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41. The Determinants of Child Weight and Height in Sri Lanka: A Quantile Regression Approach

Author:
Harsha Aturupane, Anil B. Deolalikar, and Dileni Gunewardena
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrition with the right set of interventions, policymakers need to have a better understanding of its economic, social and policy determinants. While there is a large literature that investigates the determinants of child malnutrition, it focuses almost exclusively on mean effects of these determinants. However, socioeconomic background variables and policy interventions may affect child nutrition differently at different points of the conditional nutritional distribution. Using quantile regressions, this paper explores the effect s of variables such as a child's age, sex and birth order; household expenditure per capita; parental schooling; and infrastructure on child weight and height at different points of the conditional distributions of weight and height using data from Sri Lanka's Demographic and Health Survey. Results indicate that OLS estimates can be misleading in predicting the effects of determinants at the lower end of the distributions of weight and height. For example, even though on average Sri Lankan girls are not nutritionally-disadvantaged relative to boys, among children at the highest risk of malnutrition girls are disadvantaged relative to boys. Likewise, although expenditure per capita is associated with strong nutritional improvement on average, it is not a significant determinant of child height or weight at the lower end of the distribution. Similarly, parental education, electricity access, and the availability of piped water have larger effect son child weight and height at the upper quantiles than at the lower quantiles. The policy implication is that general interventions—parental schooling, infrastructure and income growth—are not as effective for children in the lower tail of the conditional weight and height distributions. These children, who are at the highest risk of malnutrition, are likely to need specialized nutritional interventions.
Topic:
Development, Education, and Health
Political Geography:
Asia and Sri Lanka

42. Higher Education Reservations and India's Economic Growth: An Examination

Author:
Gurpreet Mahajan
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In 2006 the Indian Parliament passed legislation reserving an additional 27 percent of seats in all institutions of higher learning, funded by the central government, for the category of socially disadvantaged groups officially known as "Other Backward Classes." At a time when India is opening its economy to global competition, this initiative has re-ignited the debate on the efficacy of reservations and triggered fresh anxieties about the impact of this policy on India's economic growth.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Education, and Globalization
Political Geography:
India and Asia

43. No Way Out: An Assessment of the Romani Community in Georgia

Author:
David Szakonyi
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
The Romani community is the most marginalized and disadvantaged ethnic community in Georgia. Although accurate estimates are hard to establish, the population is thought to number up to 1,500 persons, living in multiple small settlements across Georgia. Extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of education and health care, and isolation from larger society comprise several of the major problems the community as a whole is facing. The overall situation for the Roms in Georgia has significantly deteriorated since the Soviet period, leaving the population practically devoid of any means to lift themselves out of their often devastating circumstances.
Topic:
Education, Ethnic Conflict, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, and Georgia

44. Skilled Emigration and Skill Creation: A quasi-experiment

Author:
Satish Chand and Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Does the emigration of highly-skilled workers deplete local human capital? The answer is not obvious if migration prospects induce human capital formation. We analyze a unique natural quasi-experiment in the Republic of the Fiji Islands, where political shocks have provoked one of the largest recorded exoduses of skilled workers from a developing country. Mass emigration began unexpectedly and has occurred only in a well-defined subset of the population, creating a treatment group that foresaw likely emigration and two different quasi-control groups that did not. We use rich census and administrative micro data to address a range of concerns about experimental validity. This allows plausible causal attribution of post-shock changes in human capital accumulation to changes in emigration patterns. We show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji; they moreover raised the stock of tertiary educated people in Fiji—net of departures.
Topic:
International Relations, Education, Markets, and Migration
Political Geography:
Asia and Australia/Pacific

45. Media and Conflict: Afghanistan as a Relative Success Story

Author:
Yll Bajraktari and Christina Parajon
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The development of media in post-Taliban Afghanistan has been relatively successful (compared with both the Taliban regime and other countries subject to international intervention) in establishing free and responsible expression despite the lack of electricity, harsh terrain, absence of viable media outlets during the Taliban regime, and a conservative religious society that subordinates women. However, Afghanistan's media development remains incomplete. Since it still faces many challenges, the international community must continue to assist and support it.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Education
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Asia, and Taliban

46. The World is Still Waiting: Broken G8 promises are costing millions of lives

Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Poverty and suffering could be ended in our lifetime, and our leaders must do everything in their power to make this happen. This was the clear demand of the 40 million people in 36 countries who took part in the Global Call to Action Against Poverty in 2005. A year later, in the space of just one day, 24 million people across the world stood up against poverty as part of World Poverty Day.
Topic:
Education, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, Asia, France, Germany, and Italy

47. Minds on Fire: Enhancing India's Knowledge Workforce

Author:
Richard P. Adler
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
India's economy continues to grow at a remarkable pace. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) has been expanding an average of nearly 8 percent per year since 2002. In the fiscal year ending March 2007, India's economy grew at 9.4 percent. This performance means that the Indian economy met its own national five-year growth goal for the first time since the first five-year plan was issued by the government in 1950. At its current rate of growth, India will become a trillion-dollar economy by 2007–2008 and will overtake South Korea to become Asia's third-largest economy, after China and Japan.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Education, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan, India, Asia, and South Korea

48. The Inequality-Growth Nexus in the Short and Long Runs: Empirical Evidence from China

Author:
Guanghua Wan, Zhao Chen, and Ming Lu
Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper argues that the conventional approach of data averaging is problematic for exploring the growth—inequality nexus. It introduces the polynomial inverse lag (PIL) framework so that the impacts of inequality on investment, education, and ultimately on growth can be measured at precisely defined time lags. Combining PIL with simultaneous systems of equations, we analyze the growth—inequality relationship in postreform China, finding that this relationship is nonlinear and is negative irrespective of time horizons.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Education
Political Geography:
China and Asia

49. Primary Education in India: Prospects of Meeting the MDG Target

Author:
Bernarda Zamora and Sonia Bhalotra
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It decomposes this growth into a component due to changes in the characteristics that determine schooling, and another associated with changes in the responsiveness of schooling to given characteristics. Our results caution against the common practice of using current data to make future projections on the assumption that the model parameters are stable. The analysis nevertheless performs illustrative simulations relevant to the question of whether India will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of realising universal primary education by the year 2015. The simulations suggest that India will achieve universal attendance, but that primary school completion rates will not exhibit much progress.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Education
Political Geography:
India and Asia

50. Widening Gap of Educational Opportunity? A Longitudinal Study of Educational Inequality in China

Author:
Min-Dong Paul Lee
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This study attempts to convey an accurate and dynamic account of educational inequality in China during the last decade. The study finds that there is clear evidence of rapid expansion of education, and younger students all over China are benefiting from the expansion. One of the most notable achievements is the virtual elimination of gender bias against girls in educational attainment. However, analysis of province-level school enrolment data over the last decade shows evidence of persistent regional inequality of educational attainment. Students from inland provinces continue to face strong structural inequality in educational opportunity, and this structural inequality becomes more pronounced as they progress to higher grades. Moreover, inter-cohort analysis reveals that the inter-provincial inequality in upper grades is increasing for younger cohort of students, meaning that educational inequality in China is deteriorating further. Lastly, a decomposition analysis shows that the causes of inter-provincial educational inequality are quite complex and cannot simply be explained by the urban-bias hypothesis that is often suggested as the main source of income inequality.
Topic:
Education, Human Rights, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia