Change in income inequality in Taiwan from 1964 to 1995 is sensitive to how household incomes are adjusted for household composition. The reasonable practice of dividing household income by persons (or adults) in the household eliminates the widely noted increase in income inequality from 1980 to 1995, and calls into question whether income inequality decreased substantially from 1964 to 1975. ...

Sibling Influence on the Human Capital of the Left Behind While a growing literature has analyzed the effects of parental migration on the educational outcomes of children left behind, this is the first study to highlight the importance of sibling interactions in such a context. Using panel data from the RUMiC Survey, we find that sibling influence on schooling performance is stronger among lef...

Early Childbirth, Health Inputs and Child Mortality: Recent Evidence from Bangladesh This paper examines the relationship between early childbearing and child mortality in Bangladesh, a country where adolescent childbearing is of particular concern. We argue that effective use of specific health inputs could however significantly lower child mortality rates even among adolescent women. This off...

Rural People’s Perception of Poverty in China Subjective Poverty Line methodology is applied to rural China 2002 using a sample from 22 provinces. Respondents were asked two questions: one on amount of food necessary and another on amount of cash necessary for their households. The respondent’s perception of how much cash is needed varies profoundly and positively by income in the county where ...

This paper examines the economic status and labour supply of older workers in Chile. It examines the extent to which the labour market is an important source of economic risk diversification for older workers and their households, and the influence of alternative sources: the family, social security, and accumulated assets. The main findings are firstly that there are important differences by a...

This paper uses data from the Mexican Family Life Survey to estimate the impact of a household member’s migration to the United States on the cognitive development of children remaining in Mexico. While there is no developmental effect of a child’s sibling migrating to the United States, there is an adverse effect when another household member—typically the child’s parent—migrates. This is part...

Access to Public Schools and the Education of Migrant Children in China A significant proportion of migrant children in China are not able to attend public schools for lack of local household registration (HuKou), and turn to privately-operated migrant schools. This paper examines the consequences of such a partially involuntary school choice, using survey data and standardized test scores from...

This paper provides a summary of the findings contained in a forthcoming issue of the Latin American Journal of Economics on entrepreneurship in Latin America as a vehicle for upward social mobility, especially for the middle class. The income persistence coefficients estimated with pseudo-panel data for Colombia, Ecuador, and Uruguay indicate that entrepreneurial activity is a channel of inter...

Economic Returns to Communist Party Membership: Evidence from Urban Chinese Twins This paper estimates the returns to membership of the Chinese Communist Party using unique twins data we collected from China. Our OLS estimate shows that being a Party member increases earnings by 10%, but the within-twin-pair estimate becomes zero. One interpretation of these results is that the OLS Party premiu...