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Child mortality in an important indicator of shortcomings in health provisions to the most vulnerable segments of the society i.e., children under five. In this highly connected world, the trends in child mortality need exploration within the context of institutional change and global connectivity. This study explores the effect of globalization on child health in Asia and Latin America. These two regions over the last three decades have undergone waves of liberalization as well as an inconsistent drive towards democratization with very different outcomes in terms of child mortality, making for apt comparison in the context of this study. The study also examines how the level of democracy changes the relationship between globalization and child health in the two regions for the time-period 1970 to 2016 using System GMM estimation technique. The results indicate that economic globalization improves child health in Asia while social and political globalization show different results for infant and child mortality. In Latin America political globalization was found to be most effective in reducing infant mortality, while all dimensions of globalization were found to be either insignificant or increasing under-five mortality. That said, the interactions between dimensions of globalization and democracy were found to be consistently significant and mortality reducing. This result signifies the existence of complementarity between democracy and globalization in improving child health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women empowerment has its significance for the economic and social development of countries; specifically, women empowerment is rendered important for child health. Child health being part of sustainable development goals (2030) can be traced through reduced infant and child mortality rates. Owing to the importance of women empowerment for the infant mortality, the present study is an attempt to analyze the impact of women empowerment on infant mortality in Pakistan, utilizing the data from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS-VI) of United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The sample consists of 24,201 individuals. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been employed to measure the women empowerment using education level, employment status, asset holdings and decision-making power. Besides women empowerment, other socio-economic, demographic and biological variables have been included as regressors. Logit model has been employed for the estimation of the determinants of the infant mortality. The results show that women empowerment significantly reduces the infant mortality. The study recommends that policy makers ought to introduce broad socio-economic interventions aiming at the wellbeing of both women and their infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Pakistan, state of minorities still remains largely unexplored in a number of dimensions. Specifically, their social status and economic contribution. This study is first of its kind in that it analyzes the determinants of labour market positioning and earnings of Christian workforce of the country. The analysis is carried out by developing a study instrument, which focuses on socioeconomic characteristics of the parental family and personal characteristics of a worker. A purposive sample of 246 Christian members of labour force employed in upper and middle rungs of job hierarchies is taken from twin cities, Rawalpindi/Islamabad. Determinants of job market positioning have been examined by applying logistic regression analysis, while OLS regression has been used to investigate the determinants of income. Results of logistic regression suggest that socioeconomic status of parents is a major factor in determining occupational success of the children of Christian families in Pakistan, as 4 of the 9 respective variables are found significant in statistical estimation. On the other hand, estimates of OLS regression show that asset ownership of their parents along with personal educational achievement significantly determine higher earnings of Christian workforce in Pakistan. The study leads to the conclusion that further research warrants to be carried out on social and economic issues of Christian citizens of Pakistan, specifically targeting the vast numbers lying on the margins of social hierarchy. This essentially requires development of a comprehensive national database on demographic and economic characteristics of all religious minorities of the country. Such an initiative will help assess their state of assimilation in mainstream society which in turn will help devise most efficient and effective interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to analyze the impact of foreign remittance on source of economic growth, namely the physical capital, human capital and the total factor productivity (TFP). There is a substantial literature related to the impact of foreign remittance on economic growth of Pakistan, but there has been dearth of related literature to the impact of foreign remittance on sources of economic growth. The study covers the time span of 1972 to 2013 and employed three estimation techniques, namely, the OLS, FMOLS, and the GMM, to execute empirical testing. Results of the study indicate that, foreign remittance significantly contribute in building physical and human capital of the country, along with improving the TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at analyzing the determinants of individual's happiness in Pakistan. However, this kind of research is hardly undertaken in Pakistan. The present study is first of its kind in Pakistan to analyze the determinants of individual happiness by using the data from World Values Survey (WVS) for three different waves, which are 1994-1998, 1999-2004, and 2010-2014. Total sample consists of 3,933 individuals with 733 individuals in the 1994-98 wave, 2000 individuals in the 1999-2004 wave and 1200 individuals in the recent wave of 2010-2014. Happiness is measured by a question regarding feeling of happiness of individuals on a four-point scale with the options, very happy, quite happy, not very happy, and not at all happy. This happiness measure is regressed on socio-economic and demographic variables, namely, age, health status, gender, marital status, education, income, children, employment status, importance of religion, family saving during past year, trust and satisfaction with financial situation of household. Ordered Probit regression technique is used for estimation. Interestingly, the percentage of „very happy" individuals has increased over time in Pakistan as in the 1994-98 wave the frequency of very happy individuals is 28% which increased to 45% in the recent wave. However, happiness is lower for males, married persons and for aged people and for persons, having children. Results suggest the need for policy makers to adopt social programs to increase income of the people and to improve health status of individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at analyzing public perceptions on political empowerment of women in Pakistan. According to the World Economic Forum index on gender gap regarding political empowerment, Pakistan is one of the lowest among South Asian countries despite the highest quota for women in parliament. The paper is first of its kind with an attempt to empirically evaluate people's perceptions on women's political empowerment in Pakistan and also to look at determinants of these perceptions. For this purpose, a questionnaire is formulated and Likert scale is used to compute a score on attitudes regarding women's political empowerment by both males and females. The data was collected from Rawalpindi district in Punjab province of Pakistan and total sample size is 231. The empirical analysis consists of two regression equations. The first is regarding the determinants of choice of candidate either male or female with equal qualifications for which Logistic regression approach is utilized. The second equation is a linear regression model with people's opinions as dependent variable. Results show that age, gender, marital status, education and income of the household of respondent are significant determinants of attitudes regarding women's political empowerment. The study concludes that wide ranging measures at societal level are necessary along with the quota to ensure effective political empowerment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses conditionalβ-convergence among the low income countries using a panel data framework covering the period 1960 to 2008. The estimation of conditional income convergence is based on the augmented Solow model with system GMM technique for the dynamic panel data. More importantly, the article assesses the role of initial human capital stock and the rule of law in the income convergence of poor countries by considering further categorizations of the poor countries based on these two variables. This is the first study on the comparative properties of human capital and the rule of law in the income convergence of poor countries utilizing a dynamic panel framework. The full sample of low income countries does not show any evidence of conditional income convergence. The categorizations on the basis of initial human capital stock do not alter the conclusion of no income convergence. However, the subsample of low income countries with a better rule of law exhibits positive evidence of convergence towards the steady states. The article concludes that there exists a greater role of the rule of law, than initial human capital stock, in the income convergence of poor countries and vice versa for the high and middle income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]