Does More Mean Better? Sibling Sex Composition and the Link between Family Size and Children’s Quality

Exogenous variation in fertility from parental preferences for sex-mix among their children is used to identify the causal effect of family size on several measures associated with either the allocation of resources towards children within the household or the outcomes of these investments. Results using data from Colombia suggest that family size has negative effects on average child quality. Children from larger families have accumulated almost 1 year less of education, are less likely to enroll in school and about twice as likely to be held back in school. A larger family also increases the likelihood that oldest siblings share a room and reduces the chance that they have access to clean water and sanitary sewer facilities by approximately 15 percentage points, suggesting the existence of negative effects arising from limited household resources. Mothers in these households have less labor participation (over 27 percentage points) and their oldest children are also more likely to engage in labor activities or domestic chores. Children from larger families are also more likely to be physically or psychologically affected by domestic violence within the household. Other less robust but informative calculations using data on anthropometrics, morbidity and immunization records also fit well with the main results of the quasi-experimental research design. The evidence presented here is consistent with the tradeoff between the number and quality of children implied by the theoretical interdependence in their prices and is robust to different specifications, estimation methods and alternative sub-samples.fertility, household behavior, children’s well-being, Colombia

Assessing the long-term effects of conditional cash transfers on human capital : evidence from Colombia

Conditional cash transfers are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. Although there is significant evidence showing that they have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about the long-term impacts of the programs on human capital. This paper investigates whether cohorts of children from poor households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia, attained more school and performed better on academic tests at the end of high school. Identification of program impacts is derived from two different strategies using matching techniques with household surveys, and regression discontinuity design using a census of the poor and administrative records of the program. The authors show that, on average, participant children are 4 to 8 percentage points more likely than nonparticipant children to finish high school, particularly girls and beneficiaries in rural areas. Regarding long-term impact on tests scores, the analysis shows that program recipients who graduate from high school seem to perform at the same level as equally poor non-recipient graduates, even after correcting for possible selection bias when low-performing students enter school in the treatment group. Although the positive impacts on high school graduation may improve the employment and earning prospects of participants, the lack of positive effects on test scores raises the need to further explore policy actions to couple the program's objective of increasing human capital with enhanced learning.Education For All,Tertiary Education,Primary Education,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning

Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. While there is significant evidence showing that they have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about their long-term impacts on human capital. In this paper we investigate whether cohorts of children from poor households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Acción, a CCT in Colombia, attained more school and performed better in academic tests at the end of high school. Identification of program impacts is derived from two different strategies using matching techniques with household surveys, and regression discontinuity design using census of the poor and administrative records of the program. We show that, on average, participant children are 4 to 8 percentage points more likely than nonparticipant children to finish high school, particularly girls and beneficiaries in rural areas. Regarding long-term impact on tests scores, the analysis shows that program recipients who graduate from high school seem to perform at the same level as equally poor non-recipient graduates, even after correcting for possible selection bias when low-performing students enter school in the treatment group. Even though the positive impacts on high school graduation may improve the employment and earning prospects of participants, the lack of positive effects on the test scores raises the need to further explore policy actions to couple CCT's objective of increasing human capital with enhanced learning.Conditional Cash Transfers, school completion, academic achievement, learning outcomes

Higher-Dimensional Algebra VII: Groupoidification

Groupoidification is a form of categorification in which vector spaces are replaced by groupoids, and linear operators are replaced by spans of groupoids. We introduce this idea with a detailed exposition of "degroupoidification": a systematic process that turns groupoids and spans into vector spaces and linear operators. Then we present three applications of groupoidification. The first is to Feynman diagrams. The Hilbert space for the quantum harmonic oscillator arises naturally from degroupoidifying the groupoid of finite sets and bijections. This allows for a purely combinatorial interpretation of creation and annihilation operators, their commutation relations, field operators, their normal-ordered powers, and finally Feynman diagrams. The second application is to Hecke algebras. We explain how to groupoidify the Hecke algebra associated to a Dynkin diagram whenever the deformation parameter q is a prime power. We illustrate this with the simplest nontrivial example, coming from the A2 Dynkin diagram. In this example we show that the solution of the Yang-Baxter equation built into the A2 Hecke algebra arises naturally from the axioms of projective geometry applied to the projective plane over the finite field with q elements. The third application is to Hall algebras. We explain how the standard construction of the Hall algebra from the category of representations of a simply-laced quiver can be seen as an example of degroupoidification. This in turn provides a new way to categorify - or more precisely, groupoidify - the positive part of the quantum group associated to the quiver.Comment: 67 pages, 14 eps figures; uses undertilde.sty. This is an expanded version of arXiv:0812.486

Does Cash for School Influence Young Women's Behavior in the Longer Term? Evidence from Pakistan

The Punjab Female School Stipend Program, a female-targeted conditional cash transfer program in Pakistan, was implemented in response to gender gaps in education. An early evaluation of the program shows that the enrollment of eligible girls in middle-school increased in the short term by nearly 9 percentage points. This paper uses regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference analyses to show that five years into the program implementation positive impacts do persist. Beneficiary adolescent girls are more likely to progress through and complete middle school and work less. There is suggestive evidence that participating girls delay their marriage and have fewer births by the time they are 19 years old. Also, girls who are exposed to the program later-on, and eligible for the benefits given in high school, increase their rates of matriculating into and completing high school. The persistence of impacts can potentially translate into gains in future productivity, consumption, inter-generational human capital accumulation and desired fertility. Lastly, there is no evidence that the program has negative spillover effects on educational outcomes of male siblings.conditional cash transfers, female education, female labor participation, fertility, Pakistan

The effect of exercise and caloric restriction on cardiac NF-kB signaling and inflammation in Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima Fatty (OLETF) rats

Introduction: Cardiometabolic syndrome is considered a chronic low-grade inflammatory condition that affects various organs and tissues. Individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity are at an increased risk for developing the cardiometabolic syndrome and have greater rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD). These conditions are also associated with increased systemic and local inflammation and greater expression of pro-inflammatory markers such as monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and interleukin 1β (IL-1β) in many tissues. The heart is adversely affected by the inflammation and metabolic changes induced by diabetes and obesity. Nuclear transcription factor kappa B (NF-κB) activity is known to be related to inflammation and cytokine production. However, there is limited information on whether NF-κB signaling and inflammation play a role in early cardiac pathogenesis related to obesity and diabetes and whether lifestyle changes known to prevent or treat these diseases are effective in the heart. Purpose: Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the effect of exercise (EX) and caloric restriction (CR) to alter NF-κB signaling, inflammation, and markers of cardiac dysfunction in the heart of 20-week old Otsuka Long Evans Tokushima (OLETF) rats. Methods: Hearts of male 20 week old OLETF rats from a previous study (Crissey et al., 2014) were collected for gene expression (RT-PCR), NF-κB activity, and markers of inflammation and immune cell infiltration. Results: There were no significant differences detected in markers of cardiac dysfunction including, α-MHC, β-MHC, ANP, BNP, COL1, COL3 (all p\u3e0.05). Second, 1-way ANOVA showed that there was trend for an overall effect of group (p=0.07) on NF-κB activation where CR tended to be greater compared to SED and WR (p=0.06). Finally, there were no significant differences between groups in inflammatory and immune cell markers; CD4, F4/80, CD68, IL-1β, MCP-1, TGFB1, and TNF-α (all p\u3e0.05). Conclusion: This study shows that at 20 weeks, a time when OLETF animals exhibit characteristics of the metabolic syndrome such as hypertension, mild obesity, and increased insulin resistance, EX and CR do not reduce markers of cardiac dysfunction and inflammation, potentially because inflammation does not influence the heart at this early time period in the development of the disease. Further, the trend of greater NF-κB activity in CR compared to EX and SED, needs further exploration

An Invitation to Higher Gauge Theory

In this easy introduction to higher gauge theory, we describe parallel transport for particles and strings in terms of 2-connections on 2-bundles. Just as ordinary gauge theory involves a gauge group, this generalization involves a gauge '2-group'. We focus on 6 examples. First, every abelian Lie group gives a Lie 2-group; the case of U(1) yields the theory of U(1) gerbes, which play an important role in string theory and multisymplectic geometry. Second, every group representation gives a Lie 2-group; the representation of the Lorentz group on 4d Minkowski spacetime gives the Poincar\'e 2-group, which leads to a spin foam model for Minkowski spacetime. Third, taking the adjoint representation of any Lie group on its own Lie algebra gives a 'tangent 2-group', which serves as a gauge 2-group in 4d BF theory, which has topological gravity as a special case. Fourth, every Lie group has an 'inner automorphism 2-group', which serves as the gauge group in 4d BF theory with cosmological constant term. Fifth, every Lie group has an 'automorphism 2-group', which plays an important role in the theory of nonabelian gerbes. And sixth, every compact simple Lie group gives a 'string 2-group'. We also touch upon higher structures such as the 'gravity 3-group' and the Lie 3-superalgebra that governs 11-dimensional supergravity.Comment: 60 pages, based on lectures at the 2nd School and Workshop on Quantum Gravity and Quantum Geometry at the 2009 Corfu Summer Institut

Do Natural Disasters Affect Human Capital? An Assessment Based on Existing Empirical Evidence

The last few years have seen a notable increase in the number of studies investigating the causes and effects of natural disasters in many dimensions. This paper seeks to review and assess available empirical evidence on the ex-post microeconomic effects of natural disasters on the accumulation of human capital, focusing on consumption, nutrition, education and health, including mental health. Three major findings come forward from this work. First, disasters appear to bring substantial damages to human capital, including death and destruction, and produce deleterious consequences on nutrition, education, health and many income-generating processes. Furthermore, some of these detrimental effects are both large and long-lasting. Second, there is a large degree of heterogeneity in the size – but not much in the direction – of the impacts on different socioeconomic groups. Yet, an empirical regularity across natural hazards is that the poorest carry the heaviest burden of the effects of disasters across different determinants and outcomes of human capital. Finally, although the occurrence of natural hazards is mostly out of control of authorities, there still is a significant room for policy action to minimize their impacts on the accumulation of human capital. We highlight the importance of flexible safety nets as well as the double critical role of accurate and reliable information to monitor risks and vulnerabilities, and identify the impacts and responses of households once they are hit by a disaster. The paper also lays out existing knowledge gaps, particularly in regard to the need of improving our understanding of the impacts of disasters on health outcomes, the mechanisms of transmission and the persistence of the effects in the long-run.natural disasters, human capital accumulation

Does cash for school influence young women's behavior in the longer term ? evidence from Pakistan

The Punjab Female School Stipend Program, a female-targeted conditional cash transfer program in Pakistan, was implemented in response to gender gaps in education. An early evaluation of the program shows that the enrollment of eligible girls in middle school increased in the short term by nearly 9 percentage points. This paper uses regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference analyses to show that five years into the program implementation positive impacts do persist. Beneficiary adolescent girls are more likely to progress through and complete middle school and work less. There is suggestive evidence that participating girls delay their marriage and have fewer births by the time they are 19 years old. Girls who are exposed to the program later, and who are eligible for the benefits given in high school, increase their rates of matriculating into and completing high school. The persistence of impacts can potentially translate into gains in future productivity, consumption, inter-generational human capital accumulation and desired fertility. Lastly, there is no evidence that the program has negative spillover effects on educational outcomes of male siblings.Education For All,Primary Education,Tertiary Education,Gender and Education,Disability