Essays on Family Choices in Developing Economies PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Essays on Family Choices in Developing Economies PDF full book. Access full book title Essays on Family Choices in Developing Economies by Gina Andrade Baena. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Gina Andrade Baena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Important gaps in knowledge remain when investigating the links between family characteristics and human capital investments along the life-cycle. Human capital formation (i.e. skills development) is problematic amongst low-income populations given the risk factors they are exposed to, such as poverty, malnutrition, non-stimulating home environments, and/or mistaken beliefs about returns to investments. Throughout three empirical chapters, this dissertation sheds light on the role of family characteristics and factors influencing two key human capital investments among deprived population in two developing economies: the choice of childcare and time allocation. Chapter 2 examines childcare choices exploiting the experimental design of a scalable early childhood intervention in Colombia. Chapter 3 investigates the role of children"s time use to produce one cognitive skill and two psychosocial skills; and the trade-offs of child work among alternative activities. Chapter 4 examines the relationship of birth order with time use and parental educational aspirations. The investigations in chapters 3 and 4 employ longitudinal data from Young Lives and focus on Peru. Furthermore, the analyses centres in three less documented life-stages within the human capital literature, childhood (ages 6-9), early adolescence (ages 10-14) and transition to adolescence (age 15). Findings in chapter 2 indicate that the stimulation treatment led to an increase up to 4.6 percentages points in informal childcare relative to maternal care. I also find evidence of increases in maternal play time investments. Chapter 3 results show that time inputs effects are marginal for both types of skills, although daily time in educational activities is crucial for verbal development, specifically time spent studying and at school. Finally, in chapter 4, I find that being the second born sibling in two-child families has a significant and negative effect on child work; nonetheless, parents are equally likely to aspire for the highest level of education for both children.
Author: Gina Andrade Baena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Important gaps in knowledge remain when investigating the links between family characteristics and human capital investments along the life-cycle. Human capital formation (i.e. skills development) is problematic amongst low-income populations given the risk factors they are exposed to, such as poverty, malnutrition, non-stimulating home environments, and/or mistaken beliefs about returns to investments. Throughout three empirical chapters, this dissertation sheds light on the role of family characteristics and factors influencing two key human capital investments among deprived population in two developing economies: the choice of childcare and time allocation. Chapter 2 examines childcare choices exploiting the experimental design of a scalable early childhood intervention in Colombia. Chapter 3 investigates the role of children"s time use to produce one cognitive skill and two psychosocial skills; and the trade-offs of child work among alternative activities. Chapter 4 examines the relationship of birth order with time use and parental educational aspirations. The investigations in chapters 3 and 4 employ longitudinal data from Young Lives and focus on Peru. Furthermore, the analyses centres in three less documented life-stages within the human capital literature, childhood (ages 6-9), early adolescence (ages 10-14) and transition to adolescence (age 15). Findings in chapter 2 indicate that the stimulation treatment led to an increase up to 4.6 percentages points in informal childcare relative to maternal care. I also find evidence of increases in maternal play time investments. Chapter 3 results show that time inputs effects are marginal for both types of skills, although daily time in educational activities is crucial for verbal development, specifically time spent studying and at school. Finally, in chapter 4, I find that being the second born sibling in two-child families has a significant and negative effect on child work; nonetheless, parents are equally likely to aspire for the highest level of education for both children.
Author: Hans Rosling
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 125012381X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Author: Simon Kuznets
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521521963
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Get Book Here
Book Description
This is a collection of essays by Simon Kuznets, winner of the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, published posthumously. It represents the primary concerns of his research at a late phase of his career, as well as themes from his earlier work. The first four chapters deal with 'modern economic growth'. Chapters five to seven introduce the main theme of the remainder of the volume: interrelations between demographic change and income inequality. Chapters eight to ten draw on a wider set of data to make comparisons of income inequality among societies at widely different levels of development. Chapter eleven returns to data for the United States to develop more fully the importance of differing childbearing patterns for income inequality. In the introduction Professor Richard Easterlin discusses the relationship of the essays to the balance of Kuznets's writings. In the afterword Professor Robert Fogel discusses the methodologies favoured by Kuznets.
Author: Martin Browning
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107728924
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 511
Get Book Here
Book Description
The family is a complex decision unit in which partners with potentially different objectives make consumption, work and fertility decisions. Couples marry and divorce partly based on their ability to coordinate these activities, which in turn depends on how well they are matched. This book provides a comprehensive, modern and self-contained account of the research in the growing area of family economics. The first half of the book develops several alternative models of family decision making. Particular attention is paid to the collective model and its testable implications. The second half discusses household formation and dissolution and who marries whom. Matching models with and without frictions are analyzed and the important role of within-family transfers is explained. The implications for marriage, divorce and fertility are discussed. The book is intended for graduate students in economics and for researchers in other fields interested in the economic approach to the family.
Author: Esther Redmount
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 1440800553
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
A fascinating look at the role that households—and the dynamics of families, in particular—play in creating economic growth and social stability in modern economies and markets. This timely compilation of essays examines the paradigm of family in the 21st century, delving into cohabitation, marriage, and divorce; the effects of modern family units on work and consumption; and the ramifications of life choices on economic growth and stability. The text ponders highly personal yet societal topics, such as who lives with whom and why; the reasons for low birth rates among highly educated, high-income women; and strategies busy parents use to balance career, parenthood, and personal life. Volume I explores the various profiles of families today, covering multi- or single-generational, single or dual parent, and same- or opposite-sex couples. Volume II considers how time and money are shared among family members and what impact this distribution of resources has on occupations, technology, and markets. The text scrutinizes the factors that drive family formation and dissolution, control population in countries all over the world, and contribute to a family's well-being and fortitude.
Author: Christian Aspalter
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819951690
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book bridges the disciplines of micro-economics and social policy in general, and, in particular, behavioral/explanatory social policy and public choice theory, plus Leibenstein’s X-efficiency theory. Being trained as an economist and social policy scientist, the author leaps out of the comfort zone of most social policy scientists and experts, right into the exciting world of micro-economic theory, and then extending and connecting those theories to explain major social, political and economic conundrums of our time. In doing so, the book offers a new set of theoretical—and practical—explanations derived from the general proposition of micro-economic theory, of how government officers, policymakers, administrators and the people themselves alike are, by and large, motivated in their daily as well as strategic (long-term) decision-making. Using a meta-analytical approach (based on a number of grand theories), this book also explains systemic factors behind human behavior and the thereof resulting shortcomings in lifetime outcomes (health, wealth and happiness of a person) and at the same time societal, policy-making, and economic outcomes on societal level, and in global comparison. The outcomes thereof can be measured exactly (and hence validated), especially through the method of empirical comparative social science/economic research. Here, the author also (but not only) introduces the new method of using Aspalter's Standardized Relative Performance (SRP) Index in measuring exactly complex, aggregate performances of multiple governments, and that at the same time also across the entire world.
Author: David Aimé Zoundi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 125
Get Book Here
Book Description
This Ph.D. thesis explores barriers to gender equality in developing countries. It is composed of three essays. The first essay (chapter 1) explores the roots of gender inequality favoring boys in education. It analyzes the effect of culture interaction with poor household economic on the school dropout probabilities of boys' and girls', using Malawi data. Malawi's suitability for this analysis stems from the coexistence in its territory of two different customs of post-marital residence for couples: patrilocal and matrilocal customs. Estimation results show that gender inequality in education is rooted in the interaction of household economic conditions and the custom of patrilocality—when a married couple settles near or with the husband's family after marriage. The essay concludes that public policies that make it unnecessary for parents to rely on traditional customs to organize their family life can eliminate gender inequality favoring boys' education. The last two essays analyze the issue of polygyny—when a man can have multiples wives simultaneously. This marriage institution has disappeared globally but remains confined in a cluster of sub-Saharan African countries, particularly in the Sahel region. Economic theory predicts that increasing women's education leads to the disappearance of polygyny. Still, empirical evidence is yet to establish this causal link, settling instead for a negative correlation between education and women's polygyny probabilities. The second essay examines the effect of education on women's polygyny probabilities, using primarily Uganda data. For identification, we use an estimation approach that jointly addresses sample selection and education endogeneity problems. We estimate a three-equation model comprising a polygyny (main) equation, a marriage (selection), and an education (endogeneity) equation. Estimation results confirm economic theory's prediction that increasing women's education leads to the disappearance of polygyny. The third and final essay provides evidence on the cause of the clustering of polygyny in drought-prone countries. Evidence shows that in village economies dependent on rainfed agriculture, the breakdown of informal risk-sharing arrangements following covariate shocks such as droughts increases the value of having a large family, both in size and composition, as a lever of resilience strategies. We find that polygyny allows households to build resilience to the adverse effects of drought on crop yields. These three essays contribute to advancing our knowledge of the barriers to gender inequalityin sub-Saharan Africa. It mainly draws attention to the importance for developing countries to invest in girls' schooling (Essay 2) and promote public policies that make it less attractive for parents to resort to traditional institutions to support their livelihoods (Essay 1). Additionally, policies such as those promoting smallholder farmers as a development strategy can contribute to the persistence of polygyny in drought-prone communities if done without weaning the rural population of its dependence on rainfed agriculture. In these settings, promoting resilience and adaptation strategies independent of household size can lead to polygyny and child marriage's disappearance (Essay 3).
Author: David Levine
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9780890961513
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Get Book Here
Book Description
In recent years a growing number of scholars have used the family as a prism through which to view historical change. The ways in which people cope with their world have always been reflected in familial decisions. Thus, a focus on the family has allowed historians the clearest view of the dynamic relationship between the people of the past and the evolution of society and the economy. These five essays combine the economics and values of the family, two elements whose separation has been an impediment to our best understanding of its history. The ways in which people cope with their circumstances have always been reflected in familial decisions. These five essays combine the economics and values of the family.
Author: Esther Redmount
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440800561
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 593
Get Book Here
Book Description
A fascinating look at the role that households—and the dynamics of families, in particular—play in creating economic growth and social stability in modern economies and markets. This timely compilation of essays examines the paradigm of family in the 21st century, delving into cohabitation, marriage, and divorce; the effects of modern family units on work and consumption; and the ramifications of life choices on economic growth and stability. The text ponders highly personal yet societal topics, such as who lives with whom and why; the reasons for low birth rates among highly educated, high-income women; and strategies busy parents use to balance career, parenthood, and personal life. Volume I explores the various profiles of families today, covering multi- or single-generational, single or dual parent, and same- or opposite-sex couples. Volume II considers how time and money are shared among family members and what impact this distribution of resources has on occupations, technology, and markets. The text scrutinizes the factors that drive family formation and dissolution, control population in countries all over the world, and contribute to a family's well-being and fortitude.
Author: Shamma Adeeb Alam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 87
Get Book Here
Book Description
This dissertation is on three essays on issues in development and health economics. In these essays, I try to examine how different health issues affect economic outcomes and vice versa. I examine individual and household responses to different economic and health issues in Bangladesh and Tanzania. In the first two chapters, I examine how different shocks affect family's fertility decisions and decision to make investments on their children in Tanzania. In the third chapter, I examine how information regarding dangers of pesticide affects the likelihood of pesticide exposure for farmers in Bangladesh. In the first chapter, I examine how parental illness affects child labor and schooling outcomes using panel data from Tanzania. Prior literature provides limited empirical evidence on the impact of parental illness on child labor and schooling outcomes. I examine if parental illness causes households to reallocate children's time from school to work. I find that a father's illness hinders child schooling by decreasing attendance and hours spent in school. These effects on schooling are substantially greater for severe illnesses. There is also evidence that a father's illness has long-term impact on child education, as it decreases their likelihood of completing primary school and leads to fewer total years of schooling. However, a father's illness has no effect on child labor. In contrast, a mother's illness does not affect child education, but does cause a small increase in children's work. Surprisingly, parental illness does not have a differential impact by children's gender. Additionally, illness of other household members, such as grandparents, adult siblings, and child siblings, has no effect on children's schooling. Thus, overall, there is no evidence that parental illness or illness of other household members affects children's schooling through increased child labor. Instead, the results suggest that only illness of fathers, who are typically the primary income earners in Tanzanian households, reduces household income and severely decreases the family's ability to afford child education. In the second chapter, which is a joint work with Claus Portner, we examine the relationship between household income shocks and fertility decisions. Using panel data from Tanzania, we estimate the impact of agricultural shocks on contraception use, pregnancy, and the likelihood of childbirth. To account for unobserved household characteristics that potentially affect both shocks and fertility decisions we employ a fixed effects model. Households significantly increase their contraception use in response to income shocks from crop loss. Furthermore, pregnancies and childbirth are significantly delayed for households experiencing a crop shock. We argue that these changes in behavior are the result of deliberate decisions of the households rather than income shocks' effects on other factors that in influence fertility, such as women's health status, the absence or migration of spouse, and dissolution of partnerships. In the third chapter, which is a joint work with Hendrik Wolff, we examine how different information sources influence precautionary behavior when using pesticide and likelihood of pesticide exposure. Modern agriculture heavily depends on the use of pesticides and has successfully increased productivity, but also led to increasing concerns regarding farmers' health. Mishandling of pesticides continues to pose a serious health problem for farmers especially in developing countries. This chapter describes supply side and demand side regulations for pesticide handling, health outcomes and adoption of health technologies using a detailed household level dataset from Bangladesh. The dataset is unique as it spans the chain from: `where do farmers obtain information from', `which precautionary tools (i.e. masks, gloves) are used' and `what are subsequent health outcomes after spraying'. Previous studies hypothesized that pesticide sellers in developing countries misguide farmers regarding pesticide use. On the other hand, government field extension workers reduce pesticide exposure by training farmers in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques. In our dataset we cannot confirm these hypotheses. In contrast, we find that those famers that use information from pesticide sellers increase the adoption of precautionary tools. These same farmers also enjoy subsequently improved health outcomes. Further, our results show that the agricultural extension program does not significantly impact technology adoption or health. We find instead evidence of social learning as peer farmers, especially those trained in handling pesticides, have a substantial influence. We conclude with policy recommendations.
