nutrition in childhood body size and wages in early adulthood evidence from guatemalan workers espanolcausalidad entre salud y productividad no resulta directa de establecer por un lado mayores ingresos pueden trasladarse en una dieta de mejor calidad por el otro es probable que un trabajador saludable sea mas productivo este trabajo analiza el efecto del tamano corporal altura e indice de masa corporal como indicadores de nutricion en salarios los datos provienen del estudio longitudinal realizado en guatemala entre 1969 77 y 2002 04 estimaciones sugieren que la elasticidad tamano del cuerpo en relacion al salario aumenta cuando la heterogeneidad no observable es considerada sin embargo los resultados son mas robustos para los hombres adicionalmente la elasticidad estimada presenta algun grado de disparidad entre quantiles de la distribucion condicional del salario englishestablishing a causal relationship between health and productivity is not straightforward on one hand as income grows people invest in better diets on the other a healthier worker is likely to be more productive this paper focuses on the effect of body size height and body mass index as indicators of nutrition upon wages data comes from a longitudinal study conducted in guatemala during 1969 77 and followed up in 2002 04 body size elasticity increases when unobserved heterogeneity is considered although evidence is stronger for males additionally estimated elasticity shows some degree of heterogeneity at different quantiles of the conditional wage distribution

dynamics and stagnation in the malthusian epoch this paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential malthusian theory according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita eventually leading to a larger but not significantly richer population exploiting exogenous sources of cross country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement the analysis demonstrates that in accordance with the theory technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living during the time period 1 1500 ce

forced displacement and technology adoption an empirical analysis based on agricultural households in bosnia and herzegovina we use the bosnian living standards measurement study lsms survey to show that conflict induced displacement of agricultural households dramatically affects the adoption of new technologies in agriculture we exploit the heterogeneity in the level of violence in the pre war location to account for selection bias this natural experiment seems to be a source of exogenous variation in our case because violence aims at ethnic cleansing without economic consideration we find that the displaced are less likely than stayers to adopt fertiliser and pesticide

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

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

testing the neoclassical model of family labor supply and fertility the mcelroy horney nash bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands this restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 socioeconomic survey of thailand the neoclassical restriction is rejected for female labor supply andfertility another unexplored limitation offamily demand studies due to the sample self selection of intact marriages is empirically treated through alternative estimation strategies in this case a more sharply focused theory of marital behavior is needed to identify family demand models

is there curvature in the slutsky matrix d o the poor substitute among commodities more flexibly than the rich when relative prices change even when compensated for the income effects of the price changes is it necessary to add a third dimension to the slutsky substitution matrix to identify household income in short do the terms of the slutsky elasticity matrix curve smoothly from poor households to rich households in such a way that equation 1 is meaningful

agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement improved maize varieties in rural ethiopia adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households including increased productivity incomes and food consumption however possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature this article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties imvs on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural ethiopia the conceptual linkage between imv adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height for age and weight for age z scores to be positive and significant quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes finally by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation it is found that the increase in own produced maize consumption is the major channel through which imv adoption affects child nutrition

the kuznets process and the inequality development relationship abstract in his classic paper on economic growth and income inequality kuznets discussed the process of population shift from traditional to modern activities as the basis for a theory of distributional change during the course of development in this paper we present a formalization of the kuznets process conduct a general analysis of distributional change under this process and derive the functional forms of and conditions for a turning point in the inequality development relationship for six commonly used indices of inequality the functional form appropriate to each index is then estimated using cross section data on 60 developing and developed countries finally some extensions to the initial formalization of the kuznets process are considered

the kuznets curve a reassessment abstract this paper revisits the kuznets hypothesis an extensive data set containing the most recent estimates of income distribution is utilized to test the kuznets hypothesis in addition the data comparability problem with respect to income distribution data when conducting econometric analysis is addressed the results indicate that the data comparability problem is not severe enough to nullify the estimates obtained from pooled regressions the kuznets hypothesis holds for this data set

saving in developing countries theory and review in the literature on economic development much of the interest in saving has been focused on the relation between saving and growth but saving is not only about accumulation it is about smoothing consumption in the face of volatile and unpredictable income and helping to ensure the living standards of poor people whose lives are difficult and uncertain this paper develops a model of households which cannot borrow but which accumulate assets as a buffer stock to protect consumption when incomes are low such households dissave as often as they save do not accumulate assets over the long term and have on average very small asset holdings but their consumption is markedly smoother than their income much of the evidence is as consistent with this view of saving as it is incosistent with standard views of smoothing over the life cycle and with explanations of the link between saving and growth in terms of life cycle saving behavior consumption smoothing is also a useful way of thinking about government policy where volatility in the world prices of taxed commodities can generate sharp fluctuations in government revenues as well as reallocations of revenue between the private and public sectors many important policy issues in developing countries hinge on issues of consumption and smoothing and research on these issues is currently likely to be more productive than work on the relation between saving and growth

economics food choices and nutrition abstract our goal in this paper is to examine the role and influence of economic factors defined rather broadly on consumer food choices and hence nutritional outcomes we attempt to do this in a non technical fashion we examine the role of prices especially as they relate to the affordability of food in the united states and as a policy lever income is analyzed as a driving force behind changes in eating habits in particular increasing the demand for convenience the role of time constraints as well as time preference are examined as links to healthy eating habits and as forces behind current trends in eating patterns information and knowledge are given prominent play as counter balances to economic forces driving eating habits we conclude with and examination into maternal nutrition knowledge and children s dietary quality

returning home after civil war food security and nutrition among burundian households abstractthis paper investigates the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households hhs using the 2006 core welfare indicator survey for burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non displaced neighbours we test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning home we use log linear as well as propensity score matching and an instrumental variable approach to control for self selection bias we find that the individuals and hhs who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier on average the formerly displaced have 5 per cent lower food expenses and 6 per cent lower calorie intake moreover we find evidence in favour of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affects hh welfare results are robust after controlling for self selection bias de

literacy and intrahousehold externalities abstract the size of the intrahousehold externality created when a literate household member provides literacy services to illiterate members is estimated in this paper using a model of children s height for age in papua new guinea this externality appears to be large these results support the use of a new measure of literacy developed by basu and foster 1998 to take account of the gains when illiterates live in households where at least one person is literate regional rankings change when the new measure of literacy is used suggesting that policies guided by the usual measure of adult literacy may overlook an important pathway for human development

water accessibility and child health use of the leave out strategy of instruments this paper investigates the leave out strategy of instruments by using the leave out community ratio of household access to in yard water sources and community water infrastructure as instruments for hours in fetching water time and the data on disease symptoms the results show that community level access to clean water is significantly associated with both water relevant and irrelevant disease symptoms which suggests that the correlation between community level access to clean water and child health is at least partially due to endogenous project placement potentially with respect to unobserved community wealth the paper concludes that the ols estimates have a potential endogeneity bias problem and that iv estimates under this strategy is subject to endogenous project placement and is not valid a policy implication of this study is that careful attention should be paid to both self selection and endogenous project placement in studying the effect of water accessibility on child health

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

prices infrastructure household characteristics and child height household survey data from brazil matched with information collected at the municipio county level are used to examine the relation between parental characteristics primarily education community infrastructure and services and child height data are drawn from 2 sources informacoes basicas municipais 1974 is a periodic survey of 4000 municipios on infrastructure health and education services estudo nacional da despesa familiar 1974 75 is a household survey covering 37000 children under age 8 on income expenditure anthropometry and socio demographic characteristics local food price indices were derived from these data child height is significantly affected by local infrastructure particularly modern sewerage and piped water in urban areas and electricity in rural settings these effects are stronger for children over 2 those of better educated mothers and those in households spending more higher prices for dairy products and sugar are linked to lower urban child height and higher fish prices to lower rural child height significantly for children of illiterate mothers higher prices for meat and rice are associated with taller height possible because men usually eat these foods mothers with elementary schooling can counteract the effects of food prices on child height number of teachers is positively related to height in rural children numbers of nurses and of hospital beds is associated with shorter children suggesting that large hospitals locate in poor urban areas this study has succeeded in identifying some public investments that affect child health

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest

malthus revisited fertility decision making based on quasi linear preferences abstract malthus 1798 population hypothesis is inconsistent with the demographic transitions and the massive income expansion observed among industrialised countries the current study shows that eliminating the income effect on the demand for children from malthus theory makes consistent with industrial development

cash crops in developing countries the issues the facts the policies the issue of cash crops is profoundly controversial the debate uses different definitions of the term and slides across levels of analysis from the household to the international economy it also cuts across arguments crops countries and time periods this paper sets out to order the debate it deals first with definitions and taxonomy and then reviews issues connected with cash crops and a growth b distribution c food security d dependency and e the environment the paper concludes that with appropriate policies cash crops can offer a route to equitable growth