Child poverty in Vietnam: using adult equivalence scales to estimate income-poverty for different age groups

Measurements of child poverty are commonly carried out using household expenditure data in per capita terms or adjusted by some standard parameter of economies of size. In this paper, we use adult equivalence scales and economies of scale coefficients estimated from the data to assess child poverty in Vietnam. By doing so, we show child poverty in Vietnam to be overestimated by conventional techniques. The commonly used technique for the estimation of adult equivalence scales contains an implicit household income distribution. Therefore, we used these techniques to estimate child poverty and patterns of resource allocation for different household groups. Better-off families (which are largely urban, more educated, female-headed and from the Khin ethnic majority) spend a lower share of their income on children than other household groups, though their children are still better off in absolute terms. A comparison of the data between 1992-93 and 1997-98 also reveals that children from better-off family groups have experienced a more rapid increase in welfare levels than children from other sectors of Vietnamese society during this period. The presence of gender discrimination in child treatment is also investigated. Rural and male headed households are those that more prominently appear as discriminating against female children. We found no clear relationship between gender discrimination and expenditure or between gender discrimination and level of education.child poverty; poverty measurement; Vietnam

Infant and Child Mortality in Andhra Pradesh: Analysing changes over time and between states

Most countries of the world are reducing infant and child mortality too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a two-thirds reduction by 2015. Yet, some countries and regions have achieved impressive reductions, Kerala in India being one example. This paper examines the determinants of infant and child mortality in Andhra Pradesh, where the Young Lives project is taking place, and Kerala and the factors explaining their differential performance. The determinants of mortality are estimated using a Cox proportional hazards model. Infant mortality is found to depend on biological factors, including mother’s age and birth order, and also factors related to health service provision such as tetanus injection and use of antenatal services. Economic well being is not significant once these other factors are taken into account. By contrast, economic well-being is a significant determinant of child mortality, but substantially outweighed in importance by other factors such as maternal education and knowledge of health practices (ORS) and access to safe water. The data also show gender discrimination in Andhra Pradesh, notably toward girls with only female siblings, which is absent from Kerala. We conclude that raising service levels across India toward the levels found in Kerala is a necessary step toward meeting the MDGs, and that the success of these efforts is reinforced by female empowerment.infant mortality; child mortality; health; india; social development; andhra pradesh; kerela; hazards model; health production function

Food demand, uncertainty and investments in human capital: three essays on rural Andhra Pradesh, India

This dissertation provides some explanations of the causes of poverty in rural India, by investigating poverty determinants that are too often neglected in the literature and in policy debates. It proceeds in three main chapters, each addressing a specific research question. The first chapter focuses on the process of agricultural transformation in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In the early stages of economic development, all countries undergo a process of transformation of their production and employment structure. As a result, agricultural output as a share of total GDP decreases, as does rural employment as a share of total employment. Over the last 50 years, the share of agriculture in total output has considerably declined in Andhra Pradesh. However, the agricultural sector continues to employ the great majority of the labour force. The theoretical section of this chapter shows how structural change is affected by the characteristics of food demand and by income inequality. The empirical analysis, using novel semiparametric methods, estimates food Engel curves and food elasticities, which are used to simulate the effects on changes in income distribution on the composition of demand. The second chapter analyses the stabilising effect of irrigation on household expenditure. The expansion of irrigation infrastructure, together with the introduction of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers, was the most important technological advancement in Indian agriculture of the last 50 years. The positive impact of irrigation on income of rural households has been extensively documented, but its stabilising effect has been largely neglected. The first part of the chapter builds a theoretical model that establishes the causal links between access to irrigation, income stability, and consumption smoothing over the seasonal cycle. The empirical analysis assesses the stabilising impact of irrigation on expenditure using modern impact evaluation techniques. The findings indicate that consumption patterns of households with access to irrigation are more stable over the seasonal cycle and over the years. The third chapter studies the effect of income uncertainty on educational choices made by the rural poor. It investigates the demand side of education in order to understand why a large number of rural children do not enrol or complete primary education. The theoretical part of the chapter presents an inter-temporal consumption model that shows how the expectation of income variability negatively affects household expenditure on education. The empirical analysis uses a duration model with time covariates in order to estimate the determinants of child progress in school, and provides evidence that income variability negatively affects investments in education

Impact Evaluation when N=1

A common presumption holds that when there is only one unit of observation, such as in the case of a national-level policy or a small scale intervention, causality cannot be established and impact evaluation methods do not apply. Yet many development interventions have single communities or organisations as their target, just as in other cases we are interested in the impact of a programme in a particular community, not for the average community. The experimental observation of single subjects or groups is normally practiced in sciences such as psychology and biology. Social sciences do not enjoy the controlled environments that allow conducting single-case experiments. However, this CDI Practice Paper by Edoardo Masset shows that, under some circumstances, methods to assess impact when there is only one unit of observation are possible, and that we should try to create the right conditions for these ‘experiments’ to take place rather than neglect them.DFI

Integrated Development, Past and Present

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in integrated rural development (IRD) projects, which were a common feature of international development in the 1960s and 1970s. In this article we critically review the literature on past IRD with the goal of informing current practice. We identify two key narratives in the IRD literature: (1) IRD projects were designed to exploit complementarities and synergies between development interventions, and (2) the administrative complexity of IRD projects prevented their successful implementation. We argue that the first narrative is not grounded in a solid theory of how IRD works, and that the second is largely based on a body of evidence which is wide but not rigorous. We show that some recent IRD experiences have been successful and conclude that future IRD evaluations need a novel conceptualisation of synergies and greater attention to the characteristics of implementation and cost-effectiveness.Department for International Development (DFID

Maintaining Momentum to 2015? An impact evaluation of interventions to improve maternal and child health and nutrition in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced rapid fertility decline and reductions in under-five mortality over the last three decades. This impact study unravels the various factors behind these changes. Economic growth has been important, but so have major public sector interventions, notably reproductive health and immunization, supported by external assistance from the World Bank and other agencies. By contrast, nutrition began to improve only in the 1990s and remains high. The Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Program (BINP) has played a small role, if any, in this progress, which is mainly attributable to higher agricultural productivity.Bangladesh, mortality, fertility, nutrition, health, population

Books, Buildings and Learning Outcomes: an impact evaluation of World Bank assistance to basic education in Ghana

This paper demonstrates that the delivery of hardware inputs to Ghana’s basic education system – building classrooms and supplying textbooks – has had a substantial impact on higher enrollments and better learning outcomes. The Bank’s support for school building has been a major factor behind Ghana being on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of Universal Primary Education. The context for these improvements was a government strongly committed to implementing a program of educational reform that refocused government resources away from secondary and tertiary education and onto the basic sector. But the Bank’s support played a critical role in allowing the government to carry out its plans. Partly because of increased reliance on community contributions, a gap is opening up between the majority of schools and those in poorer communities, particularly in off-road rural areas. Facilities in schools in poorer areas are usually inferior and teacher absenteeism high, so that little learning can take place. Special attention needs to be paid to these least-privileged schools if Ghana is to remain on track to meet the education MDG.Impact evaluation, education, Ghana, Africa

Conflict and Child Mortality in Mali: A Synthetic Control Analysis.

Indirect effects of conflict on mortality of vulnerable groups are as important, or more important, than the direct effects. However, data limitations and methodological challenges hinder the estimation of excess deaths produced by conflict, and few studies explore the mechanisms by which conflict harms civilian populations. We estimate the impact of the Malian conflict on child mortality over the period 2012–2018 using Demographic Health Survey data. We use birth histories to build time series of child mortality, and we employ novel synthetic control methods to show that the Malian conflict significantly increased child mortality in northern Mali. We conduct a difference-in-difference analysis of the impact of conflict on key determinants of maternal and child health and conclude that a reduction in access to safe sanitation and to child vaccinations in conflict areas was among the most likely causes of the increase in mortality. Northern Mali is today one of the poorest and most neglected areas of the world where humanitarian assistance is urgently needed