Household income dynamics: a four-country story

In this article, we analyse the dynamics of household per capita incomes using longitudinal data from Indonesia, South Africa, Spain and Venezuela. We find that in all four countries reported initial income and job changes of the head are consistently the most important variables in accounting for income changes, overall and for initially poor households. We also find that changes in income are more important than changes in household size and that changes in labour earnings are more important than changes in other sources of household income.     

Books received

The Economy of Bangladesh. By Azizur Rahman Khan. London : Macmillan and New York: St. Martins Press, 1972. Pp. xviii + 196; £4.95.

Matching Employment Opportunities and Expectations: A Programme of Action for Ceylon. Report by the International Labour Office. Geneva, 1971. Pp. xvii + 251; £1.60 and U.S.$4.

Price Consistency in Development Planning. By Peter A. Cornelisse. Rotterdam University Press, 1973. Pp. xiv + 154 n.p.

The Mexican Economy: Twentieth‐Century Structure and Growth. By Clark W. Reynolds. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Pp. xxiv, 468; £6.05.

Nutrition, National Development and Planning. Edited by A. Berg, N. S. Scrimshaw and D. L. Call. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., 1973. Pp. 400. £4–50.

The Nutrition Factor: its Role in National Development. By Alan Berg, Portions with Robert J. Muscat. Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1973. Pp. xii 4‐ 290, Tables, Figures. $8.95.

The Ecology of Malnutrition in Mexico and Central America. By Jacques M. May and Donna L. McLellan. New York: Hafner, 1972. Pp. xiii + 397, tables, maps; £7.50.

The Ecology of Malnutrition in the Caribbean. By Jacques M. May and Donna L. McLellan. New York: Hafner, 1973. Pp. viii + 490, tables, maps; £9.95.     

Infrastructure and Development: A Critical Appraisal of the Macro-level Literature

This survey reviews the existing macro-level empirical literature on the link between infrastructure and development in a critical light. After providing a general framework that casts the problem in the context of an aggregate production function, it signals what are the relevant empirical questions to be addressed. This guides the systematic review of a number of empirical studies and the discussion of the main econometric challenges to the identification of the effect of infrastructure on output and productivity. Finally, building on related research, in particular in contract theory and political economy, the article spells out several promising research avenues.     

Aid,Remittances, Medical Brain Drain and Child Mortality: Evidence Using Inter and Intra-Country Data

This article analyses the respective impact of aid, remittances and medical brain drain (MBD) on child mortality using panel and cross-country quintile-level data on respectively 84 and 46 developing countries. Our results show that remittances reduce child mortality while MBD increases it. Health aid also significantly reduces child mortality but its impact is less robust than the impact of remittances. Remittances seem to be more effective in reducing mortality for children belonging to households from the upper classes, whereas neither a pro-poor nor anti-poor effect is found for health aid.     

Part-Time Work,Gender and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from a Developing Country

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between part-time work and job satisfaction in Honduras. In contrast to previous work for developed countries, this paper does not find higher job satisfaction among women working part-time. Instead, for both women and men, job satisfaction is higher when in full-time work, although this finding is stronger for men. Consistent with an interpretation of working part-time as luxury consumption, the paper finds that partnered women with children, poor women or women working in the informal sector are more likely to report higher job satisfaction when working full-time than single women, partnered women without children, non-poor women or women working in the formal sector.     

Ethnic diversity and its spatial change in Latvia, 1897–2011

Utilizing data from five census enumerations of Latvia (including the most recent 2011 census), this study analyzes temporal and spatial trends in ethnic diversity in the country at the national and municipal levels. The measure employed, the ethnic diversity index (EDI), makes possible a more sophisticated interpretation of the dynamics of ethnic diversity than an analysis of the changing percentage shares of Latvia's various ethnic groups over time. At the national level, a trend of declining ethnic diversity prior to Latvia's incorporation into the Soviet Union was followed by a rapid increase during the Soviet period, before the onset of gradually decreasing diversity during the post-Soviet period. These national-level trends obscure a number of trends evident at the municipal level, including salient (depending on the period) ethnic diversity gradients Rīga–Latvia, cities/towns–countryside, and the east–west. Latvia remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries of Europe, and the study outlines some of the implications of the recent stagnation of regional EDIs at rather high levels for the economic and political life of the country.     

Contesting and upholding the rights of the Irish Parliament in 1698: the arguments of William Molyneux and Simon Clement

SUMMARY

This paper explores the constitutional relationship between England and Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century with a focus on the contemporary debate around the prerogative of the Irish legislature. It examines and contrasts the arguments developed in the pamphlets of William Molyneux of Dublin (1656–98), representing the ruling Irish Protestant nation, and of English Whig Simon Clement (1654?–1730?), asserting the rights of the English empire. Molyneux's The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (Dublin, 1698) and Clement's An answer to Mr. Molyneux his case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, stated: and his dangerous notion of Ireland's being under no subordination to the parliamentary authority of England refuted by reasoning from his own arguments and authorities (London, 1698) are compared and analysed in the context of renewed tensions around the woollen trade. These pamphlets highlight the nature, and the perceived nature, of the constitutional relationship between the two polities in the aftermath of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. The main discussion was whether Ireland was a colony of England or an independent kingdom, and how its nature affected the relationship between both legislatures. Molyneux argued that Ireland, although sharing a monarch with England, was an independent kingdom. To Molyneux, Ireland's independence, as a kingdom, signified the independence of its legislature and the unconstitutionality of the English Parliament's claim to legislate for Ireland. Clement refuted Molyneux's assertions point by point, contending that Ireland was part and parcel of an empire. In Clement's opinion, Ireland's subjection to England meant that the English Parliament had a legitimate right to legislate for Ireland.     

Sacred Laïcité and the Politics of Religious Resurgence in France: Whither Religious Pluralism?

This article contributes to the current scholarly discussion by inviting us to look at secularism not as a static model of religious governance, but as a formation that shifts with time and that is deeply related to our contemporary understanding of religion. As such, it investigates the recent transformations of French secularism. In 2004 France passed a law banning visible religious symbols in public schools. Since then French secularism has increasingly become a sacred – non-negotiable – element of collective life. Drawing on Kim Knott's concept of the ‘secular sacred’, the article investigates, through an analysis of policy reports, law proposals and laws, how this discursive usage of secularism has been used to set apart particular spaces from others: secular spaces that carry the ‘supreme’ values of secularism. In this process, the role of public servants and citizens has been changing, as they have been invested with the responsibility of policing the boundaries of these spaces. New tools, such as charters of secularism, laws and regulations, and state bodies are being imagined to consolidate these boundaries. The article also explores how ‘religious resurgence’ (and more specifically ‘Islamic resurgence’) has been essential to this ‘sacred-making’ activity: to give substance to values that are non-negotiable and need to be separated from those that are not. Overall, the piece posits, in line with other recent works, that sacred-making is not reserved to the ‘religious’, but can become a central component of how secularism gets articulated and deployed. In so doing, it underscores the importance of documenting how meanings given to secularism shift to grasp the politics that underpin discourses on religious resurgence.