AbdelRahmen El Lahga

The Effects of Marriage on Couples' Allocation of Time Between Market and Non-Market Hours

Living arrangements have undergone considerable change in recent decades. In most Western countries, marriage rates have fallen, divorce rates have risen, and fertility outside legal marriage has become commonplace (Lundberg and Pollak, 2007; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2007). Marriage is no longer the exclusive context of family formation. Cohabitation substitutes for marriage among many couples at younger ages and is a permanent alternative to marriage for a growing number of couples. For instance, in the USA, the percentage of marriages preceded by cohabitation has risen from about 10% in the period 1965–1974 to well over 50% for 1990–1994 (Bumpass and Lu, 2000). In the same way, the number of unmarried couples has nearly doubled in the 1990s. Cohabitation has also developed in Europe and has become very important in countries such as Germany, France, or Sweden (Stevenson and Wolfers, 2007).

Estimating the impact on poverty of Ghana’s fuel subsidy reform and a mitigating response

The study simulates the welfare implications of the fuel subsidy reform carried out in early 2013 and the required scaling up of cash transfers to mitigate the impact of the subsidy removal on poor households in Ghana. Approximately 78 per cent of fuel subsidies benefited the wealthiest group, with less than 3 per cent reaching the poorest quintiles. We find that the removal of the fuel subsidies, by causing an increase in prices, results in a negative impact on household welfare. The negative effect is worst for the poorest group who experience reduction in their total consumption of 2.1 per cent. The simulation estimates that the poverty rate rises by 1.5 percentage points leading to an additional 395,180 individuals being pushed into poverty.

Poverty and Inequality in Tunisia: A Non-Monetary Approach

In this study we construct a welfare composite index (WCI) from a set of non-monetary household living conditions indicators in order to analyze the evolution of poverty in Tunisia between 1988 and 2001 from a multidimensional perspective. We show that poverty significantly decreased during the period, although regional and rural/urban disparities remained unchanged. Poverty is essentially a rural phenomenon. The Northwest (NW) and Central West (CW) remained the poorest regions of the country. Improvement in housing conditions and in access to communication tools may be important in the effort to fight poverty.

Would You Marry Me? The Effects of Marriage on German Couples' Allocation of Time

We evaluate the effects of the transition from cohabitation to marriage on household domestic and market work hours using a sample of working couples. For this purpose we use the 21 first waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSEOP). We adapt the estimator introduced by Semykina and Wooldridge (2005) to system GMM estimation to account for selection bias in the presence of endogenous regressors. Our results indicate that marriage increases womens specialization in home-based activities and that marriage decreases womens leisure. These effects are robust across specifications.

Decomposing Monetary Inequality In The Arab Region

The main objective of this paper is to perform a decomposition analysis of the inequality level by socioeconomic groups and geopolitical regions of each country to better our understanding of their contribution to overall inequality. This will fill an important gap in knowledge of inequality patterns in the Arab region, by drawing a rough picture of monetary inequality. Our results show that differences in mean income across groups are much larger in Tunisia, Morocco and especially Yemen and account for a much larger proportion of overall inequality.

A Note on the Contribution of Sectoral Natural Population Growth to the Aggregate Poverty Change: Evidence from Bangladesh, Mongolia and Nicaragua

This note extends the Ravallion and Huppi (1991) aggregate poverty change decomposition, to account for the distinct contribution of migration and differential natural population growth between sectors to the aggregate poverty change. We apply our decomposition to three LDCs. We find that accounting for sectoral difference in natural population growth has a considerable impact on national poverty change.

Comparing Multidimensional Poverty between Egypt and South Africa (Les mesures multidimensionnelles de la pauvreté: une application sur l'Afrique du Sud et l'Égypte)

It is common to argue that poverty is a multidimensional issue. Yet few studies have included the various dimensions of deprivation to yield a broader and fuller picture of poverty. In this paper we discuss ethical foundations of various recent multidimensional poverty measures. An application of these measures to compare poverty between Egypt and south Africa is illustrated using robustness analysis and household data from each country.