Person:
Jolliffe, Dean
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Food security,
Education economics,
Health economics,
Data collection methods,
Measuring Poverty
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Development Economics Data Group, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Dean Jolliffe is a lead economist in the Development Data Group at the World Bank. He is a member of the Living Standards Measurement Study team and co-lead of the team that works on global poverty measurement (PovcalNet). Previously, he worked in the Research Group and the South Asia region of the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a research economist with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an assistant professor at Charles University Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education in Prague, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and a postdoctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Dean holds appointments as a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor, as a co-opted council member of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, and as a fellow of the Global Labor Organization. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 33
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Publication
Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies : Household-level Evidence from Afghanistan
(Taylor and Francis, 2012-02-28)This article investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption. Smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world's poorest, most food-insecure countries. -
Publication
Conflict, Food Price Shocks, and Food Insecurity : The Experience of Afghan Households
(Elsevier, 2013-10)Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violence, we examine the relationship between conflict and food security in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the country; surprisingly, high conflict provinces are not the most food insecure. Using a simple bivariate regression model of conflict (violent incidents and persons killed or injured) on food security (calorie intake and the real value of food consumed), we find mixed associations. But once we move to a multivariate framework, accounting for household characteristics and key commodity prices, we find robust evidence that in Afghanistan levels of conflict and food security are negatively correlated. We also find that households in provinces with higher levels of conflict experience muted declines in food security due to staple food price increases relative to households in provinces with lower levels of conflict, perhaps because the former are more disconnected from markets. Gaining a better understanding of linkages between conflict and food security and knowing their spatial distributions can serve to inform policymakers interested in targeting scarce resources to vulnerable populations, for example, through the placement of strategic grain reserves or targeted food assistance programs. -
Publication
Bangladesh, a Middle Income Country by 2021 : What Will it Take in Terms of Poverty Reduction?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)The vision 2021 plan and the associated perspective plan 2010-2021, adopted by the Government of Bangladesh lay out a series of development targets for 2021. Among the core targets identified to monitor the progress toward the vision 2021 objectives is that of attaining a poverty headcount of 14 percent by 2021. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: given Bangladesh's performance in poverty reduction over the last decades, can the author expect the proportion of the country's population living in poverty to be 14 percent by 2022? Using data from the last three household income and expenditures survey, we examine changes in poverty rates during 2000-2010, estimate net elasticity of poverty reduction to growth in per-capita expenditure, and then project poverty headcounts into the future. Our poverty projections based on the last three Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) surveys suggest that Bangladesh will achieve its Millennium Development Goal, or MDG goal of halving its poverty headcount to 28.5 percent by 2015 significantly ahead of schedule. Attaining the vision 2021 poverty target of 14 percent by 2021, however, is less certain as it requires a Gross Domestic Product, or GDP growth of at least 8 percent, or more than 2 percentage points higher than that observed in recent years. -
Publication
Earnings, Schooling, and Economic Reform
(World Bank, 2007-09-30)Earnings, Schooling, and Economic Reform: Econometric Evidence From Hungary (1986 2004) Nauro Campos and Dean Jolliffe How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform? This article sheds light on this question using a unique data set and procedure to reduce sample-selection bias. The principal assumptions are that sample-selection bias was minimal in 1986 and that the decision to participate in the wage market after 1986 is correlated with age, gender, and schooling demographics. Once corrected for sample selection on observables, the increase in returns is smaller, suggesting the existence of the positive correlation between education and the decision to participate in the wage sector that was discussed above. 16 Comparing the panels shows that sample-selection bias is positive and quite large throughout the period of analysis. An advantage of the Wage and Earnings Survey design is that the sample was selected in a single stage, and thus there is no need to correct estimates of the sampling variance for any design-induced dependence. Returns to Years of Schooling, 1986 2004: Spatial and Industry Fixed-effects Estimation of Equation (1) 1986 Panel A: Selection-corrected estimates Years of schooling Gender dummy variable (male 1) Potential experience Experience squared/100 Firm size dummy (300 employees 1) Number of observations R2 Panel B: Uncorrected estimates Years of schooling Gender dummy variable (male 1) Potential experience Experience squared/100 Firm size: 300 employees Number of observations R2 1989 1992 1995 1998 Although the Wage and Earnings Survey data include no direct measures of school quality, it is possible to provide limited supporting evidence. Studies that are based on multiple survey instruments for temporal analysis face the difficult question of whether the observed change results from changes in the examined population or changes in the survey instrument. The analysis showed that the 75 percent increase in returns to a year of schooling between 1986 and 2004 is evidence that the planned economy Campos and Jolliffe 525 undervalued education and that liberalization has allowed markets to correct this. -
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From Tragedy to Renaissance : Improving Agricultural Data for Better Policies
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-01)Agricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction, yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus. There are several reasons for this: (i) difficult-to-measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries, (ii) agricultural data are collected with little coordination across ministries of agriculture and national statistics offices, and (iii) poor analysis undermines the demand for high-quality data. This paper argues that initiatives like the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics bode well for the future. Moving from Devarajan's statistical "tragedy" to Kiregyera's statistical "renaissance" will take a continued long-term effort by individual countries and development partners. -
Publication
Estimating Poverty with Panel Data, Comparably: An Example from Jordan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-07)Poverty estimates based on enumeration from a single point in time form the cornerstone for much of the literature on poverty. Households are typically interviewed once about their consumption or income, and their wellbeing is assessed from their responses. Global estimates of poverty that aggregate poverty counts from all countries implicitly assume that the counts are comparable. This paper illustrates that this assumption of comparability is potentially invalid when households are interviewed multiple times with repeat visits throughout the year. The paper provides an example from Jordan, where the internationally comparable approach of handling the data from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 percent greater than the rate that is currently reported as the official estimate. The paper also explores alternative definitions of poverty, informed in part by the psychological and biophysical literature on the long-run effects of short-term exposure to poverty or generally adverse environments. This alternative concept of poverty suggests that the prevalence of those who have been affected by poverty in Jordan during 2010 is more than twice as large as the official 2010 estimate of poverty. -
Publication
A Global Count of the Extreme Poor in 2012: Data Issues, Methodology and Initial Results
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the international poverty line. In order to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank’s twin goals, the new poverty line was chosen so as to preserve the definition and real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs) in poor countries. Using the new 2011 PPPs, the new line equals $1.90 per person per day. The higher value of the line in US dollars reflects the fact that the new PPPs yield a relatively lower purchasing power of that currency vis-à-vis those of most poor countries. Because the line was designed to preserve real purchasing power in poor countries, the revisions lead to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence: from 14.5 percent in the old method to 14.1 percent in the new method for 2011. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 percent of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents the detailed methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats, limitations, perils and pitfalls of the approach taken. -
Publication
From Tragedy to Renaissance : Improving Agricultural Data for Better Policies
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-02-13)Agricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction, yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus. There are several reasons for this: (1) difficult-to-measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries; (2) agricultural data are collected with little coordination across sectors; and (3) poor analysis undermines the demand for high-quality data. This article argues that initiatives like the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics bode well for the future. Moving from Devarajan’s statistical tragedy’ to Kiregyera’s statistical ‘renaissance’ will take a continued long-term effort by individual countries and development partners. -
Publication
Global Poverty Goals and Prices: How Purchasing Power Parity Matters
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05)With the recent release of the 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) data from the International Comparison Program (ICP), analysts and institutions are confronted with the question of whether and how to use them for global poverty estimation. The previous round of PPP data from 2005 led to a large increase in the estimated number of poor in the world. The 2011 price data suggest that developing countries’ incomes in PPP-adjusted dollars are significantly higher than indicated by the 2005 PPP data. This has created the anticipation that the new PPP data will decrease significantly the count of poor people in the world. This paper presents evidence that if the global poverty line is updated with the 2011 PPP data based on the same set of national poverty lines that define the $1.25 line in 2005 PPPs, and if the 2011 PPP conversion factors are used without adjustments to selected countries, the 2011 poverty rate is within half a percentage point of the current global estimate based on 2005 PPPs. The analysis also indicates that the goal of ‘ending’ extreme poverty by 2030 continues to be an ambitious one. -
Publication
Snapshot of Poverty and Labor Market Outcomes in Lebanon Based on Household Budget Survey 2011-2012
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12-08)This brief is based on analysis of the 2011-12 household budget survey (HBS) implemented by Central Administration for Statistics (CAS) with technical assistance from the World Bank. The survey was conducted during the period of September 2011 to November 2012, and was stratified across nine regions. The sample was designed to cover 4,805 households, but due to high non-response, it only includes 2,476 participating households. Poverty numbers presented in this note are not comparable with poverty estimates for other years due to differences in the instruments, fieldwork implementation and to some extent sample design; and also due to differences in the methodology for constructing welfare aggregate and the poverty line. All regional estimates in this report should be viewed with caution given concerns about significant levels of nonresponse and relatively small sample sizes within regions. CAS and the World Bank are working together to improve the quality of future surveys.