Do Educational Attainments Influence Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Abstract

Although there is a plethora of literature on gender equality and women empowerment, studies on whether (and to what extent) educational attainments affect people’s attitudes toward gender equality are lacking. This is particularly true for Africa, a mostly male-dominated continent. In this article, we use data from the Wave 6 of the World Values Survey to empirically examine the relationship between educational attainments and attitudes toward gender equality among people in 5 countries in Africa–Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Our results, based on different measures of gender equality and econometric specifications, consistently reveal that the higher the level of education acquired, the more liberal and favorable the individual’s attitudes are toward gender equality.     

Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is it Equality of Opportunity or Equality of Outcomes?

This article explores the impact of gender equality on economic growth. In particular, we focus on the multidimensional nature of gender equality with the object of identifying the relative salience of different aspects of equality. Using exploratory factor analysis on five measures of gender equality, we identify two distinct dimensions: equality of economic opportunities and equality in economic and political outcomes. Regression analysis conducted on an unbalanced panel of 101 countries taken over nonoverlapping five-year periods from 1990 to 2000 reveals that a standard deviation improvement in equality in economic opportunity increases growth by 1.3 percentage points and a corresponding improvement in participatory equality improves growth by an average of about 1.2 percentage points. However, this impact is contingent on a country's stage of development: while developing economies experience significant improvements in growth from greater equality in opportunity, developed societies see significant improvements resulting from greater equality in outcomes.     

Can Empathy Explain Gender Differences in Economic Policy Views in the United States?

This paper shows that different levels of empathy of men and women explain the well-documented gender differences in interventionist government economic policy views in the United States. Using the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy, the study finds that more empathic people support more interventionist policies. While greater empathy leads both men and women to support more government action, there is no gender difference in the effects of empathy on policy views. When policy views are separated by area, gender differences on policies concerning poverty, inequality, and social welfare disappear once empathy is accounted for, though they persist in views on free markets.     

Can Minimum Wages Close the Gender Wage Gap?

Using manufacturing plant‐level census data, this paper demonstrates that minimum wage increases in Indonesia reduced gender wage gaps among production workers, with heterogeneous impacts by level of education and position of the firm in the wage distribution. Paradoxically, educated women appear to have benefitted the most, particularly in the lower half of the firm average earnings distribution. By contrast, women who did not complete primary education did not benefit on average, and even lost ground in the upper end of the earnings distribution. Minimum wage increases were thus associated with exacerbated gender pay gaps among the least educated, and reduced gender gaps among the best educated production workers. Unconditional quantile regression analysis attests to wage compression and lighthouse effects. Changes in relative employment prospects were limited.     

The Hunger of Old Women in Rural Tanzania: Can Subjective Data Improve Poverty Measurement?

On average, women in Tanzania are slightly less likely than men to say that they are “always/often without enough food to eat”—but this masks a much higher rate of self‐reported food deprivation among elderly rural women. Official Tanzanian poverty statistics are, however, based on a methodology which presumes equal sharing per equivalent adult within the household. This paper combines subjective and objective micro‐data from Tanzania's 2007 Household Budget Survey and 2007 Views of the People Survey. By imputing individual consumption based on the relative probability of self‐reported food deprivation, it provides an example of the possible importance of one type of intra‐household inequality—i.e., the hunger of old women—for poverty measurement. Implications include the complexity of gendered intra‐household inequality and the importance of “technical” poverty measurement choices for public policy priorities, such as old age pensions.     

Can Poverty be Alleviated in China?

The 2000s witnessed the third poverty alleviation wave in China. Compared with its predecessors, the third wave distinguished itself by new interventions and redefined standards for the National Poor Counties. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the new program using a data set consisting of 1,411 of China's western and central counties from 2000 to 2010. It combines the propensity score matching method with the difference‐in‐differences approach, which helps to avoid selection bias and track the policy impact on variables of interest at each time point. It is found that the non‐western local governments tended to manipulate data on income and output growth to maintain the special transfer payments disbursed exclusively to the National Poor Counties. It is also shown that the program failed to improve the infrastructure and sanitary conditions in general.     

Can good projects succeed in bad communities?

The lack of “social capital” is frequently given as an explanation for why communities perform poorly. Yet to what extent can project design compensate for these community-specific constraints? I address this question by examining determinants of collective success in a costly problem for developing economies — the upkeep of local public goods. It is often difficult to obtain reliable outcome measures for comparable collective tasks across well-defined communities. In order to address this I conducted detailed surveys of community-maintained infrastructure projects in Northern Pakistan. The findings show that while community-specific constraints do matter, their impact can be mitigated by better project design. Inequality, social fragmentation, and lack of leadership in the community do have adverse consequences but these can be overcome by changes in project complexity, community participation, and return distribution. Moreover, the evidence suggests that better design matters even more for communities with poorer attributes. The use of community fixed effects and instrumental variables offers a significant improvement in empirical identification over previous studies. These results provide evidence that appropriate design can enable projects to succeed even in “bad” communities.     

Can innovation network projects result in efficient performance?

This paper examines the effects that process, structure and governance dimensions of networks have on innovation performance. The main focus of the paper is the multidimensional aspect of innovation networks and how these dimensions affect network performance. Technology management, resource-based, transaction costs and social capital perspectives are applied in the construction of the model variables of each subsystem or dimension analyzed. With results drawn from a sample of 350 project managers identified in the European Union CORDIS database who are actively involved in European innovation networks, we argue that the performance of innovation networks is increased through the suitable design of process, structure and governance subsystems. Empirical findings also show that interactions between these subsystems have a complementary or synergic effect resulting in improved innovation performance.     

Value for money? German local government efficiency in a comparative perspective

In this article, we investigate the cost efficiency of German local governments in the state of Baden-Württemberg in 2004 using a stochastic frontier approach. Besides being the first study on German data, we add two elements to the literature. First, we provide a comparative perspective, allowing us to embed our results in the broader literature. Second, unlike most previous studies, we explicitly account for exogenous or nondiscretionary influences when estimating municipal efficiency scores. The results suggest that disregarding such exogenous factors can lead to significant and systematic bias in the estimated inefficiency levels. Particularly, underestimation of efficiency occurs for municipalities with high tourist activity, while the reverse is true for municipalities with high unemployment.     

Can a decline in search cost increase prices?

This paper provides a new explanation of why a decline in consumers’ price search cost may not lead to lower prices. In a duopoly with price competition, I show that when some consumers are captive to one firm, there may be a non‐monotonic relationship between search cost and market power; firms may charge high prices with higher probability and the average price charged may be higher when consumers’ price search cost falls below a critical level. Furthermore, when firms have asymmetric captive segments, expected prices charged by each firm may move in opposite directions as search cost declines.     

Is Australia Really a World Leader in Closing the Gender Gap?

Abstract

In the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2006 Global Gender Gap report, Australia was highlighted as a world leader in closing the gender gap. With reference to the Economic Participation and Opportunity Index (one of four components in the WEF Gender Gap Index (GGI)), this article assesses whether or not Australia is deserving of this recognition. Closer analysis shows that convergence in the participation gap flowed from increased participation in part-time, low-paid, and precarious jobs. Research also shows that women's entry into professional jobs has led to the feminization of some positions and that vertical segregation remains an ongoing problem. In highlighting these disparities, this article questions the capacity of the GGI to provide an adequate understanding of women's labor market participation and economic attainment.     

Is There a Gap in the Gap? Regional Differences in the Gender Pay Gap

In this paper, we investigate regional differences in the gender pay gap both theoretically and empirically. Within a spatial model of monopsonistic competition, we show that more densely populated labour markets are more competitive and constrain employers’ ability to discriminate against women. Utilizing a large administrative data set for western Germany and a flexible semi‐parametric propensity score matching approach, we find that the unexplained gender pay gap for young workers is substantially lower in large metropolitan than in rural areas. This regional gap in the gap of roughly 10 percentage points remained surprisingly constant over the entire observation period of 30 years.     

Gender difference in support for Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do social institutions matter?

Several recent papers have noted gender differences in support for democracy in Africa, but the causes of this difference remain unclear. This article investigates whether the observed gender gap is due to the related gender inequality in social institutions, which affects women's daily life and deprives them of social and economic empowerment inside and outside the home. Using Afrobarometer survey data (rounds 2 [2002–3], 3 [2004–5], and 4 [2008–9]), the study finds that the gender difference in support for democracy is no longer significant once gender discrimination is controlled for in the family code, physical integrity, or civil liberties components of the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI). Interaction terms show that women's support for democracy is only lower in places where gender inequality in these social institutions is particularly large. This study thus provides evidence that women who live in countries with favorable institutions toward women are more supportive of democracy than women who do not.     

The Study on the Sharing Information in Supply Chains

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between the sharing of information of supply chains and the supply chain management; we also discuss the function of information share, and the obstacles in sharing information. As we all know, information share between enterprises in supply chains is necessary and possible, but the existence of obstacles of sharing information in supply chains is also a severe challenge in practice. This paper tries to find right ways for enterprises to build the real trade partners＇ relationship and realize transferring the information smoothly in all these three levels among the partners in supply chains.     

What to Value and How? Ecological Indicator Choices in Stated Preference Valuation

The ecological literature accepts that many policy outcomes cannot be observed directly and must be characterized using indicators. Multiple indicators can often be used to communicate similar ecological outcomes. Previous studies using alternative indicators in stated preference surveys suggest that welfare estimates may be indicator-dependent, casting doubt on whether welfare estimates are sufficiently reliable for cost benefit analysis. We suggest that the reason for such indicator dependence may be that indicators used in these prior studies represented different outcomes valued by respondents. This possibility underscores the need for greater attention to selection of indicators and their properties within stated preference survey design. This paper develops a model introducing the concept of outcome equivalent indicators, defined as indicators that provide alternative representations of identical underlying outcomes. To assess empirically whether welfare estimates are indeed robust to indicator choice when alternative indicators are expected to be outcome equivalent, we analyze data from a choice experiment estimating willingness to pay for migratory fish restoration in Rhode Island, USA. Results demonstrate that welfare estimates are robust to the use of alternative ecological indicators within stated preference scenarios.