Which eligible households get grants? Demographic correlates of receipt in South Africa

Since Apartheid, the South African government transformed and expanded the social grants system to improve the well-being of its vulnerable populations. Despite increased efforts, a sub-section of the grant-eligible population is not reached. Too little is known about the factors that contribute to grant receipt, especially for the household as a whole. This article examines the household and community characteristics associated with grant receipt among poor households in KwaZulu-Natal. We add to previous work by assessing grant receipt at the household level, examining receipt of the two major grants and analysing correlates in a multivariate framework. While associations with grant receipt are complex and varied, we find higher grant receipt (especially the Child Support Grant) among more disadvantaged households. We also find that characteristics across multiple domains are needed to best distinguish household grant receipt. We discuss theoretical implications for models of grant receipt and practical implications for improving grant access.     

Financial Risk Taking by Age and Birth Cohort

This study decomposes the effects of chronological age, birth cohort, and calendar year on the age profile of household financial risk taking. Using two measures of risk taking, one based on observed portfolio allocations of wealth and another based on survey respondents' stated willingness to take risk, the results support the conventional wisdom that risk taking decreases with age. The results also reveal a cohort effect that shifts the age-risk profile down from older to younger cohorts. This finding is consistent with households taking less risk in response to decreasing financial security over time. The results have implications for the impact of an aging population on stock prices and for the impact on household well-being of the trend toward individual responsibility for asset management in vehicles such as defined-contribution pensions and the proposed Social Security personal accounts.     

Literacy and Intrahousehold Externalities

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.     

How does housing wealth affect household consumption? Evidence from macro-data with special implications for China

Thanks to four-decade spectacular economic growth, China's households have been accumulating a stockpile of wealth. In such a context, further concerns have been raised about the relationship between wealth accumulation and improvement of economic well-being, mainly through consumption. The issue becomes even more important when considering the challenges facing China in recent years, which can be characterized by a mix of increasingly leveraged households, escalating housing price, sluggish consumption, slowing economic expansion, trade frictions with the United States, and the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic difficulties. With that background in mind, this paper first provides international evidence on the relationship between household consumption and wealth, especially in the form of houses. Drawing on a panel of aggregate data for fourteen countries including China, we find that household consumption positively responds to changes in housing wealth, and this link is further affected by different levels of government spending and financial development. We next relate the international evidence to the case of China, with the focus on some recent policy issues over housing regulations and consumption promotion. Importantly, as the evidence and underlying theories suggest, housing wealth-consumption association does not follow a simplistic pattern, and thus, multiple policy measures could and should be undertaken rather than merely curbing speculative activities in real estate exchanges and associated financial business.     

Digital Financial Inclusion and Consumption Smoothing in China

In this paper, we investigate the effect of digital financial inclusion (DFI) on household consumption smoothing in China. We use four waves of the biennial China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2016, during which time DFI has significantly developed alongside financial technology across China. We split household income shocks into permanent and transitory components, and evaluate if DFI may help households to buffer against these shocks. We find that households are not able to insure against permanent shocks to income, but they can smooth approximately 70 percent of transitory shocks to income. We also find that DFI has diminished households’ ability to insure against transitory income shocks. This is partly because online purchase may lead to the oversensitivity of consumption to income. In addition, we find that contrary to DFI, traditional financial sector development contributes to better household consumption smoothing against transitory income shocks.     

Food poverty,hunger and household production in rural Eastern Cape households

More than two decades since the advent of democracy in South Africa, the place of small-scale agriculture in rural development, poverty alleviation and food security remains ambiguous and highly contested. However, there is now some new evidence that official income poverty estimates in South Africa may be underestimating the contribution of rural, land-based livelihoods when measuring household well-being. This paper aims to explore this possibility further by identifying how household production activities are associated with improved food security among rural Eastern Cape households in the former homelands. The analysis is based on data from Statistics South Africa’s 2008/9 Living Conditions Survey and its annual General Household Surveys. In adopting a food poverty lens, the findings suggest that hunger levels are lower among farming households in the Eastern Cape even though a higher percentage of these households (relative to non-farming households) live below the national food poverty line. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for policy.     

Individual well-being in urban China: The role of income expectations

Using household survey data, we study the determinants of individual well-being in urban China, emphasizing particularly the role of income expectations. First, we find that individual well-being increases contemporaneously with own income and decreases with community's average income, consistent with findings reported in previous studies. This result holds when we replace income with consumption and when we consider employment and health status of other family members. Second and more important, we find that income expectations have a positive and significant effect on individual well-being. This result is robust to alternative model specifications and to controls for optimistic personality. Instrumental variable estimates and endogeneity tests suggest that the positive relationship between well-being and income expectations is genuine. Our finding has the potential to explain why reported well-being has declined in China despite the spectacular economic growth in the past decades.     

Home value misestimation and household behavior: Evidence from China

Households often make errors when self-assessing their housing wealth. By using the Chinese Households Finance Survey, we show that Chinese urban households systematically overestimate their home value. This bias is significantly related to household consumption: a one standard deviation increase in the extent of estimation bias is associated with a 10% increase in household consumption. Our main results are robust against a variety of robustness checks, e.g., taking into account the expectations of future home price, using the interviewee's estimation as the instrumental variable for the household self-estimation, implementing the hedonic model on an external data source to assess real homevalue, etc.. Further, we show that overestimated households are more likely to take risk in financial market, and have a larger amount of immediate and conspicuous consumption. These findings have policy implications for the recent debate about property tax, indicating the unintended consequences of property tax through providing more precise information about home value.     

Gender and child sensitive social protection in South Africa

Drawing from a 2010 study of women receiving the Child Support Grant in an urban area of South Africa, this article discusses the link between social protection, women's empowerment and the well-being of children. It appears that the Grant enhances women's power and control over household decision-making in financial matters, general household spending and child well-being. At the same time, the data show that women continue to bear the greatest burden of care in the household and that these responsibilities significantly heighten gender inequalities. Therefore, while the Grant has benefits for child well-being and women's empowerment, it cannot on its own transform unequal and unjust social relations of power. It should be working in concert with other public programmes not only to focus on children's needs but also to strive for gender equality for poor women.     

Financial literacy,housing value and household financial market participation: Evidence from urban China

Using data from the 2012 consumer finance survey in China, we extend the literature on household finance by examining the effects of both financial literacy and housing value on household financial market participation, the role of which has been examined separately in the existing literature. The results show that financial literacy significantly improves the probability of household financial market participation, while the housing value has an obvious “crowding-out effect” on household financial market participation in urban China. Further research finds that the role of financial literacy in household financial market participation in households with a low housing value is stronger than that in households with a high housing value. Furthermore, the study of the regional differences shows that among households with a high housing value, financial literacy plays a more significant role in household bond market participation in less-developed cities. Among households with a low housing value, improvement in financial literacy plays a more significant role in household fund market participation in less-developed cities and under-developed cities. Our findings remain robust after alleviating potential bias due to endogenous problems by applying the instrumental variable (IV) method and propensity score matching (PSM) method. Finally, the paper proposes corresponding policy recommendations.     

Are the actual and intended sources of financial knowledge the same? Evidence from Japan

The recent prolonged period of low economic growth and low interest rates in Japan demands that Japanese households invest in risky assets to accumulate sufficient retirement savings. In so doing, they acquire financial knowledge on these risky assets, typically from financial experts or salespersons in financial institutions. However, they may not necessarily be content with their current sources of financial knowledge because depending on their stage in the life cycle, they require different types of financial knowledge, usually from a variety of sources. Unfortunately, because of limitations in the data available, few studies have investigated whether the actual and intended sources of financial knowledge are the same. To address this research gap, this paper uses a Japanese household survey from 2010 to 2017, which provides unique information on the actual and intended sources of financial knowledge, and obtains two interesting results. First, a household’s actual sources of financial knowledge typically differ from its intended sources. More specifically, 33 % of households choosing financial institutions and experts and 52 % of households choosing financial institutions as their actual sources have a different intended source. Second, the discrepancy between actual and intended sources appears to relate to household demographic characteristics. Among those households choosing financial institutions and experts as their actual source of financial knowledge, 14 % choosing financial institutions as their intended source tend to have a lower level of financial knowledge and educational attainment. These results suggest that they have some difficulty understanding the advice of financial advisers. Among households choosing financial institutions as their actual source of financial knowledge, 26 % choosing financial institutions and experts as their intended source tend to have a larger amount of financial assets, better financial knowledge, and a preference for investing in risky assets; however, they also tend to be younger. This suggests they might want to obtain financial knowledge from financial experts to purchase risky financial assets as they age. While the study does not provide any causal evidence, the results suggest that understanding the reasons for any discrepancy in the actual and intended sources of financial knowledge may help financial institutions provide better services to these customers.     

Remittances and relative concerns in rural China

The paper investigates the impact of remittances on the relative concerns of households in rural China. Using the Rural to Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) dataset we estimate a series of subjective well-being functions to simultaneously explore relative concerns with respect to income and remittances. Our results show that although rural households experience substantial welfare loss due to income comparisons, they gain well-being by comparing their remittances with those received by their reference group. In other words, we find evidence of a “status effect” with respect to income and of a “signal effect” of similar magnitude with respect to remittances. This finding is robust to various specifications, alternative reference group definitions, controls for the endogeneity of remittances and selective migration, as well as the use of migrants' net contribution to household income.     

ARE PRIVATE TRANSFERS ALTRUISTICALLY MOTIVATED? THE CASE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA BEFORE AND DURING THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Using household panel data from Korea for 1995–98, this paper shows that private transfers of Korean households were altruistically motivated. Although the altruistic motive of households seemed to be reinforced during the financial crisis, the amount of private transfers was still not sufficient to support households living in urban areas. Also, there had been a strong crowding‐out relation between private and public transfers. This suggests that the Korean government should have designed its public transfer scheme carefully in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its social safety net programs.     

ARV Treatment and Time Allocation to Household Tasks: Evidence from Kenya

Using longitudinal survey data collected over a period of two years, this paper examines the impact of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment on the time allocated to various household tasks by treated HIV-positive patients and their household members. We study outcomes such as time devoted to housework, firewood and water collection, as well as care-giving and care-seeking. As treatment improves the health and productivity of patients, we find that female patients in particular are able to increase the amount of time they devote to water and firewood collection. This increased productivity of patients coupled with large decreases in the amount of time they spend seeking medical care leads to a reduced burden on children and other household members. We find evidence that boys and girls in treated patients' households devote less time to housework and other chores. These results suggest that the provision of ARV treatment generates a wide variety of benefits to households in resource-poor settings.     

Who are the heads of household,what do they do,and is the concept of headship useful? An analysis of headship in South Africa

In most household surveys, headship is not defined by objective criteria but is self-identified by respondents. The first part of this article examines whether self-reported heads in South Africa are those household members in whom more control over decision-making is vested. Although the head is typically found to be the oldest household member, there is also a strong relationship between headship and the highest income-earner in the household. Furthermore, heads have final say over decisions even when they do not earn the most income. This is the case particularly in households headed by women. The second part of the article evaluates whether the gender of the head provides a useful marker for distinguishing between household types and their access to resources. Female- and male-headed households are not homogeneous groupings, and male-headed households are not equally advantaged. However, female-headed households in South Africa on average contain fewer income-earners, whose income is also lower, than male-headed households. Overall, therefore, households headed by women are considerably more likely to be economically vulnerable.     

"SIN" TAXES AND POOR HOUSEHOLDS: UNANTICIPATED EFFECTS

This paper presents several hypotheses relating to the effects that tax hikes on tobacco and alcohol products may have on poor households. Its focus is limited to patriarchal households in which the head is “egoistic” and/or addicted (to alcohol and tobacco) and is also in control of the household budget. It is argued that “sin” tax hikes may adversely affect the welfare of household members other than the head, either directly through a re‐allocation of the household budget, or indirectly through higher health expenses caused by the substitution of cheaper and lower quality alcohol and tobacco products for higher quality products.     

数字普惠金融发展影响家庭资产配置结构了吗

2016年,我国政府提出发展数字普惠金融,倡导利用数字化技术提高金融体系的普惠水平。文章以数字普惠金融发展为切入点,研究了其对家庭资产配置的影响。使用2017年CHFS调查数据、北京大学数字普惠金融指数和中国城市统计年鉴数据,实证发现数字普惠金融能显著提高家庭参与金融市场和股票市场的概率,提高配置风险资产和股票资产的比例,此结果经过多种稳健性检验后保持一致。这一影响在城镇地区的家庭和使用第三方支付的家庭中更显著。这一影响的作用机制是数字金融降低了家庭参与成本、增加了金融可得性和扩宽了信息渠道。文章为数字普惠金融发展影响家庭金融行为提供了实证证据。     

Income Uncertainty and Wealth Accumulation: How Precautionary are Taiwanese Households?*

To assess how recent job loss impacts wealth accumulation of Taiwanese households, the present study investigates the empirical relevance of the precautionary saving motive to explain measures of wealth during the past 2 decades. This study demonstrates that households facing increased transitory shock accumulate increased amounts of financial and housing wealth, whereas permanent shocks cause households to accumulate housing wealth only. Empirical results suggest an important policy implication: households in Taiwan will save less when social insurance policies are effective in reducing future transitory and permanent shocks to household income.     

互联网普及如何影响中国家庭债务杠杆率

互联网技术的普及推动了数字金融、移动支付、金融科技等一系列金融创新的发展,基于此,文章利用中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）2017年的数据,细致探讨了互联网这一最基础的技术普及与家庭债务杠杆率的关系及内在作用机理。结果发现：（1）互联网的使用将显著推高家庭的债务杠杆率。在使用工具变量回归、处理效应模型与PSM匹配纠正内生性问题后,这一结论依然成立。（2）除通过促进电子支付、增加金融可及性外,互联网的使用还将通过提高信息搜寻与增强社会互动这两种渠道而带来家庭债务杠杆率的累积。（3）互联网的使用与家庭债务杠杆率间存在显著的非线性关系,即意味着只有当对互联网的使用达到一定程度后,其才会带来家庭债务风险。（4）对于受需求型信贷约束、低收入与中老年群体,互联网使用对这类群体债务杠杆率的影响程度更大。进一步地,除网络平台借款将推高家庭债务杠杆外,文章还考察了互联网的使用对民间借贷的影响,并发现其对家庭非正规借贷杠杆率的影响更为突出。而对于金融知识欠缺的家庭,其债务杠杆率更高。这说明,在鼓励使用互联网推动家庭参与金融市场的同时,也要注意防范过度使用互联网所带来的金融风险,而其中一种有效的途径便是普及金融知识教育,提高居民的金融素养。     

British working‐class household composition,labour supply,and commercial leisure participation during the 1930s

The early twentieth century constituted the heyday of the ‘breadwinner–homemaker’ household, characterized by a high degree of intra‐household functional specialization between paid and domestic work according to age, gender, and marital status. This article examines the links between formal workforce participation and access to resources for individualized discretionary spending in British working‐class households during the late 1930s, via an analysis of household leisure expenditures. Leisure spending is particularly salient to intra‐household resource allocation, as it constitutes one of the most highly prioritized areas of individualized expenditure, especially for young, single people. Using a database compiled from surviving returns to the Ministry of Labour's national 1937/8 working‐class expenditure survey, we examine leisure participation rates for over 600 households, using a detailed set of commercial leisure activities together with other relevant variables. We find that the employment status of family members other than the male breadwinner was a key factor influencing their access to commercial leisure. Our analysis thus supports the view that the breadwinner–homemaker household was characterized by strong power imbalances that concentrated resources—especially for individualized expenditures—in the hands of those family members who engaged in paid labour.