{"title":"Determinants of Subsistence Farmers Participation to Non-Farm Activities in Itang Special District, Gambella Region, Ethiopia","authors":"Chayot Gatdet","doi":"10.17632/SCY8BTM2NK.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17632/SCY8BTM2NK.1","url":null,"abstract":"The subsistence farmers are highly relying on farming activities as the main source of survival in Gambella region particularly in Itang Special District. This threatens the livelihood of most subsistence farmers in the district. The aim of the study was to examine determinants of subsistence farmers’ participation to non-farm activities in the study area. Multistage sampling technique was used to choose the study area and participants. The data were collected from 150 randomly selected subsistence farmers in the study area. These data were collected through households’ interview and document analysis. Moreover, the data were analyzed by using mean, standard deviation, percentage, frequency, chi-square test, t-test and binary logistic regression model. A result found that trading livestock, selling wild products, craftsman, trading of food and drinks and employed in organizations were the main non-farm activities among the subsistence farmers in the study area. In addition, the credit access, access to remittance, transport access, market access, skill training, livestock holding size and income influence the participation of households to non-farm activities. The concerned bodies need to strengthen the local institutions and alternative activities in the study area.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"SMC-5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126707333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic Recovery and Accelerated COVID-19 Spread in Florida","authors":"P. Bernet","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3888353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3888353","url":null,"abstract":"Objectives: To determine whether rebounds in Florida business revenues following initial COVID-19 quarantines were associated with increasing infection rates, and whether those associations were more strongly related to certain industries. Methods: Florida business gross revenues and tax collections for April 2020 through March 2021 were accumulated by industry and month. Measured relative to the same month in the prior year, economic rebounds are correlated with statewide monthly COVID-19 infections to measure the strength of relationship. Results: Florida's overall tax collections dropped $2.8 billion below prior year levels during the April 2020 to March 2021 COVID-19 pandemic era; over two-thirds from declining revenues for hotels, theme parks, restaurants, and bars. Although tourism has been rebounding slowly, restaurant and bar business has returned to pre-pandemic levels, with infection rates matching pace. Conclusions: Florida loosened restaurant and bar restrictions faster than most states, only to see rebounding revenues parallel rising infection rates. The states' heavy financial dependence on this industry challenges the objectivity of choices between economic recovery and population health.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"14 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124313011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparing Pregnancy and Childbirth-Related Hospital Visits in Arizona Before and during COVID-19 Using Network Analysis","authors":"Jinhang Jiang, Karthik Srinivasan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3877615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3877615","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe effect on all facets of human society, including healthcare. One of the primary concerns in healthcare is understanding and mitigating the impact of the pandemic on pregnancy and childbirth. While several studies have looked at challenges such as contract tracing of positive cases, predicting confirmed cases and deaths in individuals and communities, few studies have examined differences in hospitalization and treatment of pregnant mothers and infant care in large populations. In this study, the prevalence and co-occurrence of pregnancy and childbirth-related diagnoses reported in Arizona State hospitals for three sixth-month periods - before COVID-19 (second half of 2019), COVID-19 onset (first half of 2020), and COVID-19 (second half of 2020) are analyzed using network analysis. The results show that there are considerable differences in ego networks of few diagnoses during these time periods warranting further investigation into the causality of such population changes.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121770457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xiaoying Liu, H. Miao, Jere R. Behrman, E. Hannum, Zhijiang Liang, Qingguo Zhao
{"title":"The Asian Games, Air Pollution and Birth Outcomes in South China: An Instrumental Variable Approach","authors":"Xiaoying Liu, H. Miao, Jere R. Behrman, E. Hannum, Zhijiang Liang, Qingguo Zhao","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3873998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3873998","url":null,"abstract":"We estimate the effects of air-pollution exposure on low birthweight, birthweight, and prematurity risk in South China, for all expectant mothers and by maternal age group and child sex. We do so by exploiting exogenous improvement in air quality during the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, when strict regulations were mandated to assure better air quality. We use daily air-pollution levels collected from monitoring stations in Guangzhou, the Asian Games host city, and Shenzhen, a nearby control city, between 2009 and 2011. We first show that air quality during the Asian Games significantly improved in Guangzhou, relative to Shenzhen. Next, using birth-certificate data for both cities for 2009-2011 and using expected pregnancy overlap with the Asian Games as an instrumental variable, we study the effects of three pollutants (PM10, SO2, and NO2) on birth outcomes. Four main conclusions emerge: 1) air pollutants significantly reduce average birthweight and increase preterm risk; 2) for birthweight, late pregnancy is most sensitive to PM10 exposure, but there is not consistent evidence of a sensitive period for other pollutants and outcomes; 3) for birthweight, babies of mothers who are at least 35 years old show more vulnerability to all three air pollutants; and 4) male babies show more vulnerability than female babies to PM10 and SO2, but birthweights of female babies are more sensitive than those of male babies to NO2.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128477194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Long-Term Effects of the Inca Road","authors":"A. Franco, Sebastian Galiani, P. Lavado","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3871970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3871970","url":null,"abstract":"The Inca Empire was the last of a long series of highly developed cultures in pre-colonial South America. It stretched across parts of the current territories of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and the whole of Peru. The Inca Road was its 30,000-kilometer-long transportation system. The aim of this study is to identify its long-term impact on current development in Peru. Our results show that the long-run effect of the Inca Road includes increases in wages and educational attainment, a reduction of child malnutrition and an increase in children’s mathematics test scores. We also find that these effects are around 20% greater for women and explore the mechanisms that may account for this pattern.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117003466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Annarita Macchioni Giaquinto, Andrew M. Jones, N. Rice, Francesca Zantomio
{"title":"Labour Supply and Informal Care Responses to Health Shocks within Couples: Evidence from the UKHL","authors":"Annarita Macchioni Giaquinto, Andrew M. Jones, N. Rice, Francesca Zantomio","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3837099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3837099","url":null,"abstract":"Shocks to health have been shown to reduce labour supply for the individual affected. Less is known about household self-insurance through a partner’s response to a health shock. Previous studies have presented inconclusive empirical evidence on the existence of a health-related `added worker effect’. We use UK longitudinal data to investigate within households both the labour supply and informal care responses of an individual to the event of an acute health shock to their partner. Relying on the unanticipated timing of shocks, we combine coarsened exact matching and entropy balancing algorithms with parametric analysis and exploit lagged outcomes to remove bias from observed confounders and time-invariant unobservables. We find no evidence of a health-related ‘added worker effect’. A significant and sizeable increase in spousal informal care, irrespective of spousal labour market position or household financial status and ability to purchase formal care provision, suggests a substitution to informal care provision, at the expense of time devoted to leisure activities.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"2016 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121490374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Viral Myths: Why We Risk Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Pandemic","authors":"K. Niemietz","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3850626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3850626","url":null,"abstract":"The coronavirus pandemic has given rise to the phenomenon of \"Coronfirmation Bias\", a tendency to interpret the pandemic as a vindication of one’s worldview. Three ideas have become part of the conventional wisdom: that the UK was caught unprepared because a decade of austerity had hollowed out the public sector, that COVID-19 is a crisis of \"globalisation gone too far\", and that the NHS has been the star performer of the pandemic. All three of these conventional wisdoms can be challenged. We can see this by comparing the countries that coped best with the pandemic to those that coped worst. Among the former are the four \"Asian Tigers\": Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They had exceptionally low levels of deaths, minimised the economic fallout, and preserved personal freedoms and a semblance of normal life. The UK, Spain, and Italy are among those that struggled most. All four had exceptionally high death rates, severe recessions, and stringent lockdown measures. Three things stand out from comparing them: better performers have lower levels of public spending and highly globalised economies and do not have national health services. The claim of this paper is not that best performers did well because they have low public spending levels or because they have non-NHS-type healthcare systems, but that an effective pandemic response is compatible with a variety of public spending levels, a variety of trade regimes, and a variety of healthcare systems.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122263976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parental Investment After the Birth of a Sibling: The Effect of Family Size in Low-Fertility China","authors":"Shuangye Chen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3728092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3728092","url":null,"abstract":"A large body of research has examined the relationship between family size and child well-being in developing countries, but most of this literature has focused on the consequences of high fertility. The impact of family size in a low-fertility developing country context remains unknown, even though more developing countries are expected to reach below-replacement fertility levels. Set in China between 2010 and 2016, this study examines whether an increase in family size reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study improves on previous research by using direct measures of parental investment, including monetary and nonmonetary investment, and distinguishing household-level from child-specific resources. It also exploits the longitudinal nature of the CFPS to mediate the bias arising from the joint determination of family size and parental investment. Results show that having a younger sibling significantly reduces the average household expenditure per capita. It also directly reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child, with two exceptions: (1) for firstborn boys, having a younger sister does not pose any competition; and (2) for firstborn children whose mothers have completed primary education or more, having a younger brother does not reduce parental educational aspirations for them. Findings from this study provide the first glimpse into how children fare as China transitions to a universal two-child policy regime but have wider implications beyond the Chinese context.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114717567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consequences of Teenage Motherhood on Children","authors":"E. R. Johansen, H. Nielsen, M. Verner","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3704253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3704253","url":null,"abstract":"Children of teenage mothers fare worse than children of older mothers. In order to estimate a causal effect of teenage motherhood, we study a sample of teenage pregnant women and exploit miscarriages as a natural experiment that causes a delay in childbirth from age 19 to 21. We estimate lower and upper bounds and rule out negative consequences of teenage motherhood on early child health and education. One reason is that treatment and control groups are similar in terms of pre-pregnancy behavior and socioeconomic background. Another reason is that miscarriages have detrimental effects on parents’ use of mental health care.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124363688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forecasting Mortality with International Linkages: A Global Vector-Autoregression Approach","authors":"Hong Li, Yanlin Shi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3700586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3700586","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper proposes a Global Vector Autoregression (GVAR) mortality model to simultaneously model and forecast multi-population mortality dynamics. The proposed GVAR model decomposes the global regression model into population-wise local systems. Each local system consists of an intra-population autoregressive component and a small set of global factors, which contain systematic mortality information of all populations. Such a decomposition substantially reduces the extra estimation cost of including new populations compared to unconstrained VAR models, and makes the GVAR model an efficient tool for analyzing the joint mortality dynamics of a large group of populations. Further, under fairly general assumptions, the proposed GVAR model could generate coherent mortality projections between any two ages in any two populations. Using single-age mortality data of 15 low-mortality countries, we find that the global factors have substantial explanatory and forecasting power of mortality changes of individual populations, and the proposed GVAR model could produce satisfying mortality forecasts under various settings.","PeriodicalId":439996,"journal":{"name":"Health & the Economy eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128700930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}