Maria Laura Alzúa, Natalia Cantet, A. Dammert, D. Olajide
{"title":"The Well-being Effects of an Old-Age Pension: Experimental Evidence for Ekiti State in Nigeria","authors":"Maria Laura Alzúa, Natalia Cantet, A. Dammert, D. Olajide","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Many countries in the developing world have implemented old-age pensions. Evidence of the impact of such policies on the elderly in sub-Saharan Africa, however, is scarce. We provide evidence from a randomised evaluation of an unconditional old-age pension targeted at the elderly in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Our findings show that treated beneficiaries self-report better quality of life and a more stable mental health. We also provide evidence of spillover effects on the labor outcomes of other household members and of household savings patterns as well as support for interventions aimed at improving the welfare of elderly poor citizens and other household members.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46536806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Earning Structure and Heterogeneity of the Labor Market: Evidence from DR Congo","authors":"Douglas Amuli Ibale","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Using 1.2.3 survey data on the Democratic Republic of Congo, we highlight different sectors in the labor market, with ‘higher paid’ sectors that are largely formal and ‘lower paid’ sectors that are largely informal. Based on a linear regression model, we report significant heterogeneity in earnings across sectors, which remain after controlling for aspects of human capital. We use a multinomial logit model to identify sector choice and show, allowing for selection, how returns to human capital differ across these sectors. We find that returns to basic education are important in largely informal sectors and that tertiary education is very important to access the higher paid sectors, but less important than in the lower paid sectors in increasing earnings once there. We then extend this analysis using quantile regression to show how returns differ across the distribution within sectors. Finally, we decompose the earnings gap across sectors and check how characteristics and return on these characteristics affect the cross-sector earnings gap. The earnings gap decomposition shows that workers of the lower paid sectors earn less, not only because they are less skill-endowed but also because they earn lower returns on their skills.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49287578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rainfall Shocks, Livelihood Diversification and Welfare: Evidence from Rural Togo","authors":"A. Weyori, Sabine Liebenehm","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Theory suggests that rural farm households exposed to greater risk should diversify their income portfolios to reduce variation in welfare caused by adverse events such as rainfall shocks. Rainfall shocks, however, can also degrade asset stocks and make diversification more costly. Using a panel dataset of small-scale cattle farmers from rural Togo and long-term historical rainfall data, we first examine whether and in what direction rural portfolio diversification is related to historical rainfall shocks. Second, we test whether diversification is associated with stabilised welfare in the face of recent rainfall shocks. Our results show that historical rainfall shock exposure reduces income diversification. In terms of mitigation, we find that diversification is generally not effective in insulating against welfare losses. We conclude that there is a need to stimulate rural diversification as a means of building resilient livelihoods to cope with increasing weather variability by strengthening credit, agricultural and market institutions.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46617375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aregawi G Gebremariam, Elisabetta Lodigiani, Giacomo Pasini
{"title":"The Impact of Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program on Children's Educational Aspirations and Attainments","authors":"Aregawi G Gebremariam, Elisabetta Lodigiani, Giacomo Pasini","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) was launched by the government of Ethiopia in 2005 to support food-insecure rural households. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of PSNP on children's educational aspirations and actual attainments. We use longitudinal data from the Ethiopian sample of the Young Lives' survey and by means of a differences-in-differences, individual fixed-effects estimator, we find that the program increases both educational aspirations and actual attainment of children. In our preferred specification, the immediate effect (after 3 years) of the program is to increase by 1.05 years of educational aspirations and by about 0.35 years actual education of children. Furthermore, there is evidence that the program has significant effect even in the long run (after 6 years). The results point to broad and long-lasting positive effects on children education of a program designed primarily to relieve chronically poor households from food insecurity.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135574658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Heterogeneous Effects of Women's Schooling on Fertility, Literacy and Work: Evidence from Burundi's Free Primary Education Policy","authors":"Frederik Wild, D. Stadelmann","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad002","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the effect of women's schooling on fertility as well as on associated mechanisms by leveraging Burundi's free primary education policy (FPE) of 2005 as a natural experiment. Exogenous variation in schooling is identified through a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Our results show that educational attainment was positively influenced by Burundi's FPE for women situated at all wealth levels. However, the relevant downstream effects of schooling—measured by fertility, literacy and work outcomes—reveal heterogenous treatment effects which are moderated by women's household wealth. While poor women profit in terms of increases in literacy (6.7 percentage-point increase for each year of policy-induced schooling), remunerated employment opportunities (5.7 percentage-point increase), as well as a reduction in desired and actual fertility outcomes (6.9 percentage-point reduction in teenage childbirth), none of these effects of additional education are observed for women from the wealthier households of our sample. The evidence of such a marked heterogeneity contributes to the growing literature examining the nexus between education and fertility in developing countries and helps to evaluate under which conditions the literature's findings may generalize.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46314849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Breisinger, Yumna Kassim, Sikandra Kurdi, J. Randriamamonjy, J. Thurlow
{"title":"From Food Subsidies to Cash Transfers: Assessing Economy-Wide Benefits and Trade-Offs in Egypt","authors":"C. Breisinger, Yumna Kassim, Sikandra Kurdi, J. Randriamamonjy, J. Thurlow","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Food is a vital part of poor households' budgets and so subsidizing staple foods would appear to be an obvious pro-poor policy. Indeed, most countries in North Africa have prioritized large national subsidy programs for staple foods and fuels as their main social safety net. However, these programs account for significant shares of government spending and often drive fiscal deficits, especially when import prices rise. In this paper we use a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model to evaluate the trade-offs between reducing poverty and managing fiscal balances. The modeling framework allows us to measure the efficiency costs of subsidies compared to cash transfers - switching to the latter is an emerging regional trend. We analyze these issues through a detailed case study of Egypt, where efforts to replace food subsidies with cash transfers is already underway. Data is also available in Egypt to design scenarios that realistically reflect potential targeting effectiveness and administrative costs. We show that replacing broad food subsidies with targeted cash transfers of roughly equivalent fiscal costs can improve the welfare of the poorest households, but the continuation of fiscal deficits results in a deceleration of economic growth. The latter gradually reduces welfare gains for the poor and leads to substantial welfare losses for middle-income households who lose access to subsidies without benefitting from cash transfers. Our findings highlight the political challenges facing subsidy reform programs.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60898756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Crossed Analysis of Participations in Labor and Grain Markets: Evidence from Malawi","authors":"Alhassane Camara, L. Savard","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study contributes to the literature on the identification of factors shaping the decision to participate in the grain market in Africa. Unlike previous studies, we introduce labor market participation into the farm household model to highlight heterogeneities in decision making. Empirically, we rely on an extension of Heckman's approach and introduce control functions to mitigate endogeneity issues related to the adoption of agricultural technologies. We find that limited access to transportation infrastructure, by discouraging the supply of grain, constrains households to experience an excess of labor; price incentives may have a reverse effect on the choice of market regimes, even though the effect on production may be positive for households that are already participants. We also show that farmers' responses to grain prices are not sensitive to their labor market position. The use of agricultural technologies encourages cereal production and employment of external agricultural labor. This study thus provides a better targeting when designing policies promoting marketing and rural employment.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41776643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Feed Thy Neighbour: How Social Ties Shape Spillover Effects of Cash Transfers on Food Security and Nutrition","authors":"Alessandro Carraro, Lucia Ferrone","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Economic development in Sub Saharan African countries is strongly tied to households' ability to cope with exogenous events affecting their well-being. Using data from the Lesotho Child Grant Program (CGP) we provide evidence on the presence of any spillover effect of the program on non-eligible households living in treated villages and whether households' food security and nutrition are influenced by the presence of a particular network structure. We take advantage of information on each household's received and disbursed monetary transfers to build a set of indicators representing quantitatively and qualitatively the network architecture of each household. We find relevant spillover effects of the CGP on the food security and nutrition of non-eligible households living in treated villages and embedded in a social network. Geographical proximity seems to be strongly tied to positive spillover effects for food security and access to food.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136085519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emigration and External Imbalances in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Migrants' Skills Matter?","authors":"D. Coulibaly, Blaise Gnimassoun","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The external deficits in SSA countries are a major concern and may be connected to emigration from these countries to advanced economies. According to the life cycle theory, by decreasing labour force, emigration induces a fall in savings and a deterioration in the external balance in the countries of origin. Migrants' remittances may dampen or even counterbalance this effect, depending on migrants' skills that matter for their propensity to remit. Empirical investigation for SSA countries over the period 1990–2014 shows that low-skilled emigration improves the current account balance, whereas high-skilled emigration worsens it because highly skilled emigrants have higher saving potential but tend to remit less than low-skilled ones. Therefore, incentives for the financing of home economies by skilled migrants would be beneficial.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48510762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zaakhir Asmal, Haroon Bhorat, Ravi Kanbur, Marco Ranzani, Pierella Paci
{"title":"Minimum Wages and Labour Supply in an Emerging Market: The Case of Mauritius","authors":"Zaakhir Asmal, Haroon Bhorat, Ravi Kanbur, Marco Ranzani, Pierella Paci","doi":"10.1093/jae/ejad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper investigates the effect of multiple minimum wages, known as remuneration orders, on employment and working hours in Mauritius. Using data between 2005 and 2014, the analysis finds no effect on overall employment and different effects in sign for men and women. The minimum wage has a positive long-term effect on women's employment (0.141) and a negative effect on male employment (−0.097). The estimated employment elasticity magnitudes for men and women are within the range of elasticities found in previous studies of employment effects of minimum wages in low- and middle-income countries. The aggregate employment effect of the minimum wage in Mauritius is not significant, due to the larger share of men who are employed. The extensive margin effect of minimum wages is also associated with a 2.2% increase in average working hours for men but a 1.3% decline in average working hours for women in the covered sector. In the uncovered sector, the significant positive effect along the intensive margin, estimated at 4.6%, is driven by changes in labour supply among men.","PeriodicalId":51524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135116150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}