Internal Migration in Developing Countries

For people in rural areas of developing countries, finding a better paying job or better education is often only possible by moving - migrating - somewhere else. Moreover, agricultural production, generally the main economic activity in rural areas of developing countries, is risky, affected by droughts and floods. Due to poverty and the limited availability of crop insurance, rural households often rely on distant family members to provide money for buying food, starting a business or maintaining an existing business. The vast majority of moves happen within countries. Focusing on developing regions, this Roundup addresses the following questions: What are the broad trends in internal migration? Do internal migrants and their families really benefit from within-country mobility? What role does internal migration play in the recent urbanization process? The Roundup also documents how policy can increase the development impact of internal migration

Health Consequences of Childhood and Adolescence Shocks: Is There a "Critical Period"?

Individual health is not only determined by genetic factors, but also by negative or positive events during the life course. For example, children exposed to natural disasters or violent conflicts are more likely to have poor health as adults. Positiveexternal factors, such as nutritional programs, will, instead, improve individual health in the long-term. In turn, health can directly affect education and income opportunities, with macroeconomic consequences for economic growth. In particular,this Roundup investigates the following question: is there an age when shocks or interventions can have a magnified effect? In other words, is there a time while growing up when individual health is more responsive to external events? This is a relevant question, since timing represents a crucial dimension of health interventions. Available evidence identifies several sensitive periods, providing useful lessons for health policy with important economic implications

The impact of extreme weather events on education

This paper analyzes the short- and long-term impact of extreme weather events on educational outcomes in Mongolia. Our focus is on two extremely severe winters that caused mass livestock mortality. We use household panel data with comprehensive retrospective information on households' historic experience with weather shocks. Exposure to the weather shock significantly reduces the likelihood of being enrolled in mandatory school two to three years after the shock. Similarly, it significantly reduces the probability of completing basic education ten to eleven years after the shock. Both effects are driven by children from herding households. Results are robust to measuring shock intensity with district-level livestock mortality and climate data as well as household-level livestock losses. Exposure to weather shocks during preschool age (as opposed to exposure during primary and secondary school age) yields the worst consequences for educational attainment. Overall, the evidence points toward income effects as the channel through which the shock impacts education

The impact of extreme weather events on child health: Evidence from Mongolia

This paper investigates the impact of a devastating weather shock on child anthropometrics, using data from Mongolia. We employ a diff-in-diff strategy to identify the effect of an extremely harsh winter in 2010, which caused the death of about 20 percent of the national livestock. Results indicate that cohorts of children exposed to the 2010 winter and who lived in districts in which the shock was particularly harsh are significantly shorter two years after the shock. The negative effect of the shock is strongest for children from herding households. Moreover, we explore the role of mitigation channels to cushion the impact of the weather shock. In households where the head has more experience in herding, children suffer less from the consequences of the shock. Similarly, households having access to alternative sources of income are better able to protect their children from the effect of the shock. Finally, both the amount of emergency aid delivered per district and the presence of an international organization in a given district relieve the negative impact of the shock. Our findings are robust to different measures of shock intensity and to endogenous migration

Trade Policy Uncertainty and the WTO

Do WTO commitments reduce the risk of trade policy reversals? To address this question, we rely on the theoretical model of varying cooperative tariffs by Bagwell and Staiger (1990) to specify our empirical model for the probability of a tariff increase. We then study how WTO tariff commitments affect this probability. We estimate our model using a database of WTO bound tariffs that we built for all WTO Members from 1996 to 2011 at the HS 6-digit level of disaggregation. Our results show that WTO commitments significantly reduce the probability of a tariff increase, even when the bound tariff is above the MFN applied rate. In addition, the WTO reduces trade policy uncertainty through its monitoring function. These results are robust to including political economy explanations of tariff changes and to addressing endogeneity concerns

Para una ciudad de lectores

Ningun

Weather shocks and education in Mongolia

This paper analyzes the impact of extreme weather shocks on education outcomes in Mongolia. Our focus is on particularly harsh winters that caused mass livestock mortality (called dzud in Mongolian) between 1999 and 2002 and in 2009/2010. The timing of events allows us to analyze both short- and long-term effects of weather shocks on education. Our analysis disentangles the effects by age of exposure. Moreover, we provide new evidence on which households socio-economic characteristics and coping strategies are associated with worse or milder impacts of the shock. The data basis is an unusually detailed household survey that comprises rich information on households shock experience and retrospective information on households pre-shock socio-economic status. Various measures of shock intensity are derived from data on snow depth and livestock mortality. We mainly employ a difference-in-differences econometric approach, which allows to draw causal inference by exploiting exogenous variation in shock exposure across space and age cohorts. Results show that weather shocks negatively affect education both in the short- and in the long-term. Individuals from herding households with poorer socio-economic backgrounds appear to be particularly affected. Individuals exposed during pre-schooling age bear persistent negative human capital effects

Hábitat Urbano: accesibilidad para todos. El sistema de movimiento para una mejor calidad de vida en el espacio público. Estudio de casos internacionales aplicables a nuestra realidad

La finalidad de esta investigación es aportar premisas para el diseño y reestructuración de los sistemas de movilidad que lleve a la cualificación del hábitat urbano. Busca identificar factores problemas que son comunes en distintas ciudades de Latinoamérica. La investigación se estructura en 3 etapas: - La primera consiste en el estudio y análisis de casos paradigmáticos en el ámbito nacional e internacional para la conformación de la plataforma teórica de trabajo. - La segunda, tomando como caso de estudio un sector en particular, será vista desde dos miradas: La actual sumada a una futura de carácter propositivo. - La tercera, de síntesis, permitirá establecer pautas para la elaboración de lineamientos para ser aplicables a un sistema de movilidad urbana desde parámetros ambientales

Uptake of HIV testing among adolescents and associated adolescent-friendly services

Abstract Background HIV testing remains low among adolescents. Making public health services more adolescent-friendly is one strategy used to encourage testing. However, it remains unclear whether government-led initiatives have a meaningfully impact. Methods The current study is observational and utilizes two sources of data (health-facility and adolescent-level) from one round of data collection of an on-going, longitudinal impact evaluation of a pilot cash plus program targeting adolescents. This study linked data from adolescent surveys (n = 2191) to data collected from nearby government-run health facilities (n = 91) in two rural regions of Tanzania. We used log binomial regression models to estimate the association between specific adolescent-friendly health service (AFHS) characteristics and adolescents' uptake of 1) HIV testing and 2) visiting a health care facility in the past year for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. Results Most adolescents (67%) lived in a village with a health facility, and all offered HIV services. We find, however, that AFHS have not been fully implemented. For example, less than 40% of facilities reported that they had guidelines for adolescent care. Only 12% of facilities had a system in place for referral and follow-up with adolescent clients, yet this was an important predictor of both past-year HIV testing (RR = 1.28, p < 0.1) and SRH visits (RR = 1.44, p < 0.05). Less than half (44%) offered services for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), a significant predictor of past-year HIV testing (RR = 1.20, p < 0.05) and SRH visits (RR = 1.41, p < 0.01) among sexually-active adolescents. Conclusions We find that national guidelines on AFHS have not been fully translated into practice at the local level. We highlight particular gaps in adolescent referral systems and GBV services. Scaling up these two essential services could encourage greater HIV testing among a high-risk population, in addition to providing much needed support for survivors of violence