Person:
Lokshin, Michael M.

Development Data Group

Fields of Specialization

Social safety nets, Child health, Poverty mapping, Inequality, Poverty analysis, Labor

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Development Data Group

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Michael Lokshin is a Lead Economist and Manager in the Development Data Group of the World Bank. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999 after which he joined the research group at the World Bank as a Young Economist (YE program). His research focuses on the areas of poverty and inequality measurement, labor economics, and applied econometrics. More recently he has been involved in the Bank's efforts to develop the methodology of evaluating the effect of crisis and public policies on households in developing countries. He also leads the group of researchers in development of the Software Platform for Automated Economic Analysis (ADePT).

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 63

The Effect of Male Migration for Work on Employment Patterns of Females in Nepal

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-10) Lokshin, Michael ; Glinskaya, Elena

This paper assesses the impact of work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously affect males' decision to migrate and females' decision to participate in the labor market. The results indicate that male migration for work has a negative impact on the level of market work participation by the women left behind. The authors find evidence of substantial heterogeneity (based both on observable and unobservable characteristics) in the impact of male migration. The findings highlight the important gender dimension of the impact of predominantly male worker migration on the wellbeing of sending households. The authors argue that strategies for economic development in Nepal should take into account such gender aspects of the migration dynamics.
Measuring Welfare Gains from Better Quality Infrastructure

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-04) Klytchnikova, Irina ; Lokshin, Michael

Projects and reforms targeting infrastructure services can affect consumer welfare through changes in the price, coverage, or quality of the services provided. The benefits of improved service quality-while significant-are often overlooked because they are difficult to quantify. This paper reviews methods of evaluating the welfare implications of changes in the quality of infrastructure services within the broader theoretical perspective of welfare measurement. The study outlines the theoretical assumptions and data requirements involved, illustrating each method with examples that highlight common methodological features and differences. The paper also presents the theoretical underpinnings and potential applications of a new approach to analyzing the effects of interruptions in the supply of infrastructure services on household welfare.
Work-Related Migration and Poverty Reduction in Nepal

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-05) Lokshin, Michael ; Bontch-Osmolovski, Mikhail ; Glinskaya, Elena

Using two rounds of nationally representative household survey data in this study, the authors measure the impact on poverty in Nepal of local and international migration for work. They apply an instrumental variable approach to deal with nonrandom selection of migrants and simulate various scenarios for the different levels of work-related migration, comparing observed and counterfactual household expenditure distribution. The results indicate that one-fifth of the poverty reduction in Nepal occurring between 1995 and 2004 can be attributed to increased levels of work-related migration and remittances sent home. The authors also show that while the increase in work migration abroad was the leading cause of this poverty reduction, internal migration also played an important role. The findings show that strategies for economic growth and poverty reduction in Nepal should consider aspects of the dynamics of domestic and international migration.
Household Schooling Decisions in Rural Pakistan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-02) Sawada, Yasayuki ; Lokshin, Michael

Human capital investments in Pakistan are performing poorly; school enrollment is low, the high school dropout rate is high, and there is a definite gender gap in education. The authors conducted field surveys in 25 Pakistani villages and integrated their field observations, economic theory, and econometric analysis to investigate the sequential nature of education decisions--because current outcomes depend not only on current decisions but also on past decisions. Their full-information maximum likelihood estimate of the sequential schooling decision model reveals important dynamics affecting the gender gap in education, the effects of transitory income and wealth, and intrahousehold resource allocation patterns. They find, among other things, that in rural Pakistan: 1) There is a high educational retention rate, conditional on school entry, and that male and female schooling progression rates become comparable at higher levels of education. 2) A household's human and physical assets and changes in its income significantly affect children's education patterns. Birth order affects siblings' competition for resources. 3) Serious supply-side constraints on village girls' primary education suggest the importance of supply-side policy interventions in Pakistan's rural primary education--for example, providing more girls' primary schools close to villages and employing more female teachers.
Gainers and Losers from Trade Reform in Morocco

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-08) Ravallion, Martin ; Lokshin, Michael

The authors use Morocco's national survey of living standards to measure the short-term welfare impacts of prior estimates of the price changes attributed to various trade policy reforms for cereals-the country's main food staple. They find small impacts on mean consumption and inequality in the aggregate. There are both gainers and losers and (contrary to past claims) the rural poor are worse off on average after trade policy reforms. The authors decompose the aggregate impact on inequality into a "vertical" component (between people at different pre-reform welfare levels) and a "horizontal" component (between people at the same pre-reform welfare level). There is a large horizontal component which dominates the vertical impact of full de-protection. The diverse impacts reflect a degree of observable heterogeneity in consumption behavior and income sources, with implications for social protection policies.
Robustness of Subjective Welfare Analysis in a Poor Developing Country: Madagascar 2001

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-01) Lokshin, Michael ; Umapathi, Nithin ; Paternostro, Stefano

The authors analyze the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. They base their analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. The authors extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty lines on the basis of categorical consumption adequacy questions. Based on this methodology they calculate the household-specific, subjective poverty lines and compare the poverty profiles derived from different subjective welfare questions. The results show that the aggregate poverty measures derived from consumption adequacy questions accord quite well with the poverty measures based on objective poverty lines. The subjective welfare analysis can be used in poor developing countries for evaluating socioeconomic and distributional impacts of various policy interventions.
Rich and Powerful? Subjective Power and Welfare in Russia

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-06-30) Lokshin, Michael ; Ravallion, Martin

Does "empowerment" come hand-in-hand with higher economic welfare? In theory, higher income is likely to raise both power and welfare, but heterogeneity in other characteristics and household formation can either strengthen or weaken the relationship. Survey data on Russian adults indicate that higher individual and household incomes raise both self-rated power and welfare. The individual income effect is primarily direct, rather than through higher household income. There are diminishing returns to income, though income inequality emerges as only a minor factor reducing either aggregate power or welfare. At given income, the identified covariates have strikingly similar effects on power and welfare. There are some notable differences between men and women in perceived power.
Has Rural Infrastructure Rehabilitation in Georgia Helped the Poor?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2005-08-31) Lokshin, Michael ; Yemtsov, Ruslan

This article proposes a research strategy to deal with the scarcity of data on beneficiaries for conducting impact assessments of community-level projects. Community-level panel data from a regular household survey augmented with a special community module are used to measure the impact of projects. Propensity score-matched difference in-difference comparisons are used to control for time-invariant unobservable factors. This methodology takes into consideration the purposeful placement of projects and their interactions at the community level. This empirical approach is applied to infrastructure rehabilitation projects, for schools, roads, and water supply systems, in rural Georgia between 1998 and 2001. The analysis produces plausible results regarding the size of welfare gains from a particular project at the village level and allows for differentiation of benefits between the poor and the non-poor. The findings of this study can contribute to evaluations of the impact of infrastructure interventions on poverty by bringing new empirical evidence to bear on the welfare and equity implications.
Analyzing Food Security Using Household Survey Data : Streamlined Analysis with ADePT Software

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-04-22) Moltedo, Ana ; Troubat, Nathalie ; Lokshin, Michael ; Sajaia, Zurab ; Moltedo, Ana ; Troubat, Nathalie ; Lokshin, Michael ; Sajaia, Zurab

Since the end of the Second World War, the international community has been focusing on reducing the number and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Over time it became clear that no single indicator would provide a comprehensive picture of the food security situation. Rather, a suite of indicators is necessary to describe food insecurity in all its dimensions. The demand for evidence-based policies, which brings together providers such as statistical offices and users of food security indicators including policy makers and researchers, has also been increasing. The stand-alone software, ADePT-Food Security Module (available for free downloading), was developed to produce food security indicators from food consumption data collected in household surveys. These indicators, derived at the national and subnational levels, include the consumption of calories and macronutrients, the availability of micronutrients and amino acids, the distribution of calories and the proportion of people undernourished. The book focuses on the theory, methodology, and analysis of these indicators. It has five chapters beginning with a brief overview on concepts of food security. The theory and methodology are further described in the following chapter. To help users with the interpretation of the results some examples are given in chapter 3. Chapter 4 of the book provides guidelines for the preparation of the input datasets. Finally, chapter 5 explains how to use the software. Both the software and this book are products of decades of experience in analyzing food security. This project was made possible through collaboration between FAO and the World Bank, with financial support from the European Union.
Gender and Poverty : A Life Cycle Approach to the Analysis of the Differences in Gender Outcomes

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-10) Lokshin, Michael ; Mroz, Thomas A.

The authors study complex interactions between gender and poverty in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. The goal of their analysis is to uncover how a spectrum of gender differentials at different parts of the life cycle varies across income groups. Using the data from the 2001 Bosnia and Herzegovina Living Standards Measurement Study, the authors find strong gender-poverty interaction in the patterns of labor force participation, gender gap in earnings, individuals' school finances, and school attendance. The main source of gender inequality seems to come from differences in investments in girls' and boys' educations that increase with declines in income levels. Short-term income shocks could lead to long-term increases in gender inequality in households with school age children, unless there is ready access to credit markets. The authors also find that the magnitude of the impact of economic development on gender differences in Bosnia will depend on where the growth is concentrated. If the poor capture at least some benefits of economic growth, the gender differences in household investment in human capital of their children will decline. If, on the other hand, growth is concentrated among the richest, then important gender disparities could remain pervasive.