Remittances,Banking Status and the Usage of Insurance Schemes

Empirical evidence that migrants send home more remittances after disasters raises the question of whether remittances are used to self-insure, substituting for both formal and informal insurance. We investigate this question using a unique data set on the usage patterns of financial services by households in South Africa. We show that the likelihood that a respondent has a formal funeral cover increases with income and banking status. However, it is lower for individuals receiving remittances, which supports the idea that remittances act as self-insurance. We also show that other risk management strategies influence the purchasing of formal funeral cover. Finally, we find that determinants of informal insurance differ from those of formal insurance.     

Determinants and Benefits of Household Level Participation in Rural Drinking Water Projects in India

Abstract

Using data from households in 45 villages in rural India, this paper finds that wealth, literacy, household and village size are often determinants of two measures of participation in community-based development projects: meeting attendance and capital cost contributions. Using propensity score matching, this study concludes that participation leads to benefits for the households that participate although these benefits are strongest in regions with higher levels of overall participation. This study finds no evidence of elite capture with both poor and wealthy households benefiting from their participation.     

Remittances,Bonds and Bridges: Remittances and Social Capital in Burundi

This study explores the effects of remittances on households’ structural social capital in urban Burundi. Distinctions are made between bonding and bridging social capital, referring to intra- versus inter-network ties of family members and friends. The results demonstrate that remittance-receiving households invest more in bridging social capital by participating in organisations (donating time), but make fewer monetary contributions, compared to non-receiving households. Remittances have mixed effects on bonding social capital: receiving households give significantly less gifts to family members and friends, but are more likely to send internal remittances, compared to non-receivers. The implications of these findings for post-conflict development are discussed.     

Understanding the Role of Participation in Public Service Delivery: Evidences from Rural West Bengal,India

The present study, using household level data of East Midnapore district of West Bengal, India, examines the role of people’s participation in public service delivery. It considers four dimensions of participation namely attending meetings, raising voice, lodging complaints, and making contributions. The study confirms the role of participation in public service delivery. Apart from participation, households’ socioeconomic and political positions also exert significant impacts. There is, however, likelihood of “elite capture” and “clientelism” in the delivery of public services. Effective service delivery presupposes that while attending meetings, people must raise their voice and make contributions.     

Escaping poverty and becoming poor in 36 villages of Central and Western Uganda

Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions.     

Maize Market Participation among Female- and Male-Headed Households in Ethiopia

This paper examines the market participation gaps and their causes between female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) in Ethiopia using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach. The results showed that structural/coefficient effects accounted for 74 per cent (65%) of the differences between FHH and MHH in the net buyer (net seller) maize market positions. The gap between FHH and MHHs regarding quantities of maize sold was largely explained by endowment effects. The results imply that closing the observed market participation gaps will require policy interventions that facilitate equal access for both FHHs and MHHs to resources and other supportive social networks.     

Professor Alec Nove, 1915–94

The following is the text of an address given by Archie Brown of St Antony's College, Oxford, at the funeral service of Alec Nove, held in the Chapel of Glasgow University, 28 May 1994. The Managing Editors are grateful to Professor Brown for permission to reprint the address in full.     

Spectacular Death: Sheng Xuanhuai's Funeral Procession in 1917

This article focuses on the extravagant funeral procession of Sheng Xuanhuai (1844–1916) in November 1917. This mile-long procession attracted over a million spectators and, thereby, lent the residents and sojourners in Shanghai of the day a unique visual sensibility of the modern urban milieu. Various parties to the funeral procession—namely the colonial authorities, the bereaved family, businessmen, and lower-class spectators—developed various tactics to manipulate the spectacle of the procession for political control, commercial gains, and visual pleasure. The author argues that the spectacularization of daily life, as exemplified by the 1917 funeral procession, and a collective will to look and to be looked at in early twentieth-century China, contributed to binding together otherwise segregated people, thus restructuring interpersonal relationships in the modernized city of Shanghai.     

In Times of Sickness: Intra-household Labour Substitution in Rural Indonesian Households

In many developing countries, households with ill adults suffer not only from diminished labour supply but also from an inability to borrow against future labour income. Intra-household labour substitution may be an important coping strategy for these households. Using information about individual health status provided by Indonesia Family Life Survey, this study finds some evidence that Indonesian farm households cope with chronic illnesses of male adults through intra-household labour substitution. Yet, the results show that this strategy is not effective in the case of severe health shocks and that these households are unable to keep their family farm profits stable.     

Why are Informal Loans Still a Big Deal? Evidence from North-east Thailand

Abstract

This article examines the use and benefit of informal loans for different income groups of rural households in north-east Thailand. Using a difference-in-differences estimation approach, which is later complemented by propensity score matching, the article shows that different household groups profit from informal loans in different ways. Poor households increase their asset endowment, and in particular farming assets, whereas rich households’ (food) consumption rises, especially if households borrow due to a shock. By showing that informal loans serve different households for different purposes, this article provides an explanation why they still play an important role.     

Social Policy in Hard Times: Crisis-Coping Strategies in Europe from 1976 to 2013

ABSTRACT

Scholarly contributions linking welfare state and crisis management literature still lack a consistent conceptualization of the central matter of interest. To remedy this shortcoming, this article provides a classification of four potential crisis-coping strategies and analyzes the policy outputs of 11 European countries from 1976 to 2013 on the basis of an innovative dataset. The analysis shows that strong deviations from the status quo ante are the rule rather than the exception in times of economic hardship. Furthermore, it reveals a clear shift from the crisis-coping strategy of “Social Protectionism” over “Muddling Through” and “Welfare State Restructuring” to “Austerity” over time.     

BEYOND THE RULES: THE EFFECT OF OUTCOME FAVOURABILITY ON RED TAPE PERCEPTIONS

The underlying reasoning of much red tape research is that the level of rule burden, in terms of resources expended at implementing and complying with specific rules, is the main driver of red tape perceptions. In this study we challenge this claim and argue that stakeholder red tape perceptions are also affected by the favourability of the outcome. More specifically, if a certain rule or procedure has a positive outcome for a certain stakeholder, then this stakeholder will perceive lower levels of red tape, irrespective of rule burden. Using a survey experiment (n = 81), we show how variations in red tape perceptions are affected in equal measure by rule burden and outcome. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for red tape scholars, in particular the need to further understand the relationships between red tape perceptions and rule procedures and outcomes.     

Poverty Impacts of Changes in the International Prices of Agricultural Commodities: Recent Evidence for Argentina (An Ex-Ante Analysis)

Argentina has benefited greatly from the increase in prices of agricultural commodities. With a large share of its population with low and medium-low incomes; however, a sizable part of households is likely to be adversely affected by the accompanying rise in the price of the consumption basket. An ex-ante analysis suggests that this is the case. Changes through a less obvious channel (that is, in factor incomes) are likely to be more beneficial to middle-income households. In general, all households experience losses, with poorer households being the most affected. When accounting for transfers financed through the collection of export taxes, poorer households benefit. In the absence of compensatory measures, increases in the prices of agricultural commodities could potentially have an important impact in terms of indigence and poverty.     

Poverty and Survival

A recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival. But equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant. Using state-level panel data for India, we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival. We identify a significant within-state relationship which persists conditional upon state income, indicating the size of survival gains from redistribution in favour of households below the poverty line. The poverty elasticity declines over time after 1981. It is invariant to controlling for income inequality but diminished upon controlling for education, fertility and state health expenditure, and eliminated once we introduce controls for omitted trends.     

Pathways into and out of Poverty: A Study of Rural Household Wealth Dynamics in Kenya

This study identifies the factors associated with smallholder farm households that have risen out of poverty or descended into poverty between 1997 and 2007 in Kenya. The study uses data from a nationwide balanced panel of 1,275 households and data from detailed retrospective ‘life history’ survey of 84 households that had experienced either an appreciable improvement or decline in their asset wealth over the 10-year panel period. The results indicate that household welfare dynamics are associated with a disparate set of idiosyncratic and unexpected shocks, such as death and chronic illness, demographic factors, proximity to infrastructural facilities, as well as intergenerational wealth transfers.     

Vulnerability to Multi-Dimensional Poverty: An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Measurement Approaches

This paper investigates whether different measures of ex-post poverty and ex-ante vulnerability to poverty provide consistent estimates of poverty and vulnerability to poverty across households. Moreover, if there is some heterogeneity in the identification of households as poor and vulnerable, it investigates the degree of mismatch between measures? The ex-post monetary poverty (MP) and multidimensional poverty (MDP) measures are used to identify poor households. Likewise, the ex-ante vulnerability to monetary poverty (VMP) and vulnerability to multidimensional poverty (VMDP) measures are used to identify vulnerable households. Using a large household survey data-set of about 90,000 households from the Punjab province of Pakistan, we find that most of the vulnerable households are accurately identified by the ex-ante measures of vulnerability to poverty. However, the ex-post measures of poverty identify different households as poor. Our results show that 18 percent households experiencing MDP are not captured by the one-dimensional measure of MP. The important implication of this study is that the choice of measures does matter in ex-post poverty identification, but not as much in the identification of ex-ante vulnerability to poverty.     

Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization of Latin America: A Prolegomenon

Women's movements made important contributions to ending the period of authoritarian rule in Latin America, but their participation in the reconstruction of democratic politics has been more limited than expected. This paper argues that the enormous influence exerted by technocratic elites in the democratization process in Latin America has represented an obstacle to the improvement of women's status in the region. Gender-biased assumptions and practices have been only partially addressed, in part because the policy-making process is under the control of economists, a professional group with a particularly unfriendly stand towards gendered analysis. It is suggested that reforms within economics may help in the task of making democracy more responsive to the demands of women.     

The impact of tariff removal on poverty in Zimbabwe: A computable general equilibrium microsimulation

The paper uses a microsimulation computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the impact on poverty of a complete removal of tariffs in Zimbabwe. The model incorporates 14,006 households derived from the 1995 Poverty Assessment Study Survey. This paper's novelty is that it is one among a small group of papers that incorporates individual households in the CGE model as opposed to having representative households. Using individual households allows for a comprehensive analysis of poverty. The complete removal of tariffs favours exporting sectors. Poverty falls in the economy while inequality hardly changes. The results differ between rural and urban areas.     

Economic Consequences of Forced Displacement

Over 42 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their communities, though little is known about the impact of this movement on livelihoods. I use a panel data set and exploit a geographic discontinuity to explore the effects of displacement in Uganda. I find that displaced households experience a significant initial decrease in consumption. Two years after households returned home, displaced households still lag behind. However, households in the top quartiles of pre-displacement assets have recovered some of their consumption, though with significantly reduced education and wealth levels. There is likely little or no recovery for the poorest households.     

Poverty in African Households: the Limits of Survey and Census Representations

Abstract

African poverty statistics depend on household-level measurements from survey data, making the definition of household of critical importance. Detailed case studies from Tanzania and Burkina Faso explore (1) understandings of household membership and ambiguities, and (2) how well survey definitions capture households as economic units, and the implications for household size and responses to and mitigation of poverty. We develop an analytic framework of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ households. ‘Open’ households cope with poverty using flexibility, movement and extra-household networks, but are poorly represented by survey data. Closed households are likely to be better described by survey data.