Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and ... more Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and what causes change are core policy questions. Panel data are central to understanding change, and this special issue of the journal is devoted to five papers examining change in wellbeing as measured by two waves of data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS). The papers cover changes in consumption poverty, multi-dimensional poverty, food security, malnutrition in the form of wasting and underweight status, and smoothing patterns of nonfarm enterprise activities. The ESS data is freely available for download and immediate use. While the papers in this issue draw from the first two waves of data (2011-12 and 2013-14), the third wave of the ESS (2015-16) is now also publicly available. The ESS is a collaborative effort of the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia and the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys of Agriculture program.
published by Elsevier. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the pu... more published by Elsevier. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process-such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms-may not be reflected in this version of the text.
Bulgaria's transition to a market economy has coincided with a large increase in wage inequality.... more Bulgaria's transition to a market economy has coincided with a large increase in wage inequality. Given the emphasis on wage leveling in pre-transition Bulgaria, the rise in wage inequality may be due to managers rewarding more productive workers; or it may be the result of rewarding non-economic characteristics such as gender. Using data from the 1995, nationally representative Bulgaria Integrated Household Survey, I examine whether gender discrimination is an important factor determining the gap in wages between men and women and the extent to which gender discrimination affects wage inequality. I model wage determination with a correction for sample selection as a Type III Tobit and estimate this model with the Honoré et al. (1997) semiparametric estimator. Unlike the classic Heckman correction for sample selection, this estimator is consistent in the presence of heteroscedasticity. I bootstrap to estimate standard errors. Using separate wage regression estimates for men and women, an Oaxaca decomposition indicates that women's wages are 25 percent lower than men's wages and 85 percent of this differential is due to discrimination, or more precisely, due to differences in how men and women are rewarded for the same characteristics.
published by Taylor and Francis. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting f... more published by Taylor and Francis. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process-such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms-may not be reflected in this version of the text.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Essentially all empirical questions that are addressed with sample data require estimates of samp... more Essentially all empirical questions that are addressed with sample data require estimates of sampling variance. The econometrics and statistics literatures show that these estimates depend critically on the design of the sample. The sample for the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), which serves as the basis for official poverty, unemployment, and earnings estimates, results from a stratified and clustered design. Unfortunately, analysts are frequently unable to estimate sampling variance for many CPS statistics because the variables marking the strata and clusters are censored from the public-use data files. To compensate for this, the Bureau of Census provides a method to approximate the sampling variance for several, specific point estimates, but no general method exists for estimates that differ from these cases. Similarly there are no corrections at all for regression estimates. This paper proposes a general approximation method that creates synthetic design variables for the estimation of sampling variance. The results from this method compare well with officially reported standard errors. This methodology allows the analyst to estimate sampling variance for a significantly wider class of estimates than previously possible, and therefore increases the usefulness of research resulting from the CPS data files.
Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and ... more Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and what causes change are core policy questions. Panel data are central to understanding change, and this special issue of the journal is devoted to five papers examining change in wellbeing as measured by two waves of data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS). The papers cover changes in consumption poverty, multi-dimensional poverty, food security, malnutrition in the form of wasting and underweight status, and smoothing patterns of nonfarm enterprise activities. The ESS data is freely available for download and immediate use. While the papers in this issue draw from the first two waves of data (2011-12 and 2013-14), the third wave of the ESS (2015-16) is now also publicly available.
Poverty can take many different forms, ranging widely over dimensions both monetary, such as cons... more Poverty can take many different forms, ranging widely over dimensions both monetary, such as consumption or income, and nonmonetary, such as health and education. One large class of nonmonetary measures of poverty is the multidimensional poverty index (MPI); recent studies document that people identified as poor in one dimension are often different from those who found to be poor in another dimension. This paper extends the literature by examining whether MDP dynamics are similar to the dynamics of a related consumptionbased measure of poverty. Using two waves of Ethiopian panel data (2011-12 and 2013-14) we estimate poverty based on a monetary value of real consumption and a nonmonetary weighted deprivation index (our underlying measure of MDP). Similar to studies for other countries, we find that the two estimates of poverty identify significantly different groups of Ethiopians as poor. A key contribution of this paper is the finding that changes in consumption are largely independent of changes in multidimensional wellbeing: Awareness that an individual's wellbeing improved over time as measured by improvements in the weighted deprivation index provides no information about whether his or her wellbeing has improved where consumption is concerned.
economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our t... more economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Purchasing power parity exchange rates (PPPs) are used to estimate the international poverty line (IPL) in a common currency and account for relative price differences across countries when measuring global poverty. This paper assesses the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the nominal value of the IPL and global poverty. The analysis indicates that updating the $1.90 IPL in 2011 PPP dollars to 2017 PPP dollars results in an IPL of approximately $2.15-a finding that is robust to various methods and assumptions. Based on an updated IPL of $2.15, the global extreme poverty rate in 2017 falls from the previously estimated 9.3 to 9.1 percent, reducing the count of people who are poor by 15 million. This is a modest change compared with previous updates of PPP data. The paper also assesses the methodological stability between the 2011 and 2017 PPPs, scrutinizes large changes at the country level, and analyzes higher poverty lines with the 2017 PPPs. This paper is a product of the Development Data Group, Development Economics and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at .
Food insecurity can be a serious issue in conflict-afflicted countries, where food production and... more Food insecurity can be a serious issue in conflict-afflicted countries, where food production and distribution networks are strained and distributing emergency food aid can be a challenge. In such countries, economic shocks such as food price spikes can have further harmful effects on already vulnerable populations. ERS and World Bank researchers recently used nationally representative household
The costs of USDA's three largest food assistance programs-food stamps, school means and the ... more The costs of USDA's three largest food assistance programs-food stamps, school means and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)-are easier to measure than the benefits of those programs. In 2000, the three programs' direct costs were $28 billion. As shown in this issues brief, the well-being of low-income families who participate in food assistance programs is enhanced by the alleviation of the severity of poverty, an increase in food security, satisfactory nutrient intake, and increases in household food expenditures.
Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and ... more Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and what causes change are core policy questions. Panel data are central to understanding change, and this special issue of the journal is devoted to five papers examining change in wellbeing as measured by two waves of data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS). The papers cover changes in consumption poverty, multi-dimensional poverty, food security, malnutrition in the form of wasting and underweight status, and smoothing patterns of nonfarm enterprise activities. The ESS data is freely available for download and immediate use. While the papers in this issue draw from the first two waves of data (2011-12 and 2013-14), the third wave of the ESS (2015-16) is now also publicly available. The ESS is a collaborative effort of the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia and the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys of Agriculture program.
published by Elsevier. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the pu... more published by Elsevier. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process-such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms-may not be reflected in this version of the text.
Bulgaria's transition to a market economy has coincided with a large increase in wage inequality.... more Bulgaria's transition to a market economy has coincided with a large increase in wage inequality. Given the emphasis on wage leveling in pre-transition Bulgaria, the rise in wage inequality may be due to managers rewarding more productive workers; or it may be the result of rewarding non-economic characteristics such as gender. Using data from the 1995, nationally representative Bulgaria Integrated Household Survey, I examine whether gender discrimination is an important factor determining the gap in wages between men and women and the extent to which gender discrimination affects wage inequality. I model wage determination with a correction for sample selection as a Type III Tobit and estimate this model with the Honoré et al. (1997) semiparametric estimator. Unlike the classic Heckman correction for sample selection, this estimator is consistent in the presence of heteroscedasticity. I bootstrap to estimate standard errors. Using separate wage regression estimates for men and women, an Oaxaca decomposition indicates that women's wages are 25 percent lower than men's wages and 85 percent of this differential is due to discrimination, or more precisely, due to differences in how men and women are rewarded for the same characteristics.
published by Taylor and Francis. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting f... more published by Taylor and Francis. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process-such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms-may not be reflected in this version of the text.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Essentially all empirical questions that are addressed with sample data require estimates of samp... more Essentially all empirical questions that are addressed with sample data require estimates of sampling variance. The econometrics and statistics literatures show that these estimates depend critically on the design of the sample. The sample for the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), which serves as the basis for official poverty, unemployment, and earnings estimates, results from a stratified and clustered design. Unfortunately, analysts are frequently unable to estimate sampling variance for many CPS statistics because the variables marking the strata and clusters are censored from the public-use data files. To compensate for this, the Bureau of Census provides a method to approximate the sampling variance for several, specific point estimates, but no general method exists for estimates that differ from these cases. Similarly there are no corrections at all for regression estimates. This paper proposes a general approximation method that creates synthetic design variables for the estimation of sampling variance. The results from this method compare well with officially reported standard errors. This methodology allows the analyst to estimate sampling variance for a significantly wider class of estimates than previously possible, and therefore increases the usefulness of research resulting from the CPS data files.
Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and ... more Understanding change is critical to policy formulation. Who benefits, who loses from change, and what causes change are core policy questions. Panel data are central to understanding change, and this special issue of the journal is devoted to five papers examining change in wellbeing as measured by two waves of data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS). The papers cover changes in consumption poverty, multi-dimensional poverty, food security, malnutrition in the form of wasting and underweight status, and smoothing patterns of nonfarm enterprise activities. The ESS data is freely available for download and immediate use. While the papers in this issue draw from the first two waves of data (2011-12 and 2013-14), the third wave of the ESS (2015-16) is now also publicly available.
Poverty can take many different forms, ranging widely over dimensions both monetary, such as cons... more Poverty can take many different forms, ranging widely over dimensions both monetary, such as consumption or income, and nonmonetary, such as health and education. One large class of nonmonetary measures of poverty is the multidimensional poverty index (MPI); recent studies document that people identified as poor in one dimension are often different from those who found to be poor in another dimension. This paper extends the literature by examining whether MDP dynamics are similar to the dynamics of a related consumptionbased measure of poverty. Using two waves of Ethiopian panel data (2011-12 and 2013-14) we estimate poverty based on a monetary value of real consumption and a nonmonetary weighted deprivation index (our underlying measure of MDP). Similar to studies for other countries, we find that the two estimates of poverty identify significantly different groups of Ethiopians as poor. A key contribution of this paper is the finding that changes in consumption are largely independent of changes in multidimensional wellbeing: Awareness that an individual's wellbeing improved over time as measured by improvements in the weighted deprivation index provides no information about whether his or her wellbeing has improved where consumption is concerned.
economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our t... more economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Purchasing power parity exchange rates (PPPs) are used to estimate the international poverty line (IPL) in a common currency and account for relative price differences across countries when measuring global poverty. This paper assesses the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the nominal value of the IPL and global poverty. The analysis indicates that updating the $1.90 IPL in 2011 PPP dollars to 2017 PPP dollars results in an IPL of approximately $2.15-a finding that is robust to various methods and assumptions. Based on an updated IPL of $2.15, the global extreme poverty rate in 2017 falls from the previously estimated 9.3 to 9.1 percent, reducing the count of people who are poor by 15 million. This is a modest change compared with previous updates of PPP data. The paper also assesses the methodological stability between the 2011 and 2017 PPPs, scrutinizes large changes at the country level, and analyzes higher poverty lines with the 2017 PPPs. This paper is a product of the Development Data Group, Development Economics and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at .
Food insecurity can be a serious issue in conflict-afflicted countries, where food production and... more Food insecurity can be a serious issue in conflict-afflicted countries, where food production and distribution networks are strained and distributing emergency food aid can be a challenge. In such countries, economic shocks such as food price spikes can have further harmful effects on already vulnerable populations. ERS and World Bank researchers recently used nationally representative household
The costs of USDA's three largest food assistance programs-food stamps, school means and the ... more The costs of USDA's three largest food assistance programs-food stamps, school means and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)-are easier to measure than the benefits of those programs. In 2000, the three programs' direct costs were $28 billion. As shown in this issues brief, the well-being of low-income families who participate in food assistance programs is enhanced by the alleviation of the severity of poverty, an increase in food security, satisfactory nutrient intake, and increases in household food expenditures.
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Papers by Dean Jolliffe