The World Bank Economic Review - Advance Access

The Consequences of the "Missing Girls" of China

Ebenstein, A. Y., Sharygin, E. J. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:08:06 PST

In the wake of the one-child policy of 1979, China experienced an unprecedented rise in the sex ratio at birth (ratio of male to female births). In cohorts born between 1980 and 2000, there were 22 million more men than women. Some 10.4 percent of these additional men will fail to marry, based on simulations presented here that assess how different scenarios for the sex ratio at birth affect the probability of failure to marry in 21st century China. Three consequences of the high sex ratio and large numbers of unmarried men are discussed: the prevalence of prostitution and sexually transmitted infections, the economic and physical well-being of men who fail to marry, and China's ability to care for its elderly, with a particular focus on elderly males who fail to marry. Several policy options are suggested that could mitigate the negative consequences of the demographic squeeze.

The Gender and Intergenerational Consequences of the Demographic Dividend: An Assessment of the Micro- and Macrolinkages between the Demographic Transition and Economic Development

Schultz, T. P. — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:57:56 PDT

The demographic transition changes the age composition of a population, potentially affecting resource allocation at the household level and exerting general equilibrium effects at the aggregate level. If age profiles of income, consumption, and savings were stable and estimable for the entire population, they might imply how the demographic transition would affect national savings rates, but there is little agreement on the impact of age composition. These age profiles differ by gender and are affected by human capital investments, whereas existing microsimulations are estimated from samples of wage earners that are not distinguished by sex or schooling and make no effort to model family labor supply behavior or physical and human capital accumulation. Considering these shortcomings of assessments of the "demographic dividend," a case study based on household surveys and long-run social experiments may be more informative. Matlab, Bangladesh, extended a family planning and maternal and child health program to half the villages in the district in 1977, and recorded fertility in the program villages was 15–16 percent lower than in the control villages for two decades. Households in the program villages realized health and productivity gains that were concentrated among women, survival and schooling increased among children, and after 19 years household physical assets were 25 percent greater per adult than in the control villages. These large gains in the wake of the program-induced demographic transition suggest reasons for designing new labor market and microcredit policies to help women during the demographic transition invest in productive skills; shift their time more efficiently from child care to home production, self-employment, and wage labor; and invest more in the human capital of their children.

Political Accountability and Regulatory Performance in Infrastructure Industries: An Empirical Analysis

Gasmi, F., Noumba Um, P., Recuero Virto, L. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:56:25 PDT

The relationship between the quality of political institutions and the performance of regulation has recently assumed greater prominence in the policy debate on the effectiveness of infrastructure industry reforms. Taking the view that political accountability is a key factor linking political and regulatory structures and processes, this article empirically investigates its impact on the performance of regulation in telecommunications in time-series–cross-sectional data sets for 29 developing countries and 23 developed countries during 1985–99. In addition to confirming some well-documented results on the positive role of regulatory governance in infrastructure industries, the article provides empirical evidence on the impact of the quality of political institutions and their modes of functioning on regulatory performance. The analysis finds that the impact of political accountability on the performance of regulation is stronger in developing countries. An important policy implication is that future reforms in these countries should give due attention to the development of politically accountable systems.

Development, Modernization, and Childbearing: The Role of Family Sex Composition

Filmer, D., Friedman, J., Schady, N. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:14:23 PDT

Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually large data set, covering 64 countries and some 5 million births, is used to show that fertility behavior responds to the presence—or absence—of sons in many regions of the developing world. The response to the absence of sons is particularly large in Central Asia and South Asia. Modernization does not appear to reduce this differential response. For example, in South Asia the fertility response to the absence of sons is larger for women with more education and has been increasing over time. The explanation appears to be that a latent demand for sons is more likely to manifest itself when fertility levels are low. As a result of this differential fertility behavior, girls tend to grow up with significantly more siblings than do boys, with potential implications for their well-being when quantity–quality tradeoffs result in fewer material and emotional resources allocated to children in larger families.

Macroeconomic Stability and the Distribution of Growth Rates

Sirimaneetham, V., Temple, J. R.W. — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:36:33 PDT

It is often argued that macroeconomic instability can form a binding constraint on economic growth. Drawing on a new index of stability, threshold estimation is used to divide developing economies into two growth regimes, depending on a threshold level of stability. For the more stable group of countries, the output benefits of investment are greater, conditional convergence is faster, and measures of institutional quality have more explanatory power, suggesting that instability forms a binding constraint for the less stable group. Macroeconomic stability is also shown to dominate several other candidates for identifying distinct growth regimes.