Exclusion and Discrimination as Sources of Inter-Ethnic Inequality in Peru

According to the 2003 National Household Survey, mean labour income for an indigenous worker is only 56% of that for a non-indigenous worker. Studies of ethnic discrimination in Peru’s labour markets generally find that discrimination is too low to explain inequalities of this magnitude. However, Sigma Theory (Figueroa 2003) predicts that social exclusion is a source of inter-ethnic inequality, and that has not been empirically tested. The primary aim of this paper is to fill this gap by estimating the extent to which exclusion and discrimination contribute to income inequality. Hurdle models are used to tackle down econometric endogeneity of years of schooling and truncation-at-zero of incomes. The results imply that exclusion plays a stronger role on inequality than discrimination: without exclusion, the Gini of labour income would decrease from 0.64 to 0.45, and without discrimination it would be reduced to 0.50.inter-ethnic inequality; exclusion; hurdle models

Household Electrification and Indoor Air Pollution

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that household electrification leads to direct and substantial welfare improvements via reductions in indoor air pollution. In the setting of a recent electrification program in northern El Salvador, we exploit a unique data-set on minute-by-minute fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) concentration within the framework of a clean experimental design. Two years after baseline, overnight PM 2.5 concentration was on average 67% lower among households that were randomly encouraged to connect compared to those that were not. This change is driven by reductions in kerosene use. As a result, the incidence of acute respiratory infections among children under 6 fell by 65% among connected households. Estimates of exposure measures suggest large health gains for all household members, but these gains are unequally distributed by gender. In addition, we show that when the electrification rate among the non-encouraged group caught up with that of the encouraged group, the effects in the former group were similar to those in the latter

Rural poverty and Food insecurity mapping at district level for improved agricultural water management in the Limpopo River Basin

The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) Phase II for the Limpopo Basin Development Challenge (LBDC) project aims to develop methods, processes, and technologies to help resource- constrained smallholder farmers mitigate poverty and food insecurity through improved agricultural water management (AWM) strategies. The purposes of this paper are to: 1) Identify areas in the Limpopo River Basin with high levels of rural poverty and food insecurity; 2) Identify areas where AWM interventions are taking place; and 3) Check whether current activities of the CPWF in the Limpopo Basin are located in areas of need as per poverty profiles and geographical location of smallholder farms. The generated poverty and food insecurity maps were based on food security surveys and estimates of consumption or income-based welfare outcomes at the district level from 2003–2013. Based on existing district level poverty and other relevant data in the basin, the study shows that the LBDC study sites are located in poor areas in the Limpopo Basin, and poverty reduction efforts should prioritize vulnerable female and child-headed households as they are the most negatively impacted by poverty and food insecurity in the four countries. Hence, with the overall aim of CPWF under LBDC to reduce poverty and food insecurity, and improve livelihoods, poverty indices should rank highly as one of the factors for project site selection. Poverty and food insecurity mapping plays an important role in identifying areas lagging behind in social and economic development, and also in facilitating targeted developmental programs such as education, health, access to credit, agricultural production support and food aid. However, it should be recognized that using district-level information often masks the existence of poverty pockets in otherwise relatively well-off districts, which could lead to poorly targeted AWM schemes. In addition, the poverty index is limited by the subjective nature of community-level and household-level factors that influence it, and this is reflected by the responses from research participants. Whereas a common poverty line for a particular time frame enables poverty comparisons across countries, local level poverty assessments, however, usually require more in-depth and diverse information that can be used in designing cost-effective and efficient anti-poverty programs and livelihoods enhancement opportunities. In order to achieve the research project’s goals of poverty and food insecurity reduction, and livelihood enhancement of smallholder farmers in the Limpopo Basin, it is of greater significance to understand trends in poverty rates rather than 1-year values at CPWF-LBDC study sites. Poverty maps that highlight areas marginalized by resource constraints help in setting priorities for developing technologies and in deploying resources where they are most needed and likely to alleviate poverty and food insecurity. This work provides background information on the Limpopo Basin

Determinants of Time Allocation to Rural Non-Farm Activities in Central America: The Role of Infrastructure and EducationI

We estimate a bivariate Tobit model to find the main determinants of time allocation to rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) among rural households in four Central American countries: ElSalvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The main effects stem from gender and schooling of the household head, as well as access to infrastructure, with evidence of infrastructure complementarities, i.e. we identify increasing share of nonfarm activities when the household has simultaneously more than one infrastructure. Households from the poorest income quartile would allocate between 3 (Guatemala) to 8 (El Salvador) additional hours to nonfarm activities if they increase their access from 0 to 2 types of infrastructure. This apparently small change in time allocation (substituting time in farm by time out of the farm, leaving leisure intact) would have non-negligible impacts in income, which would increase by 6% in Guatemala and 11% in El Salvador. Moreover, infrastructure access variables are positive for all income quartiles, but the marginal effect is positively correlated with income, i.e. the poor would benefit less than the rich... Finally, the model also shows an inverted U-shape in the relationship between the expected number of hours in RNFE and income. The more the households specialize in agriculture the less time they allocate to RFN. The richest households (roughly the top 1%) specialize in agriculture and thus allocate less time (zero in the case of El Salvador and Guatemala) to RNFE

Electrification and Time Allocation:Experimental Evidence from Northern El Salvador

We implemented an experimental study to better understand how electrification affects the economic lives of rural households. By randomly allocating incentives to get a grid connection we generate exogenous variation in the probability that households connect to the grid, which we exploit to study the effects of electrification on time allocation. We find that electrification leads to (i) increased investment in education among school-age children, in the form of a 78 percent higher participation in activities related to education (e.g. time studying, time at school); and (ii) higher participation in income generating activities among adult women: electrification led to a 46 percentage point increase in participation in non farm employment and 25 percentage point higher probability of operating a home business. These are mostly home production activities that don't require large monetary investments or the participation of the male head. However, average profits from these activities are around $1,000 per year, suggesting that income increases due to electrification are potentially important

Household Electri cation and Indoor Air Pollution

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that household electrification leads to direct and substantial welfare improvements via reductions in indoor air pollution. In the setting of a recent electrification program in northern El Salvador, we exploit a unique data-set on minute-by-minute fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) concentration within the framework of a clean experimental design. Two years after baseline, overnight PM 2.5 concentration was on average 67% lower among households that were randomly encouraged to connect compared to those that were not. This change is driven by reductions in kerosene use. As a result, the incidence of acute respiratory infections among children under 6 fell by 65% among connected households. Estimates of exposure measures suggest large health gains for all household members, but these gains are unequally distributed by gender. In addition, we show that when the electrification rate among the non-encouraged group caught up with that of the encouraged group, the effects in the former group were similar to those in the latter

Inteligencia de negocios y producción de alimentos en la empresa Redondos S.A. Huacho, 2017

El informe de investigación demuestra la relación entre la inteligencia de negocios y la producción de alimentos balanceados de la empresa Redondos S.A., en el año 2017, en el problema planteado se identificó ¿cuál es la relación entre la inteligencia de negocios y la producción de alimentos para granjas de pollos de la empresa Redondos S.A., Huacho en el año 2017, Se aplicó una investigación de tipo básica, diseño no experimental, correlacional, transversal; la población está constituida por 20 colaboradores a los cuales se les aplicó un cuestionario, y se recolectó información sobre el uso de la inteligencia de negocios y la producción de alimentos; teniendo como resultados la Sig. Bilateral de 0,005 menor que (P=0.05) y el índice de correlación 0.119, se concluye que existe relación directamente proporcional de nivel bajo entre la Inteligencia de negocios y la producción de alimentos, entendiéndose que las variables no se están dando con la misma intensidad en la organización, más bien existirá otros factores que estén incidiendo en el comportamiento de las variablesTesi

Electrification and Time Allocation:Experimental Evidence from Northern El Salvador

We implemented an experimental study to better understand how electrification affects the economic lives of rural households. By randomly allocating incentives to get a grid connection we generate exogenous variation in the probability that households connect to the grid, which we exploit to study the effects of electrification on time allocation. We find that electrification leads to (i) increased investment in education among school-age children, in the form of a 78 percent higher participation in activities related to education (e.g. time studying, time at school); and (ii) higher participation in income generating activities among adult women: electrification led to a 46 percentage point increase in participation in non farm employment and 25 percentage point higher probability of operating a home business. These are mostly home production activities that don't require large monetary investments or the participation of the male head. However, average profits from these activities are around $1,000 per year, suggesting that income increases due to electrification are potentially important

Determinants of Time Allocation to Rural Non-Farm Activities in Central America: The Role of Infrastructure and EducationI

We estimate a bivariate Tobit model to find the main determinants of time allocation to rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) among rural households in four Central American countries: ElSalvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The main effects stem from gender and schooling of the household head, as well as access to infrastructure, with evidence of infrastructure complementarities, i.e. we identify increasing share of nonfarm activities when the household has simultaneously more than one infrastructure. Households from the poorest income quartile would allocate between 3 (Guatemala) to 8 (El Salvador) additional hours to nonfarm activities if they increase their access from 0 to 2 types of infrastructure. This apparently small change in time allocation (substituting time in farm by time out of the farm, leaving leisure intact) would have non-negligible impacts in income, which would increase by 6% in Guatemala and 11% in El Salvador. Moreover, infrastructure access variables are positive for all income quartiles, but the marginal effect is positively correlated with income, i.e. the poor would benefit less than the rich... Finally, the model also shows an inverted U-shape in the relationship between the expected number of hours in RNFE and income. The more the households specialize in agriculture the less time they allocate to RFN. The richest households (roughly the top 1%) specialize in agriculture and thus allocate less time (zero in the case of El Salvador and Guatemala) to RNFE