The Impact of Bolsa Família on Poverty: Does Brazil’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program Have a Rural Bias?

A crucial dimension in assessing Brazil's signature anti-poverty program Bolsa Família is to know how the program has affected the living standards of different sub-groups of the poor. This paper addresses the specific question of whether it affects the rural poor and the urban poor differently. Perhaps it has had a larger impact on the urban poor because they live in closer proximity to schools, health facilities, and transfer payment locations, and might therefore experience lower participation costs and fewer barriers to complying with the program's conditions. Or, perhaps it has had larger benefits for the rural poor because, while they receive the same transfer payments and face the same eligibility cut-off as the urban poor in nominal terms, they face a lower cost of living. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of not adjusting Bolsa Família's eligibility cut-off or transfer size for spatial cost-of-living differences. In particular, it compares and contrasts Bolsa Família's impact at the state level in different states and formally tests the hypothesis that the cash transfer program has had a larger impact on poverty in Brazil's most rural states than in its most urban states. Indeed, the data points to a statistically significant rural bias. In addition to the state-level analysis (which is very robust to the choice of states, poverty lines, and spatial price indices), a probit regression analysis indicates that poor rural households are more likely than poor urban ones to escape poverty due to Bolsa Família

A Novel Method For Determining Acetabular Orientation

Enhanced knowledge of the acetabulum is of paramount importance in the diagnostic, planning, and execution stages of procedures and treatments targeting the hip joint. The convoluted and highly variable morphology of the structures comprising the bony pelvis make ascertaining measures of the acetabulum challenging. Furthermore, current methods for determining acetabular orientation assume symmetry between the separate halves of the pelvis by utilizing a coordinate system based on bilateral landmarks. The purpose of this study was to determine the three-dimensional orientation of the entire acetabulum. For this research, an improved programmatic method was developed for determining acetabular orientation using three-dimensional data. Accurate measures of commonly used acetabular orientation were ascertained from a large population of normal subjects. In addition, unilateral-based measures were performed using a new “hemi-pelvis coordinate system”. Significant differences between genders were observed in both the overall orientation of the acetabulum and the structural arrangement of the innominate bone

The political economy of education systems in conflict-affected contexts

This report is a rigorous literature review on the political economy of education systems in conflict-affected contexts and is aimed at education advisers and agencies, development practitioners and Ministry of Education policy makers working in conflict-affected contexts. The report seeks to provide theoretically informed and policy relevant insights on the global, national and local governance of education systems in conflict-affected contexts garnered from a rigorous review of the academic and policy literature on the political economy of education in conflict-affected contexts. The review was driven by three main questions: (1) What are the underpinning assumptions of the main bodies of political economy research in education and conflict? (2) What can the political economy of education literature since 1990 inform us about educational change and reform in conflict-affected contexts? (3) What are the strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and research gaps in the political economy of education literature exploring the governance of educational change and reform in conflict-affected contexts? Chapter 1 outlines the rationale and aims of the review. Chapter 2, describes the theoretical and conceptual framework and presents the framing of the key issues under review, and Chapter 3 outlines the review methodology. Chapter 4 presents the main characteristics and an assessment of the quality of the studies selected for the in-depth review, and Chapter 5, discusses the review’s main findings. Chapter 6 presents the conclusions of the study, outlines a theory of change that emerges from the findings and draws out the policy insights and research gaps for future study

The Political Economy of Education Systems in Conflict-Affected Contexts: A Rigorous Literature Review

This report is a rigorous literature review on the political economy of education systems in conflict-affected contexts and is aimed at education advisers and agencies, development practitioners and Ministry of Education policy makers working in conflict-affected contexts. The report seeks to provide theoretically informed and policy relevant insights on the global, national and local governance of education systems in conflict-affected contexts garnered from a rigorous review of the academic and policy literature on the political economy of education in conflict-affected contexts.<p></p> The review was driven by three main questions: (1) What are the underpinning assumptions of the main bodies of political economy research in education and conflict? (2) What can the political economy of education literature since 1990 inform us about educational change and reform in conflict-affected contexts? (3) What are the strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and research gaps in the political economy of education literature exploring the governance of educational change and reform in conflict-affected contexts?<p></p> Chapter 1 outlines the rationale and aims of the review. Chapter 2, describes the theoretical and conceptual framework and presents the framing of the key issues under review, and Chapter 3 outlines the review methodology. Chapter 4 presents the main characteristics and an assessment of the quality of the studies selected for the in-depth review, and Chapter 5, discusses the review’s main findings. Chapter 6 presents the conclusions of the study, outlines a theory of change that emerges from the findings and draws out the policy insights and research gaps for future study

Essays in the Development and Costing of Income Contingent Loans

(Note: Abridged abstract) Income contingent loans (ICL) are policy instruments that can enable participation in activities that yield both public and private benefits, with repayment conditions that promote equity, remove the risk of loan default, smooth consumption, and thus increase utility for loan recipients. Three essays are presented on the development and costing of ICLs. The first two essays consider the application of ICLs to paid parental leave and to student income support, and they are approached from the perspective of financial product design: context and motivation are described; product features are chosen to balance consumer needs and affordability with provider costs; models are developed and populated with assumptions and parameters; and the models are used to undertake risk assessment and costing. In the first essay, an ICL is developed as an extension to the recently introduced Australian statutory paid parental leave scheme. Design features are proposed to mitigate adverse selection and moral hazard, and it is shown that the ICL could be a cost effective and equitable means of providing parents with the necessary leave so as to optimise both private and public returns. In the second essay, an ICL is motivated and developed for the shortfall in student income support for higher education. The consequences of different loan indexation arrangements to expected taxpayer costs, loan recipient outlays, cross-subsidisation, and participation rates are discussed. A novel ICL sourced from superannuation is proposed separately as a means of financing income support for mature aged students. The viability of ICLs will depend, in part, on aggregate taxpayer costs. In the final essay, labour force and earnings models are developed to explore how ICL cost estimates are affected by model structures and assumptions. Nested bivariate logistic models for labour force transitions are developed that incorporate lagged labour states. Hourly wage is modelled, and residuals from the mean fit are partitioned into permanent and transitory components, incorporating serial dependency and non-normal shocks. A non-parametric model for weekly hours worked is developed that incorporates conditional transition probabilities. Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate ICL debt, repayments and subsidies under the fitted models. It is found that under a wide range of conditions, dynamic stochastic earnings models lead to greater repayments, lower projected debt, and significantly lower aggregate taxpayer subsidies when compared with models that ignore earnings mobility

A Simple Effective Method for Three-Dimensional Modelling of Cementation, Fracturing and Dissolution of Carbonate Rocks: Illustrated through Oolitic Limestone

Sandstones and many carbonates (e.g., oolitic limestone and other grainstones), comprise solid particulates (grains) and pores, which have a given pore network architecture relationship, and associated porosity—permeability values. Over time, through the process of diagenesis, the pore network architecture may be extensively altered. Changes can include compaction, particle deformation, cementation, dissolution and fracturing, with the pathway followed after deposition depending on factors such as the energy level, rate of burial, degree of biological activity, local heat flow, sediment composition, Eh, pH and the presence or absence of organic materials. Any method that provides a means of modelling changes is therefore highly desirable, in particular, allowing a prediction of changes in porosity and permeability with time. The current work illustrates a simple method that uses freely available open source image analysis software to model the development of cement phases within an oolitic limestone in three-dimensions. As well as cementation, it demonstrates the modelling of fracture development and dissolution processes, and records how porosity and permeability change during such processes