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Summary Compared to the extensive literature on measurement of poverty, the question of how the poor are distributed regionally has received less attention. This paper fills the gap in the literature by providing a conceptual framework to measure inequality in the distribution of the poor. A poverty segregation curve is used to compare a region’s share of the poor population with its share in the overall population. A unique contribution of the paper is formulating a generalized version of the poverty segregation curve. Unlike the segregation curve, the generalized segregation curve also takes average poverty rates into account while ranking distributions. Thus the generalized segregation curve may rank a distribution with substantially lower poverty rates above a distribution with higher poverty rates, when differences between their segregation curves are relatively small. The segregation curves are used to analyze changes in the distribution of the poor in India since the economic reforms in the early 1990s. Poverty rates and shares among all states, territories, and districts in India are estimated using data from the National Sample Survey Organization in 1994, 2004, and 2010. In the decades following the reforms India witnessed high growth rates and declining poverty rates. Despite the reduction in poverty, our analysis is the first to reveal that there was a significant rise in segregation of the poor over time. Some states had disproportionately high share of the poor compared to their share in the total population. Within states, the extent of segregation was lower among some of the poorest states and higher in less poor states. The generalized segregation curves show that the substantial decline in poverty rates since the reforms was not adequate to compensate the rise in segregation of the poor. Increase in segregation was also evident when the poor are identified as those who lacked education, health, and access to basic services. Reducing the segregation of the poor is important if India is to attain regionally balanced economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The paper estimates the degree of intergenerational earnings persistence in South Africa. Using microdata from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the paper finds that intergenerational earnings mobility in South Africa is low. Moreover, a limited set of inherited circumstances explains a significant fraction of earnings inequality among male adults. In particular, race is shown to play a significant role. The evidence provided for South Africa is consistent with the hypothesis that low levels of intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity are characteristic of high-inequality emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using OECD-DAC data covering 112 recipient countries for 1995–2011, this paper examines the responsiveness of health aid to the recipients’ needs in terms of infant mortality, child mortality, and HIV prevalence. This paper fills a gap in the literature by investigating extensive and intensive margins of health aid allocation patterns at project- and donor-levels. We find that when the health status of a recipient country deteriorates, the total value of health aid to the country increases due in large part to an increase in the number of health aid projects and to an increase in the average aid value from each donor country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The evidence from censuses and satellite imagery is increasing that the rate at which many countries are becoming more urban in sub-Saharan Africa has slowed or is even stagnating. This has major policy implications. Many standard reviews of the region still, however, tend to maintain that urbanization is occurring rapidly but, as this paper demonstrates, the data used are frequently erroneous. Such errors are exacerbated by a lack of reasonable estimates of the size and growth of towns in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country with the region’s most complex urban system. This paper also attempts to address this knowledge gap and shows how Nigeria’s level of urbanization has also been significantly over-estimated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary In this paper we investigate the drivers of wage inequality within education groups in Central-Eastern European Countries by employing EU-SILC microdata before (2007) and after (2012) the crisis. Our main focus is on the variability of temporary/permanent workers wage gap and on the role of institutions (labor market deregulation, union density, and wage coordination) in shaping the gap across education groups and along the wage distribution. Results, obtained by means of OLS and quantile regression methods, confirm that holding a temporary position corresponds to a statistically significant negative wage gap with respect to permanent jobs, especially for low-paid jobs and tertiary educated workers. The impact of institutional settings on the wage gap varies remarkably across education groups and wage levels, and strongly depends on the macroeconomic conditions. Labor market deregulation and weaker minimum wage provisions reduce the wage gap; this could be related to the fact the these institutional features reduce the duality on the labor market, triggering a downward convergence of permanent wages toward the lowest level of the temporary employed, especially in the context of labor reallocation and declining wages typical of recession. Stronger wage setting institutions, on the contrary, seem to reinforce duality in the labor market, although to different extents depending on the group of workers and on the part of the wage distribution concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Substantial resources have been devoted to mitigating the asset gender gap in developing country agriculture. Efforts have been taken to understand the role of women in decision making and in farm operations. Recommendations for best practices in eliciting information on women’s roles have emphasized the importance of sex-disaggregated data collection and analysis. Collection of sex-disaggregated data is not straightforward and careful attention to context is needed. In Ecuador’s highlands, chemical use in agriculture is widespread, and outreach and training programs to reduce this use are essential. These programs should target the appropriate decision makers. This paper presents results from a field experiment conducted in the Ecuador highlands where responding farm households are randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: (i) a male respondent, (ii) a female respondent, and (iii) both adult male and female respondents (interviewed separately, but with knowledge that the other would also be interviewed). We assess whether treatment assignment affects responses to questions about decision making and responsibility for agricultural activities. Perceptions about household decision making and who is responsible for agricultural activities vary substantially by type of respondent. Men are more likely to claim sole responsibility; women are more likely to claim responsibility or that decisions are jointly made. In households where both man and woman were interviewed (separately) we found stark differences in responses about responsibilities, with men claiming sole responsibility at higher rates. Interviewing both members led to less divergence in responses, but large differences in perceptions about responsibilities remain when both are interviewed. Best interviewing practices depend on the type of information needed: for precise quantification of gender roles, complex methods may be necessary, but where qualitative information is sufficient, single-member interviews may be sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the impact of state-level political reservation for two minority groups–Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes–on the incidence of child labor in India. We estimate the effect of political reservation on the incidence of child labor by exploiting the state variation in the share of seats reserved for the two minority groups in state legislative assemblies mandated by the Constitution of India. Using data from state and household-level surveys on fifteen major Indian states, we find that at the household level, Schedule Tribe reservation decreases the incidence of child labor, while Scheduled Caste reservation increases the total number of children working. We examine these impacts on the general as well as the disadvantaged group population independently, and across the gender of children. We also explore potential explanations for the differential impact of SC and ST political reservation, including geographic isolation, caste fragmentation, support for the Congress Party, and decentralization of power. Our results survive a variety of robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms are positive deviants: “solution- and leader-driven change” (SLDC) and “problem-driven iterative adaptation” (PDIA). The theories are used to analyze data emerging from a case survey involving thirty cases from Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Society (ISS) program. The bulk of evidence from this study supports a PDIA explanation, but there is reason to believe that SLDC hypotheses also have value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The extensive coverage of household surveys in conflict regions in recent decades has fueled a growing literature on the microeconomic effects of war. In this paper, we use a unique panel dataset to quantify the impact of the Nepalese civil conflict on schooling attainment. Given longitudinal data, we are able to directly estimate unobserved individual heterogeneity and thus address selective wartime displacement. Despite the widely-held view that war is detrimental to human capital formation, we find no effect of war intensity on schooling attainment once unobserved individual heterogeneity is accounted for. We draw on supplementary data to explain our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The paper assesses the levels and determinants of economic inequality in 12 Arab countries using harmonized household survey micro-data. It focuses on the sources of rural–urban, as well as metropolitan–nonmetropolitan, inequalities. The analysis finds moderate inequality levels, with Gini coefficient for the distribution of per capita total expenditures ranging between 30.7 in Libya and 45 in Mauritania. Differences in households’ endowments such as demographic composition, human capital, and community characteristics appear as the main sources of the urban–rural welfare gap. Inequality between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions is resulting mainly from differences in returns to human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Discussions of high-skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries, which ignore movements to and between developing countries. This paper presents, for the first time, a global overview of human capital mobility through bilateral migration stocks by gender and education in 1990 and 2000, and calculation of nuanced brain drain indicators. Building on newly collated data, we use a novel estimation procedure based on a pseudo-gravity model. We identify key determinants of international migration, which we subsequently use to impute missing data. Non-OECD destinations account for one-third of skilled-migration, while OECD destinations are declining in relative importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Affirmative action, in the form of reservation policies, to address the issues of inclusion has been in place in India for a long time. While its scope has enlarged with inclusion of new social groups, the efficacy remains a matter of debate. This paper explores if parental education is an appropriate criterion for affirmative action. Empirical results using three rounds of the National Sample Survey data suggest that parental education as a determinant of participation in higher education not only transcends the impact of caste, religious, and economic status, it is also very attractive for the ease of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's economic performance has been widely viewed with pessimism. In this paper, firm-level data for around 80 countries are used to examine formal firm performance. Without controls, manufacturing African firms perform significantly worse than firms in other regions. They have lower productivity levels and growth rates, export less, and have lower investment rates. Once geography, political competition, and the business environment are controlled for, formal African firms lead in productivity levels and growth. Africa's conditional advantage is higher in low-tech than in high-tech manufacturing, and exists in manufacturing but not in services. The key factors explaining Africa's disadvantage at the firm level are lack of infrastructure, access to finance, and political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China from 1988 to 2008 by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp increases in inequality largely due to changes in the wage structure. During 2002–08, changes in the returns to education and experience have been equalizing. However, changes in other categories of wage differential—by sex, occupation, ownership, industrial sector, and province—widened inequality. The gender gap continued to rise, as did the gap between white collar and blue collar workers, and between manufacturing and other sectors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper investigates the impact of remittances on financial inclusion. Using household-level survey data for El Salvador, we examine whether remittances affect households’ use of savings and credit instruments from formal financial institutions. We find that although remittances have a positive impact on financial inclusion by promoting the use of deposit accounts, they do not have a significant and robust effect on the demand for and use of credit from formal institutions. If anything, by relaxing credit constraints, remittances might reduce the need for external financing from financial institutions, while at the same time increasing the demand for savings instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper applies mixed methods to examine the occupational status of Senegalese return migrants and nonmigrants in Dakar and to explore the role of differential migration experiences for occupational outcomes. The analysis uses quantitative data from the MAFE-Senegal survey (2008) and qualitative semi-structured interviews with return migrants. While returnees do not seem to drop out of the labor market, they are overrepresented among the self-employed. However, self-employment is not necessarily associated with positive migration experiences. Rather than a choice, self-employment appears to be a “last resort” for individuals who were not able to accumulate capital or prepare their return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the social determinants of the rule of law by comparing Jamaica and Barbados, two countries with many similarities, but with divergent outcomes concerning the rule of law. The research takes a comparative historical approach, specifically investigating the origins of the divergence of the rule of law between Jamaica and Barbados by focusing on the late colonial period (1937–1966). Using new data collected from archival research, state legitimacy is identified as the key factor that helps explain the divergent trajectories of the rule of law in Jamaica and Barbados post-independence. Going beyond state-based explanations of the rule of law, the analysis suggests that the rule of law not only depends on characteristics of the state, but also on characteristics of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: China’s unbalanced growth strategy has seemingly fostered growing inter-regional growth disparities and there is little evidence of wealth trickling down from richer provinces to poorer provinces. Standard convergence tests, however, may be ill specified to detect underlying long-term growth trends in small samples due to the pronounced and frequent inter-regional short-term fluctuations. Our paper suggests a novel approach to distinguish between these long-term growth trends and short-term fluctuations. Based on provincial data from 1978 to 2009, our results indicate that China’s provinces only diverge over the short-term. Over the long term, provinces cluster into two converging growth clubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper uses data from the Indonesian manufacturing census in order to uncover the determinants of firm exports over the period 1990–2005. We examine to what extent differences in firm export propensity and intensity are a consequence of firm-level (microeconomic), of place-based (macroeconomic) first- and second-nature geography characteristics, or of a combination of the two. The results indicate that both internal and external factors matter. Second-nature, rather than first-nature, geography makes an important difference. The conditions of a firm’s province and those of neighboring provinces shape firm exports. Agglomeration effects, education, and transport infrastructure endowment play a particularly relevant role in Indonesian firms’ export propensity, while export spillovers increase export intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper analyzes whether caste impedes access to formal agricultural credit in India. Credit is provided mainly through cooperative and commercial banks. Using national data, we find that cooperative banks discriminate against lower caste borrowers, and find weak evidence that commercial banks instead bias lending in their favor in accordance with affirmative action policies. We compare the organizational structures of the two types of bank, and explain discrimination by cooperative banks in terms of interest group capture at the district level by showing that discrimination takes place in those districts where higher castes dominate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper addresses the relevance of agricultural seed systems in terms of the production and dissemination of seed in the context of adaptation to climate change. Using nationwide household level data from Malawi, we examine the hypothesis that climatic shocks increase small-scale farmers’ reliance on purchased seeds, in particular from local seed markets, an element of the informal seed sector. The results are used to discuss the role of seed systems for potentially supporting small-scale farmers’ adaptation mechanisms in the face of climate change in Malawi. This study has implications for other similar sub-Saharan African contexts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Local efforts to govern forests can benefit from support from organizations operating at broader governance scales. This paper investigates why local users value the support from some organizations more than others, and the extent to which these preferences matter for governance choices. Analyzing data from 200 forest user groups in Bolivia, I find that users rate their relationships with nongovernmental organizations and municipal governments equally high, but only relationships with municipalities affect the probability of establishing local governance institutions. I attribute these results to differences in the external actors’ motivation and ability to respond to local governance needs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper investigates whether a big push to the extreme poor in terms of a one-off large grant enables them to participate in the microfinance program. The analysis uses data from a quasi-experiment on BRAC’s ultra poor program in Bangladesh. The results for the baseline and repeat survey data for the treatment and comparison groups show that such a big push does make a significant impact on graduation to the microfinance program. The results are robust to correction for self-selection bias. Social capital and awareness also play important role in their decision on NGO membership and borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: About 15% of the world population lives with some form of disability. Yet little is known about the economic lives of persons with disabilities, especially in developing countries. This paper uses for the first time internationally comparable data to draw an economic profile of persons with disabilities in 15 developing countries. In most countries, disability is found to be significantly associated with higher multidimensional poverty as well as lower educational attainment, lower employment rates, and higher medical expenditures. Among persons with disabilities, persons aged 40 and above and persons with multiple disabilities were more likely to be multi-dimensionally poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The success of global health and development interventions ultimately depends on local reception. This paper documents local demand for HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa and seeks to explain patterns of demand using data from a country hard-hit by AIDS. As international agencies and national governments scale up HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa, I find HIV-positive respondents more highly prioritize HIV/AIDS programs, however, cross-national opinion data paired with interviews of villagers and their headmen in rural Malawi show weak prioritization of HIV/AIDS. The data illustrate a misalignment of policy preferences in the global-to-local hierarchy, highlighting the import of studying preferences of intended beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper emphasizes bequest motives by evaluating participation patterns in micro life insurance against insurance demand and supply side factors. Based on household survey data from Sri Lanka, it presents evidence on the determinants of micro life insurance participation of low-income households, using probit and tobit models. The results provide evidence that micro life insurance is positively correlated with measures of bequest motives such as the number of children or dependents. Besides, better off households are less excluded from micro life insurance markets than their poorer counterparts. The study finds a convincing need for the microinsurance sector to be more responsive to the needs of the poor, with a key role in providing financial education to understand the need for microinsurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households’ wealth or income. This paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in Ethiopia. We find that: (1) households’ consumption expenditure growth is positively correlated with the initial share of nonfarm income; (2) the growth elasticity of nonfarm income share is higher for wealthier households; and (3) the main source of growth for nonfarm participants comes from the higher rates of return participants enjoy on their human and physical capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper analyzes the complexities of converting assets into livelihood and the role that agency constraints play. Drawing inspiration from the capabilities approach and using household data from South Africa, linkages between assets and agency are identified by decomposing asset endowments’ impact on future livelihood. By employing a method of path analysis akin to early heritability of traits studies, theoretical asset-based studies of chronic poverty are bridged with capabilities literatures. The interaction between assets and agency is shown to be as important as asset-to-asset complementarities. The results have wide ranging policy implications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The study explores empowerment and well-being related outcomes of Farmer Field Schools (FFS), an extension approach that has gained popularity with agriculture development programs in many African countries. This is done by examining the empirical relationships between FFS participation and increased well-being; as well as FFS participation and empowerment; and finally between empowerment and enhanced well-being. Data analysis from the two thousand household questionnaires show a relationship between these aspects, despite contextual differences in the three countries studied. It is thereby argued that there could be scope to talk about an empowerment route to well-being. The paper further suggests that the most significant impact of FFS could be viewed in terms of building the capacity of local people to make choices and make decisions that ultimately lead to increased uptake of agricultural innovations, access to services, and market access as well as collective action. A major conclusion of the study is that agricultural development programs should focus more on processes of empowering farmers as opposed to technical solutions that characterize most programs, in order to create an appropriate mix of technological and social advancement for a development process that is sustainable in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Existing foreign aid databases – the OECD’s CRS data and now AidData – are project-based. And yet nearly all empirical analyses using these data aggregate to the country-year level, thereby losing project-specific information. In this paper, we introduce new data on the geographic location of aid projects that have been committed to many African countries between 1989 and 2008. The data enable an examination of project-level information in a wider variety of systematic research contexts. To demonstrate the utility of the new data, we discuss how geographically disaggregated foreign aid and armed conflict data are needed to capture the theoretical mechanisms in the aid-conflict literature. We then map the disaggregated aid and conflict data in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Mozambique as specific examples of how these data could help disentangle competing causal mechanisms linking aid to conflict onset and dynamics. The research provides an important new perspective on the connections between aid and conflict. More generally, it is a crucial first step in geo-referencing and comparing foreign aid projects to various localized development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Child labor has always been a core concern of the International Labor Organization (ILO). This paper investigates whether ILO conventions have contributed to reducing the scale of the problem. Two approaches to answering the question are used. First, evidence based on country-level data show that, by 1990, child labor was not less and school attendance was not greater in countries having ratified ILO conventions compared with non-ratifying states. Second, in individual-level data on school attendance from the 1990s, little evidence can be found for an increase in school attendance for children protected by ILO Convention 138 compared with unprotected children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the relationship between the employment of children and their mothers, with the aim of informing discussion on efforts to reduce child labor in Brazil. The analysis builds on the largely separate literatures on children’s time use and mothers’ work in two ways—by examining characteristics of employment which are often not available in survey data, and by modeling both children’s work and mothers’ employment. The results suggest that the relationship between children’s and mothers’ work is complex, with substantial evidence of positive correlation. The findings are consistent with the argument that anti-poverty programs that target women’s employment could result in increased child labor. This possibility warrants further analysis in order to better inform policy regarding child labor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper investigates the extent to which East Asia has become a source of international knowledge diffusion and whether such diffusion is localized to the region. Using citations made by US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted patents to other USPTO patents as an indicator of knowledge flow, I investigate the patterns of knowledge diffusion in East Asia by estimating a model of international knowledge diffusion. While OECD countries remain the dominant sources of knowledge, I find evidence of increasing regionalization of knowledge flow in East Asia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The paper focuses on the impact of international core labor standards on long-term per capita income. In order to do that, it is necessary to build a new synthetic indicator of labor standards using multiple correspondence analysis, measuring the four core labor standards recognized by ILO. We propose an estimation of the steady-state per capita income for a large panel of countries (104) and then that of developing countries. The two-stage least square method is used to correct potential problems of endogeneity. The findings show that, by and large, countries with higher labor standards have a higher steady-state level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We measure and analyze the "government take" in gold mining projects. • We develop a theoretical model with a globally competitive mining industry to determine the optimal government take. • Data analysis shows that country risk is positively associated with government take, the opposite of the model prediction. • Political economy variables have predictive power in determining the government take. This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the factors that determine the government "take" in gold mining projects around the world. We develop a theoretical model to predict the government take, which we define as the ratio of total payments to the government from a mining project (including taxes, fees, and royalties) relative to the mining company's pre-tax net revenue from the same project. In line with investment decision theory, our model predicts that governments should decrease their take on mining operations to compensate multinational corporate investors for increased local development costs and political and macroeconomic risk. However, our empirical investigation shows that higher country risk is actually associated with greater government take. Extending the model, we find that political economy variables have as much predictive power in explaining the government take as the basic investment theory model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study weather effects on migration in rural India. • Positive weather shocks facilitate migration abroad and to cities in the same state. • Adverse weather shocks drive rural-urban migration to different states. • Urban climate migrants are less educated and are from agricultural households. • Approximately 8% of urbanization between 2005 and 2012 can be attributed to weather. In this paper, we move from the large strand of research that looks at evidence of climate migration to the questions: who are the climate migrants? and where do they go? These questions are crucial to design policies that mitigate welfare losses of migration choices due to climate change. We study the direct and heterogeneous associations between weather extremes and migration in rural India. We combine ERA5 reanalysis data with the India Human Development Survey household panel and conduct regression analyses by applying linear probability and multinomial logit models. This enables us to establish a causal relationship between temperature and precipitation anomalies and overall migration as well as migration by destination. We show that adverse weather shocks decrease rural-rural and international migration and push people into cities in different, presumably more prosperous states. A series of positive weather shocks, however, facilitates international migration and migration to cities within the same state. Further, our results indicate that in contrast to other migrants, climate migrants are likely to be from the lower end of the skill distribution and from households strongly dependent on agricultural production. We estimate that approximately 8% of all rural-urban moves between 2005 and 2012 can be attributed to weather. This figure might increase as a consequence of climate change. Thus, a key policy recommendation is to take steps to facilitate integration of less educated migrants into the urban labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]