The sensitivity of calorie-income demand elasticity to price changes

"The calorie-income demand elasticity is an important parameter in the development literature and in the policy arena. Yet, there is very little evidence on the extent to which it can be considered as an unchanging parameter or a time-shifting parameter that, for example, changes with the economic conditions faced by households. In this paper I use data from the 1996 and 1999 National Socio-Economic Surveys (SUSENAS) in Indonesia to examine whether the relationship between income changes and caloric availability has changed and if so, how. Using the same questionnaire, the SUSENAS surveys collect detailed information on more than 200 different food items consumed over the last seven days by 60,000 households at the same point in each survey year. I use nonparametric as well as regression methods to examine two important relationships: (1) between income and total calories, and (2) between income and calories from cereals and other foods (excluding cereals and root crops). The empirical analysis finds that the income elasticity of the demand for total calories is slightly higher in February 1999 (the crisis year with dramatically different relative prices) compared to its level in February 1996. Also, the calorie-income elasticity for cereals as a group increases while the calorie-income elasticity for other food items decreases. The latter finding is interpreted as consistent with the presence of a binding subsistence constraint." from Authors' AbstractCaloric intake ,

The structure of wages during the economic transition in Romania

This paper uses cross-sectional individual data from the 1994 Integrated Household Survey of Romania to analyze the determinants of male and female wages in public and private enterprises. Using quantile regression, the rate of return to education and experience at different quantiles of the wage distribution is estimated. Higher levels of education are significantly associated with higher wages for both males and females in public firms. In private firms, only college education is correlated with significantly higher wages. Differences in individual characteristics are found to explain the highest portion of the male-female wage differential in Romania in both sectors.employment ,Wage differentials Romania. ,Wages. ,Gender issues. ,Labor economics. ,Household surveys ,

PROGRESA and its impacts on the welfare of rural households in Mexico:

"This document synthesizes the findings contained in a series of reports prepared by IFPRI for PROGRESA between November 1998 and November 2000... PROGRESA is one of the major programs of the Mexican government aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Targeting its benefits directly to the population in extreme poverty in rural areas, PROGRESA aims to alleviate current and future poverty levels through cash transfers to mothers in households.... One of the most important contributions of IFPRI's evaluation of PROGRESA has been the continuation of the program in spite of the historic change in the government of Mexico in the 2000 elections. The overwhelming (and unprecedented) evidence that a poverty alleviation program shows strong signs of having a significant impact on the welfare and human capital investment of poor rural families in Mexico has contributed to the decision of the Fox administration to continue with the program and to expand its coverage in the poor urban areas of the country after some improvements in the design of the program.... The majority of the improvements in the design of PROGRESA (renamed Oportunidades by the Fox administration) were based on findings of the evaluation of PROGRESA that revealed areas of needed improvements in some of the structural components and the operation of the program... Yet in spite of these improvements in the program, the evaluation findings suggest that some issues remain to be resolved." from TextRural poor Government policy Mexico, Poverty Government policy Mexico, Mexico Social policy,

Is PROGRESA working?

This document summarizes 24 months of extensive research by the International Food Policy Research Institute designed to evaluate whether PROGRESA has been successful at achieving its goals. The evaluation analyzes what has been the impact of PROGRESA on education, health, and nutrition as well as in other areas, such as women's status and work incentives.Education ,health ,human nutrition ,

Sources of Welfare Disparities across and within Regions of Brazil: Evidence from the 2002-03 Household Budget Survey

Brazil's inequalities in welfare and poverty across and within regions can be accounted for by differences in household attributes and returns to those attributes. This paper uses Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions at the mean as well as at different quantiles of welfare distributions on regionally representative household survey data (2002-03 Household Budget Survey). The analysis finds that household attributes account for most of the welfare differences between urban and rural areas within regions. However, comparing the lagging Northeast region with the leading Southeast region, differences in returns to attributes account for a large part of the welfare disparities, in particular in metropolitan areas, supporting the presence of agglomeration effects in booming areas.Brazil; Leading and Lagging Regions; Welfare; Poverty; Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions

An evaluation of the performance of regression discontinuity design on PROGRESA

While providing the most reliable method of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the chances of adopting them. In this paper the authors use a unique data set from rural Mexico collected for the purposes of evaluating the impact of the PROGRESA poverty alleviation program to examine the performance of a quasi-experimental estimator, the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). Using as a benchmark the impact estimates based on the experimental nature of the sample, we examine how estimates differ when we use the RDD as the estimator for evaluating program impact on two key indicators: child school attendance and child work. Overall the performance of the RDD was remarkably good. The RDD estimates of program impact agreed with the experimental estimates in 10 out of the 12 possible cases. The two cases in which the RDD method failed to reveal any significant program impact on the school attendance of boys and girls were in the first year of the program (round 3). RDD estimates comparable to the experimental estimates were obtained when we used as a comparison group children from non-eligible households in the control localities.Scientific Research&Science Parks,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Anthropology,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Science Education,VN-Acb Mis -- IFC-00535908,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats

Evaluating the impact of Mexico's quality schools program : the pitfalls of using nonexperimental data

The authors evaluate whether increasing school resources and decentralizing management decisions at the school level improves learning in a developing country. Mexico's Quality Schools Program (PEC), following many other countries and U.S. states, offers US$15,000 grants for public schools to implement five-year improvement plans that the school's staff and community design. Using a three-year panel of 74,700 schools, the authors estimate the impact of the PEC on dropout, repetition, and failure using two common nonexperimental methods-regression analysis and propensity score matching. The methods provide similar but nonidentical results. The preferred estimator, difference-in-differences with matching, reveals that participation in the PEC decreases dropout by 0.24 percentage points, failure by 0.24 percentage points, and repetition by 0.31 percentage points-an economically small but statistically significant impact. The PEC lacks measurable impact on outcomes in indigenous schools. The results suggest that a combination of increased resources and local management can produce small improvements in school outcomes, though perhaps not in the most troubled school systems.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Secondary Education,Economics of Education

Can Social Programs be Reliably Evaluated with NonExperimental Methods? Evidence on the Performance of Regression Discontinuity Design using PROGRESA data

In 1997 a social program called PROGRESA was introduced in Mexico using a design for a randomized experiment. We exploit a build in, but neglected, discontinuity in the eligibility rule and use the quasi-experimental Regression-Discontinuity design in order to estimate marginal average treatment effects. Our findings show substantial regional variation. Moreover, given that the RDD approach allows us to use only data from the treated sample, we are able to investigate the extend to which the introduction of the program had an effect on ineligible children in the localities it was introduced and compare its performance to the experimental outcomes.treatment effects, regression discontinuity design, PROGRESA

Conditional cash transfers and their impact on child work and schooling

In this paper we investigate whether a conditional cash transfer program such as the Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) can simultaneously combat the problems of low school attendance and child work. PROGRESA is a new program of the Mexican government aimed at alleviating extreme poverty in rural areas. It combats the different causes of poverty by providing cash benefits that are targeted directly to households on the condition of children attending school and visiting health clinics on a regular basis. Some of the questions addressed are as follows: Does the program reduce child labor? Does it increase participation in school activities? Does the latter occur at the expense of children's leisure time? And how do the effects of the program vary by age group and gender? Our empirical analysis relies on data from a quasi-experimental design used to evaluate the impact of the program involving a sample of communities that receive PROGRESA benefits (treatment) and comparable communities that receive benefits at a later time (control). We estimate the effect of “treatment on the treated” using both double-difference and cross sectional difference estimators. Our estimates show significant increases in the school attendance of boys and girls that are accompanied by significant reductions in the participation of boys and girls in work activities. We also find that the program has a lower impact on the incidence of work for girls relative to boys.FCND ,Transfer payments. ,Income Mexico. ,Public health. ,Children Mexico. ,Poverty. ,

Correlates and Determinants of Child Anthropometrics in Latin America: Background and Overview of the Symposium

This paper provides a summary of the work in seven papers of a Latin American Research Network project intended to identify the following information. The private and public determinants of child anthropometrics; The extent to which the private and public determinants interact and whether interactions suggest gross substitution or complementarities; and The extent to which the influence of the determinants of child anthropometrics vary by the age and gender of the child. Countries for which results are reported included in the project are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.