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To understand the role of family background in intergenerational mobility, a large literature has focused on the conditional mean of children's economic outcomes given parent's economic status, while ignoring the information contained in conditional variance. This paper explores the effects of family background on the conditional variance of children's outcomes in the context of intergenerational educational mobility using data from three large developing countries (China, India, and Indonesia). The empirical analysis uses exceptionally rich data free of sample truncation because of the nonresident children at the time of the survey. Evidence from all three countries suggests a strong influence of father's education on the conditional variance of children's schooling. The analysis finds substantial heterogeneity across countries, gender, and geography (rural/urban). Cohort-based estimates suggest that the effects of father's education on the conditional variance have changed qualitatively; in some cases, a positive effect in the 1950s cohort turns into a substantial negative effect in the 1980s cohort. A methodology is developed to incorporate the effects of family background on the conditional variance along with the standard conditional mean effects. This paper derives risk-adjusted measures of relative and absolute mobility by accounting for an estimate of the risk premium for the conditional variance faced by a child. The estimates of risk-adjusted relative and absolute mobility for China, India, and Indonesia suggest that the existing evidence using the standard measures of mobility substantially underestimates the effects of family background on children's educational opportunities, and thus gives a false impression of high educational mobility. The magnitude of underestimation is especially large for the children born into the most disadvantaged households where fathers have no schooling, while it is negligible for the children of college educated fathers. The standard (but partial) measures may lead to an incorrect ranking of regions and groups in terms of relative mobility. Compared to the risk-adjusted measures, the standard measures are likely to underestimate the gender gap and rural-urban gap in educational opportunities.
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December 2000 Governments perform better where there is more general trust and strong civic norms; they perform less well where citizens are less trusting and less civic-minded. Social capital--in the form of general trust and strong civic norms that call for cooperation when large-scale collective action is needed--can improve government performance in three ways: * It can broaden government accountability, making government responsive to citizens at large rather than to narrow interests. * It can facilitate agreement where political preferences are polarized. * It is associated with greater innovation when policymakers face new challenges. Consistent with these arguments, Putnam (1993) has shown that regional governments in the more trusting, more civic-minded northern and central parts of Italy provide public services more effectively than do those in the less trusting, less civic-minded southern regions. Using cross-country data, La Porta and others (1997) and Knack and Keefer (1997) obtained findings consistent with Putnam's evidence. For samples of about 30 nations (represented in the World Value Surveys), they found that societies with greater trust tended to have governments that performed significantly better. The authors used survey measures of citizen confidence in government as well as subjective indicators of bureaucratic inefficiency. Knack further analyzes links between social capital and government performance using data for the United States. In states with more social capital (as measured by an index of trust, volunteering, and census response), government performance is rated higher, based on ratings constructed by the Government Performance Project. This result is highly robust to including a variety of control variables, considering the possibility of influential outlying values, treating the performance ratings as ordinal rather than cardinal, and correcting for possible endogeneity. This paper--a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to identify the determinants of good governance and of institutions conducive to long-term economic development. The author may be contacted at sknack@worldbank.org.
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A small open economy, Benin has seen growth that is above average for the region. The volatility of high growth spells combined with low productivity growth has translated into limited gains in income per capita. Following its transition from low-income country to lower middle income country status in 2020 Benin is at the start of a new growth path. Its challenge is to boost the structural transformation of its economy driven by new growth drivers capable of sustaining an economic acceleration, lifting labor productivity and creating quality jobs for its young labor force, including women. While Benin's economy has been spared by the worse of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) crisis, the shock has reinforced the need to focus on structural reforms that address long term challenges and ensure that economic recovery is sustainable and inclusive. The key conclusions that underpin this report, following the country economic memorandum (CEM) 2.0 framework suggest that investing further in human capital and closing gender gaps, particularly to accelerate the decline in fertility rates, and integrate women and youth into a higher quality labor market, should be central. Deepening market integration, connecting people and creating agglomeration economies through transport infrastructure and services should catalyze additional opportunities, taking advantage of Benin's geographical position.
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"This paper attempts to quantify the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on social capital with cross-country data. Using data from the World Values Survey, the authors estimate reduced-form regressions of the main determinants of social capital controlling for HIV prevalence, institutional quality, social distance, and economic indicators. The results obtained indicate that HIV prevalence affects social capital negatively. The empirical estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in HIV prevalence will lead to a decline of at least 1 percent in trust, controlling for other determinants of social capital. Moving from a country with a relatively low level of HIV prevalence, such as Estonia, to a country with a relatively high level, such as Uganda, there is a more than 11 percent point decline in social capital. These results are robust in a number of dimensions and highlight the empirical importance of an additional mechanism through which HIV/AIDS hinders the development process. "--World Bank web site.
HIV (Viruses). --- Social capital (Sociology). --- HIV (Viruses) --- Social capital (Sociology)
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"This paper explores the social capital impacts of a large-scale, community-driven development project in the Philippines in which communities competed for block grants for infrastructure investment. The analysis uses a unique data set of about 2,100 households collected before the project started (2003) and after one cycle of sub-project implementation (2006) in 66 treatment and 69 matched control communities. Participation in village assemblies, the frequency with which local officials meet with residents and trust towards strangers increased as a result of the project. However, there is a decline in group membership and participation in informal collective action activities. This may have been because households were time-constrained, so that in order to participate in project activities, they needed to temporarily reduce their participation in informal activities. An alternative explanation is that the project improved the efficiency of formal forms of social capital and thus households needed to rely less on informal forms. Finally, the results indicate that, in the short run, the project might have reduced the number of other investments. "--World Bank web site.
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Using a new, nationally representative sample of Chinese households, this paper studies how social capital affects access to credit and its implications for consumption levels. The paper focuses on two specific forms of social capital: private social networks and membership in the Communist Party. Although party affiliation is linked to higher consumption in rural areas, those benefits are direct and thus do not work through credit markets. The main finding is a strong link between private social networks, use of informal credit, and household consumption. Instrumental variable regressions indicate that the link is causal. However, the study finds no evidence that social capital has facilitated formal credit market development in China, as it has in countries with higher levels of private sector development.
Consumption --- Finance --- Informal Finance --- Social Capital
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Violence --- Social capital (Sociology) --- Economic aspects
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Economics --- Social capital (Sociology) --- Sociological aspects
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Happiness --- Social capital (Sociology) --- Social networks --- Trust
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