03. Journals

2,963 items available

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http://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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Distribution-Sensitive Multidimensional Poverty Measures

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10) Datt, Gaurav

This paper presents axiomatic arguments to make the case for distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures. The commonly used counting measures violate the strong transfer axiom, which requires regressive transfers to be unambiguously poverty increasing, and they are also invariant to changes in the distribution of a given set of deprivations among the poor. The paper appeals to strong transfer as well as an additional cross-dimensional convexity property to offer axiomatic justification for distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures. Given the nonlinear structure of these measures, it is also shown how the problem of an exact dimensional decomposition can be solved using Shapley decomposition methods to assess dimensional contributions to poverty. An empirical illustration for India highlights distinctive features of the distribution-sensitive measures.
Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-06) Mookerjee, Sulagna

This paper examines whether economic empowerment of women improves their autonomy within their marital household, and investigates the mechanism, by exploiting variation from a legal reform aimed at improving women’s inheritance rights in India. Results suggest that the reform increased women’s participation in decision-making but at the expense of the older generation of household members and not at the expense of their husbands. Two channels are proposed to explain this phenomenon. First, this can be driven by a shift in the family structure from traditional joint families to nuclear households. Such a change is consistent both with the increase in women’s decision-making authority, which they can exert to move out of the joint household, as well as with men’s incentives, since men have weaker financial links with their parents post-reform. Second, even within joint families, the amendments empowered young couples at the expense of the older generation of household members.
Direct and Indirect Effects of Malawi's Public Works Program on Food Security

(Elsevier, 2017-09) Beegle, Kathleen ; Galasso, Emanuela ; Goldberg, Jessica

Labor-intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low-income settings, intended to supplement the income of poor households and improve public infrastructure. In this evaluation of the Malawi Social Action Fund, an at-scale, government-operated program, across- and within-village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer. There is no evidence that the program improves food security and suggestive evidence of negative spillovers to untreated households. These disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments. These findings stand in contrast to those from large public works programs in India and Ethiopia, and serves as a reminder that public works programs will not always have significant and measurable welfare effects.
Does Child Sponsorship Pay off in Adulthood?: An International Study of Impacts on Income and Wealth

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-06-01) Wydick, Bruce ; Glewwe, Paul ; Rutledge, Laine

We estimate the impact of international child sponsorship on adult income and wealth of formerly sponsored children using data on 10,144 individuals in six countries. To identify causal effects, we utilize an age-eligibility rule followed from 1980 to 1992 that limited sponsorship to children twelve years old or younger when the program was introduced in a village, allowing comparisons of sponsored children with older siblings who were slightly too old to be sponsored. Estimations indicate that international child sponsorship increased monthly income by $13–17 over an untreated baseline of $75, principally from inducing higher future labor market participation. We find evidence for positive impacts on dwelling quality in adulthood and modest evidence of impacts on ownership of consumer durables in adulthood, limited to increased ownership of mobile phones. Finally, our results also show modest effects of child sponsorship on childbearing in adulthood.
Long-term Gains from Electrification in Rural India

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-06-01) van de Walle, Dominique ; Ravallion, Martin ; Mendiratta, Vibhuti ; Koolwal, Gayatri

We know surprisingly little about the long-run impacts of household electrification. This paper studies the impacts on consumption in rural India over a 17-year period, allowing for both internal and external (village-level) effects. Under our identifying assumptions, electrification brought significant consumption gains for households who acquired electricity for their own use. We also find evidence of a dynamic effect of village connectivity for households without electricity themselves. This is suggestive of an external effect, which also comes with a shift in consumption spending suggestive of status concerns among those still without electricity. Labor earnings were an important channel of impact. This was mainly through extra work by men. There was no effect on average wage rates.
Asymmetric Information about Migrant Earnings and Remittance Flows

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-02) Seshan, Ganesh ; Zubrickas, Robertas

We examine asymmetric information about migrant earnings and its implications for remittance behavior using a sample of Indian households with husbands working overseas in Qatar. On average, wives underreport their husbands’ income and underreporting is more prevalent in households with higher earning migrants. The discrepancy in earning reports is strongly correlated with variation in remittances: greater underreporting by wives is associated with lower remittances. We develop an exchange model of remittances with asymmetric information and costly state verification. The optimal remittance contract prescribes a threshold for remittances that invites verification only if unmet. The model's predictions closely match our empirical findings.
Tenure Security Premium in Informal Housing Markets: A Spatial Hedonic Analysis

(Elsevier, 2017-01) Nakamura, Shohei

This paper estimates slum residents’ willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune, India. The results show that the legal assurance of slum residents’ occupancy of their lands could benefit them. Previous studies have discussed the legal and non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure security of residents in informal settlements; however, it remains unclear how and to what extent the assignment of legal property rights through the formalization of land tenure improves the tenure security of residents in informal settlements and living conditions, even in the presence of other legal and non-legal factors that also contribute to their tenure security. To address this question, this study focuses on the city of Pune, India, where government agencies have formalized slums by legally ensuring the occupancy of the residents under the “slum declaration.” Applying a hedonic price model to an original household survey, this paper investigates how slum residents evaluate formalized land tenure. A spatial econometrics method is also applied to account for spatial dependence and spatially autocorrelated unobserved errors. The spatial hedonic analysis shows that the premium of slum declaration is worth 19.2% of the average housing rent in slums. The associated marginal willingness to pay is equivalent to 6.7% of the average household expenditure, although it is heterogeneous depending on a household’s caste and other legal conditions. This finding suggests that the assurance of occupancy rights is a vital component of land-tenure formalization policy even if it does not directly provide full property rights.
What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2015-09-29) Klasen, Stephan ; Pieters, Janneke

Female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2011 are surprisingly low and have stagnated since the late 1980s. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wage and education levels, married women's labor force participation hovered around 18 percent. Analysis of five large cross-sectional micro surveys shows that a combination of supply and demand effects have contributed to this stagnation. The main supply side factors are rising household incomes and husband's education as well as the falling selectivity of highly educated women. On the demand side, the sectors that draw in female workers have expanded least, so that changes in the sectoral structure of employment alone would have actually led to declining participation rates.
A Retrospective Impact Evaluation of the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project

(Taylor and Francis, 2015-07-01) Khanna, Madhulika ; Kochhar, Nishtha ; Palaniswamy, Nethra

Community based livelihood interventions, which focus directly on increasing income and employment, have become an increasingly important component of large-scale poverty reduction programmes. We evaluate the impact of a participatory livelihoods intervention – the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project (PVP) using propensity score matching methods. The paper explores the impact of PVP on its core goals of empowering women and the rural poor, improving their economic welfare, and facilitating public action. We find significant effects of PVP on reducing the incidence of high cost debt and diversifying livelihoods. We also find evidence of women’s empowerment, and increased political participation.
Does Female Reservation affect Long-Term Political Outcomes? Evidence from Rural India

(Taylor and Francis, 2014-09-17) Deininger, Klaus ; Jin, Songqing ; Nagarajan, Hari K. ; Xia, Fang

While studies have explored the impacts of political quotas for females at household level, differential effects on males and females and their evolution through time have received little attention. Using nationwide data from India spanning a 15-year period, we find that, while leader quality declines, gender quotas increase the level and quality of women’s political participation, their ability to hold leaders to account, and their willingness to contribute to public goods. Key effects persist beyond the reserved period and impacts on females often materialize only with a lag.