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251. Income-based Measures of Average Well-being

Author:
Steve Dowrick
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Internation comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy with income comparisons, and shows that the fixed-price indexes of real income, such as those in the Penn World Table, substantially understate the income gaps between the poorest and richest countries.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty

252. Human Well-being: Concepts and Conceptualizations

Author:
Des Gasper
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, 'GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country's living standard' (Partha Dasgupta). Well-being seems to have intuitive plausibility as a concept, but in practice we encounter a bewilderingly diverse family of concepts and approaches, partly reflecting different contexts, purposes, and foci of attention. Is there a unifying framework that yet respects the complexity and diversity of well-being? This paper presents an imperfect comparative and integrative framework that builds on the contributions by Sen and others. We move toward the framework gradually, since well-being concepts are in fact complex entitities which reflect pictures of personhood and of science. Insight grows through surveying a wide range of relevant experience and views, before risking blinkering one's vision in a framework. The paper then uses the framework to examine conceptualizations of human well-being, by Dasgupta, Sen, Nussbaum, Doyal and Gough, and Alkire.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Human Welfare, and Poverty

253. Diffusion of Digital Mobile Telephony: Are Developing Countries Different?

Author:
Petri Rouvinen
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200 developed and developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz model. The market size and network effects are found to play more important roles in the developing countries; there is also more need for complementing innovations in, for example, financial and payment systems. Even though the developing countries have disadvantages, being late entrants in digital mobile telephony is to their advantage and promotes cross-country convergence. Overall digital technologies are best seen as equalizers, and thus the divide is rather socio-economic or analog than digital.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Globalization, and Science and Technology

254. An Inquiry into Cities and Their Role in Subnational Economic Growth in South Africa

Author:
W.F. Krugell and W.A. Naudé
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
South Africa is characterized by significant inequality in spatial economic activity. Whether future growth and development on a subnational level in South Africa will be such as to reduce this inequality may depend on the economic growth and development of South Africa's largest cities. Our local economic growth empirics show some indications of conditional convergence in output between poorer towns as well as overall between all cities and towns. Between 1990 and 2000 some limited sigma convergence was found but this was driven by declines in the standard deviation of per capita income amongst the poorest quintile of towns. An estimate of conditional beta convergence of 1.2 percent over the period 1990-2000 confirms that overall convergence has been taking place. From an estimation of the determinants of economic growth on a local level, using a dataset on 353 local areas in South Africa between 1990-2000 we found the most significant determinants to be stocks of human capital and distance from harbours and markets. The effect of human capital on economic growth was strongly associated with the presence of large cities, as one would predict from endogenous growth theory.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

255. Return International Migration and Geographical Inequality: The Case of Egypt

Author:
Barry McCormick and Jackline Wahba
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores entrepreneurship amongst return migrants, how their business locations and characteristics differ from other businesses, and the implications for rural urban inequality. First, we examine, amongst returnees, the determinants of investment in a project/enterprise. Second, we study the impact of return migration on the characteristics and nature of non-farm small enterprises using a sample of return migrants and non-migrant owners of enterprises. Our data indicate that although the share of return migrants originating in urban areas is almost equal to those from rural areas, and that migrants tend to return to their origin region, urban areas benefit more than rural areas from international savings. The empirical evidence suggests that overseas savings, and the duration of stay overseas, have positive separate effects on the probability of investing in a project/enterprise amongst returnees. Furthermore, returnees from urban-origin are more likely than rural ones to invest in a non-farm enterprise. The findings also indicate that there is a regional bias in the location of firms and jobs created by returnees compared to non-migrants, in favour of the capital city. Thus, overall, the results support a positive impact of return migration on enterprise investment in urban areas driven by the preference of returnees to invest in urban areas.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Migration
Political Geography:
Middle East and Egypt

256. Love Thy Neighbour? Evidence from Ethnic Discrimination in Information Sharing within Villages

Author:
Mattia Romani
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
There is increasing evidence to suggest that a fundamental source of information for farmers on how to access and use new agricultural technologies comes from interacting with neighbours. Economic research on adoption of innovations in a rural context has only partially addressed the issue of how the social structure of a village can affect adoption and the final impact on productivity of farmers. This paper investigates the role of proximity interpreted not only in geographical terms but also along the line of ethnic similarities among neighbours (what we define as 'social proximity'). We use a panel dataset collected in Côte d'Ivoire to define the probability of accessing the knowledge network. The main results indicate that farmers from ethnic minorities are less likely to access, and benefit less from, extension services. But they seem to try to re-equalize their condition by putting more effort than dominant ethnic group neighbours in sharing information among themselves.
Topic:
Agriculture, Demographics, Economics, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Africa

257. Crime, Isolation, and Law Enforcement

Author:
Marcel Fafchamps and Christine Moser
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between criminal activity and geographical isolation. Using data from Madagascar, we show that, after we control for population composition and risk factors, crime increases with distance from urban centers and, with few exceptions, decreases with population density. In Madagascar, crime and insecurity are associated with isolation, not urbanization. This relationship is not driven by placement of law enforcement personnel which is shown to track crime, but fails to reduce feelings of insecurity in the population. Other risk factors have effects similar to those discussed in the literature on developed countries. We find a positive association between crime and the presence of law enforcement personnel, probably due to reporting bias. Law enforcement personnel helps solve crime but appears unable to prevent it.
Topic:
Crime, Demographics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa and Madagascar

258. Urban-Rural Inequality in Living Standards in Africa

Author:
David E. Sahn and David C. Stifel
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban-rural differences for several African countries for which we have data and find that living standards in rural areas lag far behind those in urban areas. Then we examine the relative and absolute rates of change for urban and rural areas and find no overall evidence of declining differences in the gaps between urban and rural living standards. Finally, we conduct urban-rural decompositions of inequality, examining the within versus between (urban and rural) group inequality for asset inequality, education inequality, and health (height) inequality.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Africa

259. Inequality and Welfare Evaluation of Heterogeneous Income Distributions

Author:
Anthony Shorrocks
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper establishes the principles which should govern the welfare and inequality analysis of heterogeneous income distributions. Two basic criteria—the 'equity preference' condition and the 'compensation principle'—are shown to be fundamentally incompatible. The paper favours the latter, thereby vindicating the traditional method of dealing with heterogeneous samples. However, inequality and welfare comparisons will usually be well defined only if equivalent incomes are obtained using constant scale factors; and researchers will need to distinguish clearly between inequality of nominal incomes and inequality of living standards. Furthermore, household observations must always be weighted according to family size.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty

260. Race, Ethnicity, and Health

Author:
Kenneth Finegold and Laura Wherry
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), combined with many states' decisions to expand Medicaid eligibility, increased public coverage of black, white, and Hispanic children between 1997 and 2002. Uninsurance rates fell among children in low-income white, black, and Hispanic families, remained constant among white and black children in higher-income families, and increased among Hispanic children in higher-income families. The health status of children, as reported by their parents, was stable for blacks, whites, and Hispanics, except for a decline in health among higher-income Hispanic children.
Topic:
Demographics, Health, Human Welfare, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States