Futoshi Yamauchi

Early childhood nutrition schooling and sibling inequality in a dynamic context: Evidence from South Africa.

This article examines the effects of early childhood nutrition on schooling investments and outcomes to assess the dynamic nature of human capital production, using panel data from South Africa. Height‐for‐age Z‐score is used as a measure of health and nutritional status in early childhood. Based on a comparison of siblings, the empirical analysis shows that improving children’s health significantly lowers the age when they start school, increases grade attainment, decreases grade repetition, and improves learning performance in the early stage of schooling. However, the observed effect diminishes as a child ages, which implies that (i) height at ages earlier than three better explains subsequent schooling outcomes and/or (ii) the role of health capital changes from one schooling stage to another.

Marriage Behavior Response to Prime-Age Adult Mortality: Evidence from Malawi

This article examines the effect of AIDS-related mortality of the prime-age adult population on marriage behavior among women in Malawi. A rise in prime-age adult mortality increases risks associated with the search for a marriage partner in the marriage market. A possible behavioral change in the marriage market in response to an increase in prime-age adult mortality is to marry earlier to avoid exposure to HIV/AIDS risks. We test this hypothesis by using micro data from Malawi, where prime-age adult mortality has drastically increased. In the analysis, we estimate the probability of prime-age adult mortality that sample women have observed during their adolescent period by utilizing retrospective information on deaths of their siblings. Empirical analysis shows that excess prime-age adult mortality in the local marriage market lowers the marriage age for females and shortens the interval between the first sex and first marriage.

Prenatal Seasonality, Child Growth, and Schooling Investments: Evidence from Rural Indonesia

Abstract This article examines the impacts of prenatal conditions on child growth using recent data from Indonesia. There is seasonality in birthweight: this measure is significantly higher immediately after the main rice harvest in the country. The empirical results show that an increase in birthweight improves child growth outcomes as measured by the height and weight z-scores, as well as schooling performance as measured by age at start of schooling and number of grades repeated. The interactions of ecological variations affect early childhood human capital formation and can have long-term impacts on childrens outcomes.

Population Pressures, Migration, and the Returns to Human Capital and Land: Insights from Indonesia

Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth in a general equilibrium setting, this paper examines the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household outcomes. The analysis uses panel data from Indonesia combined with district-level demographic data. Historically, Indonesia has adapted to land constraints through a mix of agricultural intensification, expansion of the land frontier, and nonfarm diversification, with public policies playing a role in catalyzing all of these responses. In contemporary Indonesia, the paper finds that human capital determines the effect of increased population density on per capita household consumption expenditure. On the one hand, the effect of population density is positive if the average educational attainment is high (above junior high school), while it is negative otherwise. On the other hand, farmers with larger holdings maintain their advantage in farming regardless of population density. The paper concludes with some potential lessons for African countries from Indonesias more successful rural development experiences.

Factor Endowments, Wage Growth, and Changing Food Self-Sufficiency: Evidence from Country-Level Panel Data

Asian countries have witnessed a sharp increase in real wage as a result of rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent years. Using a country level panel data from 1980 to 2010, this paper examines the effects of real wage increase on Asian agriculture that traditionally used family labor intensively on small farms. The empirical evidence supports our hypothesis that an increase in real wages, along with absorptions of labor into nonagricultural sectors, has been inducing the substitution of labor by machines in agriculture. However, this process is less successful in the countries that are constrained by their small operational land sizes, resulting in lowered land productivity. We also demonstrated that dynamic changes in yield are an important determinant of food self-sufficiency ratio. The above findings imply that in the near future, Asian agriculture can face a challenge in maintaining domestic food production. Given the large size of consumer demands in the region and its increasing trend, the future path of Asian agriculture could be a significant constraint on the global food supply-demand balance.

Why Do Schooling Returns Differ? Screening, Private Schools, and Labor Markets in the Philippines and Thailand

This article examines returns to schooling in the Philippines and Thailand, using recent employee surveys in manufacturing industries. Empirical results show that (i) schooling returns steadily increase as education attainment increases in Thailand, but the returns increase only at university level in the Philippines, and that (ii) private school premiums are higher in the Philippines than Thailand. The latter finding is consistent with the dominance of private institutions in the Philippine education system. The premiums from private schooling investments in the Philippines are, however, found to be spurious in the sense that private schools screen high ability students, which augments wage. Therefore, the productivity gain from private schooling is small.

Natural disasters, self-Insurance, and human capital investment: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi

This paper examines the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The empirical results show that the accumulation of biological human capital prior to disasters helps children maintain investments in the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (long-term nutritional status) plays a role of insurance with resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investment and outcomes, although disasters have negative impacts on investment. In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less affected by the adverse effects of floods, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock in the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are rather frequent, exposure to highly frequent droughts in some cases reduces schooling investment but the negative impacts are larger among children embodying less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to the disasters, especially the households stock of intellectual human capital, also helps maintain schooling investments at least to the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in children prior to the disasters.

Risks, Ex-Ante Actions and Public Assistance: Impacts of Natural Disasters on Child Schooling in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi

This paper examines the impacts of natural disasters on schooling investments with special focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The importance of ex-ante actions depends on disaster risks and the likelihood of public assistance, which potentially creates substitution between the two actions. The findings show that higher future probabilities of disasters increase the likelihood of holding more human capital and/or livestock relative to land, and this asset-portfolio effect is significant in disaster prone areas. The empirical results support the roles of both ex-ante and ex-post responses (public assistance) in coping with disasters, but also show interesting variations across countries. In Ethiopia, public assistance plays a more important role than ex-ante actions to mitigate the impact of shocks on child schooling. In contrast, households in Malawi rely more on private ex-ante actions than public assistance. The Bangladesh example shows active roles of both ex-ante and ex-post actions. These observations are consistent with the finding on the relationship between ex-ante actions and disaster risks. The results also show that among ex-ante actions, human capital accumulated in the household prior to disasters helps mitigate the negative effects of disasters in both the short and long runs.

Wage Growth, Landholding, and Mechanization in Chinese Agriculture

Highlights • Rising real wages induced substitution of labor by machines in Chinese agriculture.• An expansion of machine services by providers contributed to mechanization.• Active land rental market enabled some farmers to increase their operational size.• Relatively educated farmers tended to reduce their operational size.• Scale economies are arising with mechanization and active land rental markets.

Impacts of Prime‐age Adult Mortality on Labour Supply: Evidence from Adolescents and Women in South Africa*

This paper examines the impact of prime‐age adult mortality on the transition made by adolescents from school to the labour market and on female adult labour force participation decisions in South Africa. We find, first, that deaths of prime‐age adults significantly increase both male and female adolescents’ labour force participation as they stop their schooling. Secondly, the death of prime‐age adults in general also decreases school enrolment ex ante. Thirdly, female adults tend to join the labour force following the death of prime‐age adult males. These findings imply that prime‐age adult mortality increases labour supply and disrupts human capital formation.