Dietary Changes, Calorie Intake and Undernourishment: A Comparative Study of India and Vietnam

This paper examines the changes in the nature and quantity of Food consumption in India during the reforms decade of the 1990s, and analyses their implications for calorie intake and undernourishment. The study documents the decline in cereal consumption, especially in the urban areas, and provides evidence that suggests an increase in the prevalence of undernourishment over the period, 1987/88 – 2001/2002. The results also point to a significant number of households, even in the top expenditure decile, suffering from under nourishment. This calls for a reassessment of the current strategy of directing the Targetted Public Distribution System (TPDS) exclusively at households below the poverty line (BPL). This study shows that, both as a source of subsidised calories and as a poverty reducing instrument, the PDS is of much greater importance to the female headed households than it is to the rest of the population. Another important result is that, notwithstanding the sharp decline in their expenditure share during the 1990s, Rice and Wheat continue to provide the dominant share of calories, especially for the rural poor. The Indian experience is in sharp contrast to that in Vietnam which witnessed a large increase in calorie intake and, consequently, a decrease in the prevalence of ndernourishment in the late 1990s. The Vietnamese diet displayed increased diversification during the 1990s with a greater role for protein rich animal products and a more balanced diet of nutrients than in India.Calorie Intake, Prevalence of Undernourishment, Calorie Price Inflation, Public Distribution System, Backward Classes, Female headed Households.

Does the Evidence on Corruption Depend on how it is measured? Results from a Cross Country Study on Micro Data sets

This study compares the evidence on corruption between alternative data sets. These include the Corruption Perceptions Indices (CPI) that are conventionally used and the micro data sets from the International Crime Victim Surveys (ICVS) and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) that have been used in recent applications. While a comparison between the evidence from the CPI and WBES constitutes a comparison of perception versus reality, the comparison of evidence from ICVS and WBES can be construed as a comparison of individual with business corruption. The study finds several similarities and differences between the pictures on corruption yielded by the alternative data sets. For example, while in case of low income countries, perception of business corruption seems to be worse than that based on firms’ actual experience of doing business there, the reverse is true for high income countries. The magnitude of individual corruption is consistently lower than that of business corruption, with the gap between the two forms of corruption closing only for high income countries. As a country develops and commercial transactions increase, the mix of corruption changes in favour of business corruption. While the study finds evidence of a negative association between per capita GNP and corruption rates, none of the three data sets provides any evidence of negative association between growth and corruption rates. The study also finds that while improvement in human development indicators such as literacy are effective instruments in controlling individual corruption, the strengthening of institutions such as the legal system and the regulatory mechanism are likely to be more effective in combating business corruption. The strengthening of trust, whether via improved literacy and development of social networks or via a strong legal system, and an effective and transparent regulatory mechanism is the key to combating both forms of corruption. A methodological contribution of this study is the combination of the information of the characteristics of the respondent with the country level indicators in analysing the determinants of corruption. A significant difference between the two forms of corruption is that, after controlling for the respondent’s attributes and the country indicators, while individual corruption showed an increase over time, this was not the case with business corruption. The importance of introducing the country effects is seen from the sign reversal of the time coefficient estimate that occurs in case of both individual and business corruption once we control for the effects of the country of residence of the respondent. The overall message of this study is that the authorities need to distinguish between different forms of corruption in devising policy intervention. As the mix of individual and business corruption changes with economic development, so should the mix of policy instruments in tackling corruption. The results also underline the need to undertake more studies that investigate the sensitivity of the evidence on corruption to alternative data sets.Business Corruption, Kernel density graphs, Social Network, Human Development Indicator, Regulatory Mechanism

Changes in Indonesian Food Consumption Patterns and their Nutritional Implications

This study examines changes in Indonesian food consumption during 1996-2002 which included the period of the Asian financial crisis in late 1997/98. This paper analyses the nutritional implications of the changes in terms of the level and composition of calorie intake and the prevalence of undernourishment. The analysis reveals a divergence, during this period, between the magnitude and the movement of the undernourishment and food expenditure poverty rates. The results reveal a sharp divide between rural and urban households, and between calorie-deprived and calorie-satisfied households. While this period witnessed significant improvement in calorie intake, the dietary changes do not appear to have been large enough to address the issue of protein deficiency in the Indonesian diet. The results point to the need for policy interventions and information campaigns to ensure an increase in both the quantity and quality of the calorie intake.Undernourishment, Calorie Shares, Processed Food, Kernel Density Plot.

Multidimensional Deprivation in China, India and Vietnam: A Comparative Study on Micro Data

This study compares living standards in China, India and Vietnam using the recent multidimensional approach. A distinguishing feature of this study is the use of unit record data sets containing household level information on a wide range of variables including access to several dimensions of living, wealth and child health. The study uses household level information on a wide variety of indicators and the methodology of Principal Component Analysis to measure household wealth. The wealth index is then used to examine the distribution of deprivation and poverty by wealth percentiles. This paper uses the Lorenz curve for wealth and the pseudo Lorenz curves for deprivation and poverty to show that wealth, used here as a proxy for income, understates deprivation and poverty in all the three countries. The paper also provides evidence on child health, which is at odds with the overall progress that is portrayed by the multidimensional measures.Multidimensional Deprivation, Wealth Index, Principal Component Analysis, Sub group Decomposability.

Multi Dimensional Deprivation in India during and after the Reforms: Do the Household Expenditure and the Family Health Surveys Present Consistent Evidence?

This paper uses the recent approach of multidimensional deprivation measures to provide a comprehensive and wide ranging assessment of changes to living standards in India during the period, 1992/93-2004/5.This covers the reforms and the immediate post reforms time periods. The study is based on the simultaneous use of two parallel data sets, namely the NSS and NFHS data sets covering proximate rounds and near identical time periods. The study is conducted both at regionally disaggregated levels and by socio economic groups. The deprivation dimensions range widely from the conventional expenditure dimensions to non expenditure dimensions such as access to drinking water and clean fuel, to health dimensions such as child stunting and the mother’s BMI. The use of decomposable deprivation measures allows the identification of regions, socio economic groups and deprivation dimensions that are contributing more than others to total deprivation.Multidimensional Deprivation, Social Exclusion, Decomposable Deprivation Measures, Scheduled Classes and Tribes, Clean Fuel, Stunted Children.

Interaction between HIV Awareness, Knowledge, Safe Sex Practice and HIV Incidence: Evidence from Botswana

This paper makes methodological and empirical contributions to the study of HIV awareness, knowledge, incidence and safe sex practice in the context of Botswana, one of the most HIV prone countries in the world. While the focus is on Botswana, the paper presents comparable evidence from India to put the Botswana results in perspective. The results point to the strong role played by affluence and education in increasing HIV knowledge, promoting safe sex and reducing HIV incidence. The study presents African evidence on the role played by the empowerment of women in promoting safe sex practices such as condom use. The Botswana results show however that simply increasing HIV knowledge may not be effective in lowering HIV incidence unless people are also made fully aware of the lethal nature of the disease. The lack of significant association between HIV incidence and safe sex practice points to the danger of HIV infected individuals spreading the disease through multiple sex partners and unprotected sex. This danger is underlined by the result that females with multiple sex partners are at higher risk of being infected with HIV.HIV incidence, Female Empowerment, Safe Sex Methods, Finite Mixture Models, Principal Components Analysis.

Crime, Corruption and Institutions

This paper explores the link between crime and corruption, compares their magnitudes, determinants and their effects on growth rates. The study uses a large cross country data set containing individual responses to questions on crime and corruption along with information on the respondents’ characteristics. This data set is supplemented by country level indicators from a variety of sources on a range of macro variables and on institutions in the respondent’s country of residence. A methodological contribution of this study is the estimation of an ordered probit model based on outcomes defined as combinations of crime and bribe victimisation. The principal results include the evidence that while a male is more likely to be a corruption victim, a female is more exposed to crime, especially, serious crime. Older individuals and those living in the smaller towns and cities are less exposed to crime and corruption due presumably to their ability to form informal networks that act as protective mechanisms. With increasing levels of income and education, an individual is more likely to report both crime and bribe victimisation. A crime victim is more likely than a non victim to report receiving demands for a bribe. The results suggest that variables such as inequality, unemployment rate and population size have a strong effect on the country’s crime and corruption statistics though the sign and significance of the country effects are not always robust. However, the paper does provide robust evidence that a stronger legal system and a happier society result in a reduction in both crime and corruption. While the study finds that both crime and corruption rates decline as a country becomes more affluent, as measured by its per capita GNP at PPP, there is no evidence of a strong and uniformly negative impact of either crime or corruption on a country’s growth rate. There is limited OLS based evidence of a non linear relationship between growth and corruption rates, though the significance of the corruption effect on growth disappears on the use of IV estimation. The paper also provides evidence that there has been a decline in both crime and corruption during the latter half of the 1990s. This is true even after controlling for the individual and country characteristics.Crime Victimisation, Institutions, Happiness, Ordered Probit, Rule of Law.

Duration and Persistence in Multidimensional Deprivation: Methodology and Australian Application

This paper extends the recent literature on static multidimensional deprivation to propose dynamic deprivation measures that incorporate both the persistence and duration of deprivation across multiple dimensions. The paper then illustrates the usefulness of the extension by applying it to Australian panel data for the recent period, 2001-2008. The empirical application exploits the subgroup decomposability of the deprivation measures to identify the subgroups that are more deprived than others. The proposed measure is also decomposable by dimensions and is used to identify the dimensions where deprivation is more persistent. The comparison between the subgroups shows that the divide between homeowners and non-homeowners is one of the sharpest, with the latter suffering much more deprivation than the former. The results are robust to alternative schemes for weighting and aggregating the dimensions as well as to the choice of model parameters.Multidimensional Deprivation; Social Exclusion; Duration of Deprivation; Deprivation Persistence; Subgroup Decomposability.

Optimal commodity taxes under rationing

How useful and relevant are the results of standard optimal commodity tax models when one or more commodities are rationed? This paper investigates the implications of optimal commodity taxation under rationing. In a single person economy, optimal policy dictates that the rationed commodity bears the entire tax. The implication for developing countries is that if the government has a fixed budget to subsidize certain commodities, optimal policy will be to subsidize only the rationed commodities. In a multi person economy, optimal policy will tax all nonrationed commodities at an infinite rate if the rule is that taxes on all commodities are proportional to prices. The more a society is concerned about inequality, the greater the tax should be on nonrationed commodities. The alternative model presented here overcomes some of the restrictive features of the previous rationing model.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Commodities,Consumption

Multi Dimensional Deprivation in the Awakening Giants: A Comparative Study on Micro Data

This paper evaluates and compares multidimensional deprivation in India and China during the 1990s and beyond. The exercise is conducted on two micro data sets that have been tailor made for this study. It departs from the recent comparisons between India and China that are based on macro aggregates such as trade, investment and growth rates and undertakes a systematic and comprehensive analysis of living standards in the two countries based on unit record data. The paper disaggregates the overall deprivation by categories, and compares the deprivation distribution between the two countries. This study reports that the high growth rates did not translate into an unambiguous improvement in living standards in either country. Deprivation is still unacceptably high in some categories. While rural deprivation is much higher in India than in China, they face similar levels of urban deprivation. Special attention is paid to a comparison of child health, and its link with mother’s health, between the two countries. China outperforms India on child health with lower incidence of stunting and wasting. While both countries still record high rates of child stunting in the new millennium, wasting is much more of an issue in India than in China. The study provides evidence of strong link between deprivation in access to basic facilities, such as drinking water and clean fuel for cooking, and child undernourishment. The Indian evidence suggests that children of undernourished mothers are at high risk from stunting and wasting, but this does not extend to China. Notwithstanding evidence of decline in mother’s BMI over this period, China outperforms India on women’s health as well.Multi Dimensional Deprivation, Stunting, BMI, Anaemic Rates,Decomposability