Public Disclosure Authorized Human Development Quarterly Update Q2 2010

 Latest research findings Missing girls = missing brides. The implications for China’s  New articles and books marriage ‘market’  Research in the news  And on the blogs Fertility decline has fueled a sharp increase in the proportion  Linking research and operations of 'missing girls' in China. As a result, an increasing share of  References males will fail to marry, and will face old age without the  Previous issues support normally provided by wives and children. In this paper, Monica Das Gupta, Avraham Ebenstein, and Ethan Jennings Sharygin [3] show that historically China has had nearly-universal marriage for women and a very competitive Latest research findings ‘market’ for men. Lower-educated men experience higher rates of bachelorhood while women favor men with better Public Disclosure Authorized How the global crisis has affected development thinking prospects, migrating if needed from poorer to wealthier areas. The authors examine the anticipated effects of this he global financial crisis has not only dealt a major combination of bride shortage and hypergamy, for different blow to the global economy, but also shaken regions of China. Their projections indicate that unmarried confidence in economic management in the developed males will likely be concentrated in poorer provinces with low T world and the economic models that guide it. The fiscal ability to provide social protection to their citizens. Such crisis has revealed major market failures, especially in the geographic concentration of unmarried males could be housing bubble and its transmission to the financial system, socially disruptive, and the paper’s findings suggest a need to but also glaring state failures that propagated and expand the coverage of social protection programs financed exacerbated the crisis. Will the events of the past two years substantially by the central government. lead to major shifts in thinking about development economics, and should they? In this paper, Halsey Rogers [1] How decentralization can lead to vote-buying, and how to assesses that question for several key domains of prevent it Public Disclosure Authorized development thinking, including the market-state balance, macroeconomic management, globalization, development A recent trend in decentralization in several large and diverse financing, and public spending. countries is the creation of local jurisdictions below the regional level—municipalities, towns, and villages—whose How donors differ in the quality of their aid spending is almost exclusively financed by grants from both regional and national governments. In her new paper, Stuti In this paper, Steve Knack, Halsey Rogers and Nicholas Khemani [4] paper argues that such grants-financed Eubank [2] present an overall aid-quality index and four decentralization enables politicians to target benefits to coherently defined sub-indexes on aid selectivity, alignment, pivotal voters and organized interest groups in exchange for harmonization, and specialization. Compared with earlier political support. Decentralization, in this model, is subject to indicators used in donor rankings, the indicator set developed political capture, facilitating vote-buying, patronage, or pork- is more comprehensive and representative of the range of barrel projects, at the expense of effective provision of broad donor practices addressed in the 2005 Paris Declaration on public goods. Khemani explores the theory's implications for Aid Effectiveness, thereby improving the validity, reliability, international development programs in support of decentralization.

Public Disclosure Authorized and robustness of rankings. One of the authors’ innovations is to increase the validity of the aid-quality indicators by adjusting for recipient characteristics, donor aid volumes, and Health shocks are different other factors. A new paper by Adam Wagstaff and Magnus Lindelow [5] finds that in Laos, health shocks are more common than most

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other shocks and more concentrated among the poor. They also tend to be more idiosyncratic than non-health shocks, New articles and books and are more costly, leading to high medical expenses and sizeable income losses. Health shocks also stand out from India shining and Bharat drowning: How two Indian states other shocks in the number of coping strategies they trigger, fare relative to the worldwide distribution of mathematics and in terms of households saying they were forced to cut achievement back consumption and saw their family's well-being affected "a lot." People experiencing a health shock did not recover vidence suggests that cognitive skills matter more for their former subjective health following the shock, losing, on economic development than schooling attainment, average, 0.6 points on a 5-point scale. and that income and skill inequality are inextricably E linked. Yet for most of the developing world no Does access to water affect women's work and child internationally comparable estimates of cognitive skills exist. outcomes? This paper by Jishnu Das and Tristan Zajonc [8] uses student answers to publicly released questions from an international Taking into account the nonrandom placement of water testing agency together with statistical methods from Item infrastructure, and using survey data from nine developing Response Theory to place secondary students from two countries, Gayatri Koolwal and Dominique van de Walle [6] Indian states—Orissa and Rajasthan—on a worldwide find that access to water does not lead to increased off-farm distribution of mathematics achievement. These two states work for women. However, they do find that in countries fall below 43 of the 51 countries for which data exist. The where substantial gender gaps in schooling exist, both boys' bottom 5% of children rank higher than the bottom 5% in and girls' enrollments improve with better access to water. only three countries—South Africa, Ghana and Saudi Arabia. They also find evidence of impacts on child health as But not all students test poorly. Inequality in the test-score measured by anthropometric z-scores. distribution for both states is next only to South Africa. The combination of India's size and large variance in achievement Why customary law needs to be more transparent give both the perceptions that India is shining even as Bharat, the vernacular for India, is drowning. How India's In this paper Varun Gauri [7] sets out to see how far dispute- development unfolds will depend critically on how the skill resolvers in customary-law systems provide widely distribution evolves and how low- and high-skilled workers understandable justifications for their decisions. He first interact in the labor market. examines the liberal-democratic reasons for the importance of publicity (understood to be wide accessibility of legal The political economy of village sanitation in south India: justification), by reviewing the uses of publicity in Habermas’ Capture or poor information? and Rawls’ accounts of the rule of law. Taking examples from Sierra Leone, Gauri then argues that customary-law systems In this paper, Radu Ban, Monica Das Gupta and Vijayendra would benefit from making more accessible the reasons for Rao [9] find that despite efforts to mandate and finance local local dispute-resolution practices, such as "begging" from governments' provision of environmental sanitation services, elders, witchcraft, and openness of hearings. He concludes outcomes remain poor in the villages they survey in four that although legal pluralism is usually taken to be an South Indian states. Several key issues appear to hinder analytical concept, it may have a normative thrust as well, improvements in sanitation. Local politicians tend to capture and that publicity standards would also apply to formal sanitary infrastructure and cleaning services for themselves, courts in developing countries, which are also typically but keep major village roads reasonably well-served. Their "defective" along this dimension. decisions suggest, however, that they understand neither the health benefits of sanitation nor the negative externalities to their own health if surrounding areas are poorly served. The authors’ findings suggest that improving sanitary outcomes requires disseminating information on the public goods nature of their health benefits, as well as on the local government's responsibilities. It also requires putting public health regulations in place, along with measures to enable accountability in service provision.

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Improving immunization coverage in rural India: Incentives commonplace, and that while SHI can cover the formal sector help, but not nearly enough and the poor relatively easily, it fares badly in terms of covering the non-poor informal sector workers until the In an editorial in the British Medical Journal, Jishnu Das [10] economy has reached a high level of economic development. cautions against an optimistic interpretation of the recent Wagstaff also argues that SHI can have negative labor market BMJ paper by Banerjee et al. [11]. Banerjee and his effects. colleagues explored the impact of small financial incentives on immunization rates in India by means of a randomized The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Six, one, or none? control trial where regular India’s regular immunization approach was compared with two alternatives: one where Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering vaccination camps were held in villages on a monthly basis; large samples of countries, have become popular in and a second where camps were held but families were comparative political analysis. Few studies, however, rewarded with a small amount of lentils for each vaccination examine the validity or reliability of these indexes. To and with a larger amount of food once they completed the partially fill this gap, Laura Langbein and Steve Knack [14] use full course. The first intervention increased the fraction of factor, confirmatory factor and path analysis to test both full-immunized children to 18% (compared to 6% in the measurement and causal models of the six Worldwide control group); the second intervention increased it to 39%. Governance indicators. These indicators purportedly measure Das argues that while encouraging, the incentive intervention distinct concepts of control of corruption, rule of law, still leaves India’s immunization rate well below the rate that government effectiveness, rule quality, political stability, and confers herd immunity; he notes that more generous voice and accountability. In fact, rather than distinguishing incentives would likely have a smaller incremental effect. among aspects of the quality of governance, they actually appear to be measuring the same broad concept, according Health workers and health care provision in Indonesia to Langbein and Knack’s analysis.

Indonesia has made great progress improving access to Unraveling the sources of aggregate changes in human health workers, especially in rural areas, and improving the development outcomes using micro data quality of health providers. Significant steps and policy changes were taken in the past to improve the distribution of Sylvie Lambert, Martin Ravallion and Dominique van de Walle the health force, but few studies have been undertaken to [15] show how differences in aggregate human development measure the actual impact of these policies and programs. In outcomes over time and space can be additively decomposed a new World Bank book, Claudia Rokx, John Giles, Elan into a pure mean income (growth) component, a component Satriawan, Puti Marzoeki and Pandu Harimurti [12] begin the attributed to differences in the distribution of income, and process of reviewing the impacts of the past policies and components attributed to 'non-income' factors and policy changes. They link the changes in supply and quality of differences in the model linking outcomes to income and health workers to past health workforce policies but also to non-income characteristics. They model the income effect at changes in financing and civil service reforms. They also the micro level non-parametrically, so as to flexibly reflect review important aspects of health professional education potentially complex distributional changes. They illustrate and changes in demand for services. their method using data for Morocco and Vietnam; the results offer some surprising insights into the observed Reexamining social health insurance aggregate gains in schooling attainments.

Social health insurance (SHI) is enjoying something of a revival in parts of the developing world. Ironically, this revival is occurring at a time when the traditional SHI countries in Europe have either already reduced payroll financing in favor Research in the news of general revenues, or are in the process of doing so. In this paper Adam Wagstaff [13] examines how SHI fares in health- anna Rosin’s article in the Atlantic Magazine on “The care delivery, revenue collection, covering the formal sector, End of Men” quoted Monica Das Gupta’s work on and its impacts on the labor market. He argues that SHI does the rapid decline in son preference in Korea. Male not necessarily deliver good quality care at a low cost, partly H preference in South Korea “is over,” Rosin quotes because of poor regulation of SHI purchasers. He suggests Gupta as saying. “It happened so fast. It’s hard to believe it, that the costs of collecting revenues can be substantial, even but it is.” “The same shift is now beginning in other rapidly in the formal sector where non-enrollment and evasion are industrializing countries such as India and China,” says Rosin.

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“Up to a point, the reasons behind this shift are obvious. As community involvement in the schools, no impact on teacher thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical effort, and no impact on students' achievement in school.” strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, Harold Alderman’s work on food security is picked up in a not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest.” couple of blogs, one by the Taiwan Environmental Readers of this week’s Economist will have read (p61) about Information Center which Google Translate translates as women being an underused asset: in Japan only 61% of them “Anti-GM food shortages lead poison thirst quencher” and work, and their incomes are less than half that of men. another by Chris Barrett posting on Cardus called “Natural disasters and acts of God”. Philippe Lesaffre, writing in the French magazine L’Express, mentions Steve Knack’s research on donor aid quality using The Portuguese blog E.conomia.Info laments Portugal’s last the new AidData database created by the researchers at the place in the aid quality league table produced by Steve Knack, College of William and Mary. Knack’s work on trust also gets Halsey Rogers and Nicholas Eubank. Knack’s work is also mentioned in Spanish and Mexican newspapers; in the picked up in a blog called “Speaking truth to strangers” process, Knack gets promoted to the job of World Bank Chief written by CSU San Bernadino political science professor Economist. Congratulations, Steve! Alemayehu G. Mariam blogging on the Huffington Post, as well as in Spanish-language blogs “Fashion coolhunting” Deon Filmer and David L. Lindauer’s 2001 working paper (interesting!) and Reggio’s. "Does Indonesia Have a Low Pay Civil Service" is cited in an op-ed on corruption by Muhammadun that appeared in the DECHD’s feature story on the impact of the financial crisis on Indonesian online newspaper Riau Pos. Muhammadun uses children written by Jane Zhang was picked up in several blogs their results to substantiate his claim that low salaries are not and online news sites. One rather improbable one was a the cause of corruption, noting that Filmer and Lindauer French realtor association’s news site. It was also featured in found average civil service salaries to be 42% higher than the news section of Muslim Aid in Australia. those in private sector. What, then, are the causes of corruption, according to Muhammadun? One problem, he Monica Das Gupta’s work on missing girls continues to suggests, is a “mental apparatus that is shoddy”. Or at least attract attention by bloggers. Ryan Pyle, a Canadian-born that’s how Google Translate translates his remarks. freelance photographer working in China, talked about it in a recent blog of his entitled “Where are all the girls?.” A Taiwanese blogger also cited Das Gupta’s work.

Kristen DiCuio, in a blog called “Human right to health care” And on the blogs on World Poverty and Human Rights Online picks up Varun Gauri’s work on social rights and health care. Gauri’s work is or this issue of HDQU, we trawled through all blogs, also picked up in a blog called “Challenging the role of aid not just our 12 favorite economics and development giver in the face of AIDS” on Wesleyan professor Mike blogs. The result was quite a catch. Nelson’s Africa in World Politics blogspot. F Stuti Khemani’s work with Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, David Sasaki in a blog on Global Voices called “Technology for Esther Duflo and Rachel Glennerster was mentioned in an transparency review” mentions Stuti Khemani’s paper “Can Economist blog congratulating Duflo on her award of the Information Campaigns Overcome Political Obstacles to prestigious John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the Serving the Poor?”. Unfortunately, Mr Sasaki keeps referring economist under 40 “who is judged to have made the most to Ms Khemani as “he”, which rather spoils the story. significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.” In the cited paper, Duflo, Khemani, et al. “investigate the Last but definitely not least, we have three blogs by DECHD’s effects of three randomly assigned programs targeting new blogger Jishnu Das. In a post called “Education, test- community participation. The first informed villagers about scores and other things that matter” on the Bank’s Education opportunities to participate in school governance and for Global Development site, Das offers “a (very partial) list of monitoring committees, the second trained villagers to use a what we know about test-scores, why they may be important testing tool, and the third organized literate villagers to hold (and why they may not).” He promises in future blogs “to remedial reading classes for illiterate children. The study take up each of these topics in greater detail.” Das’ other concludes that the interventions had no impact on posts include “Comparing three villages in Madhya Pradesh” and “Playing chicken in India.”

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Linking research and operations Previous issues:

HD Quarterly Previous Issues ‘Linking research and operations’ has left for the summer and will be back in the Fall.

References

1. Rogers, F.H., The global financial crisis and development thinking. 2010, Washington, DC: World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5353. 2. Knack, S., F.H. Rogers, and N. Eubank, Aid Quality and Donor Rankings. 2010, Washington, DC: The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5290. 3. Das Gupta, M., A. Ebenstein, and E.J. Sharygin, China's marriage market and upcoming challenges for elderly men. 2010, Washington, DC: World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5351. 4. Khemani, S., Political capture of decentralization: vote-buying through grants-financed local jurisdictions. 2010, Washington, DC: World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5350. 5. Wagstaff, A. and M. Lindelow, Are health shocks different? evidence from a multi-shock survey in Laos. 2010, World Bank: Policy Research Working Paper #5335. 6. Koolwal, G. and D. van de Walle, Access to water, women's work and child outcomes. 2010, Washington, DC: The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5302. 7. Gauri, V., The publicity "defect" of customary law. 2010, Washington, DC: The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #5349. 8. Das , J. and T. Zajonc, India shining and Bharat drowning: Comparing two Indian states to the worldwide distribution in mathematics achievement. Journal of Development Economics, 2010. 92(2): p. 175-187. 9. Ban, R.D., M. Das Gupta, and V. Rao, The Political Economy of Village Sanitation in South India: Capture or Poor Information? Journal of Development Studies, 2010. 46(4): p. 685-700. 10. Das, J., Improving Immunisation Coverage in Rural India. BMJ, 2010. 340(C2553): p. 1257-1258. 11. Banerjee, A.V., E. Duflo, R. Glennerster, and D. Kothari, Improving immunisation coverage in rural India: clustered randomised controlled evaluation of immunisation campaigns with and without incentives. BMJ, 2010. 340: p. c2220. 12. Rokx , C., J. Giles , E. Satriawan , P. Marzoeki , and P. Harimurti, New Insights into the Provision of Health Services in Indonesia: A Health Work Force Study HD Directions in Development Series. 2010, Washington, DC: The World Bank. 13. Wagstaff, A., Social health insurance reexamined. Health Economics, 2010. 19(5): p. 503-517. 14. Langbein, L. and S. Knack, The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Six, One, or None? Journal of Development Studies, 2010. 46(2): p. 350-370. 15. Lambert, S., M. Ravallion, and D. Van De Walle, A Micro- Decomposition Analysis of Aggregate Human Development Outcomes Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2010. 72(2): p. 119-145.

HD Update Quarterly Q2 2010 June 2010