Does inequality in health impede growth?

This paper investigates the effects of inequality in health on economic growth in low and middle income countries. The empirical part of the paper uses an original cross-national panel data set covering 62 low and middle income countries over the period 1985 to 2007. I find a substantial and relatively robust negative effect of health inequality on income levels and income growth controlling for life expectancy, country and time fixed-effects and a large number of other effects that have been shown to matter for growth. The effect also holds if health inequality is instrumented to circumvent a potential problem of reverse causality. Hence, increasing access to health care for the poor can make a substantial contribution to economic growth not only through its effect on life expectancy but also through its effect on reduced health inequality

Inequality in human development : an empirical assessment of thirty-two countries

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the method presented in Grimm et al. (2008) to a sample of 21 low and middle income countries and 11 industrialized countries. In particular the inclusion of the industrialized countries, which were not included in the previous work, implies to deal with a number of additional challenges, which we outline in this paper. Our results show that inequality in human development within countries is high, both in developed and industrialized countries. In fact, the HDI of the lowest quintiles in industrialized countries is often below the HDI of the richest quintile in many middle income countries. We also find, however, a strong overall negative correlation between the level of human development and inequality in human development

Does household income matter for children's schooling? Evidence for rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Household income has been shown to matter for children's school enrolment, in particular in settings where households face tight liquidity constraints caused by the lack of insurance and limited possibilities to smooth consumption through credit and savings. However, so far only few studies have made an effort to quantify the income elasticity of school enrolment, in particular in the Sub-Saharan African context. The empirical problem in identifying the causal impact of income on enrolment is to control for parental ability, which is largely unobserved, and to deal with reverse causality and measurement error. This paper uses for identification a natural experiment in Burkina Faso, a country with particularly low enrolment rates. The results show that naive estimates largely underestimate the true income elasticity of school enrolment. The results can provide a basis for safety net policies

Food price inflation and children's schooling

I analyze the impact of food price inflation on parental decisions to send their children to school. Moreover, I use the fact that food crop farmers and cotton farmers were exposed differently to that shock to estimate the income elasticity of school enrolment. The results suggest that the shock-induced loss in purchasing power had an immediate effect on enrolment rates. Instrumental variable estimates show that the effect of household income on children's school enrolment is much larger than a simple OLS regression would suggest. Hence, policies to expand education in Sub-Saharan Africa should not neglect the demand side

Spatial inequalities explained: evidence from Burkina Faso

Empirical evidence suggests that regional disparities in incomes are often very high, that these disparities do not necessarily disappear as economies grow and that these disparities are itself an important driver of growth. We use a novel approach based on multilevel modeling to decompose the sources of spatial disparities in incomes among households in Burkina Faso. We show that spatial disparities are not only driven by the spatial concentration of households with particular endowments but to a large extent also by disparities in community endowments. Climatic differences across regions do also matter, but to a much smaller extent

Beer, wood, and welfare - The impact of improved stove use among dolo-beer breweries

Local beer breweries in Burkina Faso absorb a considerable amount of urban woodfuel demand. We assess the woodfuel savings caused by the adoption of improved brewing stoves by these micro-breweries and estimate the implied welfare effects through the woodfuel market on private households as well as the environmental effect. We find substantial wood savings among the breweries, 36% to 38% if they fully switch to an improved stove. In absolute amounts, they save about 0.176 kg of fuelwood per litre of dolo brewed. These savings imply huge reductions in CO2-emissions and reduce the overall demand for woodfuel, which is predominantly used by the poorer strata for cooking purposes. We provide estimates for the price decrease that might result from this and show that the urban poor are likely to benefit. Thus, the intervention under study is an example for a green growth intervention with pro-poor welfare gains - something green growth strategies should look for. Copyright

An assessment of the effects of the 2002 food crisis on children's health in Malawi

In 2002 Malawi experienced a serious shortage of cereals due to adverse climatic conditions. The World Food Programme assumed that about 2.1 to 3.2 million people were threatened of starvation at that time. However, not much research has been undertaken to investigate the actual consequences of this crisis. In particular, little is known about how the crisis affected the health status of children. Obviously, quantifying the health impact of such a crisis is a serious task given the lack of data and the more general problem of relating outcomes to specific shocks and policies. In this paper a difference-in-difference estimator is used to quantify the impact of the food crisis on the health status of children. The findings suggest that at least in the short run, there was neither a significant impact on child mortality nor on malnutrition. This would suggest that the shock might have been less severe than initially assumed and that the various policy interventions undertaken at the time have been effective or at least sufficient to counteract the immediate effects of the crisis

Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level

There is a well-known debate about the respective roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler mortality as an instrument for endogenous institutions and found that this supported their line of reasoning. We believe there is value-added to consider this debate at the micro level within a country as particularly questions of parameter heterogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are likely to be smaller than between countries. Hence, we examine the determinants of economic development across villages on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi and find technology adoption to play a crucial role. We show that geography-induced migration together with population size foster through their effect on institutions technology adoption

Socio-economic determinants of road traffic accident fatalities in low and middle income countries

In low and middle income countries road traffic accident fatalities will become in the near future one of the three major causes of death. Given that in particular the active population accounts for these fatalities, the potential economic implications are large, on the micro and the macro level. Yet, so far not much is known about the determinants and economic consequences of low road safety, in particular about the factors influencing road users’ behavior. Obviously this makes the design of interventions to prevent road traffic accidents and to care for the victims a serious challenge. The objective of this note is to summarize and review the existing knowledge on the determinants of road traffic accident fatalities, to identify the relevant research gaps in particular for low and middle income countries and to suggest ways to collect data and to conduct experiments that help to close these gaps. We also present a cross-country analysis of the determinants of road traffic accident fatalities that takes into account a wide range of potential environmental, economic and social factors

Migration pressure, tenure security and agricultural intensification

We explore the role played by migration induced population pressure for the endogenous adoption of formal land titles and subsequent investments in land in Central Sulawesi (Indonesia). Using original village and household-level data we provide evidence that migration pressure increased the incentives to formalize landownership. The adoption of formal land rights was in turn associated with increased expenditures for agricultural inputs and investment in trees, terraces, ditches and irrigation systems. We show that the availability of a demand-driven land titling system has been critical for increased agricultural intensification in our Indonesian setting