On the limits of sexual health literacy: Insights from Ugandan schoolgirls

This article makes the case that current conceptions of sexual health literacy have limited relevance to the Ugandan context because they assume that knowledge of unsafe sexual practices will lead to changes in behavior and lifestyle. Drawing on a longitudinal case study with 15 Ugandan schoolgirls in rural Uganda from August 2004 to September 2006, this study argues that despite being well-informed about the risks and responsibilities of sexual activity, poverty and sexual abuse severely constrained options for these young women. Although many believed in the value of abstaining from sexual activity until marriage, they engaged in transactional sex to pay for school fees, supplies, clothing, and food. Further, fear of sexual abuse, early pregnancy, and HIV–AIDS compromised attempts to embrace sexuality. The article concludes with implications of the study for research and policy on sexual health literacy in Uganda and other poorly resourced regions of the world

Dynamics and Drivers of Consumption and Multidimensional Poverty: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This study aims to explore poverty measures, its dynamics and determinants using Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and consumption poverty. Our results show that the two measures assign similar poverty status to about 52 percent of households and that both approaches confirm poverty is mainly transient in rural Ethiopia. However, we find that the trend in adjusted head count poverty is different when using these two poverty measures. In terms of determinants of poverty dynamics, we find that household size matters in consumption poverty while we do not find significant effects on multidimensional poverty. Amongst the shocks, drought shock is found to affect consumption poverty but not multidimensional poverty. This implies that short-term shocks are more reflected in consumption poverty while the effect of simultaneous shocks is exhibited significantly on multidimensional poverty. Overall, our result provides empirical evidence on the importance of using both measures as complementary to get a full picture of poverty measure, dynamics and determinants

Revisiting the causal effects of exporting on productivity: Does price heterogeneity matter?

In most empirical studies that establish the export-productivity relationships, output is measured in values rather than in quantities. This makes it difficult to distinguish between productivity and within-firm changes in price that could occur following exposure to international markets. Using detailed data on quantity and prices from Ethiopian manufacturing firms in the period 1996-2005, this paper distinguishes efficiency from revenue based productivity and examines what this means for the estimated relationship between exporting and productivity. The main results show that exporters are more productive than non-exporters in terms of revenue based productivity and this is explained by both self-selection and learning effects. However, when correcting for price heterogeneity, exporters appear to be similar to non-exporters both before and after export entry. Overall, the results suggest that the increase in firm-level productivity following entry into foreign markets is associated with changes in prices as opposed to productive efficiency

Business constraints and growth potential of micro and small manufacturing enterprises in Uganda

Ugandan micro and small enterprises (MSEs) still perform poorly. Studies associating poor performance of manufacturers with lack of finance and low investment ignore micro enterprises. Those focusing on MSEs are either exploratory in nature or employ a descriptive analysis, which cannot show the extent to which business constraints explain the performance of MSEs. Thus, this paper tries to examine the extent to which the growth of MSEs is associated with business constraints while controlling for owners’ attributes and firms’ characteristics. The results reveal that MSEs’ growth potential is negatively associated with limited access to productive resources (finance and business development services), high taxes and lack of market access