Prices,infrastructure, household characteristics and child height

A Brazilian household survey, ENDEF, in 1974-75 and the 1974 Informacoes Basicas Municipais (IBM) provided data for the analysis of the impact of community services and infrastructure and household characteristics on the logarithm of child height, standardized for age and gender. The sample was comprised of 36,974 children stratified by residential location, the child's age, and the educational level of the mother. Variance and covariance matrices were estimated with the jackknife developed by Efron (1982). Household characteristics included the logarithm of per capita expenditure as a measure of household resource availability, income, and parental education. Community characteristics were local market price indices for 6 food groups (dairy products, beans, cereals, meat, fish, and sugar), level of urbanization, buildings with sewage, water, and electricity connections per capita, per capita number of buildings, and population density. Health services were measured as per capita number of hospitals and clinics and doctors and nurses, and the number of beds are hospital. Educational services include a measure of student teacher ratios, elementary school class size, and per capita number of teachers living in the community. the results show that expenditure had a positive, significant effect on the height of children 2 years and older. Expenditure was a significant determinant for literate and illiterate mothers, and not well educated mothers. The impact of maternal education was largest on the length of babies and declined with the age of the child. Father's education had not impact of length of babies. The effect of parents' education was complementary. The effect of father's education was largest when mothers had some education. Better educated parents had healthier children. Maternal rather than paternal height had an impact of the length of a baby. In the community models, prices had a significant effect on child height, in both urban and rural areas, in all age groups, and for all levels of maternal education. Higher prices were associated with shorter children. Joint price and expenditure interactions were significant. Children at the top of the expenditure distribution were more affected by some prices than by others. Capital building improvements alone and with expenditures were all positively associated with child height. Only nurses per capita impacted on child height.     

The Impact of the German Child Benefit on Household Expenditures and Consumption

The German Child Benefit (‘Kindergeld’) is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. The benefit does not depend on household income or other household characteristics. I use exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households in the German Socio‐Economic Panel to estimate the impact of a given change in the child benefit on food expenditures of households, the probability of owning a home, rent per square meter, measures of the size of the home, as well as parents’ smoking behavior and parents’ alcohol consumption. Households primarily increase per capita food expenditures in response to increases in child benefit, and they also improve housing conditions. The effect of child benefit on per capita food expenditures is larger for low‐income households compared to high‐income households. I do not find a significant effect of child benefit on parents’ smoking or drinking.     

Soviet theories of economic demography: a survey

At this time Soviet demographic scientists maintain the position that population problems may in fact exist temporarily under socialism but that the planning principle will allow society to resolve population problems, through the use of the administrative, moral, and economic levers (subsidies, government policies, propaganda, education) emphasized by Urlanis (1974) and others. For planners to deal effectively with population management, the determinants of fertility and labor force participation must be established. The foundations of Soviet theories of human capital and fertility were laid by several writers. For the sake of simplicity, these are referred to as the Urlanis-Strumilin model, named after 2 pioneer researchers in Soviet demography and manpower economics. The formulations are based upon the writings of Strumlin (1964) and Urlanis (1974), supplemented by writings of numerous other Soviet researchers. Although their models avoid neoclassical terms such as marginal utility and income and price elasticities, they clearly employ these concepts. The Urlanis-Strumilin model, reduced to its basic elements, is a direct household utility maximizing model. The husband and wife, the household decision makers, must select optimal levels of child "quantity," child "quality," leisure, their own human capital (further education and training), and other goods. The Soviet theory recognizes that an increase in household income will increase relatively the demands for income elastic goods. The model postulates that the demand for child quality is inversely related to the price of children. The price of children is the opportunity cost of children, the major element of which is the income foregone by the mother in the course of childbearing and childrearing. The child quantity demand schedule has elastic and inelastic portions. The marginal utility of the 1st child is great. The marginal utilities of higher order children decline substantially. Families with at least 1 child can make substitutions between having more children and raising the quality of children already born. The question is what does the model predict will happen to fertility with economic development. The positive income effect will be limited as increased income is channelled into child quality and other superior goods rather than child quantity. The Urlanis-Strumilin model of labor supply assumes that the household allocates its time among market employment, household production. The model shows that the effect of children on female labor supply is not ambiguous. The presence of young children raises the value of home services and lowers long run market wages, thereby reducing female market labor supply. According to the model, the socialist state can manipulate labor supplies through several channels. It can reduce the value of home services by providing market substitutes. Soviet writers recognize the linkages between labor supply and fertility without formalizing the simultaneous relationship. The comparative statics of the Soviet model are essentially the same as those of the neoclassical model: an increase in "costs" of children will have, at best, a small positive impact on fertility.     

The Persistence of Income Shocks: Evidence from Rural Indonesia

This paper estimates the persistence of transient income shocks to farm households in rural Indonesia. Persistence is defined as the elasticity of a household's 1997 household per capita income with respect to its 1993 per capita income, controlling for time‐invariant characteristics of the household. Local rainfall levels are used as an exogenous source of transitory variation in 1993 income. Four main conclusions emerge. First, roughly 30% of household income shocks remain after four years. Second, the persistence of negative and positive shocks is approximately equal; if anything, positive shocks last longer. Third, neither positive nor negative income shocks disproportionately affect poor households. Finally, measurement error in income and unobserved household heterogeneity are important sources of bias. These findings cast doubt on common arguments advocating public intervention to stabilize or redistribute income, and suggest that anti‐poverty policy should address more permanent causes of household poverty.     

CHILD POVERTY, INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN AND GENERATIONAL MOBILITY: THE SHORT AND LONG TERM WELLBEING OF CHILDREN IN URBAN CHINA AFTER THE ONE CHILD POLICY

China's One Child Policy (OCP), introduced in 1979, changed fundamentally the nature of both existing and anticipated marriage arrangements and influenced family formation decisions in many dimensions, especially with respect to the number of and investment in children. The policy coincided with the Economic Reforms of 1979 and the trend toward greater urbanization, all of which may have influenced the wellbeing of children. This paper examines the mobility status consequence of children in urban China since the introduction of the OCP and the economic reforms using data drawn from urban household surveys in China. The analysis first makes the comparison between child poverty in Canada, the United Kingdom and urban India, where it was found that both status and trends of child poverty are very different among the countries, with children not being over-represented in the poverty group in urban China. The extent to which the policies influenced investment in children is next examined by studying the way in which the relationship between the educational attainment of children and family characteristics changed within families formed prior to and after 1979. We found that the impact of household income and parental educational attainment increased significantly over time, with a positive gender effect where girls advanced more than boys. Applying new techniques for measuring mobility, we observe the reduction in intergenerational mobility. This phenomenon is found to be particularly prevalent in the lower income quantiles, reinforcing a dynastic notion of poverty.     

How responsive is body weight to transitory income changes? Evidence from rural Tanzania

We use time-series of rainfall to estimate the response of body weight to transitory changes in household income in rural Tanzania. We find that the response of body weight to income changes is positive on average, but that the impact is highest for female children, and lower for adults. For female children, a ten-percent increase in household income implies an increase in body weight by about 0.4 kg. In contrast, the body weight of adolescents and young adults is virtually invariant to income changes.     

中部地区农地流转特征及影响因素分析——基于中部六省的调查

应用分类评定模型(Logit模型)对中国中部地区的农户调查数据研究表明:地权稳定性、地区经济发展水平对农地转入和转出都有显著的正向影响;家庭年总收入、非农收入比重、外出务工劳动力比重、土地流转价格对土地转出有显著的正向影响,而对土地转入有显著的负影响;户主年龄对土地转出影响不显著、对转入有显著的正向影响;户主受教育程度对土地转入和转出的影响均不显著。研究的结果表明,要促进我国中部地区农地流转,必须继续贯彻惠农政策,大力发展农村经济,完善农地流转的相关政策法规和服务,增强地权的稳定性。     

Maternal empowerment and child malnutrition in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The study examines the importance of maternal empowerment in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in Bangladesh. Maternal empowerment is measured by a composite index based on four proxy variables that promote maternal empowerment. Factor analysis technique is used in constructing empowerment index. Ordered probit models are specified and estimated using national-level household survey data. Maternal empowerment is found to be the third-most important predictor of child malnutrition in Bangladesh, preceded by maternal endowment and child characteristics. Household characteristics such as partner’s level of education and household income are also associated with child malnutrition. The study has a number of policy implications to address maternal empowerment and child malnutrition. Public policy should focus on factors of maternal empowerment and investment in maternal health in order to improve the health of the next generation.     

How Monetary Policy Affects Your Gross Domestic Product

During the financial crisis, monetary policy was loosened significantly. Debate continues about the extent to which low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) may have had adverse distributional impacts, whether by income, wealth, age or region. Using quantified simulations on micro data, I show that looser monetary policy had a significantly positive financial impact on the majority of cohorts of UK society. The impact of monetary policy loosening on income and wealth inequality was small and the overall impact on household welfare significantly positive. These results differ from public perceptions of monetary policy. Personalised information on the impact of monetary policy on household balance sheets could help to correct these misperceptions.     

Why is child labor illegal?

We present a theory of the emergence of laws restricting child labor or imposing mandatory education that is consistent with the fact that poor parents tend to oppose such laws. We find that if altruistic parents are unable to commit to educating their children, child-labor laws can increase the welfare of higher-income parents in an ex ante sense. On the basis of an empirical analysis of Latin-American household surveys, we demonstrate that per capita income in the country of residence has the predicted effect on child labor supply, even after controlling for other household characteristics.     

Rural development in the digital age: Does information and communication technology adoption contribute to credit access and income growth in rural China?

Information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in rural livelihoods and household well-being. Therefore, this study examines the impact of ICT adoption on farmers' decisions to access credit and the joint effects of ICT adoption and access to credit on household income using 2016 China Labour-force Dynamics Survey data. Both recursive bivariate probit model and a selectivity-corrected ordinary least square regression model are employed for the analysis. The results show that ICT adoption increases the probability of access to credit by 12.8% in rural China and empowers rural women and farm households in relatively less-developed regions to access credit. ICT adoption and access to credit affect household income differently. ICT adoption significantly increases household income, while access to credit significantly reduces it, primarily because farmers do not use the acquired credit to invest in income-generating farm and off-farm business activities. ICT adoption has the largest positive impact on household income at the highest 90th quantile. Our findings suggest that improving rural ICT infrastructure to enhance farmers' ICT adoption and developing ICT-based financial products to enable households to access sufficient funds can improve rural household welfare.     

The Distribution of Economic Well-being in Urban Russia at the End of the Soviet Era

Assessing the extent of inequality and how various groups in the population were faring in the former Soviet Union is difficult. There are conceptual problems and severe data limitations. Here we analyse the distribution at the household level using unique microdata. The sample was collected for the Russian city Taganrog in 1989. We portray inequality in equivalent income terms, investigate income packaging, decompose inequality by population subgroups and relate equivalent income to household characteristics. The results indicate that inequality in living standards for urban Russia was small, but not extremely small. Public sector transfers and income taxes played a smaller role than in several advanced Western countries. The income situation of a household in the former Soviet Union was very strongly linked to its work efforts and dependency burden. Thus, aged persons and families with a newborn child were much worse off than people of active ages. Persons in households with a female head had considerably lower income than those with male head of households. The results also shows a clear positive relation between length of education and living-standard.     

A Cross Country Comparison of Child Nutrition and Investigation of its Demographic Determinants

This study pools data on child anthropometrics and on their determinants from Pakistan, Peru, Jamaica, Russia and South Africa. It, then, estimates regression equations of child height and weight, measured by the Z-scores, on both combined country data and, separately, for each country. Moreover, the study estimates the child height and weight equations, separately, for young (0–36 months) and older children (37–72 months) and provides evidence on the impact of household assets and of a household’s access to basic amenities on the health of its children. The child health in the five countries chosen, which are culturally, economically, politically and geographically, quite diverse, are compared. The paper finds that the hard core cases of child malnutrition are not necessarily related to poverty or inequality. Female education plays an effective role in improving child health, with its beneficial effects considerably enhanced in households with access to public information through the radio or the TV.

     

健康变化对劳动供给和收入影响的实证分析

本文使用中国健康与营养调查(CHNS)数据检验了居民健康状况变化对居民劳动供给和家庭收入的影响。通过控制基期健康状况和一系列个人特征,本文重点检验了可以被视作外生冲击的健康变化对居民劳动供给和家庭收入的影响。考虑到城乡居民以及性别在劳动供给以及收入上的差异,本文还分别分城乡和性别进行了回归分析。研究发现,滞后期健康状况与当期劳动供给和家庭收入显著正相关;健康恶化显著降低劳动供给和家庭收入。此外,健康与劳动供给和家庭收入之间的关系在城乡居民和性别之间均存在差异,具体地,城市居民和男性更容易因健康恶化退出劳动供给,农村居民和女性则会因健康改善增加劳动供给。这表明在评估健康干预政策时要综合考虑健康变化对公民社会经济状况(SES)可能造成的影响,同时,对城市居民和农村居民以及对男性和女性要区别考虑。     

Child labor and agricultural shocks

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

Child Benefit Payments and Household Wealth Accumulation

Using the life‐cycle/permanent income hypothesis, we theoretically and empirically assess the impact of child benefit payments on household wealth accumulation. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we find that higher cumulative benefits received increase current assets, higher future benefit payments lower asset holding, and that these effects systematically vary over the life cycle. We find different wealth responses to child benefit payments for liquidity constrained and unconstrained households, as predicted by the model.     

影响我国农村居民收入差距的主要因素:从收入构成角度的分解分析

This paper attempts to explore the causes behind the change of the inequality in China rural areas at the very beginning of this century by decomposing the inequality of the total per capita income into the contributions from different income components. Furthermore, we develop the decomposition method of Gini coefficients from the income components and use it not only in the static analysis but also in comparative static analysis. Namely it can be used to explore the change of the overall inequality by decomposing the change of Gini Coefficient from income components. The empirical results show that the wage from local employment, the income from agricultural household business and the incomes from non-agricultural household business are the three income components that made the largest contributions to the inequality of the total per capita income. The total contribution to the overall inequality of non-agricultural incomes was much more than that of agricultural incomes. The incomes from agricultural household business, the incomes from non-agricultural household business and the wages from migration made the positive impact on the increase of the overall inequality. The incomes donated by relatives and friends made the most important negative impact on the increase of the overall inequality.     

Child participation,nature of work,and fertility demand: a theoretical analysis

A model of utility maximization with home production of children and standard of living is used to analyze the fertility behavior of a subsistence farming household in an agricultural lesser developed country. Assuming children as both consumer and producer goods, and assuming a prestige cost of their participation in labor force, the author derived alternative levels of fertility demand. The following different conditions of child participation were identified depending upon the size of the prestige cost and the resultant net gain from child work: (1) participation in wage-labor, if marginal child income from the family farm is less than marginal wage income; (2) participation in family farm works only, if the larger wage income is neutralized by a higher prestige cost, implying a lower child contribution; (3) participation in family farm works only, if its marginal child income is greater than wage income, thus providing the largest child contribution; and (4) no participation in labor force at all, implied by a very high prestige cost and resulting in no child contribution. The household demands a larger number of children under conditions (1) and (3) than under conditions (2) and (4). The results are then used to draw inferences regarding fertility behavior across different landholding households. It appears that landholding reduces fertility initially, increases it at the intermediate levels, and then decreases it when the household becomes a non-cultivating rental income earner. The nonmonotonic landholding-fertility relationship explains the contradictory empirical evidence which exists in the literature while also suggesting important implications for fertility regulation policy.     

The effect of fair trade affiliation on child schooling: evidence from a sample of Chilean honey producers

We evaluate the impact of Fair Trade (FT) affiliation on child schooling within a sample of Chilean honey producers with a retrospective panel data approach. From a theoretical point of view, we argue that FT should have a positive effect on child schooling since it generates a short-run pure income effect together with a medium-run productivity effect on both adult and child wages. On the other hand, because of the higher productivity generated by the medium-run effect, the opportunity cost of child education increases if they work with their parents. The direction of the impact of FT affiliation on child schooling is therefore uncertain and requires empirical testing. Our econometric findings document a positive and significant impact of affiliation years on child schooling after controlling for endogeneity and heterogeneity between the treatment and control sample.     

收入差距与社会地位寻求:一个高储蓄率的原因

我们使用中国城镇住户调查数据证实:在控制家庭收入之后,收入差距仍然会显著减少家庭除教育以外的消费。我们还发现收入差距对低收入或年轻家庭的消费抑制更加明显,但能刺激教育投资的上升。这很可能来源于为提升社会地位而储蓄的动机。更高的社会地位可以带来各种物质或非物质上的收益。而社会不平等的增加意味着进入社会上层可以获得更高的收益,同时提升地位需要更多的财富。这些都可能加强人们为提高社会地位而储蓄的激励。