Nationally-representative Household Survey Research Articles

Inequality and the Urban–rural Divide in China: Effects of Regressive Taxation

AbstractUsing three comparable national representative household surveys for China in 1988, 1995 and 2002, the present paper reveals the regressivity and urban bias of China's direct tax and welfare system in this period. It shows that a regressive taxation system and skewed allocation of subsidies increases the urban–rural income gap and enhances overall inequality. Modeling these relationships indicates that the relatively poorer rural population has a net tax liability, whereas those in the richer urban areas receive net subsidies. This pattern is common in China, although the extent of the bias varies. This skewed system of tax and welfare payments is a major cause of the persisting urban–rural income gap and contributes to the overall income inequality in China. The abolishment of the agriculture tax in 2006 has had a positive impact on rural people's livelihoods.

Increasing inequality and civil conflict in Nepal

This paper investigates the relationship between increasing inequality and recruitment in a civil conflict. Starting from the puzzling observation that the Nepalese conflict escalated after a period of substantial growth and poverty reduction, it hypothesizes that increasing differences in welfare between groups can help explain recruitment by the Maoists. The hypothesis is tested with data from two national-representative household surveys, matched with district-level information regarding mass abductions by the Maoists from newspaper articles. The identification strategy relies on the fact that the months following finalization of the second round of data collection were characterized by a geographical escalation of the conflict. The paper first shows that gains from growth between 1995 and 2003 were much smaller for the (near) landless than for the landed; it then shows that recruiting through abduction of young people was more intensive in districts where inequality between the landed and the landless had previously increased. Copyright 2011 Oxford University Press 2010 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

Hospitalization in Tajikistan: determinants of admission, length of stay, and out‐of‐pocket expenditures. Results of a national survey

To assess factors explaining hospitalization in Tajikistan and discuss policy implications for reforms in hospital care. This study involves a secondary analysis of micro-data collected from a nationally-representative household survey conducted in Tajikistan in 2003. Three empirical models are employed: binomial logit regression for the admission to the hospital; zero truncated negative binomial (ZTNB) regression for the length of hospital stay; and ordinary least square (OLS) for the amount of out-of-pocket expenditures for hospitalization. Variation in hospital admission is due to the differences in ability to pay, long-standing illness, gender, age, and educational level. Factors explaining out-of-pocket expenditures include ability to pay, having long-standing illness, and having surgery and receiving intensive care. The most important out-of-pocket expenditures are payments for pharmaceuticals and supplies. Finally, long hospital stay that is the result of outdated treatment protocols, rigid financial and management system, lack of funding, and weakness of primary and long-tem care. As a result, long time in inpatient care is mostly used ineffectively. Strategies to address the existing deficiencies include voluntary community-based health insurance for rural areas, targeted subsidized care for the neediest, improvements in procurement of pharmaceuticals and supplies, and rationalization of hospital primary and long-term care.

Food Security in Afghanistan: Household-level Evidence from the 2007-08 Food Price Crisis

This paper investigates the impact of rising food prices – during the 2007/08 global food crisis – on food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting the temporal stratification of a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in real per capita food consumption and in food security (i.e., per capita calorie intake and household dietary diversity) corresponding to the price shocks. The data reveal smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption, suggesting that households trade off quality for quantity as they move towards staple foods and away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables. In addition, we observe Giffen good properties, i.e., increased demand in the face of price increases, for staple foods (wheat) in urban areas. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household wellbeing before and during the height of the global food crisis in one of the world’s poorest, most food-insecure countries.

Why do women have longer durations of unemployment than men in post-restructuring urban China?

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post-restructuring urban China. This analysis is based upon data obtained from a national representative household survey. Rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for re-employment, this analysis shows that women's job search efforts are handicapped by a lack of access to social networks, unequal entitlement to social re-employment services, higher earnings losses from job separations for women, and unfair treatment of women with respect to mandatory retirement.

Infertility services reported by men in the United States: national survey data

To describe the extent to which men report they or their partners had made use of infertility services, what services and conditions were reported, and what factors were associated with their use of services. Analysis of the male sample of the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally-representative household survey of men 15-44. Analysis involved estimation of percentages, chi-squared tests of difference, and multivariate logistic regression analysis. The 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 6. A total of 4109 sexually experienced men aged 15-44 years in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth who had received infertility services. None. Percentage of men reporting that they had sought help with having a baby. A total of 7.5% of all sexually experienced men reported a visit for help with having a child; 2.2% reported a visit in the past year, equivalent to 3.3-4.7 million men reporting a lifetime visit and 787,000-1.5 million a past-year visit. Visits were reported more frequently by older men, those currently or previously married, and the more highly educated. Male-related infertility conditions were reported by 18.1% of those who sought help, the most frequent being sperm or semen problems and varicocele. Previous estimates of infertility help-seeking were based on data from women. Men report a percentage seeking help that appears to be somewhat lower than reported by women. About 1 in 5 of those seeking help reported male-related infertility conditions.

Orphanhood and Completion of Compulsory School Education Among Young People in South Africa: Findings From a National Representative Survey

We examined the association of orphanhood and completion of compulsory school education among young people in South Africa. In South Africa, school attendance is compulsory through grade 9, which should be completed before age 16. However, family and social factors such as orphanhood and poverty can hinder educational attainment. Participants were 10,452 16–24‐year‐olds who completed a South African national representative household survey. Overall, 23% had not completed compulsory school levels. In univariate analyses, school completion was lower among those who had experienced orphanhood during school‐age years, males, and those who reported household poverty. In multivariate analyses controlling for household poverty, females who had experienced maternal or paternal orphanhood were less likely to have completed school; orphanhood was not independently associated with males' school completion. Findings highlight the need for evidence‐informed policies to address the education and social welfare needs of orphans and vulnerable youth, particularly females, in South Africa.

Why Do Women Have Longer Unemployment Durations than Men in Post-Restructuring Urban China?

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post-restructuring urban China using data obtained from a national representative household survey. Rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for employment, the analysis shows that women's job search efforts are handicapped by lack of access to social networks, social stereotyping (that married women are unreliable employees), unequal access to social reemployment services stemming from sex segregation prior to the displacement, and wage discrimination in the post-restructuring labor market.

Comparing Subjective and Objective Measures of Health: Evidence from Hypertension for the Income/Health Gradient

Economists rely heavily on self-reported measures of health status to examine the relationship between income and health. In this paper we directly compare survey responses to a self-reported measure of health that is commonly available in nationally-representative individual and household surveys, with objective measures of the same health condition. Our particular focus is on hypertension, which is the most prevalent health condition in Western countries. Using data from the Health Survey for England, we find that there is a substantial difference in the percentage of adult survey respondents reporting that they have hypertension as a chronic health condition compared to that from repeated measurements by a trained nurse. Around 85% of individuals measured as having hypertension do not report having it as a chronic illness. Importantly, we find no evidence of an income/health gradient using self-reported hypertension, but a large (about 14 times the size) gradient when using objectively measured hypertension. We also find that the probability of false negative reporting, that is an individual not reporting to have chronic hypertension when in fact they have it, is significantly higher for individuals living in low income households. Given the wide use of such self-reported chronic health conditions in applied research, and the asymptomatic nature of many major illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer at moderate and sometimes very elevated levels, we show that using commonly available self-reported chronic health measures is likely to lead to an underestimate of true income-related inequalities in health. This has important implications for policy advice.

Inequality and Instability: An Empirical Investigation into Social Discontent in Urban China

Instability, proxied by individual level data on satisfaction, is measured, its association with inequality is investigated, and the socio-economic determinants of overall satisfaction are modelled. A very recent national representative household survey (2002) with a module designed to serve this purpose has been the statistics source of this study. The results point to the role of income growth in quelling social discontent. Membership of the Communist Party and political participation also play a positive role. By contrast, unemployment exerts a strong depressive effect, as does exclusion from state welfare provision.

Comment on “Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)” by Angus Deaton

Angus Deaton discusses the ambiguity that arises from using different definitions and data sources for individual income or consumption levels in world poverty measurement. Should one rely on the direct information on individual consumption or income provided by national representative household surveys, or should consumption and income figures be scaled up or down so that means coincide with National Accounts (NA) data? It is generally the case that consumption expenditure per capita estimated in the NA is higher than the mean expenditure per capita obtained in surveys: thus scaling up leads to lower poverty estimates than when surveys are used. It is also the case that the difference between the two estimates tends to widen over time, so that trends are not more reliable than poverty estimates at one point of time. Deaton analyzes in detail the reasons for this divergence and concludes that NA-scaled survey data are in some sense faulty, whereas a pure consistency argument pleads in favor of using survey data at their face value.

Smallholder income and land distribution in Africa: implications for poverty reduction strategies

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of land allocation and its relation to income poverty within the smallholder sectors of Eastern and Southern Africa. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys between 1990 and 2000 in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper shows that farm sizes are declining over time; that roughly a quarter of the agricultural households in each country are virtually landless, controlling less than 0.10 hectares per capita, including rented land; that non-farm income shares are below 40% even for the households in the bottom land quartile; and that because of this, there is a strong relationship between access to land and household income, particularly for farm sizes below 1.0 hectares per capita. Land distribution within these small-farm sectors appears to be becoming more concentrated over time, and their Gini coefficients are comparable to those of many Asian countries at the time of their green revolutions. Lastly, the largest part of the variation in per capita farm sizes within the small-farm sectors is, in every country, predominantly within-village rather than between-village. Realistic discussions of poverty alleviation strategies in Africa need to be grounded in the context of these land distribution patterns and trends.

Children's Work, Schooling, and Welfare in Latin America

From the 1980s through the 1990s, children in many areas of the world benefited from new opportunities to attend school, but they also faced new demands to support their families because of continuing and, for many, worsening poverty. Children's Work, Schooling, And Welfare In Latin America is a comparative study of children, ages 12-17, in three different Latin American societies. Using nationally-representative household surveys from Chile, Peru, and Mexico, and repeatedly over different survey years, David Post documents tendencies for children to become economically active, to remain in school, or to do both. The survey data analyzed illustrates the roles of family and regional poverty, and parental resources, in determining what children did with their time in each country. However, rather than to treat children's activities merely as demographic phenomena, or in isolation of the policy environment, Post also scrutinizes the international differences in education policies, labor law, welfare spending, and mobilization for children's rights. Children's Work shows that child labor will not vanish of its own accord, nor follow a uniform path even within a common geographic region. Accordingly, there is a role for welfare policy and for popular mobilization. Post indicates that, even when children attend school, as in Peru or Mexico, many students will continue to work to support the family. If the consequence of their work is to impede their educational success, then schools will need to attend to a new dimension of inequality: that between part-time and full-time students.

Children's nutritional status in female-headed households in the Dominican Republic

A national representative household survey of food consumption, income, and expenditure was conducted in the Dominican Republic in 1986 by Tufts University School of Nutrition in cooperation with USAID Office of Nutrition [1: Rogers B.L. and Swindale A. Determinants of Food Consumption in the Dominican Republic. USAID/S & T/Nutrition, Washington, DC, 1988]. Out of 1440 families surveyed 706 had children under 6 years of age. Anthropometric indicators of height and weight were collected for all 1251 children in the sample in a follow-up study conducted from December 1986 to January 1987 by Tufts with USAID/Santo Domingo Mission funding. Anthropometric measurement were converted to (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), and weight-for-height (WHZ). Earnings in families with children having males as heads-of-household were roughly one-third greater than in thosse with females as household head; total income was also greater in these families, though not significantly. More calories and protein per adult equivalent were available in male-headed families as well. In spite of this economic and dietary situation there was a trend throughout the entire sample for children of female-headed households to be taller and heavier for their age than those of two parent homes; all three anthropometric measures showed differences in the same direction. In the lowest expenditure quartile, WAZ and WHZ were significantly greater to children in female-headed households than their counterparts in male-headed households (WAZ: P = 0.01, WHZ: P = 0.00). This finding remained significant even when controlling for the mother's employment outside the home. Multivariate regression analysis of children from households in the lowest quartile revealed a significant positive association between the percentage of household earnings from women and nutritional status, particularly HAZ. The percentage of income from women was highly significant, and its beta coefficient was high compared with other significant variables included in the model. This positive effect remained strong even when controlling for income, mother's schooling, and such child characteristics as birthweight, birth order and age. It is concluded that at low income level in the Dominican Republic, children from female-headed households are at least as well nourished as children living in male-headed households of the same income class; this may be explained in part, by female-generated income.