Women's Participation and Representation in Politics: Perspectives from Ghana

This article discusses empirical findings on issues affecting women's effective participation in politics and the public sector of Ghana. It argues that women's involvement in public life and politics has steadily declined contrary to hopeful reportage that global empowerment campaigns have increased women's political participation across Africa. The article suggests that given the deep-rooted socio-cultural hindrances women face, affirmative action policies need to be revisited to complement women's agency in contesting for, winning, and participating in politics and public service more effectively.     

The Impact of School Meals on School Participation: Evidence from Rural India

This article assesses the effect of transition from monthly distribution of free food grains to the daily provision of free cooked meals to school children on enrolments and attendance in a rural area of India. School panel data allow a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to address possible endogeneity of programme placement. The results suggest that programme transition had a significant impact on improving the daily participation rates of children in lower grades. The average monthly attendance rate of girls in grade one was more than 12 percentage points higher while there was a positive but insignificant effect on grade one boys' attendance rate. The impact on enrolment levels was insignificant.     

Impacts of Migration on Household Production Choices: Evidence from China

Abstract

The great migration from Chinese farms to cities during the past several decades ranks among the most economically consequential of modern population movements. We use a national sample of rice-producing Chinese households to examine the effects of that migration on agricultural production. Our assessment involves evaluating four alternative theories of labour market equilibrium in the framework of an expanded agricultural household model. Migration’s farm production impacts appear to be slight, not on account of farm labour market perfections or remittance-financed technological improvements, but by substituting a reduction in leisure and other low-return activities for lost labour.     

The Social Shaping of Participatory Spaces: Evidence from Community Development in Southern Thailand

Critical analysis of participatory community development has claimed that such approaches serve as a vehicle for social control and co-option by external actors. Drawing on a case study from Southern Thailand, this article argues that we need to take a less deterministic perspective, and pay more attention to the ways in which community members themselves manipulate or subvert participatory processes. The article shows how this may result in hybrid participatory practices and institutions that contain elements of both local and external interests, and which play a key role in defining the way power is constituted in local participatory spaces.     

Belonging and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2011 President Election in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This study examines the effects of social embeddedness on interest in politics and electoral behaviour using data from a nationally representative survey conducted shortly after the 2011 presidential election in Kyrgyzstan. We find that interest in politics is positively associated with community trust, public sector employment and a sense of national belonging. Controlling for the effects of interest in politics, community trust and public sector employment are also positively associated with voting in this election, whereas evidence on ethno-cultural inclusion is mixed. These findings highlight the role of social embeddedness in political participation in young post-communist democracies.     

Private foreign asset accumulation,not just capital flight: Evidence from the Philippines

External debt problems have been accompanied in many developing countries with large private capital outflows. The latter phenomenon is usually identified in the literature as ‘capital flight’. This article argues that private foreign asset accumulation is a more appropriate term and compares a great variety of definitions and measurement methods and applies these to Philippine data for 1971–88. Outcomes show striking differences in assessment of the magnitude of the phenomenon. In the preferred definition of this study applied to the Philippines, unrecorded workers remittances from abroad, a factor omitted in other studies, represent a major source of foreign exchange earnings which indirectly support private foreign asset accumulation. Other definitions appear to severely underestimate private capital outflows. Econometric evidence on the causes of private foreign asset acquisition shows a strong sensitivity to the applied definition. Regression analysis for six alternative definitions shows that the expected real exchange rate depreciation and the real foreign‐domestic interest rate differential are ‐ in line with portfolio theory ‐ important determinants in the case of nearly all alternative measures, except for those that attempt to define a narrow ‘capital flight’ concept. Other determinants found significant are the availability of external finance and the previous year stock of private foreign assets. Debt‐fuelled private capital outflows are associated with the political economy of public external borrowing and the segmented nature of the foreign exchange market in the Philippines. Stock‐adjustment behaviour in the acquisition of private foreign assets in turn is interpreted as being a result of a simultaneous decision‐making process determining consumption demand and portfolio choice of high‐income Philippine households to satisfy demands related to their international lifestyles. These results have important welfare implications and policy consequences.     

The Intergenerational Effects of Political Influence: Evidence from China

This paper considers the effects of fathers’ political influence on their offspring’s labour market outcomes in China. Political influence refers to the ability to convert political power into economic benefits. This study identifies the dissolution of political influence by exploiting an age-based mandatory retirement rule in urban China. It exploits the variation of political influence in three dimensions: bureaucrat status, retirement status, and offspring gender. A difference-in-differences approach shows that the retirement of a bureaucrat translates into a 13 per cent decrease in offspring’s income. A triple-differences approach suggests retirement of a bureaucrat father translates into a 27 per cent decrease in earnings among sons. Retirement of a bureaucrat father is associated with larger income losses for offspring working in the same industry sector as their father and in industries that have a high concentration of assets or that are controlled by the state. This paper adds evidence to the growing literature estimating the economic benefits of political connections.     

Estimation of Vulnerability to Poverty Using a Multilevel Longitudinal Model: Evidence from the Philippines

Using the panel data for the Philippines in 2003–2009, we estimate a three-level random coefficient model to measure household vulnerability and to decompose it into idiosyncratic and covariate components. We correct heterogeneity bias using Bell and Jones’s ‘within-between’ formulation. A majority of the poor and 18 per cent of the non-poor are found to be vulnerable to unobservable shocks, while both groups of households are more susceptible to idiosyncratic shocks than to covariate shocks. Adequate safety nets should be provided for vulnerable households that lack access to infrastructure, or are larger in size with more dependents and less-educated heads.     

Gender Differences in Land Inheritance,Schooling and Lifetime Income: Evidence from the Rural Philippines

This article examines the difference in lifetime incomes arising from parental preferences in the allocation of land inheritance and investments in schooling between sons and daughters in the rural Philippines. Sons are preferred with respect to land inheritance, receiving 0.15 additional hectares of land, while daughters are treated more favourably in schooling investments, receiving 1.5 more years of schooling. However, differences in both current and life-cycle incomes between sons and daughters are insignificant. This suggests that Filipino parents allocate intergenerational transfers to equalise incomes among their children, without sacrificing efficiency.     

浅析韩国女性政治参与之现况

这些年,韩国女性的政治参与取得了较大进展：韩国政府制定了有利于女性参政的政策法规、在议会推行女性议员最低比例制度、女性出任过总理、女性参政团体不断发展扩大,妇女参政意识有所增强。但女性参政过程中仍然面临着一些困境,参政议政仍然存在很大局限性。     

Women's Wellbeing and the Sex Ratio at Birth: Some Suggestive Evidence from India

A declining sex ratio (SR) for a population has generally been diagnosed as an indicator of worsening female advantage, while a declining sex ratio at birth (SRB) – such as in the context of the Indian population over the recent past – has been diagnosed as being caused largely by the phenomenon of sex-selective foeticide. In this article, we examine the merits of a less sinister hypothesis in terms of which a secular improvement in women's wellbeing has led to a sex-neutral reduction in the rate of foetal wastage, and through that route, to a reduction in the SRB (and therefore in the overall SR of the population). We seek support for this hypothesis by examining evidence from India. We also discuss the implications of this line of reasoning for women's wellbeing, development and the significance of a declining sex ratio.     

Local Financial Development and Household Welfare in Vietnam: Evidence from a Panel Survey

We examine the impact of local financial development on household welfare in Vietnam. We employ household-level panel data for the periods 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2013 covering three provinces and measure local financial development at the district, sub-district and village levels. To account for potential endogeneity that could emanate from the fact that local economic development could spur local financial development, we employ a recently suggested method of identification through heteroscedasticity. Our results show that local financial development has a significantly positive effect on household annual income, consumption and consumption smoothing.     

Effect of Forced Relocation on Household Income and Consumption Patterns: Evidence from the Aynak Copper Mine Project in Afghanistan

In 2011, the government of Afghanistan and a Chinese mining company relocated an entire village near the Aynak copper mine, where they developed a mining site. This paper investigates the impact of this displacement on affected households’ income and consumption patterns using a difference-in-differences approach and primary household-level data from the villages around the mine in two periods: one just before relocation in 2011 and another in 2015. In 2011, all households of the Wali Kali village, one of the seven project-affected villages, were involuntarily relocated. Project-affected families (PAFs) claim that their traditional earning sources have been inadequately replaced by mine-related earnings and that, being separated geographically, they now face difficulty maintaining social networks that are necessary for their survival. Once lost, rebuilding social networks is not easy in war-trampled Afghanistan. This paper clarifies these shadowy effects of forced relocation and demonstrates that traditional daily labour income was reduced significantly and only partially replaced by income from mine-related activities among those who were relocated and that relocation significantly discouraged the participation in community life, reflecting the losses of social capital among the PAFs due to separation.     

Short and Long Recall Errors in Retrospective Household Surveys: Evidence from a Developing Country

While recall errors in retrospective data from household surveys may generate estimation biases, the nature and the relative magnitude of the errors are still largely unknown, especially in the context of developing countries. To bridge this gap in the existing studies, we conduct a resurvey of respondents of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLS) 2006. The combined data set allows us to investigate a variety of short-term and long-term errors associated with recall surveys. First, our empirical results suggest that when we ask total expenditure rather than categorised expenditures, long recall errors are no worse than short recall errors. Second, we found mean-reversion only for long recall errors in the sum of categorised expenditures but not necessarily for total expenditure. Finally, the inclusion of household size, asset, income, and geographical dummy variables in regression analyses may mitigate the biases arising from measurement errors.     

The Impact of Cooking with Firewood on Respiratory Health: Evidence from Indonesia

The vast majority of households in low-income countries cook with firewood, which is known to produce various airborne toxins. We examine whether cooking with firewood results in poorer respiratory health by using a unique Indonesian household survey that collected direct measures of lung capacity. We find that individuals living in households that cook with firewood have 9.4 per cent lower lung capacity than those that cook with cleaner fuels. This impact is larger for women and children than for men. The results strongly support the international policy focus on facilitating households to switch to cooking with cleaner fuels.     

Citizens' Learning,Involvement, and Participation in Decision-Making Under the Democratic Ethos: A Theoretical Framework and the Israeli Experience

Public administration literature usually assumes that citizens' participation in administrative decision-making (PDM) processes can improve public sector performance and trust. In this article, we question the universality of this assumption, arguing that PDM processes will have positive results in terms of performance and trust only when there are available channels to influence policy outcomes and democratic participatory behavior. We construct theoretical arguments based on a mechanism of social learning and illustrate them by reference to the case of Israel. The framework highlights the centrality and importance of culture and social characters for the study and planning of public administration reforms.     

Fairness and Efficiency in Smallholder Farming: The Relation with Intrahousehold Decision-Making

Agricultural households face collective action dilemmas when making decisions about investments in their common household farm and the allocation of resources and benefits derived from it. We relate intrahousehold decisions, as measured in a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted with spouses in agricultural households in western Uganda, with actual investments and intrahousehold resource allocation. Intrahousehold decision-making that supports cooperation and equitable sharing is associated with greater investment in the intensification of cash and food crop production, and more equitable access and control over income. Freeriding behaviour by husbands is associated with the intensification of cash crop production, but not with equitable sharing.     

Ashes from the phoenix: state terrorism and the party-list groups in the Philippines

An ongoing theme in Filipino history has been the exclusion of the left from electoral politics. Something that may provide an aperture facilitating left-wing participation are the provisions of the 1987 Constitution providing for the election, based on proportional representation, of representatives from traditionally marginalized sectors of society. Since the implementation of these provisions, six party-list groups have become the visible face of the left in Philippine politics. However, since 2001, the Philippines have experienced a wave of assassinations targeting leftists. These killings, an emulation of the Phoenix Program implemented by the United States in Vietnam, are designed to destroy organizations used as ‘fronts’ by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the progressive party-list groups have been specifically targeted. These killings, and the fear they generate, are an example of state terrorism and, eventually, will prove themselves to be flawed counterinsurgency doctrine because, by precluding left-wing participation in electoral politics, they force the left into armed opposition.     

The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data

Abstract

This article examines the size and profile of the middle class in Africa using alternative definitions based on pooled unit record data from the Demographic and Health Survey for 37 African countries covering the period 1990–2011. Results suggest that size of the middle class has grown modestly in many countries in the 2000 decade as compared with the 1990s. The article approached the making of the middle class in Africa from institutional and policy perspectives. Quality of institutions, ethnic fractionalisation and education play a significant role in determining the rise of the middle class.