Country Differences in Material Deprivation in Europe

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro‐level perspective) and country‐specific factors (macro‐level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually‐oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country‐specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country‐specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between‐country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual‐level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP.     

Measuring the Level and Inequality of Wealth: An Application to China

We construct and compare three distinct measures of household asset wealth that complement traditional income‐ or expenditure‐based measures of socioeconomic status. We apply these measures to longitudinal household survey data from China and demonstrate that household asset wealth has been increasing over time, a theme consistent with many previous studies on the process of development in China. Unlike other studies that have shown rising income inequality over time, however, we show that asset wealth inequality has actually been declining in recent years, indicating widespread participation in the benefits of economic reforms. Furthermore, the evolution in the cumulative distribution of household welfare is such that social welfare has been increasing with the passage of time, despite rising inequality in the early years of the survey.     

Does having more children increase the likelihood of parental smoking? Evidence from Vietnam

Evidence has shown that parental smoking can cause health problems for children. It might be expected that parents who are aware of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke will reduce their smoking, especially as they have more children. However, based on instrumental variable regressions using data from the 2006 and 2008 Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, we find a strongly positive and significant effect of the number of children on the probability of tobacco smoking in households in Vietnam. An additional child increases the probability of tobacco consumption in the household by approximately 15%. These findings imply low levels of awareness of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke on children’s health in Vietnam, and indicate the need for policy action to disseminate knowledge on the harmful effects of smoking.     

Universal food security program and nutritional intake: Evidence from the hunger prone KBK districts in Odisha

This article provides evidence on the role of consumer food subsidies in improving nutritional intake and diet quality by evaluating the expansion of the government food assistance program coverage in the hunger prone state of Odisha in India. In 8 districts of Odisha, popularly known as the Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) region which is notable for extreme poverty and starvation deaths, the government did away with the targeted food assistance program in 2008 and made the scheme universal. Using a Difference-in-Difference methodology over two repeated cross sectional household surveys, this article finds that the shift from targeted to a universal food security program in the KBK region of Odisha has led to an improvement in the household nutritional intake and diet quality. Further examination suggests that proportion of households consuming below the recommended dietary allowance of calorie, fats and protein has declined significantly in this region post the intervention.     

User Fee Abolition and the Demand for Public Health Care

This research examines the effect of the abolition of user fees in South Africa, a policy implemented in 1994 for uninsured children under the age of six and the elderly uninsured, as well as pregnant and nursing mothers. The analysis focuses on the implementation of the policy and the use of curative public healthcare services by children following strict and fuzzy regression discontinuity designs. The estimates point to statistically insignificant average and local average policy effects, even though the policy appears to have been implemented reasonably effectively, albeit imperfectly. In other words, the policy did not, on average, affect the use of curative public healthcare, at least for those children who should have benefited from the policy.     

SNAP and Paycheck Cycles

It is well documented that individuals do not spend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits smoothly over the month after receipt. Rather, recipients spend a disproportionate share of benefits at the beginning of the benefit month. This has costs for recipients and stores. There is also evidence that other income streams, such as Social Security and paychecks, are not spent smoothly. The presence of these other income streams may bias estimates of the effects of this SNAP cycle on consumption for working SNAP beneficiaries and those who receive other government benefits. We use data from United States Department of Agriculture's National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey to explore how the SNAP cycle is affected by accounting for these other income streams. We find suggestive evidence that the cycle is more pronounced for workers who are paid on a weekly or monthly basis, but little evidence that cycles in other income streams mitigate or exacerbate the SNAP cycle.     

Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

Teaching teenagers in finance: Does it work?

Many initiatives worldwide aim at improving financial literacy through targeted education programs, yet there is little evidence regarding their effectiveness. We examine the impact of a short financial education program on teenagers in German high schools. Our findings reveal that the training program significantly increases teenagers’ interest in financial matters and their financial knowledge, especially their ability to properly assess the riskiness of assets. Behaviorally, we observe a decrease in the prevalence of self-reported impulse purchases, but at the same time find no evidence of a significant increase in savings.     

World Human Development: 1870–2007

How has wellbeing evolved over time and across regions? How does the West compare to the Rest? What explains their differences? These questions are addressed using a historical index of human development. A sustained improvement in world wellbeing has taken place since 1870. The absolute gap between OECD and the Rest widened over time, but an incomplete catching up—largely explained by education—occurred between 1913 and 1970. As the health transition was achieved in the Rest, the contribution of life expectancy to human development improvement declined and the Rest fell behind in terms of longevity. Meanwhile, in the OECD, as longevity increased, healthy years expanded. A large variance in human development is noticeable in the Rest since 1970, with East Asia, Latin America, and North Africa catching up to the OECD, and Central and Eastern Europe and Sub‐Saharan Africa falling behind.     

Effect of Parental Migration on the Academic Performance of Left‐behind Middle School Students in Rural China

China's rapid development and urbanization over the past 30 years have caused large numbers of rural residents to migrate to urban areas in search of work. This has created a generation of children who remain behind in rural areas when their parents migrate for work. Previous research has found mixed impacts of parental migration on the educational achievement of left‐behind children (LBC), perhaps because of methodological deficiencies and lack of recognition of the heterogeneity of this population of children. Our study attempts to examine the impact of six types of parental migration on the academic achievement of a rural junior high school sample. Our study uses a panel of 7148 junior high school students to implement a difference‐in‐difference analysis and finds that parental migration has a negative and significant impact on the academic achievement of junior high school students. Our study suggests that the Chinese Government should implement measures to dismantle barriers to the human capital accumulation of LBC to ensure sustainable economic growth and human capital development in China.