Women in the LAC Labor Market: The Remarkable 1990’s

We examine levels and trends of labor market outcomes for women in the 1990’s using household survey data for 18 Latin American countries covering several years per country. The outcomes we analyze include labor force participation rates, the distribution of employment of women across sectors of the economy (formal versus informal) and across industries (agriculture versus non-agriculture), unemployment, and earnings. Overall we document substantial progress made by women in many areas. The gender wage gap is closing steadily in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Brazil and Uruguay, while Colombian women now enjoy higher earnings than those of men. Women’s share of household labor earnings rose from 28% in the early 1990’s to 30% in the late 1990’s. Regarding the quality of jobs, we examine self-employment and employment in small forms as possible indicators of employment in the informal sector. There is no evidence of a systematic increase in self-employment nor in employment in small firms, and contrary to findings by the ILO, we find that the share of female employment accounted by domestic servants did not increase in the 1990’s. Perhaps the salient development of the 1990’s for women in LAC countries was the brisk-paced, secular rise in their labor force participation rates. We examine this development from several angles. We explore the Singh-Goldin-Durand hypothesis that women’s work status changes with economic development. Mammen and Paxson (2000) examine this hypothesis using data for 90 countries, and find that female participation of 45-59 year olds follows a U-shaped profile, with rates rising with GDP per capita increases above $3000. We find that female participation in LAC does not follow the Mammen-Paxson pattern. Next, we examine the role of schooling in explaining the increase in female labor force participation in LAC countries. We find that increases in female schooling account for 30% of the overall increase in female participation rates. The remaining 70% is explained by increases in participation rates at given schooling levels. Finally, we analyze the role of wages, especially the returns to different schooling levels, as a partial explanation for the pattern of changes in labor force participation rates. All of these findings suggest a fair degree of change in the role of women within households and in the labor market. We conclude that the macro economic picture of stagnation for LAC in the 1990s masks non-trivial developments in the division of labor and time allocation by gender.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39885/2/wp500.pd

Research, Extension, and Information: Key Inputs in Agricultural Productivity Growth

The objective of this paper is to examine how economists have perceived the contributions of agriculture to the economic development process and then to present the case for the critical role that research, extension, and information can play in agricultural productivity growth and thus in economic development, particularly in low income countries. After a brief presentation of the framework commonly used to examine productivity growth, a distinction is made between technological change and technical efficiency. This distinction is crucial for policy purposes because the major impetus behind technological change are research and development, while education and experience are critical to improving managerial capabilities to make efficient use of a given technology. Empirical findings concerning the returns on agricultural research, with special attention to studies that have focused on Pakistan, are discussed. The paper then offers an overview of alternative methodologies available to measure technical efficiency, summarises the empirical literature, and finally focuses on studies dealing with Pakistani agriculture. Once it is established that improvements in technical efficiency could contribute significantly to increases in farm output and income, the discussion moves to some issues that have implications for the measurement and potential improvement of farm efficiency. An overview of a model of privatised extension services, currently being applied in some Latin American countries and which could have some relevance to conditions in Pakistan and elsewhere, is provided. The paper ends with the contention that significant improvements are needed in the collection and organisation of farm production data if we are to advance our understanding of the drivers of productivity growth at the farm level

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY AND OFF-FARM LABOR DECISIONS BY HEADS AND SPOUSES IN NICARAGUA: A SEMIPARAMETRIC ANALYSIS USING PANEL DATA

The objective of this paper is to analyze the determinants of off-farm labor supply by heads of household and their spouses in Nicaragua. Using a three-year balanced panel dataset, we refine the approach introduced by Jacoby (1993) and Skoufias (1994) to estimate shadow wages and shadow income, and we also apply the semiparametric approach developed by Kyriazidou (1997) to panel data which mitigates biases not only from some key individual and farm time-invariant characteristics but also from sample selection. The main findings suggest that the shadow wages and shadow income of household heads and their spouses play a major role in the supply of labor to off-farm activities. When the marginal productivity of agricultural households goes up, there is a reduction in hours allocated to off-farm activities. We also find that education, age, remittances, household size, and whether sons and daughters work are related to off-farm labor supply, with significant differences between their effect on heads and their spouses.

RATES OF RETURN TO PRIVATE AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: EVIDENCE FROM TWO FARM MANAGEMENT CENTERS IN EL SALVADOR

This paper evaluates the economic and the financial viability of implementing private farm management centers (FMC) in El Salvador. In doing so, an ex ante cost-benefit analysis is performed. The results of this analysis suggest that a combination of better farm prices (paid and received), reallocation of resources, and crop diversification that would be promoted by a FMC can lead to an increase in farm level profits that is sufficient to cover the operation of the center and to still generate net gains in household income.Farm Management,

A failed platform: the Citizen Consensus Conference travels to Chile

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.This article starts by reviewing the setbacks that the recent Science and Technology Studies literature has identified in the functioning of technologies of democracy, the different arrangements that look to enact deliberation on technoscientific issues. Putting a focus on the Citizen Consensus Conference, it then proposes that several of these setbacks are related to the kind of "work" that these technologies are expected to do, identifying two kinds of it: performing a laboratory-based experiment and constituting a platform for the dissemination of facts. It then applies this framework to study a Citizen Consensus Conference carried out in Chile in 2003. After a detailed genealogy of the planning, implementation and afterlife of this exercise, the article concludes that several of the limitations experienced are derived from a "successful outcome" conceived as solely running a neat lab-based experiment, arguing for the need to incorporate its functioning as a platform with all the associated transformations and messiness.BMBF, 01UU0906, Innovation in Governanc

A LINEAR PROGRAMMING ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIES OF SIZE AND PROFITABILITY IN VEGETABLE PRODUCTION

Crop Production/Industries,

Women in the LAC Labor Market: The Remarkable 1990’s

We examine levels and trends of labor market outcomes for women in the 1990’s using household survey data for 18 Latin American countries covering several years per country. The outcomes we analyze include labor force participation rates, the distribution of employment of women across sectors of the economy (formal versus informal) and across industries (agriculture versus non-agriculture), unemployment, and earnings. Overall we document substantial progress made by women in many areas. The gender wage gap is closing steadily in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Brazil and Uruguay, while Colombian women now enjoy higher earnings than those of men. Women’s share of household labor earnings rose from 28% in the early 1990’s to 30% in the late 1990’s. Regarding the quality of jobs, we examine self-employment and employment in small forms as possible indicators of employment in the informal sector. There is no evidence of a systematic increase in self-employment nor in employment in small firms, and contrary to findings by the ILO, we find that the share of female employment accounted by domestic servants did not increase in the 1990’s. Perhaps the salient development of the 1990’s for women in LAC countries was the brisk-paced, secular rise in their labor force participation rates. We examine this development from several angles. We explore the Singh-Goldin-Durand hypothesis that women’s work status changes with economic development. Mammen and Paxson (2000) examine this hypothesis using data for 90 countries, and find that female participation of 45-59 year olds follows a U-shaped profile, with rates rising with GDP per capita increases above $3000. We find that female participation in LAC does not follow the Mammen-Paxson pattern. Next, we examine the role of schooling in explaining the increase in female labor force participation in LAC countries. We find that increases in female schooling account for 30% of the overall increase in female participation rates. The remaining 70% is explained by increases in participation rates at given schooling levels. Finally, we analyze the role of wages, especially the returns to different schooling levels, as a partial explanation for the pattern of changes in labor force participation rates. All of these findings suggest a fair degree of change in the role of women within households and in the labor market. We conclude that the macro economic picture of stagnation for LAC in the 1990s masks non-trivial developments in the division of labor and time allocation by gender.labor force participation, earnings, women, Latin America

Violencia y subjetividad : la construcción de la peligrosidad

Esta ponencia es parte de lo producido en el marco del proyecto de investigación "¿Quién es peligroso? Una aproximación a las prácticas violentas en territorios urbanos fragmentados de la provincia de San Juan". En dicho proyecto se seleccionaron como territorios objeto de estudio dos barrios pertenecientes al departamento Rawson, de características contrastante: uno de mayor antigüedad, el barrio Güemes, y otro más nuevo, el barrio La Estación. Ambos son barrios que si bien tienen en común una gran conflictividad, los diferencia la alta estigmatización del segundo en relación al primero.Fil: Ureta, Adriana Alime. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Instituto de Investigaciones Socieconómicas.

Addictive Buying: Causes, Processes, and Symbolic Meanings (Thematic Analysis of a Buying Addict’s Diary)

Con el doble objetivo de, por un lado, comprender y reflejar la experiencia humana de la adicción a la compra, y por otro lado, contribuir a dilucidar la controvertida cuestión de la responsabilidad personal del adicto sobre su comportamiento, se presenta el análisis temático de un extenso diario escrito por una adicta a la compra. Del análisis emergen cuatro temas: las características definitorias de la adicción a la compra que determinan la frontera con otras formas de compra impulsiva o irreflexiva, diversos factores causales, el papel que el dinero y los objetos materiales juegan en las relaciones familiares y de amistad a través de los significados simbólicos que adoptan y la relación de los valores personales con la impulsividad y el autocontrol. Los resultados guían la discusión sobre el modelo moral de la adicción a la compra y fundamentan la propuesta de un modelo que explica la ambivalencia propia de la adicción a la compra sobre la base de la jerarquía personal de valores.The aims of this study were twofold. On the one hand, to reach an understanding of, and to illustrate the experience of addictive buying and, on the other, to throw some light on the controversial subject of addicts’ personal responsibility for their behavior. With these aims, a thematic analysis of an extensive diary written by a compulsive buyer is presented. Four themes emerge from the analysis: the defining characteristics of addiction to buying that determine the boundary separating it from other forms of impulsive or careless buying; several causal factors; the role that money and material objects play in family relationships and friendships through the symbolic meanings they adopt; and the relationship of personal values with impulsiveness and self-control. In view of the results, the moral model of addiction to buying is discussed, and an explanatory model of the ambivalence that is characteristic of addiction to buying is proposed, based on a personal hierarchy of values