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This paper investigates whether aspirations matter for education, which offers a common route out of poverty. We find that mother aspirations are strongly related to the child's grade achieved at age 18. The relation is nonlinear, suggesting there is a threshold, and depends on caste, household income and the village setting. The coefficients remain large and significant when applying control function estimation, using first born son as instrument. A similar strong relation is observed with learning outcomes, including local language, English and maths test results, and with attending school, but not with attending private education. These results are confirmed for outcomes at age 15. The findings provide direct evidence on the contribution of mother aspirations to children's education outcomes and point to aspirations as a channel of intergenerational mobility. They suggest that education outcomes can be improved more rapidly by taking aspirations into account when targeting education programmes, and through interventions that shape aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For economic development to succeed in Africa in the next 50years, African agriculture will have to change beyond recognition. Production will have to have increased massively, but also labor productivity, requiring a vast reduction in the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture and a large move out of rural areas. The paper questions how this can be squared with a continuing commitment to smallholder agriculture as the main route for growth in African agriculture and for poverty reduction. We question the evidence base for an exclusive focus on smallholders, and argue for a much more open-minded approach to different modes of production. To allow alternative modes and scale of production to emerge, new institutional and policy frameworks are required. A rush to establish "mega-farms" with government discretionary allocation of vast tracts of land is unlikely to be the answer. Allowing a more dynamic agriculture to develop will require clear institutional frameworks, and not just a narrow focus on smallholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study changes in living conditions using longitudinal data covering 30 years in six villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, initially surveyed during 1975–1984, and resurveyed in recent years, as part of the ICRISAT Village Level Studies. Monetary welfare indicators (such as incomes, assets, consumption and poverty) and non-monetary indicators of well-being (such as basic literacy, education, health and subjective well-being) have improved considerably. Consumption growth is linked to literacy and education at baseline. Other assets, such as land, have a neglible impact, suggesting that labour and human capital have been instrumental for growth in these villages.Change involved a large increase in various off-farm activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We propose families of measures for vulnerability to both individual and aggregate poverty. We view vulnerability as the burden caused by the threat of poverty. Exposure to states of the world where hardship may strike causes distress ex-ante, even if ex-post the dice are benign and poverty (consumption below a critical norm) does not materialise. We ensure our measures meet a set of desirable axioms-in the case of aggregate vulnerability, this set includes sensitivity to the degree of correlation of outcomes across individuals. We argue that individual vulnerability levels are not enough to compose the aggregate picture, e.g. because society may be wary of the threat of simultaneous, widespread poverty. We illustrate with data from Ethiopia, where rainfall risks are found to raise vulnerability to poverty despite sustained increases in consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We use data on children at ages 8, 12, and 15 from Young Lives, a cohort study of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru, and Vietnam to document the presence of a gender gap across indicators of nutrition, education, aspirations, subjective well-being, and psychosocial competencies. We find considerable heterogeneity across countries, ages, and indicators in the existence and direction of gender gaps. Second, we find evidence of an “institutionalized” gender bias against girls in education in India and, to an extent, Ethiopia. Poorer non-cognitive skills could be a channel for continuing gender bias through poorer labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Following the disputed 2007 Kenyan Presidential election unprecedented levels of violence erupted across the country adding to the history of troubled elections in Africa. This paper offers quantitative and qualitative evidence on the issues that triggered the electoral violence, its incidence, and impacts. Using two surveys conducted before and after the election we find that one out of three Kenyans was affected by the violence regardless of their ethnicity and wealth. The chances of being a victim of violence were higher in areas with land conflicts and where politically-connected gangs operated. Violence, which was mainly triggered by the perception that the election had been rigged, increased support toward lawlessness, reduced trust and social capital among communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

What keeps some people persistently poor, even in the context of relative high growth? In this article, we explore this question using a 15-year longitudinal data set from Ethiopia. We compare the findings of an empirical growth model with those derived from a model of the determinants of chronic poverty. We ask whether the chronically poor are simply not benefiting in the same way from the same factors that allowed others to escape poverty, or whether there are latent factors that leave them behind? We find that this chronic poverty is associated with several initial characteristics: lack of physical assets, education and ‘remoteness’ in terms of distance to towns or poor roads. The chronically poor appear to benefit from some of the drivers of growth, such as better roads or extension services, in much the same way that the non-chronically poor benefit. However, they appear to have lower growth in this period, related to time-invariant characteristics, and this suggests that they face a considerable growth and standard of living handicap. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the role of social networks as facilitators of information flows and banana output increase. Based on a village census, full information is available on the socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmers' kinship group members, neighbours and informal insurance group members. The census data enable us to use individual specific reference groups and include exogenous group controls to tackle standard difficulties related to identification and omitted variables bias when analysing social effects. For the survey village of Nyakatoke in Tanzania the results suggest that information flows exist within all types of groups analysed but output externalities are limited to kinship groups. Using networks may offer scope for effective information flows on agricultural techniques, but our evidence suggests that not just any local network will have a social externality impact, requiring a clear understanding of local social networks for maximum impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on implications of the HIV epidemic for individual households and broader rural economies in the 1980s and early 1990s predicted progressive declines in agricultural production, with dire consequences for rural livelihoods. Restudies in Tanzania and Uganda show that from 1986 to the present, HIV and AIDS have sometimes thrown households into disarray and poverty, but more often have reduced development. The progressive and systematic decline predicted in earlier work has not come to pass. However, poverty remains, as does endemic HIV disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article by Michael Carter and Chris Barrett on asset thresholds and poverty traps concerned with developing positive theories of poverty. He believes that the giving of transfers to the poorest is not necessarily the most effective poverty-reducing policy. He considers the model proposed by Carter and Barrett as narrow in terms of its diagnosis of the problems of poverty traps and risk, and narrow in terms of the policy implications and solutions it proposes.

Summary: A funeral is a costly occasion. This paper studies indigenous insurance institutions developed to cope with the high costs of funerals, based on evidence from rural areas in Tanzania and Ethiopia. These institutions were found to be highly prevalent in the study areas. They are based on well-defined rules and regulations, often offering premium-based insurance for funeral expenses. Increasingly, they are also offering other forms of insurance and credit to cope with hardship. The paper argues that the characteristics and inclusiveness of these institutions make them potentially well placed as models to broaden insurance provision and other developmental activities in these communities. The history of these institutions is characterized by a resistance to attempts of political capture, and helps to understand their apparent opposition to engage more broadly with NGOs and government agencies. As a result, any attempt to expand their activities will have to be done cautiously. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Explores the short-run movements in and out of poverty in Ethiopia. Discussion on the issues related to modelling consumption and poverty dynamics; Examination on consumption fluctuations and shocks; Conclusions.

Analyzes the experiences of demobilization and reintegration of ex-soldiers during the first part of the 1990s in Ethiopia. Overview of the demobilization program in Ethiopia; Profile of ex-soldiers; Support as part of the demobilization program; Welfare indicators.

Analyzes the different income portfolios of households using survey data from rural Ethiopia and rural Tanzania. Indication that different portfolios held by households cannot be explained by their behavior towards risk; Investment in particular skills and access to capital as factors behind entry into high-return activities.

Suggests improvement in the methodology to analyze market integration. Way of applying market integration techniques to the analysis of shocks such as market liberalization and war; Civil war on food markets in Ethiopia; Important effects of liberalization on short-run and long-run integration of food markets.

Attempts to analyze coffee pricing and its consequences in Ethiopia since the 1960s. Contribution of taxation, overvaluation and high marketing margins to the development of black markets for coffee; Empirical model of coffee supplies in the official market under the possibility of smuggling; Assessment of two competing models.

A response by Tony Barnett, Stefan Dercon and Janet Seeley to a letter to the editor about their article "The effects of HIV/AIDS on Rural Communities in East Africa: A Twenty Year Perspective," published in an earlier issue is presented.

Background: The HIV epidemic exacerbated the prevalence of prime-aged adult death in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in increased rates of orphanhood. Little is known about whether this will coincide with adverse psychosocial well-being in adulthood for those who were orphaned at childhood. Methods: We studied a cohort of 1108 children from Kagera, a region of Tanzania that was heavily affected by HIV early in the epidemic. During the baseline data collection in 1991-1994, these children were aged 0-16 years and had both parents alive. We followed them roughly 16-19 years later in 2010, by which time 531 children (36%) had lost either one or both parents before their 19th birthday. We compared the 2010 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) score between children who lost a parent before the age of 19 and those who did not. We used the baseline data to control for preorphanhood confounders. This is important because we find that children who will lose their fathers in the future before age 19 came from somewhat lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Results: We found no correlation between maternal death and self-esteem measured through RSES. Paternal death was strongly correlated with lower levels of self-esteem (0.2 SDs lower RSES 95% confidence interval: 0.059 to 0.348), and the correlation was stronger when the death occurred during the child's teenage years. These effects are a net of socioeconomic differences that existed before the orphanhood event. Conclusions: Our study supports the further development and piloting of programs that address psychosocial problems of orphans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long run for health and education outcomes in a region of northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991-1994 who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19%, lost one or more parents before age 15 in this period, allowing us to assess permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. In the analysis, we control for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. We find that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5% compared with similar children whose mothers survived until at least their 15th birthday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to investigate whether exporting impacts on efficiency, and whether efficient firms self-select into the export market. Based on simultaneous estimation of a production function and an export regression, our preferred results indicate significant efficiency gains from exporting, which can be interpreted as learning by exporting. We show that modelling unobserved heterogeneity by a flexible approach is important for deriving this conclusion. A policy implication of our results is that Africa would gain from orientating its manufacturing sector towards exporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro policy has changed the real exchange rates for African countries dramatically in the 1990s. In this paper the possible impact of macroeconomic policy on firms in the manufacturing sector is considered based on a panel survey of such firms in Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana and Zimbabwe. The data show that most large African manufacturing firms do export, but most do not specialize in exporting. An export equation is estimated both for the propensity of the firms to export and the percentage of output exported. It is shown that a stable export function can be estimated for all four countries over the three rounds of the survey. While there is no evidence that real devaluations have effected a general rise in manufactured exports there is evidence from the surveys of a rise in the percentage of output exported from the Cameroon, Reasons for the lack of a general response to macro policy are suggested. In the Cameroon, large firms did increase their propensity to export. Understanding the links between macro policy and firm performance may require an understanding of how such policies impact on different types of firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]