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While the Philippines has achieved remarkable progress in raising the education level of its labor force, the standard proxy for educational attainment years of formal schooling is increasingly inadequate as a measure of workforce skills. About one-third of employers report being unable to fill vacancies due to lack of applicants with the requisite skills. Most of these missing skills ? are socioemotional skills also known as non-cognitive skills, soft skills or behavioral skills. Emerging international evidence suggests that socioemotional skills are increasingly crucial to the types of jobs being created by the global economy. The following study presents new evidence from employer and household surveys on the role of socioemotional skills in the Philippine labor market. The analysis reveals that: Two-thirds of employers report difficulty in finding workers with adequate work ethics or appropriate interpersonal and communications skills. Firm-based training increasingly focuses on socioemotional skills. The more educated and employed workers tend to score higher on measures of grit, decision-making, agreeableness, and extroversion. Socioemotional skills are associated with an increase in average daily earnings, in particular for women, young workers, less-educated workers, and those employed in the service sector. Higher levels of socioemotional skills are also correlated with a greater probability of being employed, having completed secondary education, and pursuing tertiary education. Studies suggest that primary school is the optimal age for shaping socioemotional skills, but the Philippines elementary education curriculum devotes limited resources to their development. Schools continue to be judged solely by students performance in cognitive achievement tests, but not on soft-skills competencies, and teachers are not appropriately trained to foster the development of them. Finally, interventions targeting workers entering the labor force can also effectively bolster their socioemotional skills, complementing effects to improve labor-market information and vocational counseling.

Occupational training --- Vocational guidance

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"The objective of this paper is to present microeconomic evidence on the economic effects of international remittances on households' spending decisions. Remittances can increase the household budget and reduce liquidity constraint problems, allowing more consumption and investment. In particular, remittances can afford investing in children's human capital, a key outcome for the discussion of the perspective of growth in a high recipient developing country. Robust estimates that take into account both selection and endogeneity problems in estimating an average impact of remittances are substantially different from least squares (OLS) estimates presented in previous studies, indicating the importance of dealing with these methodological concerns. After controlling for household wealth and using selection correction techniques such as propensity score matching as well as village and household networks as instruments for remittances receipts, average estimates suggest that girls and young boys (less than 14 years old) from recipient households seem to be more likely to be enrolled at school than those from nonrecipient households. Remittances are also negatively related to child labor and adult female labor supply, while adult male labor force participation remains unaffected on average. The results signaling that the additional income derived from migration increases girls' education and reduces women's labor supply, with no major impact on activity choice for males 14 years or older, suggest the presence of gender differences in the use of remittances across (and possibly, within) households. "--World Bank web site.

Emigrant remittances --- Labor supply --- School attendance

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"The objective of this paper is to present microeconomic evidence on the economic effects of international remittances on households' spending decisions. Remittances can increase the household budget and reduce liquidity constraint problems, allowing more consumption and investment. In particular, remittances can afford investing in children's human capital, a key outcome for the discussion of the perspective of growth in a high recipient developing country. Robust estimates that take into account both selection and endogeneity problems in estimating an average impact of remittances are substantially different from least squares (OLS) estimates presented in previous studies, indicating the importance of dealing with these methodological concerns. After controlling for household wealth and using selection correction techniques such as propensity score matching as well as village and household networks as instruments for remittances receipts, average estimates suggest that girls and young boys (less than 14 years old) from recipient households seem to be more likely to be enrolled at school than those from nonrecipient households. Remittances are also negatively related to child labor and adult female labor supply, while adult male labor force participation remains unaffected on average. The results signaling that the additional income derived from migration increases girls' education and reduces women's labor supply, with no major impact on activity choice for males 14 years or older, suggest the presence of gender differences in the use of remittances across (and possibly, within) households. "--World Bank web site.

Emigrant remittances --- Labor supply --- School attendance

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Most evaluations of public works programs in developing countries study their effects on poverty reduction and other labor market outcomes (job creation, earnings, and participation). However, very few look at other collateral effects, such as the incidence of violence. Between 2009 and 2014, El Salvador implemented the Temporary Income Support Program, which aimed to guarantee a temporary minimum level of income to extremely poor urban families for six months, as well as provide beneficiaries with experience in social and productive activities at the municipal level. Making use of a panel data set at the municipal level for 2007 to 2014, with monthly data on different types of crime rates and social program benefits by municipalities, this paper assesses the effects of the program on crime rates in municipalities in El Salvador. There are several possible channels through which the Temporary Income Support Program can affect crime. Since the program is associated with cash transfers to beneficiaries, a reduction in economically motivated crimes is expected (income effect). But since the program enforces work requirements and community participation, this could generate a negative impact on crime, because the beneficiaries will have less time to commit crime and because of community deterrence effects. Overall, the paper finds a robust and significant negative impact of the Temporary Income Support Program on most types of crimes in the municipalities with the intervention. Moreover, the negative effects of the program on some types of crime rates hold several years after participation. Positive spillover effects for municipalities hold within a radius of 50 kilometers.

Crime --- Employment --- Employment and Unemployment --- Job Creation --- Labor Market --- Labor Policy --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Works --- Social Protections and Labor --- Urban Poverty --- Violence

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Zonder onderwerpscode: wereldeconomie, ontwikkelingsproblematiek