Quentin Wodon

Does Child Labor Displace Schooling? Evidence on Behavioral Responses to an Enrollment Subsidy

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Does child labour displace schooling? Evidence on behavioral responses to an enrollment subsidy, conducted between 1995 and 1996, in Bangladesh. The study observed that the subsidy increases schooling, but its effect on child labour is ambiguous. The subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour. Substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy. Substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy. The reduction in the incidence of child labour by boys (girls) represents about one quarter (eighth) of the increase in their school enrollment rate.

Gender, Time Use, and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

The papers in this volume examine the links between gender, time use, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. They contribute to a broader definition of poverty to include time poverty, and to a broader definition of work to include household work. The papers present a conceptual framework linking both market and household work, review some of the available literature and surveys on time use in Africa, and use tools and approaches drawn from analysis of consumption-based poverty to develop the concept of a time poverty line and to examine linkages between time poverty, consumption poverty, and other dimensions of development in Africa such as education and child labor.

Water, electricity, and the poor : who benefits from utility subsidies?

While consumer utility subsidies are widespread in both the water and electricity sectors, their effectiveness in reaching and distributing resources to the poor is the subject of much debate. This publication brings together empirical evidence on subsidy performance across a wide range of countries. It documents the prevalence of consumer subsidies, provides a typology of the many variants found in the developing world, and presents a number of indicators useful in assessing the degree to which such subsidies benefit the poor, focusing on three key concepts: beneficiary incidence, benefit incidence, and materiality. The findings on subsidy performance will be useful to policy makers, utility regulators, and sector practitioners who are contemplating introducing, eliminating, or modifying utility subsidies, and to those who view consumer utility subsidies as a social protection instrument.

Poor Areas, or Only Poor People?

Instead of targeting poor areas, should poverty programs target households with personal attributes that foster poverty, no matter where they live? Possibly not. There may be hidden constraints on mobility, or location may reveal otherwise hidden household attributes. Using survey data for Bangladesh, the authors find significant and sizable geographic effects on living standards, after controlling for a wide range of nongeographic characteristics of households, as would typically be observable to policymakers. The geographic effects are reasonably stable over time, robust to testable sources of bias, and consistent with observed migration patterns. Poor areas are not poor just because households with readily observable attributes that foster poverty are geographically concentrated. There appear to be sizable spatial differences in the returns to given household characteristics. Their results reinforce the case for anti-poverty programs targeted to poor areas even in an economy with few obvious impediments to mobility.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: The Role of Infrastructure

The authors provide an empirical analysis of the determinants of three child-health outcomes related to the Millennium Development Goals: the infant mortality rate, the child mortality rate, and the prevalence of malnutrition. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, they go beyond traditional cross-country regressions by exploiting the variability in outcomes and explanatory variables observed within countries between asset quintiles. The authors show the relationships existing between the prevalence of diseases (diarrhea and malnutrition) and mortality. Their findings suggest that apart from traditional variables (income, assets, education, and direct health interventions), better access to basic infrastructure services has an important role in improving child health outcomes. Their analysis of interaction effects between interventions also suggests the importance of combining interventions to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Hurricane Mitch and the Livelihoods of the Rural Poor in Honduras

Abstract This paper assesses the extent to which Hurricane Mitch affected the rural poor in Honduras and whether national and international aid efforts succeeded in providing relief. One of every two surveyed households incurred medical, housing, or other costs due to Mitch. One in three suffered from a loss in crops. One in five lost assets. One in 10 lost wages or business income. Relief was most often provided by churches and nongovernmental organizations. It consisted mainly of food, clothing, and medicine, and it amounted to less than one-tenth of the losses incurred by households.

Food energy intake and cost of basic needs: Measuring poverty in Bangladesh

Past estimates of poverty in Bangladesh based on the food energy intake method found decreasing poverty over time and similar poverty in urban and rural areas. Using the cost of basic needs method, we find increasing poverty for 1984-92 and higher poverty in rural than urban areas. Examples of lack of consistency in past estimates are highlighted. A method is introduced to assess the gap narrowing and re-ranking impacts on poverty measures of changes in poverty lines. The article also estimates the marginal impact of household characteristics such as household size, education, occupation and land ownership on the probability of being poor.

Future Inequality in CO2 Emissions and the Impact of Abatement Proposals

This paper analyzes future carbon emissions inequality using a group decomposition of the Gini index. Business-as-usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declines slowly. Next, the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the Kyoto Protocol and other abatement proposals for Annex II countries in 2010 are measured, with a focus on the gap-narrowing and reranking effects. Substantial reranking of per capita emissions between Annex II and non-Annex II countries will not occur unless the former reduce their emissions by at least 50% (versus 1990 levels) and the latter continue growing unabated.

Consumption dominance curves: testing for the impact of indirect tax reforms on poverty

Abstract A new tool is presented to test for the robustness of the impact on poverty of marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities. Consumption Dominance Curves exist for every order of stochastic dominance. An illustration is provided with Bolivian data.

Inequality in CO2 Emissions Between Poor and Rich Countries

Threatened by global warming, most countries agree on the importance of global greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Yet disagreements persist on the distributional issues involved. Poor countries challenge historical and current inequalities in per capita emissions. Rich countries fear the disruptions that may accompany future reductions of their emissions. This article measures the inequality in per capita CO 2 emissions from fossil fuel use and cement production and the contributions of poor and rich countries to this inequality through a group decomposition of the Gini index 1960 to 1990. Emissions became only marginally less unequal over the period. The impact on inequality of proposals to curtail future emissions through reductions proportional to current emissions, gross domestic product, and population, as well as fixed and sliding combinations, are discussed. Finally, it is shown how the Gini analysis could be applied to quasi-emissions, which incorporate emissions transactions through a tradable emissions permit system and/or joint implementation.