Cities,slums, and child nutrition in Bangladesh

This study uses novel household survey data that are representative of Bangladesh's large cities, and of slum and nonslum areas within the cities, to investigate the effects of demographic and socioeconomic factors on child nutrition status in 2013. The study also decomposes the difference in mean child nutrition status between slum and nonslum areas in 2013, and the increase in mean child nutrition status in slum and nonslum areas from 2006 to 2013. Mother's education attainment and household wealth largely explain the cross‐sectional difference and intertemporal change in mean child nutrition status. Although positive in some cases, the effects of maternal and child health services, and potential health‐protective household amenities, on child nutrition status differ by the type of health facility, household amenity, and urban area (slum or nonslum). Focusing on nutrition‐sensitive programs for slum residents and the urban poor is consistent with the results.     

FAMILY PLANNING AND WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: EVIDENCE FROM THE ONE‐CHILD POLICY

This paper exploits China's one‐child policy (OCP) to study the relationship between fertility and educational attainment of the mothers of China's “sibling‐less generation.” I take two difference‐in‐differences approaches to estimate the OCP's effect on women's education: one compares gender difference among the ethnic majority group and the other compares ethnicity differences between ethnic majority women and ethnic minority women. I also explore the heterogeneity of the policy's effects by parent's status at the Communist Party. I find that the OCP has a positive and significant effect on women's education and explains about half of the increase in educational attainment for women born between 1960 and 1980. Their increased educational attainment associates with delayed entry into first marriage, delayed entry to parenthood and increased labor supply. (JEL I20, J13, J16, J18)     

How Hungry is the Selfish Gene?

We examine resource allocation in step-households in the United States and South Africa to test whether child investments vary according to economic and genetic bonds between parent and child. In the United States, households spend less on food when a child is raised by a non-biological mother. The reduction is identical for step, adoptive, and foster households, consistent with the hypothesis that genetic ties are the ones that binds. In South Africa, where food spending can be disaggregated, households spend less on milk, fruit and vegetables, and more on tobacco and alcohol, in the absence of a child's birth mother.     

Endogenous growth with a limited fossil fuel extraction capacity

Campbell (1980) and following authors have discussed a limited resource extraction capacity as an augmentation of the well‐known Hotelling model. We integrate a limited extraction capacity and related investments in the endogenous growth model of Tsur and Zemel (2005) to study its effect on economic development. The capacity constraint gives rise to three effects. On the one hand, higher energy costs and the reallocation of production towards capacity investments decrease production available for consumption, research and/or capital investments (energy costs and reallocation effect). On the other hand, research investments may increase, which boosts available production (research effect). Depending on the capital endowment and the strength of the effects, long‐run consumption may be boosted or depressed. In particular, the capacity constraint may render everlasting consumption growth non‐optimal in a resource‐rich economy. Furthermore, we find that capacity investments may be postponed to later points in time if the capital endowment is high.     

LIVING STANDARDS INEQUALITY BETWEEN MIGRANTS AND LOCAL RESIDENTS IN URBAN CHINA—A QUANTILE DECOMPOSITION

This study investigates the inequality in per‐capita consumption expenditure between urban and rural‐to‐urban migrant households in China using Rural‐Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) data. The methodology used is that of Oaxaca‐Blinder and unconditional quantile decompositions and we deal with selection related to education level using matching. It is found that the characteristics effect does not contribute toward explaining any of the gaps in consumption. Results from a detailed decomposition suggest that differences in educational level account for 8%–19% of the overall inequality after taking selectivity of education into consideration. Differences in household size and region of residence are also important in narrowing expenditure inequality between the two groups. (JEL R23, C15)     

ETHNIC AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY: A STUDY OF 26-YEAR-OLDS IN THE USA

This paper uses the traditional income framework and a non‐monetary framework to estimate intergenerational mobility in economic status for a sample of 26‐year‐old whites, blacks and Hispanics in the USA using data from the first and fifth sweeps of the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988 and 2000). Intergenerational income mobility is found to be greater for males than for females, although there are differences between whites, blacks and Hispanics. Transition probabilities indicate that Hispanics are the most upwardly mobile in terms of educational attainment and occupational status. Ordered logits are used to estimate the impact of parental education and occupation on educational and occupational outcomes.     

Social Affiliation and the Demand for Health Services: Caste and Child Health in South India

This paper assesses the role of social affiliation, measured by caste, in shaping investments in child health. The special setting that we have chosen for the analysis - tea estates in the South Indian High Range - allows us to control nonparametrically for differences in income, access to health services, and patterns of morbidity across low caste and high caste households. In this controlled setting, low caste households spend more on their children's health than high caste households, reversing the pattern we would expect to find elsewhere in India. Moreover, health expenditures do not vary by gender within either caste group, in contrast once again with the male preference documented throughout the country. A simple explanation, based on differences in the returns to human capital across castes in the tea estates is proposed to explain these striking results.     

The continuous treatment effect of an antipoverty program on children's educational attainment: Colombia's Familias en Accion

Educational attainment is an important element in the formation of human capital. Although many developing countries have made strong efforts to expand the coverage of education services, children in poor households still struggle to attend school on a regular basis. Human development conditional cash transfers (known as CCT s) have emerged in response to this situation in developing countries. While the effects of the CCT s are well known and widely documented, their effects in relation to educational attainment and school participation are still unclear. This paper looks empirically into the continuous treatment effects of participation length in Familias en Accion , a CCT program in Colombia. The paper focuses on the continuous treatment effects on school registration and educational attainment of participants in the program. Although initial results show a fuzzy relationship between the program outcomes and the participation length, the empirical results confirm the fact that a longer exposure to the antipoverty program led to higher school registration rates, accumulation of years of education, and lower child labor participation levels.     

Education,Rent seeking and the Curse of Natural Resources

Empirical evidence suggests that natural resources breed corruption and reduce educational attainments, dampening economic growth. The theoretical literature has treated these two channels separately, with natural resources affecting growth either through human capital or corruption. In this article, we argue that education and corruption are jointly determined and depend on the endowment of natural resources. Natural resources affect the incentives to invest in education and rent seeking that in turn affect growth. Whether natural resources stimulate growth or induce a poverty‐trap crucially depends on inequality in access to education and political participation, as well as on the cost of political participation. For lower inequality and higher cost of political participation, a high‐growth and a poverty‐trap equilibrium coexist even with abundant natural resources.     

Family linkages,social interactions,and investment in human capital: A theoretical analysis

This paper introduces parent–child interactions into the Beckerian model of human capital. The acquisition of human capital, jointly determined by parental investment and child effort, is an equilibrium outcome of the intergenerational interactions, which is Pareto efficient within the family. We show that the equilibrium output of human capital is not affected by the parental authority over child behavior, but it is usually lower than the level that maximizes the instantaneous aggregate family welfare. In a family with more than one child, siblings not only compete for parental investments but also directly interact with each other in their effort choices. Exploring intragenerational connections and their interplay with intergenerational forces, we present a more complete theory of family linkages in human development and its implications for the rise and fall of families. Social interactions among children from different families induce intragenerational feedback effects that are further amplified by intrafamily interactions and accelerate regression toward the mean in the economic status of families.     

Canadian contributions to family economics

Canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics. These include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets, and of how decisions are made in multi‐person households. Several were early contributors to the literature on married women's labour supply and labour supply in a family context, and helped to develop empirical methods in this area. A particular focus has been on the impacts of policy‐relevant parameters, such childcare costs, on family labour supply and child well‐being. New work on child development, the impact of early life conditions, and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well‐being.     

Family Policies: What Does the Standard Endogenous Fertility Model Tell Us?

Very few studies have explored the optimality properties of the “standard model” of fertility where parents must determine their optimal trade‐off between quality and quantity. The present paper works to fill that gap and find three main results. First, when there exist positive externalities in the accumulation of human capital, it is optimal to subsidize education and to tax births. Second, when the Social Welfare Function does not consist of the average utility, the social returns on educational investments can be weaker than the private returns when the optimal population growth rate is negative. In this case, the optimal economic policy consists in subsidizing births and taxing education. Finally, when the health expenditure is introduced as another source of positive externalities, it can be optimal to tax the parental health expenditure to decentralize the first‐best path even if this expenditure is always too low at the laissez‐faire equilibrium.     

The human capital and economic growth nexus: in East and South Asia

This study adopts a disaggregated regional focus to test for the human capital (HC)-growth nexus in selected nine Asian countries. It utilizes the Empirical Bayesian methodology which addresses not only the heterogeneity issue but it also utilizes the common structural priors of regional countries to yield ‘informationally’ efficient estimates of the impact of HC on the stock and levels of GDP. Various measures of HC are utilized to determine which of these produces a better explanation of economic growth in the two Asian regions. The study finds that primary and secondary education was more prominent in explaining the fluctuations of economic growth in East Asia, whereas tertiary and vocational education showed positive effects on economic growth in South Asia. Government expenditures on education were also found to positively affect economic growth in both regions. The results shed new evidence to establish that the differences in growth rates within East and South Asia are associated with differences in educational progression in the regions.     

CAN GREATER ATTENTION TO WOMEN'S RIGHTS HELP ADDRESS INCOME INEQUALITY?

We investigate the relationship between women's economic, social, and political rights with the level of income inequality. We use dynamic panel estimation to check our hypothesis that that strong rights for women translate into higher participation in economic productive activities, improve income and education and support for future generations, thus reducing the overall income inequality in the economy. We further look at how a country's overall economic performance and the status of women's education alter the relationship. The relationship is strengthened if countries are either in the higher‐income spectrum or have higher levels of female educational attainment. (JEL O1, I00, H00)     

DETERMINANTS OF SCHOOL ENROLLMENT AND PERFORMANCE IN BULGARIA: THE ROLE OF INCOME AMONG THE POOR AND RICH

Where credit markers are incomplete, households must finance educational investments out of past savings or current earnings. Poor households, with low savings and low current income, may accordingly be highly constrained in their educational choices, whereas richer households are not. The commonly used log-expenditures specification of the relationship of income to school enrollment may therefore be imprecise. Using data from the 1995 Bulgarian Integrated Household Survey, this analysis shows that the roughly 50% of Bulgarian households with expenditures per adult-equivalent of less than 5,000 Leva (1995 prices) are financially constrained in their educational choices, while richer households are not.     

HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION AND TAX EVASION

A strictly risk‐averse individual with an exogenous gross income in period one can acquire human capital in the same period and evade taxes. Period‐two income rises with educational investments in period one and can also be hidden from tax authorities. It is shown that a greater tax deductibility of educational investments and higher individual ability induce a positive correlation between tax evasion and educational investments in period two, whereas the relationship in period one is ambiguous. These theoretical predictions can explain diverse empirical findings on the correlation between education and tax evasion.     

School Education,Learning‐by‐Doing,and Fertility in Economic Development

We examine the policy implications of relaxing constraints on the educational choice of individuals for economic development. Distinguishing human capital accumulation through schooling and through learning‐by‐doing and knowledge spillovers, we show that in the earlier stages of development, mitigating and eventually eliminating constraints on school education would be necessary for even further economic development. Expanded school education increases the income of individuals and encourages physical capital accumulation, which enlarges productive knowledge through implementation and operations. The increased labor productivity thus boosts economic growth. In the process, the fertility rate will decline because of the increased education cost per child.     

HEALTH IMPROVEMENTS AND THE TRANSITION OUT OF MALTHUSIAN STAGNATION

The central component of most economic models that analyse the transition from the Malthusian regime to self-sustaining developed economies is education. Improved health is normally envisaged as simply a by-product of economic growth. Whereas growth does, indeed, tend to improve health status, the reverse is also true, namely that health improvements are a dynamic force capable of driving economic expansion. This paper underlines the importance of health improvements in escaping from Malthusian stagnation. Further, and in contrast to existing literature, which emphasizes the effects of changes in mortality rates, this paper focuses on the relationship between health status and the efficiency of human capital technology. Through this channel, health improvements stimulate investments in child quality in terms of both nourishing and schooling and drive the economy towards the Modern Growth regime.     

The Impact of the German Child Benefit on Household Expenditures and Consumption

The German Child Benefit (‘Kindergeld’) is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. The benefit does not depend on household income or other household characteristics. I use exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households in the German Socio‐Economic Panel to estimate the impact of a given change in the child benefit on food expenditures of households, the probability of owning a home, rent per square meter, measures of the size of the home, as well as parents’ smoking behavior and parents’ alcohol consumption. Households primarily increase per capita food expenditures in response to increases in child benefit, and they also improve housing conditions. The effect of child benefit on per capita food expenditures is larger for low‐income households compared to high‐income households. I do not find a significant effect of child benefit on parents’ smoking or drinking.