03. Journals

3,111 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2210

These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.

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Migration and Economic Mobility in Tanzania : Evidence from a Tracking Survey
(MIT Press, 2011-08) Beegle, Kathleen; Dercon, Stefan
This study explores to what extent migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in Tanzania. Using a thirteen-year panel survey, we find that migration between 1991 and 2004 added 36 percentage points to consumption growth. Although moving out of agriculture resulted in much higher growth than staying in agriculture, growth was always greater in any sector if the individual physically moved. As to why more people do not move given the high returns to geographical mobility, analysis finds evidence consistent with models in which exit barriers set by home communities prevent the migration of some categories of people.
Aggregate Income Shocks and Infant Mortality in the Developing World
(MIT Press, 2011-08) Baird, Sarah; Friedman, Jed; Schady, Norbert
Health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries, yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial. We investigate whether short-term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1.7 million births in 59 developing countries. We show a large, negative association between per capita GDP and infant mortality. Female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks, suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns.
Purchasing Power Parity Exchange Rates for the Global Poor
(2011-04) Deaton, Angus; Dupriez, Olivier
The global poverty count uses a common global poverty line, often referred to as the dollar-a-day line, currently $1.25 at 2005 international prices, whose construction and application depends on purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates for consumption. The price indexes that underlie the PPPs used for this purpose are constructed for purposes of national income accounting, using weights that represent patterns of aggregate consumption, not the consumption patterns of the global poor. We use household surveys from 62 developing countries to calculate global poverty-weighted PPPs and to calculate global poverty lines and new global poverty counts.
Would Freeing Up World Trade Reduce Poverty and Inequality? The Vexed Role of Agricultural Distortions
(2011) Anderson, Kym; Martin, Will
Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in non-farm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects are unclear without empirical modelling. This article summarises a series of new economy-wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on poverty and inequality globally and in various developing countries. The global Linkage model results suggest that removing those remaining distortions would reduce international inequality, largely by boosting net farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries, and would reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 per cent. The analysis based on the Global Trade Analysis Project model for a sample of 15 countries, and nine stand-alone national case studies, all point to larger reductions in poverty, especially if only the non-poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue.
Towards a Unified Scheme for Environmental and Social Protection: Learning from PES and CCT Experiences in Developing Countries
(2011) Rodriguez, Luis C.; Pascual, Unai; Muradian, Roldan; Pazmino, Nathalie; Whitten, Stuart
Environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives. However, these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments. While so-called payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection, poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers (CCT) program. These instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases. This paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified.
Transactional Sex as a Response to Risk in Western Kenya
(2011) Robinson, Jonathan; Yeh, Ethan
Though formal and informal sex work has long been identified as crucial for the spread of HIV/AIDS, the nature of the sex-for-money market remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported diaries, we find that women who engage in transactional sex substantially increase their supply of risky, better compensated sex to cope with unexpected health shocks, particularly the illness of another household member. These behavioral responses entail significant health risks for these women and their partners, and suggest that these women are unable to cope with risk through other consumption smoothing mechanisms.
Does Political Competition Lessen Ethnic Discrimination? Evidence from Sri Lanka
(2011) Sharif, Iffath A.
The impact of political competition on ethnic discrimination remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, this paper explores the relationship between the level of political competition and the probability of receiving government transfers among ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka in the run up to the national elections of 2000. The paper shows that making politicians dependent on the votes of members of ethnic groups other their own can encourage moderation in discriminatory practices towards ethnic minorities. Specifically we find that political competition positively influenced the distribution of government food stamps among Sri Lankan Tamils, who otherwise are less likely to receive food stamps relative to the Sinhalese majority. The negative impact of political competition on discrimination is higher when minorities form part of swing constituencies than when they form part of the base support for political parties. Lessons learnt here suggest that having built-in incentives in the design of the electoral process for intergroup bargaining and cooperation in countries with ethnically heterogeneous societies can be an effective restraint on ethnic discrimination. This is consistent with other research that considers political institutions to be a key lever for making ethnically divided societies more inclusive.
Decentralization and Educational Performance : Evidence from the PROHECO Community School Program in Rural Honduras
(2011) Di Gropello, Emanuela
We analyze the effectiveness of the Programa Hondureno de Educacion Comunitaria (PROHECO) community school program in rural Honduras. The data include standardized tests and extensive information on school, teacher, classroom, and community features for 120 rural schools drawn from 15 states. Using academic achievement decompositions we find that PROHECO schools do a better job of maximizing teacher effort and involving parents in the school, both of which translate into higher levels of achievement. But these efficiency advantages are offset (to some degree) by lower levels of teacher experience, training, parental education, as well as a reliance on smaller class sizes. The results help extend the community school and school based management (SBM) literatures by identifying plausible mechanisms in the chain linking increased community involvement with better student outcomes, while also highlighting the importance of local capacity.
School Attendance, Child Labour, and Remittances from International Migration in El Salvador
(2011) Acosta, Pablo
International migrant remittances can increase household budget and reduce liquidity constraint problems, generating consumption and investment opportunities for recipient households. In particular, remittances can enable investing in children's human capital and reduce child labour, key outcomes from the perspective of growth in a developing country. Using data for El Salvador, this article shows: a) a null or insignificant overall impact of remittances on schooling; b) a strong reduction of child wage labour in remittance-recipient households; and c) an increase in unpaid family work activities for children in those households. Moreover, the evidence shows important differences by gender and age of the child in consideration. While girls seem to indeed increase school attendance upon remittance receipts by reducing labour activities, boys do not benefit on average from higher schooling but some time substitution takes place favouring family work activities over paid jobs. And among secondary school-aged children, the impact of remittance may even be negative for educational prospects. These results suggest the presence of differences in the allocation of resources within the household.
Improving the Design of Conditional Transfer Programs : Evidence from a Randomized Education Experiment in Colombia
(2011) Barrera-Osorio, Felipe; Bertrand, Marianne; Linden, Leigh L.; Perez-Calle, Francisco
Using a student level randomization, we compare three education-based conditional cash transfers designs: a standard design, a design where part of the monthly transfers are postponed until children have to re-enroll in school, and a design that lowers the reward for attendance but incentivizes graduation and tertiary enrollment. The two nonstandard designs significantly increase enrollment rates at both the secondary and tertiary levels while delivering the same attendance gains as the standard design. Postponing some of the attendance transfers to the time of re-enrollment appears particularly effective for the most at-risk children.