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Abstract: The literature assessing the efficacy of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, has long puzzled over positive associations between SNAP receipt and various undesirable... more
Abstract: The literature assessing the efficacy of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, has long puzzled over positive associations between SNAP receipt and various undesirable health outcomes such as food insecurity. Assessing the causal impacts of SNAP, however, is hampered by two key identification problems: endogenous selection into participation and extensive systematic underreporting of participation status. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we extend partial identification bounding methods to account for these two identification problems in a single unifying framework. Specifically, we derive informative bounds on the average treatment effect of SNAP on child food insecurity, general poor health, obesity, and anemia across a range of different assumptions used to address the selection and classification error problems. In particular, to address the selection problem we appl...
In Ethiopia, 9.7 percent of rural and 28.7 percent of small-town children are wasted and underweight, and under nutrition is responsible for a large percentage of childhood deaths. We use two waves of panel data, from the 2012 and 2014... more
In Ethiopia, 9.7 percent of rural and 28.7 percent of small-town children are wasted and underweight, and under nutrition is responsible for a large percentage of childhood deaths. We use two waves of panel data, from the 2012 and 2014 Ethiopia Socioeconomic Surveys, to assess the dynamics of weight-for-height z-score, wasting, weight-for-age z-score, and underweight among children aged 6-59 months. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effects regression models are used to examine the associations of individual, household, and community factors with each outcome. The cross-sectional results, which generally parallel previous findings, suggest that child’s sex, recent illnesses, household assets, and livestock ownership are correlated with nutritional status. However, many associations disappear after controlling for fixed effects; only recent illness and community access to a main road are consistently significant determinants of changes in nutrition status. Thus, changing factors...
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Earnings, Schooling, and Economic Reform: Econometric Evidence From Hungary (1986 2004) Nauro Campos and Dean Jolliffe How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform?... more
Earnings, Schooling, and Economic Reform: Econometric Evidence From Hungary (1986 2004) Nauro Campos and Dean Jolliffe How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform? This article sheds light on this question using a unique data set and procedure to reduce sample-selection bias. The principal assumptions are that sample-selection bias was minimal in 1986 and that the decision to participate in the wage market after 1986 is correlated with age, gender, and schooling demographics. Once corrected for sample selection on observables, the increase in returns is smaller, suggesting the existence of the positive correlation between education and the decision to participate in the wage sector that was discussed above. 16 Comparing the panels shows that sample-selection bias is positive and quite large throughout the period of analysis. An advantage of the Wage and Earnings Survey design is that the sample was selected i...
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The March 2019 update to PovcalNet involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. Some welfare aggregates have been changed for improved harmonization, and the national accounts and population input data... more
The March 2019 update to PovcalNet involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. Some welfare aggregates have been changed for improved harmonization, and the national accounts and population input data have been updated. This document explains these changes in detail and the reasoning behind them. Emphasis is given to the update of the CPIs series released by the IMF on November 2018 and the changes to the national inequality measures in China, India, and Indonesia. In addition to the changes listed here, 50 new country-years have been added, bringing the total number of surveys to 1657.
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In developing countries highly dependent on agriculture, non-farm enterprises (NFEs) are often lauded as income diversification opportunities, helping to smooth income in the farming off-seasons. Using data from the first wave of the... more
In developing countries highly dependent on agriculture, non-farm enterprises (NFEs) are often lauded as income diversification opportunities, helping to smooth income in the farming off-seasons. Using data from the first wave of the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), a nationally representative survey of rural and small town Ethiopia, we explore the role NFEs play in seasonal income generation, consumption smoothing, and risk mitigation. We find that NFEs are in fact pro-cyclical with agriculture, with the most productive months of NFE operation coinciding with the harvest season and crop sales. This procyclicality appears to be driven by demand-side factors, where increases in community income through crop sales generate higher demand for NFE goods and services. We also find no evidence that households operating NFEs are better able to ward off incidence or duration of food insecurity in the face of shocks, suggesting NFEs do not insure temporally vulnerable households against r...
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This paper estimates differentiated effects of household asset ownership on educational outcomes of children ages 6 and above in Tanzania. The paper contributes to the literature by providing a theoretical framework that portrays a... more
This paper estimates differentiated effects of household asset ownership on educational outcomes of children ages 6 and above in Tanzania. The paper contributes to the literature by providing a theoretical framework that portrays a mechanism for different assets to have differential effects on child education. We use data from Living Standard Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) in Tanzania which provides panel data on both household wellbeing and agricultural practices and resources. Use of the LSMS-ISA data allows us to disentangle the complicated relationship between child education and agricultural assets in ways which would not be possible using traditional cross-sectional surveys of either household wellbeing or farm practices. We use the Hausman-Taylor instrumental variable (HTIV) panel-data estimator to efficiently control for time-invariant variables omitted from our specifications while allowing us to identify the effects of fixed controls while...
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for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.The authors, however, retain all ownership of On signing the Food Stamp Act of 1964, President Johnson noted that “as a permanent program, the food stamp plan will be one of our most valuable... more
for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.The authors, however, retain all ownership of On signing the Food Stamp Act of 1964, President Johnson noted that “as a permanent program, the food stamp plan will be one of our most valuable weapons for the war on poverty” (Johnson, 1964). From a humble beginning of 2.9 million recipients per month and $228
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Occasional widely publicized controversies have led to the perception that growth statistics from developing countries are not to be trusted. Based on the comparison of several data sources and analysis of novel IMF audit data, we find no... more
Occasional widely publicized controversies have led to the perception that growth statistics from developing countries are not to be trusted. Based on the comparison of several data sources and analysis of novel IMF audit data, we find no support for the view that growth is on average measured less accurately or manipulated more in developing than in developed countries. While developing countries face many challenges in measuring growth, so do higher-income countries, especially those with complex and sometimes rapidly changing economic structures. However, we find consistently higher dispersion of growth estimates from developing countries, lending support to the view that classical measurement error is more problematic in poorer countries and that a few outliers may have had a disproportionate effect on (mis)measurement perceptions. We identify several measurement challenges that are specific to poorer countries, namely limited statistical capacity, the use of outdated data and m...
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Using panel data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), representative of all people living in rural and small-town areas, this paper describes changing patterns of food security between 2012 and 2014. We examine four measures of... more
Using panel data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), representative of all people living in rural and small-town areas, this paper describes changing patterns of food security between 2012 and 2014. We examine four measures of food security – two consumption based (calories and dietary diversity) and two experience based (whether food insecurity was experienced in any month, and whether any actions were taken in response).Over all four measures in both years, the share of the food insecure population was never less than 25 percent. Disentangling chronic from transitory food insecurity is important for policy design and for estimating the total food insecurity count over time. For example, the average rate of inadequate dietary diversity was approximately 30 percent in both 2012 and 2014, but the panel data reveal that 46 percent of the rural and small-town population had inadequately diverse diets at some point over the period. While the cross-sectional estimates suggest s...
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Research Interests: Economics, Development Economics, Economic Growth, Emerging Economies, Developing Countries, and 15 moreDeveloping Country, Comparative Advantage, Debt, Developing Economies, Currency, Business Cycle, Developed Countries, Benchmark, Business Cycles, Autoregression, Commodity, Advanced Countries, Economic sectors, Adverse effect, and Capital Account
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Research Interests: Economics, Development Studies, Coping Strategies, Agricultural Economics, Human Development, and 15 moreHousing, Food Production, Agriculture, Food composition, Food Security, Food Consumption, Food Insecurity, Nutrients, Nutrient, Coping mechanisms, Household Survey, Food Price, Living Standards, Gauge, and Consumer surplus
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The vision 2021 plan and the associated perspective plan 2010-2021, adopted by the Government of Bangladesh lay out a series of development targets for 2021. Among the core targets identified to monitor the progress toward the vision 2021... more
The vision 2021 plan and the associated perspective plan 2010-2021, adopted by the Government of Bangladesh lay out a series of development targets for 2021. Among the core targets identified to monitor the progress toward the vision 2021 objectives is that of attaining a poverty headcount of 14 percent by 2021. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: given Bangladesh's performance in poverty reduction over the last decades, can the author expect the proportion of the country's population living in poverty to be 14 percent by 2022? Using data from the last three household income and expenditures survey, we examine changes in poverty rates during 2000-2010, estimate net elasticity of poverty reduction to growth in per-capita expenditure, and then project poverty headcounts into the future. Our poverty projections based on the last three Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) surveys suggest that Bangladesh will achieve its Millennium Developmen...
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An alleged achievement of socialism was gender equality in the labour market. Has its collapse shattered this accomplishment? The theoretical literature and attendant empirical evidence are inconclusive. Using data for 2.9 million wage... more
An alleged achievement of socialism was gender equality in the labour market. Has its collapse shattered this accomplishment? The theoretical literature and attendant empirical evidence are inconclusive. Using data for 2.9 million wage earners in Hungary we find that the male-female difference in log wages declined from 0.31 to 0.19 between 1986 and 1998 and that this is largely explained by a matching decline in “Oaxaca's discrimination,” suggesting extraordinary improvement of women’s relative situation. Further, we find that variation over time in the wage gaps is associated with public and large firms having progressively smaller gaps than their counterparts. JEL Classification: I2, J16, P3
Page 1. A COMPARISON OF PARAMETRIC AND SEMIPARAMETRIC ESTIMATES OF THE EFFECT OF SPOUSAL HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE ON WEEKLY HOURS WORKED BY WIVES CRAIG A. OLSON* School ...
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... Dean Jolliffe Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1800 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20036-5831, USA and William ... In a between-groups designed experiment in El Salvador, longer, more detailed questions on... more
... Dean Jolliffe Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1800 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20036-5831, USA and William ... In a between-groups designed experiment in El Salvador, longer, more detailed questions on consumption result in an estimate of mean ...