Policy Research Working Paper | Social_Development | World Bank

Is there such thing as middle class values ? Class differences, values and political orientations in Latin America

2011-11-08T05:00:00.000Z

Middle class values have long been perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. This paper investigates the relation between class (measured by position in the income distribution), values, and political orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin American countries. The analysis finds that both a continuous measure of income and categorical measures of income-based class are robustly associated with values. Both income and class tend to display a similar association to values and political orientations as education, although differences persist in some important dimensions. Overall, there is no strong evidence of any "middle class particularism": values appear to gradually shift with income, and middle class values are between the ones of poorer and richer classes. If any, the only peculiarity of middle class values is moderation. The analysis also finds changes in values across countries to be of much larger magnitude than the ones dictated by income, education, and individual characteristics, suggesting that individual values vary primarily within bounds dictated by each society.

Mass media and public services : the effects of radio access on public education in Benin

2012-01-03T05:00:00.000Z

Does radio access improve public service provision? And if so, does it do so by increasing government accountability to citizens, or by persuading households to take advantage of publicly-provided services? Prior research has argued that citizens with greater access to mass media receive greater benefits from targeted government welfare programs, but has not addressed these questions for public services such as in education and health. Using unique data from Benin, this paper finds that literacy rates among school children are higher in villages exposed to signals from a larger number of community radio stations. The effect is identified based on a "natural experiment" in the northern communes of Benin where within-commune variation in village access to radio stations is exogenous to observed and unobserved village characteristics. In contrast to prior research, the authors find that this media effect does not operate through government accountability: government inputs into village schools and household knowledge of government education policies are no different in villages with greater access to community radio. Instead, households with greater access are more likely to make financial investments in the education of their children.

Life satisfaction, social capital and the bonding-bridging nexus

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000Z

The paper investigates the relation between social capital and life satisfaction focusing on the distinction between bonding and bridging. Using the latest version of the combined World and European Values Surveys, the authors first address the question of measurement of social capital by means of a multi-step factor analysis. Through this procedure, they nd that proxies typically used for social capital tend to polarize around two dimensions interpreted as bonding and bridging. These two dimensions are in fact associated with a single latent variable with opposite signs suggesting that they describe two sides of the same latent variable rather than two independent latent variables. The authors call this latent variable the locus of socializing and use it to explore the relation between social capital and life satisfaction across world citizens and across groups of similar countries. The results indicate that people with extreme bonding or bridging attitudes are less happy than people with more balanced attitudes. Unlike the literature on social capital and economic growth that finds bridging attitudes more desirable than bonding attitudes, they nd that bonding attitudes are at least as important as bridging attitudes for life satisfaction. This suggests that the social capital dimensions important for economic growth may not necessarily coincide with the social capital dimensions important for life satisfaction.

The impact of wealth on the amount and quality of child labor

2012-01-30T05:00:00.000Z

This paper analyzes to what extent, and under what conditions, an increase in household wealth affects the use of child labor in poor households. It develops a simple theoretical model, which uses child labor, training, and schooling to maximize household income over time, subject to resource constraints. Then, it conducts an empirical analysis using randomized trial data, which were collected for the evaluation of the 2006 Nicaragua conditional cash transfer program. This social program transfers wealth to poor families in rural areas, conditional on children's school attendance and health check-ups. In addition, for one third of the beneficiaries, there is a further wealth transfer to start a non-agricultural business. The paper finds that the conditional cash transfer program affected the volume and quality of child labor, reducing it in the aggregate and steering it towards skill-forming activities. Specifically, the program appears to have reduced the use of child labor for household chores and farm work, while increasing it for the non-traditional, skill-forming activities related to commerce and retail. Moreover, the paper finds that the source behind the increase in skill-forming child labor is not the basic component, which provides a transfer for paying for schooling and health services, but it's the business-grant component, which provides a household grant for the creation of a micro business or a new economic activity.

Child labor, schooling, and child ability

2012-02-09T05:00:00.000Z

Using data collected in rural Burkina Faso, this paper examines how children's cognitive abilities influence households' decisions to invest in their education. To address the endogeneity of child ability measures, the analysis uses rainfall shocks experienced in utero or early childhood to instrument for ability. Negative shocks in utero lead to 0.24 standard deviations lower ability z-scores, corresponding with a 38 percent enrollment drop and a 49 percent increase in child labor hours compared with their siblings. Negative education impacts are largest for in utero shocks, diminished for shocks before age two, and have no impact for shocks after age two. The paper links the fetal origins hypothesis and sibling rivalry literatures by showing that shocks experienced in utero not only have direct negative impacts on the child's cognitive ability (fetal origins hypothesis), but also negatively impact the child through the effects on sibling rivalry resulting from the cognitive differences.

Poor, or just feeling poor ? on using subjective data in measuring poverty

2012-02-13T05:00:00.000Z

The challenges faced in calibrating poverty and welfare measures to objective data have long been recognized. Until recently, most economists have resisted a seemingly obvious solution, namely to ask people themselves: "Do you feel poor?" The paper studies the case for and against this approach. It is argued that, while one would not want to use self-assessments as welfare metrics in their own right, there is scope for using such data to help calibrate multidimensional measures. Indeed, the idea of a "social subjective poverty line" (below which people tend to think they are poor, but above which they do not) is arguably the most conceptually appealing way of defining poverty. However, the paper points to a number of concerns that have received insufficient attention, including the choice of covariates, survey design issues, measurement errors, frame-of-reference effects, and latent heterogeneity in personality traits and personal tradeoffs. Directions for future research are identified.

Islamic inheritance law, son preference and fertility behavior of Muslim couples in Indonesia

2012-02-21T05:00:00.000Z

This paper examines whether the son preference and fertility behavior of Muslim couples respond to the risk of inheritance expropriation by their extended family. According to traditional Islamic inheritance principles, only the son of a deceased man can exclude his male agnates from inheritance and preserve his estate within the nuclear household. The paper exploits cross-sectional and time variation in the application of the Islamic inheritance exclusion rule in Indonesia: between Muslim and non-Muslim populations affected by different legal systems, across men with different sibling sex composition, and before and after a change in Islamic law that allowed female children to exclude male relatives. The analysis finds that Muslim couples more affected by the exclusion rule exhibit stronger son preference, practice sex-differential fertility stopping, attain a higher proportion of sons, and have larger families than non-Muslims or Muslims for whom the exclusion rule is less binding.

Experiments in culture and corruption : a review

2012-05-08T04:00:00.000Z

Two decades of empirical evaluation have shown that corruption has a negative impact on economic growth, political stability, judicial effectiveness, democratization, educational attainment, and equality of income. However, corruption exists, persists, and varies significantly by culture. Lab studies have recently come to the forefront in identifying both the incentives and disincentives for corrupt behavior. However, lab studies on culture and corruption have led to some puzzling, contradictory results. This paper begins with a discussion of non-experimental work in this area, and evaluates the experimental findings in the context of earlier research. The authors sketch out the channels through which culture interacts with corruption (through institutions and social norms), and argue that discrepancies in experimental results may be due to differences in design (including repetition or unobserved variation in beliefs) or to differences in the response to punishment across societies. In addition to exploring design-based reasons for previous contradictory findings, avenues for future research include: behavioral responses to different types of externalities; replicating results in different countries; and utilizing the lab to formulate effective anti-corruption measures.

Direct democracy and resource allocation : experimental evidence from Afghanistan

2012-07-16T04:00:00.000Z

Direct democracy is designed to better align public resource allocation decisions with citizen preferences. Using a randomized field experiment in 250 villages across Afghanistan, this paper compares outcomes of secret-ballot referenda with those of consultation meetings, which adhere to customary decision-making practices. Elites are found to exert influence over meeting outcomes, but not over referenda outcomes, which are driven primarily by citizen preferences. Referenda are also found to improve public satisfaction, whereas elite domination of allocation processes has a negative effect. The results indicate that the use of direct democracy in public resource allocation results in more legitimate outcomes than those produced by customary processes.

Can participation be induced ? some evidence from developing countries

2012-07-19T04:00:00.000Z

The World Bank has allocated close to $80 billion towards participatory development projects over the last decade. A comprehensive review of the evidence on the efficacy of the approach conducted by the authors for the forthcoming Policy Research Report, Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?, finds that while participatory projects have been reasonably effective in improving access to basic services, there is far less evidence of their effectiveness in improving household income or in building sustainable participatory institutions at the local level. A key issue is that the institutional culture in development agencies such as the World Bank lacks the flexibility and long-term commitment necessary for effective externally induced participatory development. Induced participation -- driven by large-scale bureaucratically managed processes, is quite different from more organic types of participation endogenously organized by civic groups. It requires a very different approach to development, one that pays close attention to contextual variation and to uncertain trajectories of change. In order to be effective, induced participatory projects need a strong focus on learning-by-doing; on monitoring and evaluation and a willingness to learn from failure. A review of the World Bank's practices in monitoring and evaluation, and of its incentives to learn from failure, reveals that without significant changes, including changes in the incentive structures facing management, the Bank cannot be effective in inducing participation.

Performance of skilled migrants in the U.S. : a dynamic approach

2012-07-19T04:00:00.000Z

The initial occupational placements of male immigrants in the United States labor market vary significantly by country of origin even when education and other individual factors are taken into account. Does the heterogeneity persist over time? Using data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses, this paper finds that the performance of migrants from countries with lower initial occupational placement levels improves at a higher rate compared with that of migrants originating from countries with higher initial performance levels. Nevertheless, the magnitude of convergence suggests that full catch-up is unlikely. The impact of country specific attributes on the immigrants' occupational placement occurs mainly through their effect on initial performance and they lose significance when initial occupational levels are controlled for in the estimation.

How does India's rural roads program affect the grassroots ? findings from a survey in Orissa

2012-08-13T04:00:00.000Z

This paper analyzes the effects of all-weather rural roads on households' net output prices, education and health in a poor, drought-prone region of India. Of 30 villages originally surveyed in 2001-02, when two had such roads, a further nine received them between January 2007 and December 2009 under the program Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. Cross-section comparisons involving all villages and 'before and after' comparisons in the nine yielded these findings: (i) net output prices were 5 per cent or more higher; (ii) substantially fewer days of schooling were lost due to bad weather, largely because teachers had fewer absences; (iii) the acutely sick received more timely treatment and were more likely to be treated in a hospital than in the nearest primary health clinic; and (iv) the respondents ranked the resulting benefits in the domains of health and education at least as highly as the 'commercial' ones.

Internal migration in Egypt : levels, determinants, wages, and likelihood of employment

2012-08-13T04:00:00.000Z

This paper describes stylized facts about internal migration and the labor force in Egypt, and shows how internal migration in the country is low compared with international standards. Using aggregate labor force survey data, the paper shows how individuals migrate to governorates with higher wages. With a Mincerian equation, the analysis finds that migrants earn premiums with respect to non-migrants, except for those migrants with low education levels. The aggregate labor statistics reveal lower unemployment rates among migrants, a phenomenon that is verified by an employment equation. According to the econometric results, migrants are more likely to be employed, even after controlling for other observable individual characteristics. Finally, the paper estimates a Probit model for the decision to migrate, finding that more educated individuals are more likely to migrate, agricultural workers have a lower probability of migrating, and individuals from governorates in which food production for own consumption is higher are less likely to migrate. These results suggest that low educational attainment and the "food problem", which ties resources to food production to meet subsistence requirements, are at the root of low migration in Egypt.

Collecting high frequency panel data in Africa using mobile phone interviews

2012-08-28T04:00:00.000Z

As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. The experience was largely a success. High frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible (questions can be changed over time) and rapid. And once households respond to the mobile phone interviews, they tend not to drop out: even after 33 rounds of interviews in the Tanzania survey, respondent fatigue proved not to be an issue. Attrition and non-response have been an issue in the Tanzania survey, but in ways that are related to the way this survey was originally set up and that are fixable. Data and reports from the Tanzania survey are available online and can be downloaded from: www.listeningtodar.org.

Making up people -- the effect of identity on preferences and performance in a modernizing society

2012-10-10T04:00:00.000Z

It is typically assumed that being hard-working or clever is a trait of the person, in the sense that it is always there, in a fixed manner. However, in an experiment with almost 600 boys in India, cues to one's place in the traditional caste order turn out to influence the expression of these traits. The experiment assigned students to different treatments with respect to the salience of caste and had them solve mazes under incentives. It turned out that making caste salient can reduce output by about 25 percent, which is equivalent to twice the effect on output of being one year younger. The channels through which this occurs differ by caste status. For the upper castes, the decline in performance under piece rates can only be explained by a shift in preferences regarding the provision of effort. When the ascriptive caste order is cued, upper-caste individuals may think, "I don't need to excel." In contrast, for the lower castes, which were traditionally "untouchables," publicly revealing caste identity impairs the ability to learn and may lead individuals to think, "I can't (or don't dare to) excel." This paper provides a measure of the impact that ascriptive, hierarchized identities can have on preferences and performance after a society -- in its public pronouncements and legislation -- has adopted norms of equality in a formal sense. The findings are important because they suggest that when contexts cue identities founded on the superseded rules of a hierarchical institution, the effects on human capital formation and development can be first-order. Contexts that make traditional identities salient are an underemphasized source of impediments to institutional change.

"United we stand divided we fall" : maternal social participation and children's nutritional status in Peru

2012-11-13T05:00:00.000Z

In previous literature, social capital has been hypothesized as a substitute for other forms of capital, such as physical and human capital. This paper contributes to this literature, studying the association between mothers' access to social capital via participation in community organizations and their children's nutritional status at 1 and 5 years. Using the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives project, this study suggests that, where human capital is scarce, social capital might have important implications for child development. Maternal social capital is positively associated with height at 1 year old for those children whose mothers have no formal education. No significant association is found at 5 years of age.

Challenges and opportunities of mobile phone-based data collection : evidence from South Sudan

2013-01-17T05:00:00.000Z

The proliferation of mobile phones in developing countries has generated a wave of interest in collecting high-frequency socioeconomic surveys using this technology. This paper considers lessons from one such survey effort in a difficult environment -- the South Sudan Experimental Phone Survey, which gathered data on living conditions, access to services, and citizen attitudes via monthly interviews by phones provided to respondents. Non-response, particularly in later rounds of the survey, was a substantial problem, largely due to erratic functioning of the mobile network. However, selection due to non-response does not appear to have markedly affected survey results. Response rates were much higher for respondents who owned their own phones. Both compensation provided to respondents in the form of airtime and the type of phone (solar-charged or traditional) were varied experimentally. The type of phone was uncorrelated with response rates and, contrary to expectation, attrition was slightly higher for those receiving the higher level of compensation. The South Sudan Experimental Phone Survey experience suggests that mobile phones can be a viable means of data collection for some purposes, that calling people on their own phones is preferred to handing out phones, and that careful attention should be given to the potential for selective non-response.

What is a civil war ? a critical review of its definition and (econometric) consequences

2013-04-03T04:00:00.000Z

The authors argue that the academic literature, both qualitative and quantitative, has mislabeled most episodes of large-scale violence in Africa as civil war; these episodes better fit their concept of regional war complexes. The paper seeks to highlight the fundamental flaws in the conception of civil war in the econometric literature and their implications for econometric specification and estimation, problems that this literature is inherently incapable of rectifying. The authors advocate the comparative study of regional war complexes in Africa based on historical narratives.

Measuring the effect of a community-level program on women's empowerment outcomes : evidence from India

2013-04-04T04:00:00.000Z

This paper uses primary data from rural north India to show that participation in a community-level female empowerment program significantly increases access to employment, physical mobility, and political participation. The program provides support groups, literacy camps, adult education classes, and vocational training for rural women in several states of India; the data are from Uttarakhand. The paper uses instrumental variables and truncation-corrected matching on primary data to disentangle the program's mechanisms, separately considering its effect on women who work, and those who do not work but whose reservation wage is increased by participation. The analysis also finds significant spillover effects on non-participants relative to women in untreated districts. It finds consistent estimates for average treatment and intent to treat effects

Foreign job opportunities and internal migration in Vietnam

2013-04-24T04:00:00.000Z

This paper investigates the role of employment opportunities created by foreign-owned firms as a determinant of internal migration and destination choice using the Vietnam Migration Survey 2004 and the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey 2004. Multinomial logit and conditional logit models are estimated to study both origin and destination-specific characteristics of migrants. The paper finds that the migration response to foreign job opportunities is larger for female workers than male workers; there appears to be intermediate selection in terms of educational attainment; and migrating individuals on average tend to go to destinations with higher foreign employment opportunities, even controlling for income differentials, land differentials, and distances between sending and receiving areas.