Education and the empowerment of women in household decision‐making in Spain

It was analysed whether investment in the education of both women and men serves to empower wives resulting in more balanced household decisions being taken on matters related to consumption and financial management. They considered that household decision‐making could be made by mainly the wife, mainly the husband or the couple acting jointly. They then applied multinomial probit models to the Spanish Living Conditions Survey of 2010. Results show that, when controlling for demographic, family and labour market characteristics, the level of education of both the husband and wife has a positive effect in terms of a more egalitarian decision‐making process in relation to three areas of expenditure: daily shopping, expensive purchases of consumer durables and significant expenditure on children. However, only women's education has a positive effect on borrowing money and no effect of education is observed with regard to the use of savings. Results are less conclusive for households where decisions are taken primarily by the wife or husband, since men's education increases the role of husbands in the household making‐decision process whereas no effect of wives' education is observed.     

退耕还林背景下农户收入的社会网络效应分析 ——以四川南江县白滩村为例

研究目的:探讨退耕农户在生产力安排和收入结构方面是否存在同群效应或者互补效应,以及劳动力流动、退耕还林政策因素对农户收入结构的影响机制。研究方法:考虑农村社会网络内部农户间互动对其决策的影响,利用空间权重矩阵精确且全面地捕捉和定位社会网络复杂关系,构建空间计量模型展开分析。研究结果:(1)在白滩村社会网络体系中,农户的农业收入比增长1%,其亲戚邻居的家庭农业收入比降低6.7%,这一情况反映了劳动力由农业部门向非农部门转移而产生的社会网络"互补效应";(2)白滩村退耕程度越高的农户,其农业收入占家庭总收入比例就越高,退耕程度每增加1%,农业收入比将提高5.2%;(3)家庭总劳动力越多的,农业收入占总收入比例越低,其中家庭农业劳动力每流出1%,农业收入比减少3.2%。研究结论:(1)将白滩村社会网络的互补效应应用于其农村信息共享平台建设;(2)通过鼓励种植收入较高的经济林提高农民退耕还林积极性;(3)以就业为核心促进白滩村剩余劳动力转移。     

Issues in measuring success in community-based Indigenous tourism: elites,kin groups,social capital,gender dynamics and income flows

Tourism development is a key feature of the neoliberal economic development model. Through a mix of state and private investment, Indigenous communities in Mexico are encouraged to transform local cultural and environmental resources into tourist consumption sites. The process results in a shift toward reliance on tourism, in place of farming, leaving households with few alternative earning strategies amidst fluctuating tourist arrivals and income, confounding the relationship between tourism and sustainability and questioning the utility of tourism as a sustainable tool for development. This article analyses a community-based Indigenous tourism project in a rural Maya village in Mexico's Yucatan, and discusses strategies employed at household level to navigate the arrival of tourism. Funding agencies assessed this project based on a triple bottom line metric that accounts for ecological health, financial sustainability, and its relationship to local social capital; however, these fail to account for differences between local and non-local conceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and success. From a social perspective, the project has exacerbated existing tensions and has arguably widened the gap between the politically and economically powerful and less powerful, marginalized families in the community. Questions about policy, governance systems, and elite domination and kin group control are raised.     

The effects of China's Sloping Land Conversion Program on agricultural households

In the late 1990s, China aimed to mitigate environmental degradation from agricultural production activities by introducing the world's largest “Payments for Environmental Services? program: the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). We develop a microeconomic Agricultural Household Model, which can model the production, consumption, and nonfarm labor supply decisions of agricultural households in rural China in a theoretically consistent fashion. Based on this theoretical model, we derive an empirical specification, which we econometrically estimate using the Hausman–Taylor method and a large longitudinal farm household data set. The empirical results significantly differ between regions, but are generally consistent with the results of our theoretical comparative static analysis, for example, that the SLCP significantly decreases agricultural production. While the SLCP only increases nonfarm labor supply and total consumption in some regions, these effects could not be observed in others. The recent reduction of the SLCP compensation payment rates generally had negligible effects on agricultural production and off‐farm work and only very small effects on household consumption.     

黑龙江省西部松嫩低平原盐碱地质灾害分布调查的思考

本文是在充分利用前人研究成果的基础上,运用多年积累的勘察资料和工作经验,投入1:250000区域地质调查、1:250000遥感地质解译、样品采集与化验分析等工作,运用遥感解译与地面调查相结合的方法科学合理的为黑龙江省西部松嫩低平原盐碱地质灾害分布及危害程度的进一步评价提供科学依据。     

Investigating the Impact of Income on Savings Using a Chinese Household Level Dataset

This article uses the China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) to examine the savings behavior of Chinese Households. Using a standard cross-sectional empirical approach to modeling permanent and transitory income, we show that one way of explaining the relative high savings rate in China is by recognizing that in fast growing economies, individuals may have higher transitory income from which they save a large proportion. The estimation also contains a range of household specific variables which can be used to understand the impact of socio-economic characteristics such as urban vs rural dwelling, age, and the educational level.     

The Media's Role in Influencing Perceptions of Housing Values and the Resulting Impact on the Macroeconomy

The housing market is a major component of the economy and persistent negative media reports can adversely affect perceptions and expectations of homeowners as to the value of their home. As a result, households reduce their expenditures and increase their savings in an effort to rebuild lost wealth. In the short run the economy suffers and the recession is magnified. This paper demonstrates, through an empirical study, how negative media reports regarding the deteriorating conditions of the national housing market affects what households feel their housing is worth.     

Trade openness and household welfare within a country: A microeconomic analysis of Vietnamese households

The positive effects of trade liberalisation on several dimensions of poverty have initiated studies of the trade–poverty relationship. Trade liberalisation accompanies institutional reforms that help to reduce institutional barriers against the poor. This study examines the impacts of trade openness and institutional reforms on rural household welfare at the provincial level through the analysis of the determinants of welfare of rural households in Vietnam. The study employs a model of micro-determinants of growth and tests it on the data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) of 2006 and 2010. What makes the study different from some other studies of the same vein is that it attempts to directly capture the institutional effect on welfare. The study finds that, in the provinces with high institutional reforms and trade openness, the welfare of rural households improved. Institutional reforms in Vietnam appeared to be sluggish in the late 2000s. In particular, both access to land and lower informal charges were the important determinants of welfare improvement over time. These findings suggest that Vietnam should maintain its development by accelerating the process of institutional reforms, thereby helping poor households to improve standards of living.     

农村劳动力质量对规模农户生产效率影响研究

随着我国工业化与城镇化加速推进,农村领域大量劳动力以不同速度流向了非农产业,农村劳动力要素禀赋质量发生了巨大变化,农村劳动力要素禀赋质量的异质性对规模农户粮食生产效率的提高产生了深刻的影响。文章基于460户调查数据,运用Q型聚类方法将劳动力质量类型分为男性经验丰富型、女性经验丰富型、男性经验欠缺型、女性经验欠缺型四种类型,并利用随机前沿生产函数模型,计量检验了不同劳动力质量类型、劳动态度及劳动力市场发育等变量对家庭生产效率的影响。研究结果表明:男性经验丰富型与女性经验丰富型对家庭经济增长效率提升产生了显著的正效应,效应值分别为0.290、0.170,而男性经验欠缺型与女性经验欠缺型对生产效率提升产生了明显的负向影响,效应值分别为-0.110、-0.153,劳动态度、劳动力市场发育变量与家庭生产效率提升呈现了较强正、负相关性,效应值分别为0.590、-6.738。