查看更多>>摘要：This paper critically examines the reconfiguration of post-supercyclone Ersama in coastal Odisha in India, to encourage the introduction of a new form of shrimp aquaculture as the principal livelihood. It demonstrates the operation of a powerful shared construction of Ersama, a typically paddy cultivating area, as a landscape rendered 'empty' and 'unproductive' by the supercyclone of 1999. The paper shows how this notion, shared by locals and external actors, facilitates the entry of the forces of commercial aquaculture at the cost of increased socio-economic inequalities and risk-taking for the poorest participants, as well as the exclusion of women from this new livelihood. Memories of previous disastrous attempts at shrimp culture are obliterated through misleading narratives about the potent productivity of a new type of shrimp by the proponents of aquaculture. The state has presided through uneven regulation, disregarding the damaging effects of commercial aquaculture for the coastal environment. The paper argues that besides the provision of disaster relief, the state restricts its own responsibilities towards disaster prone and affected populations to the creation of warning systems and physical infrastructures. However, it assigns the broader challenge of disaster recovery to ongoing processes of capitalist development. Even as the resulting precarity, both economic and environmental, threaten long-term and inclusive recovery, the state delinks disaster recovery from questions of structural risk resulting from exclusionary development pathways, depoliticising it considerably. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：This paper examines the relationship between an individual's human capital and that of their parents' ethnic group in former British and French colonies in Africa. Using pooled cross-sectional data from eight African countries, four former French colonies (Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger) and four former British colonies (Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda), we find large effects of parental ethnicity on individuals' human capital. Our results show that colonial origin may be important in understanding intergenerational mobility in African countries via its effect on ethnic relations. Ethnic capital has a persistent effect. This effect, which could be attributed to differences in administration styles adopted during the colonial period, is higher in former British than former French colonies. Birth cohort regression analysis further shows that the ethnic effect has declined across cohorts in former British colonies while remaining comparatively static in former French colonies. Our results are robust to the use of different estimation techniques. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：A 7.8 Richter-scale magnitude earthquake hit central Nepal in 2015, affecting multiple facets of the economy. This study explores the health impacts of this earthquake on the prevalence of diarrhea, cough, and fever among Nepalese children less than five years old. To this end, I use data from two recent waves of the Demographic Health Survey (2011 and 2016) and employ difference-in-difference as an identification strategy. Results show that the prevalence of diarrhea, cough, and fever was between 3.9 and 6.3 percentage points higher among children in earthquake-affected areas. These results are equivalent to an increase in diarrhea, fever, and cough cases among the children in earthquake-affected districts by 32.2, 35.5, and 25.7 percent, respectively. A drop in the vaccination rate suggests a lack of health care facilities in the earthquake-affected areas that could have contributed to child health problems. A decrease in the availability of clean drinking water in the earthquake-affected regions could also be a mechanism behind the prevalence of the diseases. Disaster-preparedness plans in disaster-prone low-income countries should prioritize child health by making necessary health care services available and ensuring the supply of safe drinking water. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：Do mothers' perceptions of community behavior and their beliefs about exclusive breastfeeding affect their own infant feeding behavior? We explore this relationship using a primary survey of 925 mothers with children of two years or below conducted in 2019 in the Kayes and Sikasso regions of Mali. Among other information, we collected self-reported data on the respondent's social expectations about the beliefs and behaviors of their community members apart from their own infant feeding behavior. The findings from regression estimations, after controlling for a host of potential confounding factors, indicate that children whose mothers think most individuals in her community exclusively breastfeed their infants, regardless of factual accuracy, are significantly more likely to be exclusively breastfed in the first six months. Beliefs about community approval of exclusive infant breastfeeding behavior are also found to be significantly associated, albeit modestly. In addition, children of mothers who hold false but positive beliefs and over-predict the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding practices in the community are more likely to be exclusively breastfed. Further, we utilize responses from hypothetical vignettes where the levels of social expectations are experimentally manipulated. Here, prevalence of and beliefs about community infant feeding behavior are randomized across the respondents and then they are asked to predict the breastfeeding behavior of an imaginary vignette character under such conditions. The findings indicate a positive and robust relationship between the prevalence of community level exclusive breastfeeding and the predicted behavior concerning exclusive breastfeeding. A number of additional tests are conducted to ensure that the estimates are not confounded by unobserved heterogeneity. We assert that our findings can potentially represent an important foundation for the design of interventions aimed at altering social expectations, and thus effecting a measurable change in infant breastfeeding behaviors. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：Strengthening women's ownership of and control over land is an important development goal. This paper studies the extent of women's land rights in rural Tanzania and how patrilineal norms affect them. We show that married women in rural Tanzania still own little land without their husbands and have limited rights over the jointly owned land. In Tanzania, an inherent tension lies in the recognition of customary laws that explicitly discriminate against women, and statutory laws that establish equal rights for men and women. Customary patrilineal practices persist. In particular, we find that firstborn sons are expected to inherit more land than firstborn daughters, and widows' inheritance rights are affected by the gender of their children. We also find that women's tenure security in case of divorce or inheritance is fragile. In Tanzania, village institutions play a key role in the management of land rights and the mediation of land disputes. We find that members of village institutions have more pro-women views on land rights than the average household respondent. However, using randomized vignettes to measure gender bias, we show they do not always make gender-neutral recommendations in case of land disputes. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：This article uses political settlements analysis to help illuminate trends in poverty reduction in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania. Drawing on data from the ESID Political Settlements Dataset and our own coding, it finds that the predictions of political settlements theory about the relationship between political settlement type and actual poverty reduction are reasonably well supported by the data, with 'broad-concentrated' Rwanda performing best and 'narrow-dispersed' Ethiopia worst for the period in question. It then supplements this finding with a largely qualitative analytical narrative, illustrating some of the ways in which political settlement type impacted on poverty reduction through the causal mechanisms of elite commitment and state capability. Although our typology does not explain all of the observed phenomena, we argue that, when supplemented by other variables such as ideology, it is a promising explanatory model. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：This paper explores how climate risk information produced in the context of insurance-related activities can support public climate adaptation planning. The central contribution is to outline how relevant climate risk information can translate into behaviour change, and the drivers and barriers that influence this in Sub-Saharan Africa. The insurance industry has the potential to catalyse greater use of climate information, either through existing insurance transactions or through capacity building and investment in data sharing and collaboration. We investigate the interplay of climate risk information and insurance processes from two angles: the use of climate risk data by those who provide insurance - with information as an input to the underwriting process; and the catalyst role of insurance for governments to move towards anticipatory climate risk management. We apply a multi-method approach, combining insights from a survey of 40 insurance experts with key informant interviews and document analysis from three complementary case studies: indemnity-based insurance of private assets in South Africa; parametric sovereign risk pool in Malawi; and collaboration on risk analytics and risk management advice (no insurance) in Tanzania. The analysis offers a new perspective on the catalyst role of insurance by focusing on the ways in which political economy factors, particularly incentives and relationships, influence this process. Overall, there appears to be clear scope for a dynamic interaction between insurers and governments where symbiotic use and generation of climate risk information can advance mutual goals. However, that ambition faces many challenges that go beyond availability and suitability of data. Limited trust, unclear risk ownership and/or lack of incentives are key barriers, even if there is risk awareness and overall motivation to manage climate risks. The three cases show the importance of sustained cross-sectoral collaboration and capacity building to increase awareness and utilization of insurance-related climate risk information. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
查看更多>>摘要：The overall objective of this paper is to assess the impact of a value chain development project - the AVCPO in the Bale region (Oromia, Ethiopia) - on smallholder households focusing on the relationship between the food security goal (SDG2) and other SDG-related outcomes such as education (SDG4) and collective action and social capital (SDG16). Possible co-benefits and synergies among the SDGs are explored using a variety of approaches ranging from instrument variable techniques to evaluate the project overall impact on the various SDGs, multi-valued treatment effect analysis to assess which project component is more effective in achieving the expected impacts, and causal mediation modelling to evaluate to what extent collective action and social capital can play a role in achieving food security and education. Our study shows that the aggregate impact is positive and significant on most of the considered outcomes, namely food security (SDG2) except diet diversification, education (SDG4) of girls but not of boys, and collective action (SDG16), while social capital (SDG16) is significant only as far as horizontal relationships within the community are created. Disentangling the aggregate impact, we show that combined treatments (e.g. training plus storage facilities and marketing through cooperatives) generally return larger impacts than stand-alone treatments (e.g. training only). Finally, our study finds that collective action (SDG16) is an important channel that favors food security improvement (SDG2) but only to a lesser extent better education (SDG4). (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：The economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic induced many governments to provide financial assistance to households. Using representative consumer surveys conducted during the pandemic in 2020, we examine the effects of this fiscal policy instrument on households in two emerging economies, Thailand and Vietnam. Our paper contributes to the literature by studying how consumer sentiment and durable spending relate to receiving government financial support and the underlying transmission channels for these responses. We find that financial support to households is related to more positive consumer sentiment and increases in actual and planned durable spending, while also being correlated with a more optimistic macroeconomic outlook, higher trust in the government, and higher personal well-being. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
查看更多>>摘要：Over the last century, Africa has witnessed considerable committeefication, a process by which committees have become increasingly important to organise collective action. Throughout the continent, committees have come to preside over everything from natural resource management to cultural life, and from peacebuilding to community consultation. What has been the impact of this dramatic institutional change on the nature and quality of collective action? Drawing on decades of anthropological research and development work in East Africa - studying, working with and working in committees of various kinds - this article presents an approach to addressing this question. We show how committees have surface features as well as deep functions, and that the impact of committeefication depends not only on their features and functions but also on the pathways through which they proliferate. On the surface, committees aim for inclusive and deliberative decision making, even if they vary in the specifics of their missions, membership, decision-making rules, and level of autonomy. But their deep functions can be quite different: a facade for accessing recognition or resources; a classroom for learning leadership skills; or a club for elites to pursue their shared interests. The impact of these features and functions depends on the pathways through which they grow: autonomous from existing forms of collective action; in synergistic cooperation; or in competition, possibly weakening or even destroying existing local institutions. Community-based development interventions often rely heavily on committeefied collective action. This paper identifies the benefits that this strategy can have, but also shows its potential to weaken or even destroy existing forms of collective action. On that basis, we suggest that it is imperative to turn more systematic analytical attention to committees, and assess the extent to which they are delivering development or crippling collective action in the guise of democracy and deliberation. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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