Journal Issue: World Bank Economic Review, Volume 17, Issue 1
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Volume
17
Number
1
Issue Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
1564-698X
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
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Articles
Grandmothers and Granddaughters : Old-Age Pensions and Intrahousehold Allocation in South Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Duflo, Esther
This article evaluates the impact of a
large cash transfer program in South Africa on
children's nutritional status and investigates whether
the gender of the recipient affects that impact. In the
early 1990s the benefits and coverage of the South African
social pension program were expanded for the black
population. In 1993 the benefits were about twice the median
per capita income in rural areas. More than a quarter of
black South African children under age five live with a
pension recipient. Estimates suggest that pensions received
by women had a large impact on the anthropometric status
(weight for height and height for age) of girls but little
effect on that of boys. No similar effect is found for
pensions received by men. This suggests that the efficiency
of public transfer programs may depend on the gender of the recipient.
Particularism around the World
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Wallack, Jessica Seddon; Gaviria, Alejandro; Panizza, Ugo; Stein, Ernesto
This article presents a new data set on
electoral systems and outlines its potential uses in
research on the links between electoral systems and economic
outcomes. The data measure the extent to which politicians
can advance their careers by appealing to narrow geographic
constituencies on the one hand or party constituencies on
the other.
Benefits on the Margin : Observations on Marginal Benefit Incidence
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Younger, Stephen D.
Benefit incidence analysis has become a
popular tool over the past decade, especially for
researchers at the World Bank. Despite or perhaps because of
the popularity of this method, recent research has pointed
out many of its limitations. One of the most common
criticisms of benefit incidence analysis is that its
description of average participation rates is not
necessarily useful in guiding marginal changes in public
spending policies. This article considers a variety of
methods for analyzing the marginal benefit incidence of
policy changes. A key conceptual point is that despite the
fact that the various methods measure marginal incidence,
they do not measure the same thing nor are they intended to
do so. There are many possible policy changes and thus many
margins of interest. Each method captures one of these and
so is of interest for some analyses and inappropriate for
others. Empirically, the precision of the methods differs
substantially, with those relying on differenced data or
aggregations of households yielding standard errors that are
quite large relative to the estimated shares.
Economic, Demographic, and Institutional Determinants of Life Insurance Consumption across countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Webb, Ian; Beck, Thorsten
Life insurance has become an
increasingly important part of the financial sector over the
past 40 years, providing a range of financial services for
consumers and becoming a major source of investment in the
capital market. But what drives the large variation in life
insurance consumption across countries remains unclear.
Using a panel with data aggregated at different frequencies
for 68 economies in 1961-2000, this article finds that
economic indicators such as inflation, income per capita,
and banking sector development and religious and
institutional indicators are the most robust predictors of
the use of life insurance. Education, life expectancy, the
young dependency ratio, and the size of the social security
system appear to have no robust association with life
insurance consumption. The results highlight the importance
of price stability and banking sector development in fully
realizing the savings and investment functions of life
insurance in an economy.
Public Policy and Extended Families : Evidence from Pensions in South Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Bertrand, Marianne; Mullainathan, Sendhil; Miller, Douglas
How are resources allocated within
extended families in developing economies? This question is
investigated using a unique social experiment: the South
African pension program. Under that program the elderly
receive a cash transfer equal to roughly twice the per
capita income of Africans in South Africa. The study
examines how this transfer affects the labor supply of
prime-age individuals living with these elderly in extended
families. It finds a sharp drop in the working hours of
prime-age individuals in these households when women turn 60
years old or men turn 65, the ages at which they become
eligible for pensions. It also finds that the drop in labor
supply is much larger when the pensioner is a woman,
suggesting an imperfect pooling of resources. The allocation
of resources among prime-age individuals depends strongly on
their absolute age and gender as well as on their relative
age. The oldest son in the household reduces his working
hours more than any other prime-age household member.
Reducing Child Malnutrition : How Far Does Income Growth Take Us?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-01) Haddad, Lawrence; Alderman, Harold; Appleton, Simon; Song, Lina; Yohannes, Yisehac
How rapidly will child malnutrition
respond to income growth? This article explores that
question using household survey data from 12 countries as
well as data on malnutrition rates in a cross-section of
countries since the 1970s. Both forms of analysis yield
similar results. Increases in income at the household and
national levels imply similar rates of reduction in
malnutrition. Using these estimates and better than
historical income growth rates, the article finds that the
millennium development goal of halving the prevalence of
underweight children by 2015 is unlikely to be met through
income growth alone. What is needed to accelerate reductions
in malnutrition is a balanced strategy of income growth and
investment in more direct interventions.