Three Essays In Development Microeconomics

This dissertation explores various innovative approaches that can be used in development economics in order to more closely examine economic realities of the developing world. This dissertation provides guidance on how methods not used up to this point can be best used to provide a better understanding of the potential impacts of development projects, and also highlights potential areas of improvement in existing methods and practices of data collection and project evaluation. The first essay examines two major channels of social networks influence on the gender norms of young men and women, using the interviews conducted with members of ten camps in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Inequitable gender norms have been identified as one of the major factors to negatively influence HIV-related behavior, domestic violence, and parenting. There is a need for a better understanding of the factors that contribute to inequitable gender norms, and one potential method to change individual gender norms is through social networks. While there are numerous studies dealing with the social networks influence, there are not many that examine the social networks influence on personal norms. Social network influence is examined using the network autoregressive model that takes into account interdependencies among network members, and the results imply that the gender norms of the network actors are correlated with the gender norms of their alters, indicating a similarity of genders norms among closest network members. When different types of network relationships are pooled, actors' attitudes are not correlated with those of their network contacts. Network actors' and their alters' attitudes are significantly correlated in work and problem-solving relationships. The second essay explores whether and how can spatial econometric methodology be used to examine the spatial spillovers of conditional cash transfers. Conditional cash transfer programs are considered to be one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to support the poor in the developing countries. Many studies have been performed that show positive impact of conditional cash transfer on beneficiaries' consumption, health, education, etc. However, spatial inter-village spillovers of these programs are potential impacts of spillovers are mostly neglected. The results of the analysis indicate that there are spatial spillovers that reinforce the effects of the program, and there are benefits in using spatial econometrics methods as additional tool in the impact evaluation of conditional cash transfers and other programs. Using the experimental setup of the Progresa-Oportunidades program in Mexico, we find evidence of positive effects of program density on junior and senior high school enrollment among the poor beneficiaries in treated villages. The third essay analyses the impact of gender and marriage perceptions on reporting about labor outcomes using a survey conducted in Ghana. When the standard surveys are conducted in developing countries, they mostly rely only on household heads to provide information about all household members. An alternative approach is taken within the Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative which attempts to conduct interviews with all household members above a certain age. However, there are only a few empirical studies that attempt to provide a framework for understanding the potential advantages and disadvantages of using self and proxy reporters in developing countries. The impact of different factors on labor reporting is examined using the standard models for corner solutions and ordinary least squares. The results of the estimations provide evidence of the influence of gender and marriage perceptions on labor reporting.

In this thesis, I investigate factors that undermine children's life chances in developing countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries . Three essays comprise this thesis. The first two (Chapters 1 and 2) focus on the life chances of adolescent girls in relation to the issue of child marriage, while the third essay (Chapter 3) focuses on child poverty, in relation to the issue of concordance/discordance between monetary and multidimensional measures of this phenomenon. Child marriage is found in almost all regions of the world, but SSA gets the brunt of it, as it is home to 8 of the 10 countries worldwide reporting the highest prevalence rates of this phenomenon. In 2010, 34% (about 67 million) of young women aged 20-24 globally were married before their eighteenth birthday and about 12% were married by age 15. The United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that if present trends continue, 142 million girls will be married before age 18 in the next decade (UNFPA, 2012). Child marriage has been shown to hamper developing countries girls' life chances both directly and indirectly (UNFPA, 2012). Where it exists as a mass phenomenon, it reflects gendered norms that shape adolescent girls' lives through constrained choices and capabilities relative to boys, including a higher care work burden for girls, restricted access to education, limited mobility; limited authority in the family for wives ( particularly over sexuality and fertility decisions). Combating child marriage in SSA and elsewhere may thus yield significant positive spillovers for the achievement of the 2030 United Nation's Agenda for Sustainable Development. The existing child marriage literature highlights the joint role played by supply-side factors - i.e., why parents marry off their underage daughters- and demand-side factors- i.e., why men enter into marital relationships with underage girls- in driving the prevalence rates of child marriage in the developing world. To turn this empirical finding into effective policy action, however, a quantitative assessment of the relative strength of both demandside and supply-side factors in explaining these high prevalence rates is of paramount importance. The first essay of my thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by measuring the quantitative importance of the intrinsic value Niger's men attach to having child brides. The second essay follows up on the first, by developing a demand-side model of child marriage with empirical application to Nigeria, to explain why a large proportion of men in developing countries marry underage girls. The third essay explores both theoretically and empirically the causes of the observed mismatch between monetary and multidimensional child poverty. Like the first two essays, it is empirically grounded in the experiences of SSA countries, with a practical application to Tanzania. This essay theoretically links child outcomes, such as nutritional status and schooling achievements to parental and household characteristics including household income and parental education. The model used to formalize this link predicts that parental education influences the level of the mismatch between monetary and multidimensional child poverty. Empirical evidence drawn from Tanzania NPS data is consistent with this prediction. In particular, results show that parental education is a negative predictor of the probability that a monetarily non-poor child suffers some basic deprivations, and a positive predictor of the likelihood that a monetarily poor child suffers no basic deprivations. Overall, these three essays contribute to advancing our knowledge of factors that constraint children's life chances in SSA. In particular, my thesis suggests that policy interventions that ignores the extent and causes of local resistance to the implementation of child marriage prevention programs may face uncertain results (Essay 1 and Essay 2). It also highlights another channel through which parental education can play an important role in the improvement of children's life chances in developing countries (Essay 3).