Access to irrigation and the escape from poverty: Evidence from Northern Mali

"Significant changes in the agricultural sector in northern Mali suggest that irrigation has made a large contribution to welfare increases over the past eight years. Using difference-in-differences, propensity score matching, and matched difference in differences with a small panel, this study estimates the impact of access to irrigation on poverty, production, and nutrient intakes. The findings suggest that gains in agricultural production value do not transfer uniquely to household consumption. The paper tests two alternative hypotheses about the distribution of agricultural gains: (1) the gains in agricultural production induced by irrigation yield higher household savings, or (2) intra-village transfers from irrigators to non-irrigators contribute to informal social insurance. The paper provides evidence of both saving and sharing within villages as complimentary strategies for consuming gains in agricultural production. This finding suggests that estimating the effects of a program, relying solely on household consumption, may underestimate the welfare gains of irrigation investment by ignoring the household's savings and informal insurance network." from Author's AbstractIrrigation, Informal insurance, Development strategy,

States' Evidence: What It Means to Make 'Adequate Yearly Progress' Under NCLB

States will soon announce the schools or districts that did or did not make "adequate yearly progress," or "AYP" under NCLB. But the question that provides the most insight into a school's performance is not whether a school made AYP, but rather how a school did or did not make AYP

Do household definitions matter in survey design?

Household definitions used in multi-topic household surveys vary between surveys but have potentially significant implications for household composition, production, and poverty statistics. Standard definitions of the household usually include some intersection of keywords relating to residency requirements, common food consumption, and intermingling of income or production decisions. Despite best practices intending to standardize the definition of the household, it is unclear which types of definitions or which intersections of keywords in a definition result in different household compositions. This paper conducts a randomized survey experiment of four different household definitions in Mali to examine the implications for household-level statistics. This approach permits analysis of the trade-offs between alternative definition types. We find that additional keywords in definitions increase rather than decrease household size and significantly alter household composition. Definitions emphasizing common consumption or joint production increase estimates of the levels of household assets and consumption statistics, but not on per adult equivalency asset and consumption statistics, relative to open-ended definitions of the household. In contrast, definition type did not affect production statistics in levels, although we observe significant differences in per adult equivalency terms. Our findings suggest that variations in household definition have implications for measuring household welfare and production over time and across countries, as well as evaluation studies where the correct measure of spillover effects within and across households is necessary for measuring the benefits of an intervention.assets, Consumption, household definition, randomized experiment,

Asset dynamics in Northern Nigeria:

This paper examines household asset dynamics and gender-differentiated asset inequality over a 20-year period (1988–2008) in northern Nigeria. We show that the initial endowments of both household capital and livestock holdings are inconsistent with the poverty trap hypothesis but that tracking rules for households in panel surveys may lead to differences in empirical results on poverty traps. We also investigate whether initial household endowments contributed to gender-differentiated future asset levels and asset inequality. Initial livestock holdings have an effect on women's future livestock holdings but not on their livestock shares within the household, as the effect of initial livestock holdings on men's future livestock levels was much greater than its effect on women's levels. The mechanism through which asset levels differed was related to the relative prices of the assets in gender-differentiated asset portfolios. Men, who primarily held larger livestock with larger unit values, benefited from large price increases in high-value livestock, while women held lower-value livestock. These price fluctuations reinforced gender asset inequality within households for both types of assets considered.asset dynamics, poverty traps, Gender, Household resource allocation,

Protein Inter-Residue Distance Prediction Using Residual and Capsule Networks

The protein folding problem, also known as protein structure prediction, is the task of building three-dimensional protein models given their one-dimensional amino acid sequence. New methods that have been successfully used in the most recent CASP challenge have demonstrated that predicting a protein\u27s inter-residue distances is key to solving this problem. Various deep learning algorithms including fully convolutional neural networks and residual networks have been developed to solve the distance prediction problem. In this work, we develop a hybrid method based on residual networks and capsule networks. We demonstrate that our method can predict distances more accurately than the algorithms used in the state-of-the-art methods. Using a standard dataset of 3420 training proteins and an independent dataset of 150 test proteins, we show that our method can predict distances 51.06% more accurately than a standard residual network method, when accuracy of all long-range distances are evaluated using mean absolute error. To further validate our results, we demonstrate that three-dimensional models built using the distances predicted by our method are more accurate than models built using the distances predicted by residual networks. Overall, our results, for the first time, highlight the potential of capsule-residual hybrid networks for solving the protein inter-residue distance prediction problem

Migratory responses to agricultural risk in Northern Nigeria

We investigate the extent in which northern Nigerian households engage in internal migration to insure against ex ante and ex post agricultural risk due to weather-related variability and shocks. We use data on the migration patterns of individuals over a 20-year period and temperature degree-days to identify agricultural risk. Controlling for ex ante and ex post risk, we find that households with higher ex ante risk are more likely to send migrants. Households facing hot shocks before the migrant’s move tend to keep their male migrants in closer proximity. These findings suggest that households use migration as a risk management strategy in response to both ex ante and ex post risk, but that migration responses are gender-specific. These findings have implications not only for understanding the insurance motives of households, but also potential policy responses tied to climatic warming.Migration, Risk, temperature degree days,

The Applicability of the Megargee Classification System for the MMPI-A

Megargee (1977) originally developed a classification system for MMPI profiles for male offenders, and eventually expanded this system to also accommodate the MMPI profiles of female offenders (Megargee, 1992). Recently Megargee expanded and modified this system for use with the MMPI-2 (Megargee, Carbonell, Bohn, and Sliger, 2001). The purpose of the current study was to examine the utility of Megargee\u27s systems as applied to adolescents in correctional facilities based on MMPI-A results. The Megargee classification criteria were modified for the purposes of this study, generally based on quite limited modifications to accommodate the lower profile ratings typically found for adolescents on the MMPI-A. Preliminary analyses found membership percentage rates of all 10-offender types comparable to that of Megargee\u27s adult sample (Megargee, & Dorhout, 1977). Predictive analyses revealed that neither clinical scales nor Megargee classification successfully predicted to various criminal archival outcome variables. The exception to this was membership in the Jupiter, which was found to be significantly related to number of prior offenses and number of prior commitments to the SCDJJ. Limitations of the current study and recommendations for further research are discussed

Do differences in the scale of irrigation projects generate different impacts on poverty and production?

This paper investigates differences in household production and consumption among small- and large-scale irrigators to assess whether the scale of an irrigation project increases household welfare in Mali. Much of the evidence of the impact of irrigation does not use counterfactual analysis to estimate such impact or distinguish between the scale of the irrigation projects to be evaluated. In the dataset collected by the author, both a large-scale irrigation project and small-scale projects are used to construct counterfactual groups. Propensity score matching is used to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated for small and large irrigators relative to nonirrigators on agricultural production, agricultural income, and consumption per capita. Small-scale irrigation has a larger effect on agricultural production and agricultural income than large-scale irrigation, but large-scale irrigation has a larger effect on consumption per capita. This suggests that market integration and nonfarm externalities are important in realizing gains in agricultural surplus from irrigation.Irrigation, program evaluation,

Child labor and schooling responses to production and health shocks in northern Mali:

"This paper investigates children's time allocation to schooling, home production, and market production using a unique data set collected from northern Mali. Production shocks from harvest period pest infestations induce households to withdraw children from school and increase the probability that they are selected into farm work. Health shocks to women increases the probability that a child participates in the family business and childcare activities. These results are robust to varying assumptions about the structure of unobserved heterogeneity at the household and village levels. Different measures of household assets are also constructed to test whether assets serve as a buffer against increased child labor in response to shocks. Assets such as livestock have mixed effects on child labor and schooling, depending on the shock and asset type. However, household durables are substitutes for increased child labor when households face health shocks." from Author's AbstractChild labor, Production shocks, Health shocks, Labor substitution effects, Schooling, Education, Gender, Women,