Labor Effects of Adult Mortality in Tanzanian Households

Labor Effects of Adult Mortality in Tanzanian Households
Author: Kathleen Beegle
Publisher:
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

Because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Sub-Saharan African populations are challenged with increasing adult mortality rates that have potentially profound economic implications. Yet, little is known about the impact of adult deaths in African households. Using panel data from Tanzania, Beegle explores how prime-age adult mortality affects the time allocation of surviving household members and the portfolio of household farming activities. The author analyzes farm and chore hours across demographic groups and finds small and insignificant changes in labor supply of individuals in households experiencing a prime-age adult death. While some farm activities are temporarily scaled back and wage employment falls after a male death, households did not shift cultivation toward subsistence food farming and did not appear to have reduced their diversification over income sources more than six months after a death.This paper - a product of the Poverty Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to better measure and understand the economic impact of HIV/AIDS.

The Consequences of Maternal Morbidity and Maternal Mortality

The Consequences of Maternal Morbidity and Maternal Mortality
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2000-03-21
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 030917211X

In 1997 the committee published Reproductive Health in Developing Countries: Expanding Dimensions, Building Solutions, a report that recommended actions to improve reproductive health for women around the world. As a follow- on activity, the committee proposed an investigation into the social and economic consequences of maternal morbidity and mortality. With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the committee organized a workshop on this topic in Washington, DC, on October 19-20, 1998. The Consequences of Maternal Morbidity and Maternal Mortality assesses the scientific knowledge about the consequences of maternal morbidity and mortality and discusses key findings from recent research. Although the existing research on this topic is scarce, the report drew on similar literature on the consequences of adult disease and death, especially the growing literature on the socioeconomic consequences of AIDS, to look at potential consequences from maternal disability and death.

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 2)

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 2)
Author: Robert Black
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-04-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1464803684

The evaluation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) by the Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (DCP3) focuses on maternal conditions, childhood illness, and malnutrition. Specifically, the chapters address acute illness and undernutrition in children, principally under age 5. It also covers maternal mortality, morbidity, stillbirth, and influences to pregnancy and pre-pregnancy. Volume 3 focuses on developments since the publication of DCP2 and will also include the transition to older childhood, in particular, the overlap and commonality with the child development volume. The DCP3 evaluation of these conditions produced three key findings: 1. There is significant difficulty in measuring the burden of key conditions such as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, nonsexually transmitted infections, infertility, and violence against women. 2. Investments in the continuum of care can have significant returns for improved and equitable access, health, poverty, and health systems. 3. There is a large difference in how RMNCH conditions affect different income groups; investments in RMNCH can lessen the disparity in terms of both health and financial risk.

Intertemporal Excess Burden, Bequest Motives, and the Budget Deficit

Intertemporal Excess Burden, Bequest Motives, and the Budget Deficit
Author: Derek Hung Chiat Chen
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2003
Genre: Budget deficits
ISBN:

The author aims to empirically determine the significant factors that affect the levels of budget deficits of central governments across time and across countries. He empirically tests two prominent theories of budget deficits-the Barro (1979) tax-smoothing approach, and the still-untested theory of negative bequest motives advocated by Cukierman and Meltzer (1989). The author uses econometric techniques including fixed-effects (both country and time) panel regressions spanning 87 countries over the period 1975 to 1992, and the Griliches treatment of missing data. The author finds relatively stronger statistical support for the tax-smoothing approach among developing countries but not in industrial countries. The existence of empirical evidence supporting the theory of negative bequest motives is indeterminate. The author also conducted post-regression analyses to assess the proportion of observed differences in budget deficits the factors were actually able to explain. These reveal that both theories are generally weak in accounting for inter-temporal changes in budget deficit shares for both industrial and developing countries. The theories performed significantly better in accounting for cross-section differences. The author has many contributions to the literature. First, he analyzes the question of what determines the size of central government budget deficits using cross-country time series data leading into the 1990s. Second, he provides empirical tests of the still-untested Cukierman-Meltzer (1989) negative bequest motive theory of budget deficits. By using the panel data, the author attempts to determine the factors that influence not only the inter-temporal differences in budget deficits but also those factors that lead to cross-country differences. Last but not least, he provides some preliminary evidence that poverty reduction is necessary for long-term government budget deficit reduction.

Can Fiscal Rules Help Reduce Macroeconomic Volatility in the Latin America and Caribbean Region?

Can Fiscal Rules Help Reduce Macroeconomic Volatility in the Latin America and Caribbean Region?
Author: Guillermo Perry
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 28
Release: 2003
Genre: Business cycles
ISBN:

The debate on fiscal policy in Europe centers on how to let automatic stabilizers work while achieving fiscal consolidation. There is significant agreement on the importance of using fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical instrument, as monetary policy can no longer play this role. In contrast, most of the discussion on fiscal policy in Latin America and the Carribean region (LAC) deals just on solvency issues, largely ignoring the effects of the economic cycle. This is surprising as LAC economies are much more volatile than their European counterparts and have been generally applying pro-cyclical fiscal policies that exacerbate volatility. Some analysts and policymakers appear to think that counter-cyclical fiscal policies are a luxury that only industrial countries can indulge in or, at least, that LAC countries (with the exception of Chile) that have successfully put in place a counter-cyclical fiscal policy need to deal first with pressing adjustment and solvency issues before they attempt to reduce the highly pro-cyclical character of their fiscal policies. The author argues that this is a major mistake because the costs of pro-cyclical fiscal policies in LAC are huge in growth and welfare terms, especially for the poor, and because pro-cyclical policies and rules tend to develop a deficit bias, thus ending up being nonsustainable and noncredible. Perry illustrates both propositions. He then examines the causes of the pro-cyclicality of fiscal policies in LAC and discusses how well-designed fiscal rules may help to deal with the political economy and credibility factors behind pro-cyclicality. He also examines conflicts between flexibility and credibility in rules, showing how a good design can both facilitate the operation of automatic stabilizers while at the same time supporting solvency goals and enhancing credibility. Perry evaluates the experience with different fiscal rules and institutions in LAC to see the extent they have helped or can help to achieve the twin goals of avoiding deficit and pro-cyclical biases.

Trade Reform in Vietnam

Trade Reform in Vietnam
Author: Philippe Auffret
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2003
Genre: Vietnam
ISBN:

In 1986 Vietnam initiated a transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented economy where the government would keep playing a leading role. These renovation (doi moi) policies were successful at generating economic growth and reducing poverty. In the ten-year socioeconomic strategy endorsed by the Ninth Party Congress in April 2001, the authorities further articulated their development objectives in terms of economic growth and poverty reduction. To reach these objectives, the government indicated that its structural reform priorities were to change Vietnam's trade and financial policies, liberalize the climate for private investment, increase the efficiency of public enterprises, and improve governance. The author argues that the pace of implementation of trade reform-which has been impressive so far-is raising new challenges. On one side, fast liberalization of trade reform may soon conflict with the slow pace of implementation of other reforms, including restructuring of state-owned enterprises and state-owned commercial banks. On the other side, Vietnam would greatly benefit from fast implementation of trade reform and particularly fast accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), especially after China's recent WTO accession. Auffret concludes that implementation of trade reform will be a testing ground to reveal the extent of Vietnam's commitment to a market-oriented economy.

Are You Satisfied?

Are You Satisfied?
Author: Uwe Deichmann
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2003
Genre: Cities and towns
ISBN:

Citizen feedback is considered an effective means for improving the performance of public utilities. But how well does such information reflect the actual quality of service delivery? Do so-called scorecards or report cards measure public service delivery accurately, or do personal and community characteristics have a significant impact on residents' assessment of service quality? Deichmann and Lall investigate these questions using newly available household survey data on access to and satisfaction with selected public services in two Indian cities-Bangalore and Jaipur. They develop a framework where actual levels of services received, as well as expectations about service performance, influence a household's satisfaction with service delivery. The authors find that satisfaction increases with improvements in the household's own service status, a finding that supports the use of scorecard initiatives. But the results also suggest that a household's satisfaction is influenced by how service quality compares with that of its neighbors or peers and by household level characteristics such as welfare and tenure status. This implies that responses in satisfaction surveys are at least in part determined by factors that are unrelated to the service performance experienced by the household.

Diversity Matters

Diversity Matters
Author: Somik V. Lall
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2003
Genre: Economic geography
ISBN:

How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The authors answer these questions by analyzing the influence of economic geography on the cost structure of manufacturing firms by firm size for eight industry sectors in India. The economic geography factors include market access and local and urban externalities-which are concentrations of own-industry firms, concentrations of buyer-supplier links, and industrial diversity at the district (local) level. The authors find that industrial diversity is the only economic geography variable that has a significant, consistent, and substantial cost-reducing effect for firms, particularly small firms. This finding calls into question the fundamental assumptions regarding localization economies and raises further concerns on the industrial development prospects of lagging regions in developing countries.

Gender, Generations, and Nonfarm Participation

Gender, Generations, and Nonfarm Participation
Author: M. Shahe Emran
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2003
Genre: Occupations
ISBN:

The authors present an empirical analysis of intergenerational links in nonfarm participation with a focus on gender effects. Using survey data from Nepal, the evidence shows that the mother exerts a strong influence on a daughter's employment choice. Having a mother in a nonfarm sector raises a daughter's probability of nonfarm participation by 200 percent. The effects are truly dramatic for skilled nonfarm jobs. Having a mother in a skilled job raises a daughter's probability by 1,200 percent. Having a father in a nonfarm sector, on the other hand, does not have any significant effect on a son's probability of nonfarm participation when the endogeneity of education and assets is corrected for by the two-stage conditional maximum likelihood approach. But a moderate positive intergenerational correlation between fathers and sons exists for skilled jobs.