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on Demographic Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒04‒02
five papers chosen by Héctor Pifarré i Arolas Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung |
| By: | Victoria Baranov; Sonia Bhalotra; Pietro Biroli; Joanna Maselko |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the long-term impact of treating maternal depression on women’s financial empowerment and parenting decisions. We leverage experimental variation induced by a cluster-randomized control trial that provided psychotherapy to perinatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one the largest psychotherapy interventions in the world, and the treatment was highly successful at reducing depression. We locate mothers seven years after the end of the intervention to evaluate its long-run effects. We find that the intervention increased women’s financial empowerment, increasing their control over household spending. Additionally, the intervention increased both time- and monetary-intensive parental investments, with increases in investments tending to favor girls. |
| Keywords: | mental health, maternal depression, women’s labor supply, empowerment, early life, parenting, child development, randomized controlled trial, Pakistan |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wchild:60&r=dem |
| By: | Jean-Paul Chavas; Martina Menon; Elisa Pagani; Federico Perali |
| Abstract: | We investigate the relationship between the individual and household indirect utility functions in the context of a collective household model. Our analysis produces new results that explain how the rule governing the distribution of resources among household members is related to the measurement of household welfare and intra-household inequality. We show that in a collective model of private consumption, income shares are equal to the product of two weights: the Pareto weight and a distribution weight reflecting income effects across individuals. For a weighted Bergsonian representation of household utility and general assumptions about individual preferences, we derive the associated household welfare functions and intra-household inequality measures belonging to a family of entropy indexes. We illustrate our findings with an empirical application that estimates a collective demand system to recover associated individual and household welfare functions along with the measures of intra-household inequality. This is the first application that estimates the Pareto weight and examines its role within a measure of income dispersion among household members. |
| Keywords: | Collective household model, Sharing rule, Household welfare, Intra-household inequality, Theil index. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wchild:56&r=dem |
| By: | Lisack, Noëmie (Bank of England); Sajedi, Rana (Bank of England); Thwaites, Gregory (Bank of England) |
| Abstract: | We quantify the impact of past and future global demographic change on real interest rates, house prices and household debt in an overlapping generations model. Falling birth and death rates can explain a large part of the fall in world real interest rates and the rise in house prices and household debt since the 1980s. These trends will persist as the share of the population in the high-wealth 50+ age bracket continues to rise. As the United States ages relatively slowly, its net foreign liability position will grow. The availability of housing and debt as alternative stores of value attenuates these trends. The increasing monopolisation of the economy has ambiguous effects. |
| Keywords: | Demographics; population ageing; neutral interest rates |
| JEL: | E13 E21 E43 J11 |
| Date: | 2017–12–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boe:boeewp:0701&r=dem |
| By: | Alex Bell; Raj Chetty; Xavier Jaravel; Neviana Petkova; John Van Reenen |
| Abstract: | Who are America's most successful inventors - and what can we learn from their experiences in designing policies to stimulate innovation? To answer these questions, former CEP director John Van Reenen and his colleagues have analysed data on the lives of more than one million inventors. |
| Keywords: | inventor, America, innovation |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:522&r=dem |
| By: | Blaise Gnimassoun; C. John Anyanwu |
| Abstract: | While the dominant collective belief asserts that brain drain is detrimental to the development of small economies, new studies hold the reverse view. This paper aims at studying the role of the African Diaspora in the economic development of Africa. It analyzes both the overall effect and the specific effect of emigration according to the level of education of emigrants. Then, through a deeper investigation, the paper analyzes the main channels through which the Diaspora influences economic development in Africa. The results show that the African Diaspora contributes positively, significantly and robustly to the improvement of real per capita income in Africa. These findings challenge the dominant collective belief since the higher the educational level of the emigrants, the greater the impact of the Diaspora on the level of economic development. Improvements in human capital, total factor productivity and democracy are effective transmission channels of this impact. Finally, the results show that while high-skilled emigrants have an overall greater impact on economic development and democracy, those with a low level of education contribute more to remittances to Africa. The establishment of an annual African Diaspora Summer School (ADSS) by the AfDB in partnership relevant international and regional stakeholders as a channel for the transfer of knowledge, technology and experience would further strengthen the role of the Diaspora in Africa’s economic development. |
| Keywords: | International migration, Economic development, Africa. |
| JEL: | F22 O55 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2018-16&r=dem |