Labor effects of adult mortality in Tanzanian households

Due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, sub-Saharan populations are challenged with increasing adult mortality rates that have potentially profound economic implications. Yet, little is known about the impact of adult deaths in African households. Using panel data from Tanzania, this paper will explore how prime-age adult mortality impacts the time allocation of surviving household members and the portfolio of household farming activities. Analysis of farm and chore hours across demographic groups generally found small and insignificant changes in labor supply of individuals in households experiencing a prime-age adult death. While some farm activities are temporarily scaled back and wage employment falls after a male death, households did not shift cultivation towards subsistence food farming and did not appear to have reduced their diversification over income sources more than six months after a death.Demographics,Public Health Promotion,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Demographics,Housing&Human Habitats

Adult mortality and children’s transition into marriage

Adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS and other diseases is posited to affect children through a number of pathways. On top of health and education outcomes, adult mortality can have significant effects on children by influencing demographic outcomes including the timing of marriage. This paper examines marriage outcomes for a sample of children interviewed in Tanzania in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2004. We find that while girls who became paternal orphans married at significantly younger ages, orphanhood had little effect on boys. On the other hand, non-parental deaths in the household affect the timing of marriage for boys.adult mortality, AIDS/HIV, marriage, orphans

The effect of school type on academic achievement : evidence from Indonesia

Using data from Indonesia, Newhouse and Beegle to evaluate the impact of school type on academic achievement of junior secondary school students (grades 7-9). Students that graduate from public junior secondary schools, controlling for a variety of other characteristics, score 0.15 to 0.3 standard deviations higher on the national exit exam than comparable privately schooled peers. This finding is robust to OLS, fixed-effects, and instrumental variable estimation strategies. Students attending Muslim private schools, including Madrassahs, fare no worse on average than students attending secular private schools. The results provide indirect evidence that higher quality inputs at public junior secondary schools promote higher test scores.Teaching and Learning,Secondary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Gender and Education

Labor Shortages Despite Underemployment? Seasonality in Time Use in Malawi

Evidence for Malawi and other developing countries suggests the existence of labor shortages at the peak of the cropping season, with negative impacts on the ability of households to make the most of their endowments such as land. At the same time, for most of the year, there is substantial underemployment, especially in rural areas. It could therefore be argued that seasonality in the demand for labor is leading to both underemployment and labor shortages. This paper provides basic descriptive data from a 2004 nationally representative household survey to assess the typical workload of the population. The data confirm the presence of strong seasonality effects in the supply of labor, as well as substantial differences in workload between men and women due to the burden of domestic work, including the time spent for collecting water and wood.Time use; labor supply; poverty; intrahousehold allocation; seasonality

Demographic and socioeconomic patterns of HIV/AIDS prevalence in Africa

Understanding the demographic and socioeconomic patterns of the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa is crucial for developing programs and policies to combat HIV/AIDS. This paper looks critically at the methods and analytical challenges to study the links between socioeconomic and demographic status and HIV/AIDS. Some of the misconceptions about the HIV/AIDS epidemic are discussed and unusual empirical evidence from the existing body of work is presented. Several important messages emerge from the results. First, the study of the link between socioeconomic status and HIV faces a range of challenges related to definitions, samples, and empirical methods. Second, given the large gaps in evidence and the changing nature of the epidemic, there is a need to continue to improve the evidence base on the link between demographic and socioeconomic status and the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS. Finally, it is difficult to generalize results across countries. As the results presented here and in other studies based on Demographic and Health Survey datasets show, few consistent and significant patterns of prevalence by socioeconomic and demographic status are evident.Population Policies,Disease Control&Prevention,HIV AIDS,Gender and Health,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Why Should We Care About Child Labor? The Education, Labor Market, and Health Consequences of Child Labor

Although there is an extensive literature on the determinants of child labor and many initiatives aimed at combating it, there is limited evidence on the consequences of child labor on socio-economic outcomes such as education, wages, and health. We evaluate the causal effect of child labor participation on these outcomes using panel data from Vietnam and an instrumental variables strategy. Five years subsequent to the child labor experience, we find significant negative impacts on school participation and educational attainment, but also find substantially higher earnings for those (young) adults who worked as children. We find no significant effects on health. Over a longer horizon, we estimate that from age 30 onward the forgone earnings attributable to lost schooling exceed any earnings gain associated with child labor and that the net present discounted value of child labor is positive for discount rates of 11.5 percent or higher. We show that child labor is prevalent among households likely to have higher borrowing costs, that are farther from schools, and whose adult members experienced negative returns to their own education. This evidence suggests that reducing child labor will require facilitating access to credit and will also require households to be forward looking.

Orphanhood and the long-run impact on children

This paper presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long-run for health and education outcomes, in a region of Northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 nonorphaned children surveyed in 1991-94, who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19 percent, lost one or more parents before the age of 15 in this period, allowing us to assess permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. In the analysis, we can control for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. We find that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5 percent compared to similar children whose mother survived till at least their 15th birthday.HIV-AIDS, orphans, health, education, panel data

Migration and Economic Mobility in Tanzania: Evidence from a Tracking Survey

This study explores the extent to which migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in Tanzania. Using longitudinal data on individuals, the authors estimate the impact of migration on consumption growth between 1991 and 2004. The analysis addresses concerns about heterogeneity and unobservable factors correlated with both income changes and the decision to migrate. The findings show that migration adds 36 percentage points to consumption growth, during a period of considerable growth in consumption. These results are robust to numerous tests and alternative specifications. Unpacking the findings, the analysis finds that moving out of agriculture is correlated with much higher growth than staying in agriculture, although growth is always higher in any sector if one physically moves. Economic mobility is strongly linked to geographic mobility. The puzzle is why more people do not move if returns to geographic mobility are high. The evidence is consistent with models in which exit barriers are set by home communities (through social and family norms) that prevent migration of certain categories of people.adult mortality; agricultural activities; agricultural produce; AIDS epidemic; basic needs; Business Ownership; Change in Consumption; consumption aggregate; consumption data; consumption expenditure

The long-run impact of orphanhood

This paper presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long run for health and education outcomes, in a region of Northwestern Tanzania. The paper studies a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991-94, who were traced and re-interviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19 percent, lost one or more parents before the age of 15 in this period, allowing the authors to assess the permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. The analysis controls for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. The findings show that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5 percent compared with similar children whose mother survived till at least their 15th birthday.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Street Children,Youth and Governance,Primary Education,Population Policies

Do labor statistics depend on how and to whom the questions are asked ? results from a survey experiment in Tanzania

Labor market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. In practice, widespread variation exists in how labor statistics are measured in household surveys in low-income countries. Little is known whether these differences have an effect on the labor statistics they produce. This paper analyzes these effects by implementing a survey experiment in Tanzania that varied two key dimensions: the level of detail of the questions and the type of respondent. Significant differences are observed across survey designs with respect to different labor statistics. Labor force participation rates, for example, vary by as much as 10 percentage points across the four survey assignments. Using a short labor module without screening questions on employment generates lower female labor force participation and lower rates of wage employment for both men and women. Response by proxy rather than self-report yields lower male labor force participation, lower female working hours, and lower employment in agriculture for men. The differences between proxy and self reporting seem to come from information imperfections within the household, especially with the distance in age between respondent and subject playing an important role, while gender and educational differences seem less important.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Work&Working Conditions,Social Analysis,Housing&Human Habitats