Poverty and children's work in Spain and Latin America. Some preliminary remarks.

In the first part of this paper we try to test the relationship between mothers earnings, fertility and children's work in the Spanish (Catalan) context of the first third of the 20th century. Specific human capital investment of adult working women had as an outcome the sharp increase of their real wage and also the increase of the opportunity cost of time devoted to house work including child rearing. Fertility evolution is endogenous to the model and decreases as a result of women real wage increases. Human capital investment of labouring women and mandatory schooling of children shift the labour supply function to a new steady state in which the slope is steeper. According to recent papers this model applies to 20th century Spain and it causes the abolition of children's work. Nonetheless the model do not apply to 20th century Latin America. Despite the positive evolution of literacy and life expectancy in this region, other factors involved poor results of the educational human capital investment. In this paper we remark the role of the increasing share of the informal sector of the economy ruled on the bases of women's and children's work. Second we stress the role of high income inequality evolution and endogamic school supplies to explain the limits of increasing literacy on more remarkable human capital improvements.

Formació a professionals de l'àmbit de l'atenció i la protecció a la infància: eines de treball per a la capacitació parental

Els serveis i equips d’atenció a la infància i a l’adolescència tenen per objectiu assegurar el benestar i l’adequat desenvolupament dels infants en el sí de la família. L’objectiu principal d’aquest projecte es concreta en donar eines i estratègies als professionals de l’àmbit d’atenció i protecció als infants que permetin la millora de les seves intervencions amb el conjunt de la família (pràctica professional)

Does visual impairment in a child or an adolescent affect their parents' quality of life? : A literature review

The purpose of this research was to determine whether the existing research shows that having a child with a visual impairment affects their parents' quality of life and, if it is thecase, in what way it does.

Neither Private nor Public: The Effects of Communal Provision of Water on Child Health in Peru

The literature on local services has focused on the effects of privatization and, if anything, has compared the effects of private and mixed public-private systems versus public provision. However, alternative forms of provision such as cooperatives, which can be very prevalent in many developing countries, have been completely ignored. In this paper, we investigate the effects of communal water provison (Comités Vecinales and Juntas Administrativas de Servicios de Saneamiento) on child health in Peru. Using detailed survey data at the household- and child-level for the years 2006-2010, we exploit the cross-section variability to assess the differential impact of this form of provision. Despite controlling for a wide range of household and local characteristics, the municipalities served by communal organizations are more likely to have poorer health indicators, what would result in a downward bias on the absolute magnitude of the effect of cooperatives. We rely on an instrumental variable strategy to deal with this potential endogeneity problem, and use the personnel resources and the administrative urban/rural classi fication of the municipalities as instruments for the provision type. The results show a negative and signi cant effect of comunal water provision on diarrhea among under- five year old children. Keywords: water utilities, cooperatives, child health, regulation, Peru. JEL Classi fication Numbers: L33; L50; L95

Productivities, preferences, and parental child care

We study the interplay of preferences and market productivities on parenting, and show the preferences, when identified, provide a better explanation of caring decisions than has, so far, been demonstrated in the literature. We qualify the standard finding the parental education in a key determinant of care by showing important interaction effects with marital homogamy. We find that homogamy has opposite effects on child care and couple specialization for high and low educated parents. Identification has been made possible by a unique couple-based time diary study for Denmark

The Child Protection System from the Perspective of Young People: Messages from 3 Studies

This article reports findings and reflections based on the results of three different research projects conducted between 2008 and 2013 and focusing on the perspective of young care leavers in Spain. The overall aim was to examine these young people’s perceptions and evaluations of how they were treated while in the public care system, mainly residential care. Reviewing these qualitative studies, the most common and relevant issues highlighted by young people were related to the following themes: (a) entering care; (b) stability and emotional bonds in care; (c) education; (d) friends; (e) labelling, stigmatization, rights and opportunities; (f) autonomy and responsibility versus overprotection; (g) contact with parents, siblings and extended family; (h) maltreatment in care; and (i) leaving care. One of the main elements used in their assessments was comparison (i) between their previous situation within their birth family and the quality of care experienced in the residential home; and (ii) between what these young people commonly refer to as “normal children” and children in care. Recommendations deriving from their advice and opinions are also debated

Social capital and government in the production of public goods

As a response to the rapidly growing empirical literature on social capital and the evidence of its correlation with government performance, we build a theoretical framework to study the interactions between social capital and government's action. This paper presents a model of homogeneous agents in an overlapping generations framework incorporating social capital as the values transmitted from parent to child. The government's role is to provide public goods. First, government expenditure is exogenously given. Then, it will be chosen at the preferred level of the representative agent. For both setups the equilibrium outcomes are characterized and the resulting dynamics studied. Briefly we include an analysis of the effect of productivity growth on the evolution of social capital. The results obtained caution caution against both the crowding out effect of the welfare state and the impact of sustained economic growth on social capital.

The black-white test score gap widens with age?

We re-examine the theoretical concept of a production function for cognitive achievement, and argue that an indirect production function that depends upon the variables that constrain parents' choices is both moretractable from an econometric point of view, and more interesting from an economic point of view than is a direct production function that depends upon a detailed list of direct inputs such as number of books in the household. We estimate flexible econometric models of indirect production functions for two achievement measures from the Woodcock-Johnson Revised battery, using data from two waves of the Child Development Supplement to the PSID. Elasticities of achievement measures with respect to family income and parents' educational levels are positive and significant. Gaps between scores of black and white children narrow or remain constant as children grow older, a result that differs from previous findings in the literature. The elasticities of achievement scores with respect to family income are substantially higher for children of black families, and there are some notable difference in elasticities with respect to parents' educational levels across blacks and whites.

The Child is father of the man: implications for the demographic transition

We propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence that body development during childhood is an important predictor of adult life expectancy. This theory is embodied in an OLG framework where fertility, longevity and education all result from individual decisions. The model displays different regimes, allowing the economy to move slowly from an initial Malthusian regime towards the Modern era. The dynamics reproduces the key features of the demographic transition, including the permanent increase in life expectancy, resulting from improvements in body development, the hump in both population growth and fertility, and a late increase in secondary educational attainments.

Reading Ng Kim Chew: Malaysian-Chineseness and memory in contemporary Malaysian Chinese literature in taiwan

The idea of Chineseness as a geographic, cultural-specific and ethnically-charged concept, and the pivotal role assumed by memory linger throughout the writings of most authors hailing from Chinese community in Southeast Asia. Among these communities, being the Malaysian Chinese the more prolific in terms of number of writers and pieces of literature produced, this paper deals specifically with it. Its focus is put on the literature produced by Malaysian Chinese authors residing in Taiwan, which topic constitutes an important part of the first chapter, and on one of its main representatives, Ng Kim Chew, to whom chapter two and three are fully dedicated. A literary analysis of one of his short stories, Huo yu tu, will allow the reader to have a first-hand experience, through excerpts from the original text, of the importance of Chineseness and memory in the literary production of Ng and of many authors sharing with him similar life and literary experiences. I started this research from the assumption that these authors make large use of their own memories and memories from their own community in their writing as a way to re-tie themselves to the Chineseness they left in their places of origin. However in the case of Ng Kim Chew, the analysis of his works led be to theorizing that the identity he is imbued with, if there is one, is not Chinese, nor Malaysian, but purely and distinctively Malaysian-Chinese. This paper can also serve as an introduction for the general public to the field of Sinophone literature from Southeast Asia and to promote wider and innovative paths of research within the realm of Chinese studies that go beyond China proper.

Bringing actors and violent conflict into forced migration literature. A model of the decision to return

Populations displaced as a result of mass violent conflict have become one of the most pressing humanitarian concerns of the last decades. They have also become one salient political issue as a perceived burden (in economic and security terms) and as an important piece in the shift towards a more interventionist paradigm in the international system, based on both humanitarian and security grounds. The saliency of these aspects has detracted attention from the analysis of the interactions between relocation processes and violent conflict. Violent conflict studies have also largely ignored those interactions as a result of the consideration of these processes as mere reaction movements determined by structural conditions. This article takes the view that individual’s agency is retained during such processes, and that it is consequential, calling for the need to introduce a micro perspective. Based on this, a model for the individual’s decision of return is presented. The model has the potential to account for the dynamics of return at both the individual and the aggregate level. And it further helps to grasp fundamental interconnections with violent conflict. Some relevant conclusions are derived for the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina and about the implications of the politicization of return.

Nominal plural marking of nonce words in child Spanish

This study addresses the issue of Spanish plural marking considering data from three sources: existent words, loan words and nonce words. Specifically, we are interested in the role of stress placement and word-final sound in the use of /-es/ for plural formation. We present data concerning the interaction of these two features for children and adults. Our findings suggest that this phenomenon is a classic example of over generalization in acquisition. Stress does not seem a determining feature by itself. Its main effect is produced when it interacts with the structure of the syllable

Seeds of hope: Assessing the effect of development aid on the reduction of child mortality

The Millennium Declaration (2000) set as one of its targets a substantial reduction in child mortality. This paper studies whether the massive increase in development aid can account for part of the reduction in child mortality observed in developing countries since the year 2000. To do so, we analyze a panel of more than 130 developing countries over the 2000-2008 period. We use the time trend evolution of aid to identify an exogenous source of variation. Total aid has had no statistically significant effect on child mortality. However, a disaggregate analysis identifies certain sectors of aid that have had a significant impact. The effects have been larger in high mortality countries, including Sub-Saharan Africa. Projections based on our estimates strongly support the concern that most countries in that region will miss the Millennium Goals target on child mortality.

Measuring the child mortality impact of official aid for fighting infectious diseases, 2000-2010

Aid for fighting infectious and parasitic diseases has had a statistically significant role in the under-five mortality reduction in the last decade. Point estimates indicate a country average reduction of 1.4 deaths per thousand under fives live-born attributable to aid at its average level in 2000-2010. The effect would be an average drop of 3.3 in the under-five mortality rate at the aid levels of 2010. By components, a dollar per capita spent in fighting malaria has caused the largest average impact, statistically higher than a dollar per capita spent in STD/HIV control. We do not find statistically significant effects of other infectious disease aid, including aid for the control of tuberculosis.