Migrant Opportunity and the Educational Attainment of Youth in Rural China

In this paper, we investigate how reductions of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution, which make it easier for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in urban destinations. We make use of a large panel household and village data set supplemented by an original follow-up survey, and find a robust negative relationship between migrant opportunity and high school enrollment. This effect is consistent with our finding of low returns to high school education among migrants from surveyed villages.Migration, Educational Attainment, Rural China

Migrant labor markets and the welfare of rural households in the developing world : evidence from China

In this paper, the authors examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of rural households in China. The authors find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households within villages. Household income per capita and non-durable consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and increase more for poorer households. The authors also establish a causal relationship between increased out-migration and investment in housing and durable goods assets, and these effects are also stronger for poorer households. The authors do not find robust evidence, however, to support a connection between increased migration and investment in productive activity. Instead, increased migration is associated with two significant changes for poorer households: increases both in the total labor supplied to productive activities and in the land per capita managed by the household. In examining the effect of migration, we pay considerable attention to developing and examining our identification strategy.Access to Finance,Population Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Debt Markets

Migrant opportunity and the educational attainment of youth in rural China

This paper investigates how reductions of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution, which made it easier for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in urban destinations. The analysis first shows that timing of identification card distribution is unrelated to local rainfall shocks affecting migration decisions, and that timing is not related to proxies reflecting time-varying changes in village policy or administrative capacity. The findings show a robust negative relationship between migrant opportunity and high school enrollment. The mechanisms behind the negative relationship are suggested by observed increases in subsequent local and migrant non-agricultural employment of high school age young adults as the size of the current village migrant network increases.Access to Finance,Population Policies,Education For All,Tertiary Education,Secondary Education

Migrant Labor Markets and the Welfare of Rural Households in the Developing World: Evidence from China

In this paper, we examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of rural households in China. We find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households within villages. Household income per capita and non-durable consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and increase more for poorer households. We also establish a causal relationship between increased out-migration and investment in housing and durable goods assets, and these effects are also stronger for poorer households. We do not find robust evidence, however, to support a connection between increased migration and investment in productive activity. Instead, increased migration is associated with two significant changes for poorer households: increases both in the total labor supplied to productive activities and in the land per capita managed by the household. In examining the effect of migration, we pay considerable attention to developing and examining our identification strategy.Migration, Migrant Networks, Consumption, Poverty, Wealth, Rural China, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital, O12, O15, J22, J24,

OMSim : a simulator for optical map data

Motivation: The Bionano Genomics platform allows for the optical detection of short sequence patterns in very long DNA molecules (up to 2.5 Mbp). Molecules with overlapping patterns can be assembled to generate a consensus optical map of the entire genome. In turn, these optical maps can be used to validate or improve de novo genome assembly projects or to detect large-scale structural variation in genomes. Simulated optical map data can assist in the development and benchmarking of tools that operate on those data, such as alignment and assembly software. Additionally, it can help to optimize the experimental setup for a genome of interest. Such a simulator is currently not available. Results: We have developed a simulator, OMSim, that produces synthetic optical map data that mimics real Bionano Genomics data. These simulated data have been tested for compatibility with the Bionano Genomics Irys software system and the Irys-scaffolding scripts. OMSim is capable of handling very large genomes (over 30 Gbp) with high throughput and low memory requirements

Drivers of under-five stunting trend in 14 low- and middle-income countries since the turn of the millennium : a multilevel pooled analysis of 50 demographic and health surveys

Background: Understanding the drivers contributing to the decreasing trend in stunting is paramount to meeting the World Health Assembly's global target of 40% stunting reduction by 2025. Methods: We pooled data from 50 Demographic and Health Surveys since 2000 in 14 countries to examine the relationships between the stunting trend and potential factors at distal, intermediate, and proximal levels. A multilevel pooled trend analysis was used to estimate the association between the change in potential drivers at a country level and stunting probability for an individual child while adjusting for time trends and child-level covariates. A four-level mixed-effects linear probability regression model was fitted, accounting for the clustering of data by sampling clusters, survey-rounds, and countries. Results: Stunting followed a decreasing trend in all countries at an average annual rate of 1.04 percentage points. Among the distal factors assessed, a decrease in the Gini coefficient, an improvement in women's decision-making, and an increase in urbanization were significantly associated with a lower probability of stunting within a country. Improvements in households' access to improved sanitation facilities and drinking water sources, and children's access to basic vaccinations were the important intermediate service-related drivers, whereas improvements in early initiation of breastfeeding and a decrease in the prevalence of low birthweight were the important proximal drivers. Conclusions: The results reinforce the need for a combination of nutrition-sensitive and -specific interventions to tackle the problem of stunting. The identified drivers help to guide global efforts to further accelerate stunting reduction and monitor progress against chronic childhood undernutrition

Who pays the taxes?

The European Union is legally entitled to the revenue from (1) agricultural and sugar levies, (2) customs duties, (3) a 1 percent rate on each Member States' value added tax base, and (4) a resource on the basis of GNP. Currently, the Union is actively involved in the search for a fifth own revenue source. Therefore, the European Commission (DG XIX) has invited the authors to trace 'who pays the taxes'. As requested, our report gives a general account of methods to investigate impacts of taxation. More specifically, we have estimated the incidence of national tax systems (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), and the incidence of present own resources and prospective new (tax) resources of the European Union. Up till now, such information was not (readily) available.tax incidence in the European Union, prospective new EU tax resources

Jabba: hybrid error correction for long sequencing reads

Background: Third generation sequencing platforms produce longer reads with higher error rates than second generation technologies. While the improved read length can provide useful information for downstream analysis, underlying algorithms are challenged by the high error rate. Error correction methods in which accurate short reads are used to correct noisy long reads appear to be attractive to generate high-quality long reads. Methods that align short reads to long reads do not optimally use the information contained in the second generation data, and suffer from large runtimes. Recently, a new hybrid error correcting method has been proposed, where the second generation data is first assembled into a de Bruijn graph, on which the long reads are then aligned. Results: In this context we present Jabba, a hybrid method to correct long third generation reads by mapping them on a corrected de Bruijn graph that was constructed from second generation data. Unique to our method is the use of a pseudo alignment approach with a seed-and-extend methodology, using maximal exact matches (MEMs) as seeds. In addition to benchmark results, certain theoretical results concerning the possibilities and limitations of the use of MEMs in the context of third generation reads are presented. Conclusion: Jabba produces highly reliable corrected reads: almost all corrected reads align to the reference, and these alignments have a very high identity. Many of the aligned reads are error-free. Additionally, Jabba corrects reads using a very low amount of CPU time. From this we conclude that pseudo alignment with MEMs is a fast and reliable method to map long highly erroneous sequences on a de Bruijn graph

Who pays the taxes?

The European Union is legally entitled to the revenue from (1) agricultural and sugar levies, (2) customs duties, (3) a 1 percent rate on each Member States' value added tax base, and (4) a resource on the basis of GNP. Currently, the Union is actively involved in the search for a fifth own revenue source. Therefore, the European Commission (DG XIX) has invited the authors to trace 'who pays the taxes'. As requested, our report gives a general account of methods to investigate impacts of taxation. More specifically, we have estimated the incidence of national tax systems (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), and the incidence of present own resources and prospective new (tax) resources of the European Union. Up till now, such information was not (readily) available.tax incidence in the European Union, prospective new EU tax resources

The distribution of effective tax burdens in four EU countries

National policymakers are increasingly aware that their tax policy options are constrained by international tax competition. Important features of national tax systems - notably the tax mix, tax rates and rules which define the tax base - will influence decisions of firms and individuals regarding the location and (re)structuring of economic activities. The aim of the present paper is twofold: Firstly, we detail the tax mix of four member states of the European Union (Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom). Secondly, the paper aims to trace the distribution of the tax burden over rich and poor households in these four countries. Although tax mix and tax rates differ considerably among the four countries included in the study, the distribution of tax burdens proves to be amazingly similar.Distribution of tax burden, European Union; tax mix of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom