Papers by Dileni Gunewardena
Routledge eBooks, Oct 4, 2022
Human Capital and Gender Inequality in Middle-Income Countries
Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences, 2017
Sri Lanka has recorded a significant reduction in poverty in recent times. Yet, as in many other ... more Sri Lanka has recorded a significant reduction in poverty in recent times. Yet, as in many other developing countries, little or nothing is known about poverty levels and reduction of poverty among the disabled or their households. The disabled and their families encounter different hardships than the typical deprivations of the poor. The recent literature questions the ability of the monetary approach in measuring poverty in general and especially among different groups like the disabled. Therefore, this study estimates both monetary and multidimensional poverty among the households with disabled persons, using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey data of 2006/07 and 2009/10. The study found that monetary and multidimensional poverty among households with disabled persons is higher than among other households. Even though multidimensional poverty is relatively low in Sri Lanka, the difference in multidimensional poverty levels between households with and without the disabled is high. Importantly, contributions from the three dimensions considered in this research to the incidence of poverty is almost equal, suggesting that further reduction of poverty in Sri Lanka requires improvements in all three dimensions-health, education and living standards-among poor households, with and without disabled persons.
Could the simplifying assumptions made in project appraisal be so far from the truth that the exp... more Could the simplifying assumptions made in project appraisal be so far from the truth that the expected benefits of public investments are not realized? Using data for Viet-nam, commonly used estimates of the benefits from irrigation investments based on means are compared with impacts assessed through an econometric modeling of mar-ginal returns that allows for household and area heterogeneity using integrated house-hold-level survey data. The simpler method performs well in estimating average ben-efits nationally but can be misleading for some regions, and, by ignoring heterogeneity, it overestimates gains to the poor and underestimates gains to the rich. At moderate to high cost levels, ignoring heterogeneity in impacts results in enough mistakes to elimi-nate the net benefits from public investment. When irrigating as little as 3 percent of Vietnam’s nonirrigated land, the savings from the more data-intensive method are suf-ficient to cover the full cost of the extra data require...
Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrit... more Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrition with the right set of interventions, policymakers need to have a better understanding of its economic, social and policy determinants. While there is a large literature that investigates the determinants of child malnutrition, it focuses almost exclusively on mean effects of these determinants. However, socioeconomic background variables and policy interventions may affect child nutrition differently at different points of the conditional nutritional distribution. Using quantile regressions, this paper explores the effects of variables such as a child’s age, sex and birth order; household expenditure per capita; parental schooling; and infrastructure on child weight and height at different points of the conditional distributions of weight and height using
This paper-- a product of the Poverty and Human Resources Division, Policy Research Department --... more This paper-- a product of the Poverty and Human Resources Division, Policy Research Department -- is a revised version of a background paper for the Sri Lanka Poverty Assessment. Copies of this paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Patricia Sader, room N8-040, telephone extension 202-4733902, fax 202-522-1153, Internet address [email protected] or Andrea Ramirez, room N8-036, telephone 202-458- 5734. March 1997. (62 pages) The Policy Research 'brking 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 view of the W...
ILO (World Employment Social Outlook: Trends 2015) reports that the labor force participation rat... more ILO (World Employment Social Outlook: Trends 2015) reports that the labor force participation rate is 77 percent for men and 50 percent for women. The disparity is even more acute in certain regions. For instance, in South Asia, the corresponding labor force participation rates are 81 and 32 percent, respectively. In Northern Africa, the corresponding figures are 75 and 22 percent. These huge disparities are carried over to employment rates. The unemployment rate in Northern Africa for men is 92 percent, much higher than the 81 percent for women.
Policy Research Working Papers, Sep 19, 2018
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.
SSRN Electronic Journal
This paper focuses on Sri Lanka, a country with a long record of gender equality in education enr... more This paper focuses on Sri Lanka, a country with a long record of gender equality in education enrollment and high female completion rates, which has also been characterized by low and stagnant female labor force participation. It remains a puzzle why Sri Lanka has been unable to translate its high girls’ education gains into female labor force participation. This paper examines whether clues to the answer lie in (1) gender differences in skill acquisition, which have implications for education policy; (2) differences in the way the labor market values identical skills in men and women, with implications for labor market policy interventions or (3) in the gender division of labor in the household, which has implications for family-friendly and social policies. The paper analyses the 2012 World Bank STEP Skills Measurement survey, a rich dataset that includes self-reported measures of cognitive and non-cognitive skills for all individuals of working age, to address these questions. <br><br>The results indicate that women have higher measured cognitive skill than men and are not very different than men in terms of possession of non-cognitive skills that the market values. Rather, the results show that the market treats men and women with the same skills differently: Men get paid more. In addition, among labor market entrants, women have no earnings returns to cognitive skills, suggesting a role for policy intervention in the labor market.<br>
She has worked for more than 10 years as a practitioner and researcher in the development sector ... more She has worked for more than 10 years as a practitioner and researcher in the development sector in Sri Lanka, focusing mainly on gender-related issues and psychosocial work. She has also been a visiting lecturer in women's studies at the University of Colombo. She has contributed to a number of publications within the gender, youth, and psychosocial fields, and was editor of Options, a Sri Lankan feminist magazine, for a number of years. Her main research work has included developing a framework for understanding wellbeing in Sri Lanka and exploring issues of gender equality and equity. Her doctoral research is looking at women's agency within marriages and families. Harini Amarasuriya is a doctoral student in social anthropology in a joint PhD program with the University of Edinburgh and Queen Margaret University. She has worked in the development and humanitarian sector for the past 12 years as a practitioner and researcher, with a focus on gender, youth, children, and psychosocial wellbeing. She is the co-author of Political and Social Exclusion of Youth in Sri Lanka, and Rethinking the
Studies of gender wage differential decompositions based on the human capital model are legion. W... more Studies of gender wage differential decompositions based on the human capital model are legion. What makes this exercise an interesting one to undertake for Sri Lanka is that, unlike many developing countries, Sri Lankan females possess an educational advantage over their male counterparts. Yet, returns to education favour women. Thus, the Sri Lankan case is in some sense a natural experiment, providing an indication to countries struggling to close the gender gap in education: if they succeed, what is the magnitude of the wage gap that would persist, and why? Existing studies of the gender wage gap in Sri Lanka show that "discrimination" in the labour market, rather than differences in productive characteristics, account for a large fraction of the gender wage differential. The present study contributes to the literature by (a) analysing changes in and determinants of the gender wage differential during a period when employment opportunities for females in Sri Lanka were expanding rapidly along with their labour force participation, and (b) using a superior methodology than has been used so far in estimates of earnings functions for Sri Lanka. The study reveals that the gender wage gap did narrow between 1985 and 1991, and that returns to education increased over the period for both men and women. Returns to education are greater for women than for men, while "returns" to experience which were initially higher for men in 1985/86 were higher for women in 1990/91. Correcting for omitted variable bias revealed that OLS overestimates the extent of discrimination, but that even so, in the absence of discrimination, women would earn more than men. The study indicated that although returns to education are higher for women than men, initial disadvantages are so great that favourable returns are insufficient to eliminate the gender gap.
The World Bank Economic Review, 2001
The World Bank Economic Review is a professional journal for the dissemination of World Bank-spon... more The World Bank Economic Review is a professional journal for the dissemination of World Bank-sponsored and outside research that may inform policy analyses and choices. It is directed to an international readership among economists and social scientists in government, business, and international agencies, as well as in universities and development research institutions. The Review emphasizes policy relevance and operational aspects of economics, rather than primarily theoretical and methodological issues. It is intended for readers familiar with economic theory and analysis but not necessarily proficient in advanced mathematical or econometric techniques. Articles will illustrate how professional research can shed light on policy choices.
5th PEP Research Network General Meeting, …, 2006
... I thank Mark Bryan for permission to adapt his software program for estimating counterfactual... more ... I thank Mark Bryan for permission to adapt his software program for estimating counterfactual distributions, and the Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka for access to the Quarterly Labour Force Data. The contributions of Shobana Rajendran, Darshi Abeyrathna ...
Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrit... more Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrition with the right set of interventions, policymakers need to have a better understanding of its economic, social and policy determinants. While there is a large literature that investigates the determinants of child malnutrition, it focuses almost exclusively on mean effects of these determinants. However, socioeconomic background variables and policy interventions may affect child nutrition differently at different points of the conditional nutritional distribution. Using quantile regressions, this paper explores the effects of variables such as a child's age, sex and birth order; household expenditure per capita; parental schooling; and infrastructure on child weight and height at different points of the conditional distributions of weight and height using …/.
Revised Interim Report, …, 2006
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Papers by Dileni Gunewardena