School attendance and economic shocks: Evidence from rural Zimbabwe

Unpredicted shocks such as weather, pests or price changes affect agricultural households negatively or positively. The shocks have two opposite effects (income and substitution) on parents’ investments in the human capital of their children, and it is not predictable from theory whether the income effect or the substitution effect of a shock has a greater impact on the investments. Therefore, it is unknown whether human capital investments (i.e. sending children to school rather than having them work) are procyclical or countercyclical. In this paper we show how hyperinflation may affect investments in the education of children by their parents using three data-sets from Zimbabwe. We find that human capital investments are countercyclical (the substitution effect dominates) in rural areas of Zimbabwe during a shock. Therefore, policymakers in Zimbabwe need to be worried about decreased schooling of children during positive shocks in the rural areas.     

Community-Based Wildlife Management (CWM) in Tanzania: Are the Communities Interested?

The fences-and-fines approach (the American National Park model) to wildlife protection is now perceived by many conservationists to have failed in Africa. An alternative approach whereby rural communities are given ownership rights or custodianship and management responsibilities for the resource has been introduced under the name Community-based Wildlife Management (CWM) (also known as Community-Based Conservation or CBC). This new approach is currently under experimentation in many parts of Africa. It is based on a number of assumptions, one being that the communities are interested and willing to conserve wildlife on their lands. Using the Selous Conservation Programme (SCP) in Tanzania and seven other African cases, this paper examines the plausibility of this assumption.     

Development for children's environmental health in South Africa: Past gains and future opportunities

In poorly resourced countries children may face multiple health risks associated with environmental hazards and under-development. It is estimated that exposure to harmful environmental factors (e.g. air pollution, poor water quality and harmful chemicals) accounts for 33% of the global burden of disease, with the highest burden being borne by children. While accelerated housing and settlement development over the past two decades has benefitted hundreds of thousands of young children in South Africa, large numbers continue to face major environmental threats to their health, some of which have hitherto been neglected. Such children are likely to be particularly vulnerable to the unfolding ramifications of climate change. In this light greater urgency and momentum is needed to improve living conditions and other socio-environmental determinants of children's health in South Africa and other under-resourced countries. Children should be a central focus for policy and development as our global society strives to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.     

The Unintended Consequences of Education Policies on South African Participation and Unemployment

In the late 1990s, the South African Department of Education implemented two policies that were meant to reduce the large number of over‐aged learners in the school system: schools were no longer allowed to accept students who were more than two years older than the correct grade age, and students could not be held back more than once in each of four schooling phases. Our analysis uses school administrative data and household survey data to show that these policies coincided with a decrease in school enrolment of at least 400,000 and possibly more than 900,000 learners. These policies appear to have pushed many students into the labour market at earlier ages than was observed for previous generations, which explains much of the sudden increase in labour force participation and unemployment during this period. However, since these individuals would probably have entered the labour market sooner if not for their poor employment prospects, we argue that the resulting increase in unemployment signifies a more accurate reflection of disguised unemployment that already existed in the mid‐1990s rather than a deterioration of labour market conditions.     

The development status of women in South Africa: Patterns and progress in the provinces

The development status of women in South Africa declined between 1996 and 2001. This study examined whether the decline was pervasive throughout the nine provinces, and whether any development patterns were apparent among the provinces. The findings revealed that women had lost ground across the board, both in absolute terms and relative to men. They also showed that certain ranking patterns prevailed among the nine provinces and, notably, that women in provinces with pre-existing poor development statuses may also be predisposed to a poor development status relative to men. This double burden may translate into a perpetuation of poverty for women who find themselves in these provinces.     

The biological standard of living in early nineteenth‐century West Africa: new anthropometric evidence for northern Ghana and Burkina Faso1

West Africans are on average shorter than Europeans today. Whether this was already the case at the end of the Atlantic slave trade is an important question for the history of nutrition and physical welfare. We present the first study of changing heights for people born mostly in what are now northern Ghana and Burkina Faso during the early nineteenth century. The dataset, not used before for anthropometry, documents men born between 1800 and 1849. Mostly purchased from slave owners, they were recruited into the Dutch army to serve in the Dutch East Indies. We find that height development was stagnant between 1800 and 1830 and deteriorated strongly during the 1840s. In international comparison and after taking selectivity issues into account, these Ghanaian and Burkinabe recruits were notably shorter than north‐western Europeans but not shorter than southern Europeans during this period.     

The relationship between financial sector development and savings mobilisation in South Africa: An empirical study

This article examines the link between financial sector development and savings mobilisation in South Africa for the period 1980–2012. Taking the life-cycle hypothesis as our theoretical background and using Johansen co-integration that allows for hypothesis testing, the empirical results revealed a long-run relationship between savings, interest rates and financial sector development. We find an inverse relationship between the interest rate and savings, implying that South Africans are net borrowers because the income effect overwhelms the substitution effect. This in part explains the low level of savings in recent time. Important policy lessons for boosting the national savings rate are discussed.     

An ecological economic approach to forest and biodiversity conservation: The case of vanuatu

The paper presents an ecological economic approach to forest and biodiversity conservation. Constructivist philosophy of social science is critically reviewed and adopted as the methodological basis of the approach. The paradigmatic basis of ecological economics is discussed and a model of human behavior suited to ecological economics is presented. This model accounts for altruistic, normative/affective, and irrational behavior, as well as the role of institutions. A discussion of participatory land use planning, which also accounts for intergenerational equity issues, completes the presentation of the ecological economic approach. Its application to the conservation of forests and biodiversity in Vanuatu demonstrates the operational applicability of the proposed approach.