Socio-economic status, sexual behavior, and differential AIDS mortality Evidence from Cˆote d’Ivoire

Lack of knowledge about differential AIDS mortality seriously hampers the study of the economic impact of AIDS in developing countries, at both the macro and micro-economic levels. In this paper, we derive, we think, reasonable assumptions on mortality differentials by age, education, and other micro-economic characteristics by exploiting variables from the Ivorian Demographic and Health Survey. Finally these differentials are calibrated on UN demographic projections to obtain disaggregated mortality tables. Our model is based on econometrically estimated equations using commonly available individual characteristics, therefore it can be used to forecast mortality differentials for other surveys as well. A main result of our model is that educated people have a higher risk of dying of AIDS, because they are more likely to have several sexual partners. This effect is however partly offset by a higher probability of condom use relative to less educated people. The identification of the socio-economic characteristics of low and high risk groups seems indispensable to set up adequate AIDS prevention and therapy policies in developing countries.AIDS, Demographic and Health Survey, differential mortality, sexual behavior

Earnings Inequalities and Educational Mobility in Brazil over Two Decades

This paper studies the impact of changes in educational opportunities on various definitions of labour market inequalities in Brazil over two decades (1976-96). Using four editions of the nationally representative PNAD survey, we analyze the evolution of overall inequalities and inequalities of opportunity in 40-49 year old males’ earnings. We design and implement semiparametric decompositions of the respective effects of (i) schooling expansion, (ii) changes in the structure of earnings, and (iii) changes in intergenerational educational mobility. Earnings inequalities varied little over the period, with a peak in the late 1980s that can be imputed to hyperinflation. First of all, the decompositions show that changes in the distribution of education contributed to the increase in both overall earnings inequalities and inequalities of opportunity among the oldest generations, before sharply reducing them among the post-WWII cohorts. Secondly, the decrease in returns to education also contributed to equalizing labour market opportunities in the 1988-96 period. Thirdly and lastly, the changes in educational mobility were not large enough to significantly affect earnings inequalities, whereas it is shown that they should play a prominent role in equalizing opportunities in the future.Equality of opportunities, Labour market, Inequality decomposition, Brazil

Colonization, Institutions, and Inequality: A Note on Some Suggestive Evidence

What is the kind of institutions that affect economic inequalities? Using a database on national income inequality for 73 non-European countries, we show that \'good governance\' not only contributes to the level of income but also to a more equal distribution by increasing the income share of the middle class. Beside this effect of the quality of capitalist institutions, we also find an inverted U relationship between inequalities and the extent of European settlement. We finally find a large and robust correlation between the pre-colonial population density and the present equality of income distribution. We argue that this latter correlation may have to do with institutional dimensions that are not captured by usual measures of institutional quality in available databases. Countries which were more densely populated in 1500 have indeed worse \'governance\' but give larger income shares to the poor. They had more structured pre-colonial States, more often resisted to colonisation, and more often adopted a mixed economic system. Many of them in fact ended with a more equal land distribution. The equality in the distribution of landholdings does appear as an important determinant of the overall equality of income and of poverty which is independent from \'usual\' governance issues.Colonization, Inequalities, Institutions, Development

The Measurement of Income Distribution Dynamics when Demographics are correlated with Income

The purpose of our paper is to derive instructive analytics on how to account for differentials in demographic variables, in particular mortality, when performing welfare comparisons over time. The idea is to apply various ways of `correcting' estimated income distribution measures for `sample selection' due to differential mortality. We implement our approach empirically using three waves of the Indonesian Family Life Surveys (IFLS). We distinguish the direct effect of mortality, i.e. individuals who die leave the population and no longer contribute to monetary welfare, from the indirect effect, i.e. the impact on survivors in the deceased's household who may experience a decrease or increase in monetary welfare. In the case of Indonesia, we show that the direct and indirect effects of mortality on income distribution have opposite signs, but are roughly the same in magnitude. We also show that the effects of other demographic changes- such as changes in the structure of fertility, migration and educational attainment- dominate the effects of mortality, whether direct or indirect. However, we find that none of these demographic developments is substantial enough to explain a significant part of the change in income distribution, regardless of whether the pre-crisis period (1993- 1997) or the post-crisis period (1997-2000) is considered.Differential Mortality, Income Distribution Dynamics, Welfare Comparisons, Decomposition.

Borders that Divide: Education and Religion in Ghana and Togo since Colonial Times

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s policies really made. Using a new data set of men recruited to the Ghana colonial army 1908-1955, we find literacy and religious beliefs to diverge between British and French mandated part of Togoland as early as in the 1920s. We attribute this to the different policies towards missionary schools. The British administration pursued a ”grant-in-aid” policy of missionary schools, whereas the French restricted missionary activities. The divergence is only visible in the Southern part. In the North, as well as at the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso (former French Upper Volta), educational and evangelization efforts were weak on both sides and hence, did not produce any marked differences. Using contemporary survey data we find that border effects originated at colonial times still persist today.Economic History, Africa, Colonization, Education.

AIDS and income distribution in Africa. A micro-simulation study for Cˆote d’Ivoire

We develop a demo-economic micro-simulation model able to simulate over a fifteen years period the impact of AIDS on household and individual incomes. When focusing on the labor supply effects of over- mortality, the main effect of AIDS in Cˆote d’Ivoire is a shrinking of the size of the economy by around 6% after 15 years, leaving average income per capita, income inequality, and poverty roughly unchanged. The dependency ratio is not much modified by the epidemic. These conclusions do not seem to depend on the degree of heterogeneity and clustering of the HIV/AIDS-infections over the population.AIDS, labor supply, income distribution

Who deserves aid? Equality of opportunity, international aid and poverty reduction

We build and implement a normative procedure to allocate international aid based on equality of opportunity concerning the risk of poverty. This is an alternative to Collier and Dollar’s proposal (2001) which stresses the impact of aid on worldwide poverty reduction. The big problem with their approach, as regards distributive justice, is that it leaves very great inequality in poverty risk between inhabitants of countries with widely varying structural disadvantages. We draw on post-welfarist theories of social justice, especially those of John Roemer. However our proposal is very different to that of Llavador and Roemer (2001), which has serious methodological errors and reaches contradictory conclusions. Our proposed allocations, like those of Collier and Dollar, differ from current aid allocation by giving more to the poorest countries. Apart from this agreement, our equality of opportunity principle takes account of structural disadvantages to growth rather than quality of past policies. Our kind of allocation shares out poverty risks much more fairly among the world’s population, while reducing global poverty almost as effectively as Collier and Dollar\'s.International aid, Equality of Opportunity, Poverty Reduction

Family Income and Child Outcomes:The 1990 Cocoa Price Shock in Cote d'Ivoire

We study the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Cote d'Ivoire and investigate the extent to which cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe income shock in terms of school enrollment, increased labor, height stature and sickness. Comparing pre-crisis (1986-1988) data and post-crisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference within-village strategy in order to identify the causal effect of family income on children outcomes. We find a strong impact of family income variation for the four variables we examine.

Borders that Divide: Education and Religion in Ghana and Togo since Colonial Times

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s policies really made. Using a new data set of men recruited to the Ghana colonial army 1908-1955, we find literacy and religious beliefs to diverge between British and French mandated part of Togoland as early as in the 1920s. We attribute this to the different policies towards missionary schools. The British administration pursued a ”grant-in-aid” policy of missionary schools, whereas the French restricted missionary activities. The divergence is only visible in the Southern part. In the North, as well as at the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso (former French Upper Volta), educational and evangelization efforts were weak on both sides and hence, did not produce any marked differences. Using contemporary survey data we find that border effects originated at colonial times still persist today.Economic History, Africa, Colonization, Education