Level of living and fertility among a rural population of the Philippines

This study examines the issue of whether the relationship of fertility to measures of economic resources is different at lower income levels than at higher levels. Testing was done in a rural Philippine setting in 1978-79. 3 measures of economic resources were utilized -- income, quality of housing, and provision of schooling for children. The data were drawn from a survey of rural families residing in 5 muncipalities of Iloilo province, on Panay Island in the central Philippines. In the study design, villages (or barangays) were selected from the 5 municipalities to obtain equal numbers of 3 agricultural types -- upland, rainfed lowland, and irrigated lowland farms. Interviews were conducted during a 4-month period in late 1978 and early 1979. Completed interviews of 1077 married women were obtained from 1066 households in 46 villages. These women were under age 50. The number of children ever born was used as the measure of fertility. To derive household income for the families in the survey both farm production and nonfarm income were converted into Philippine pesos. For a measure of housing quality, an index was formed based on 7 household items which could be considered amenities for the family and on the reported construction materials for 5 parts of the dwelling. This sample of households in the rural villages of Iloilo Province exhibited evidence of a threshold in the relationship between housing quality and fertility and between per capita income and fertility. For those families with per capita income less than 200 pesos per year, there was a strong positive relationship between 2 of the economic resource measures and fertility. This threshold for families of very low income showed support for the presence of limiting factors other than contraception. When the contracepting women of low income were removed from the analysis, the slope below the threshold became steeper. The poor nutrition and poor health that are associated with very low income can result in lower fecundity, thus biologically or nonvolitionally limiting fertility from what it could be with conditions of good health and nutrition. Among the families with higher per capita income, there was a negative relationship between per capita income and fertility. Housing quality yielded the strongest evidence of the threshold effect. Education of the children was not related to fertility in this model. Study findings indicate that for about 1/3 of this rural population initial increases in their economic level or living standard could result in increasing fertility up to a threshold level.     

Food Price Transmission and Economic Development

In this paper we challenge the conventional wisdom that the world’s poorest countries are also the most vulnerable to spikes in international food prices. We derive an inverted U-shaped relationship between food price transmission and the development level of a country from a theoretical model. This prediction is subsequently tested in two sets of regressions where economic development is approximated by per capita income and where we control for a number of other potential determinants of food price transmission. The first set of regressions is based on estimated transmission elasticities and the second on actual domestic food price changes during spikes in international food prices. In both sets of regressions we find strong evidence of the existence of an inverted U-shaped relation between food price transmission and income. Thus, food prices in middle income (rather than in low income) countries respond the strongest to changes in international food prices, implying that the poor in these countries are the most exposed to spikes in food prices. We also show that the factors explaining the variation in the estimated transmission elasticities can explain the variation in domestic food price changes during spikes in international food prices equally well.     

The Effect of Food Price Changes on Child Labour: Evidence from Uganda

Most people in developing countries spend up to 60 per cent of their income on food, even though the majority of them are farmers. Hence, a change in food prices affects both their revenue as well as expenditure, and it may thereby affect their labour market decisions. Using the Uganda National Panel Survey and monthly regional food prices, this paper examines the effect of changes in food prices on child labour. The empirical evidence shows that an increase in food prices is linked to an increase in the probability and the intensity of child labour. We find the effect of food price increases to be smaller among landowning households, which is consistent with the view that landowning households can better compensate for price shocks. The empirical results suggest that periodic shocks in food prices may have longer lasting effects on economic development in developing countries through the channel of child labour.     

Long-term Impacts of Global Food Crisis on Production Decisions: Evidence from Farm Investments in Indonesia

This paper estimates farmers’ investment response to food price spikes using household panel data collected before and after the 2007/08 food price crisis in Indonesia. We found that an increase in farmers’ terms-of-trade allowed relatively large crop-producing farmers to increase their investments at both extensive and intensive margins. Food price spikes had a significant income effect among farmers whose production surplus is large for market sales. During the food price crisis, large farmers particularly increased machine investments, which saved some labour inputs, pointing to the importance of complementarities between land and machine investments.     

Analysis of food expenditure patterns of industrial workers and their families in a developing country

This paper employs data from a single socio‐economic group within the Indian population to throw some light on three related topics—the impact of urbanization on the demand for food, the nature of the income‐elasticity of expenditure on food for this group, and the importance of particular socio‐economic variables as determinants of the demand for food.

The income‐elasticity of demand for food has become liable to maltreatment in the process of development planning; all too often an estimate of this parameter is employed unquestioningly to evaluate the food requirements of developing countries, although it is well known that as incomes rise the income‐elasticity of demand for food falls. The following pages show that, like other characteristics of a developing system, the income‐elasticity of the demand for food is far from being a ‘fixed’ parameter. Firstly, as development proceeds, it is subject to change in a particular manner and direction. Secondly, the particular value of the income‐elasticity is subject to considerable variation within the country at a point in time. Thirdly, other variables than income exert significant pressure on behaviour, as evidenced by food expenditure patterns.     

NEGOTIATING BUREAUCRATS

This article will present the argument that frontline bureaucrats fulfilling their duties within an infrastructure bureaucracy can be understood as negotiating bureaucrats, policymakers, and cousins to street‐level bureaucrats. Empirically, the argument is based on data from an exploratory case study of a major road construction project in Sweden collected through passive participatory observation, interviews, and documents; the main source of theoretical inspiration is implementation theory and the theory of street‐level bureaucracy. Working conditions, both similar to and different from street‐level bureaucrats, are discussed, and patterns of negotiating practices are identified and analyzed. The analysis indicates that a fragmented implementation structure has effects on when and how negotiating practices are applied, and on policy outcomes, bureaucratic legitimacy, and political efficacy.     

Diversification Under Climate Variability as Part of a CSA Strategy in Rural Zambia

Climate change is posing an increasingly severe challenge to agricultural livelihoods due to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Livelihood diversification can play an important role in decreasing food insecurity and vulnerability under these challenges. This paper contributes to the literature on livelihood diversification and vulnerability under climate change to assess the role of diversification as part of a Climate-Smart Agriculture strategy by analysing the determinants of diversification, income and poverty in Zambia using panel data. We specifically focus on the roles of climate shocks and institutions in shaping these linkages to highlight policy insights to improve resilience.     

Cash Crops and Food Security: Evidence from Ethiopian Smallholder Coffee Producers

One of the central questions in food policy debates has been the role of cash cropping for achieving food security in low-income countries. We revisit this question in the context of smallholder coffee production in Ethiopia. Using data collected by the authors on about 1600 coffee farmers in the country, we find that coffee income is associated with improved food security, even after controlling for total income and other factors. Further analysis suggests that one possible pathway is linked to being better able to smooth consumption across agricultural seasons.     

Characteristics of Drug Vendors on the Tor Network: A Cryptomarket Comparison

Abstract

Past research on drug-related vendors on Tor marketplaces indicate that sellers are motivated by the greater anonymity afforded by the Tor Network. Limited research has even posited that some drug-related vendors on cryptomarkets sell to other dealers, adding another dimension to existing literature that highlights the retail nature (dealer-to-customer transactions) of these Tor-based drug markets. Yet these past studies have been largely qualitative in nature. This study conducted a quantitative analysis of vendor accounts on Evolution and Agora to determine characteristics predictive of vendors advertising controlled substances, and to determine whether any statistically significant differences among drug vendor characteristics existed between the two sites.     

Redesigning the Hollow State: A Study of Florida Child Welfare Service Reform through the Lens of Principal-Agent Theory

While principal-agency theory has greatly facilitated our understanding of governance and management in the hollow state, close examinations of how system designs affect agency problems has been rare. The purpose of this study is to explicitly investigate the effects of different contract configurations on agent shirking, which is a common problem in third-party service delivery arrangements. Florida's recent statewide privatization and reconfiguration of its child welfare service delivery system are analyzed for this purpose. Data were collected through intensive document reviews and interviews with the public managers and the contract agents who were involved in the reform. Major structural components of the redesigned system (such as overall contract configuration, procurement policies, oversight mechanism, payment methods, and vendor governance structures) are examined and compared with those of the old system. The results of the analysis suggest that the Florida reform installed several structural devices intending to curb agent shirking that plagued the old system. The most significant changes involve a transition of the contracting scheme from a fragmented quasimarket based on dyadic contracting to an integrated service network based on a managed care model, a shift of the focus of the contract oversight from compliance and process to service outcomes, and a transfer of programmatic and financial risks and uncertainties from the government to vendors. Further, the findings of the study reveal some unintended consequences of the reform. For example, the reconfigured system that empowers communities also promotes local parochialism that hinders the government's statewide policymaking ability. The reform that consolidates contracts into the hands of a few large vendors under a standardized contract management system unites the vendors around their common interests to confront their government principal.     

Culture as Values or Culture in Action? Street Codes and Student Violent Offending

ABSTRACT

The authors draw on two competing cultural perspectives—culture as values and culture in action—to examine the relationship between street codes and the propensity to violently victimize others. Specifically, they explore whether individual-level and school-level street codes, net of one another, are related to 3 types of violence: assault, robbery, and sexual battery. In addition, they consider whether these effects vary according to 3 contextual characteristics: (a) the location of the offending—in school versus out of school, (b) school-level economic disadvantage, and (c) school efficacy. Three-level ordinal logistic regression models are estimated using four waves of survey data from over 3,000 students nested within 103 schools. Results provide evidence that individual-level street codes are related to violent offending in a manner that is, largely speaking, not tied to context. However, there is some evidence that the effects of school-level street codes on offending differ between outside of school and in school settings and are conditioned by levels of school disadvantage and efficacy. Overall, some support is offered for both the culture-as-values and culture-in-action perspectives.     

Implementing European case law at the bureaucratic frontline: How domestic signalling influences the outcomes of EU law

This article analyses the implementation of European case law at the bureaucratic frontline of European member states. Theoretically, insights from street‐level implementation studies are combined with judicial impact research. Empirically, we compare how EU rules on free movement and cross‐border welfare are applied in practice in Denmark, Austria and France. We find that when applying EU rules in practice, street‐level bureaucrats are confronted with a world of legal complexity, consisting of ambiguous rules, underspecified concepts and a recent judicial turn by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In order to manage complexity, street‐level bureaucrats turn to their more immediate superiors for guidance. As a consequence, domestic signals shape the practical application of EU law. Despite bureaucratic discretion and many country differences, domestic signals create uniform, restrictive outcomes of EU law in all three cases. Thus we show that there is considerable room for politics in EU implementation processes.     

The Reversal of Fortune Thesis Reconsidered

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a ‘Reversal of Fortune’ from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both of their proxies for pre-modern income, namely urbanisation and population density. More specifically, an alternative measure of urbanisation with more observations generates a positive (but not significant) correlation between pre-modern and contemporary income, while a better measure of population density on arable land no longer produces a robust relationship.     

Can agricultural intensification help attain Sustainable Development Goals? Evidence from Africa and Asia

Market-oriented agricultural intensification is a major development strategy, yet its alignment with sustainable development goals (SDGs) is unclear. We apply indicators for SDG 2 (eradicate hunger) regarding income, food production, food security and land tenure to recent intensifications in Rwanda and Laos to reveal their disaggregated impacts. We find while market-oriented intensification may generate poverty reduction, it also exacerbated marginalisation and poverty through various forms of land tenure insecurity. Ethnicity and gender were influential factors in Rwanda, and post-conflict resettlement policies in Laos. We discuss implications for development practice and selection of suitable indicators to reflect the ambition of the SDGs.     

Long-Term Effects of Temporary Income Shocks on Food Consumption and Subjective Well-Being

A national level unconditional cash transfer programme, Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT), in Indonesia allows an empirical assessment on whether there are long-term benefits in terms of food consumption and overall well-being. The results show that a positive albeit temporary income shock increases the quantity of food consumed by the poorest households and the overall subjective well-being among the poorest recipients. It is also found that poor households are more likely to invest in farm and non-farm businesses, which in turn helps them sustain a higher level of food consumption and overall satisfaction months after the end of the programme.     

Do street traders have the ‘right to the city’? The politics of street trader organisations in inner city Johannesburg,post-Operation Clean Sweep

Street trader organisations are paradoxical objects of study. Their claims resist being analysed through the ‘right to the city’ lens, so contested are rights to inner city spaces between multiple users, not all of them in dominant socioeconomic positions; and so ambiguous is the figure of the street trader, oppressed but also appropriating public space for profit, increasingly claiming, in neoliberalising cities, an entrepreneurial identity. In the aftermath of the 2013 ‘Operation Clean Sweep’ (in which the City of Johannesburg unsuccessfully attempted to evict street traders from its inner city), this paper unpacks the politics of street trader organisations: how they organise their constituencies, frame their claims, forge unlikely alliances and enter into disempowering conflicts in engagements with a divisive municipality.     

Agricultural Production,Dietary Diversity and Climate Variability

Abstract

Nonseparable household modelsoutline the interlinkage between agricultural production and household consumption, yet empirical extensions to investigate the effect of production on dietary diversity and diet composition are limited. While a significant literature has investigated the calorie-income elasticity abstracting from production, this paper provides an empirical application of the nonseparable household model linking the effect of exogenous variation in planting season production decisions via climate variability on household dietary diversity. Using degree days, rainfall and agricultural capital stocks as instruments, the effect of production on household dietary diversity at harvest is estimated. The empirical specifications estimate production effects on dietary diversity using both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity. Significant effects of both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity on dietary diversity are estimated. The dietary diversity-production elasticities imply that a 10 per cent increase in agricultural revenue or crop diversity result in a 1.8 per cent or 2.4 per cent increase in dietary diversity respectively. These results illustrate that agricultural income growth or increased crop diversity may not be sufficient to ensure improved dietary diversity. Increases in agricultural revenue do change diet composition. Estimates of the effect of agricultural income on share of calories by food groups indicate relatively large changes in diet composition. On average, a 10 per cent increase in agricultural revenue makes households 7.2 per cent more likely to consume vegetables, 3.5 per cent more likely to consume fish, and increases the share of tubers consumed by 5.2 per cent.     

Reinforcing public responsibility? Influences and practices in street‐level bureaucrats' engagement in policy design

Previous literature demonstrates that when street‐level bureaucrats believe that the policy as designed is not desirable, they utilize various strategies to change the situation. This study suggests that when street‐level bureaucrats believe that fixing a policy through the manner in which it is implemented is not enough, they will try to influence the design of the policy directly. Three factors promote this decision: public perceptions revealed in their interactions with clients, professional ethical values and a supportive organizational environment. We test this argument using Israeli public social workers in the context of urban renewal. We discuss the problems and benefits of involving street‐level bureaucrats in policy design and view such actions as related to welfare reform and changes in the state's responsibility for its citizens. We maintain that in this changing environment, street‐level bureaucrats' involvement in policy design should be formally institutionalized.     

STREET‐LEVEL BUREAUCRACY AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

The concept of ‘street‐level bureaucracy’ was coined by Michael Lipsky (1980) as the common denominator for what would become a scholarly theme. Since then his stress on the relative autonomy of professionals has been complemented by the insight that they are working in a micro‐network of relations, in varying contexts. The conception of ‘governance’ adds a particular aspect to this: the multi‐dimensional character of a policy system as a nested sequence of decisions. Combining these views casts a different perspective on the ways street‐level bureaucrats are held accountable. In this article some axiomatic assumptions are drawn from the existing literature on the theme of street‐level bureaucracy and on the conception of governance. Acknowledging variety, and arguing for contextualized research, this results in a rethinking of the issue of accountability at the street level.