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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Entitled To Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, And Child Health In India, Plamen Nikolov, Shahadath Hossain
Entitled To Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, And Child Health In India, Plamen Nikolov, Shahadath Hossain
Economics Faculty Scholarship
Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that an increase in women’s bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance policy change, the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), which conferred enhanced inheritance rights to unmarried women in rural India, on child height. We find robust evidence that the HSA improved the height and weight of children. In addition, we find evidence consistent with a channel that the policy improved the women’s intrahousehold bargaining power within the household, leading to improved parental …
The Importance Of Cognitive Domains And The Returns To Schooling In South Africa: Evidence From Two Labor Surveys, Plamen Nikolov, Nusrat Jimi
The Importance Of Cognitive Domains And The Returns To Schooling In South Africa: Evidence From Two Labor Surveys, Plamen Nikolov, Nusrat Jimi
Economics Faculty Scholarship
Numerous studies have considered the important role of cognition in estimating the returns to schooling. How cognitive abilities affect schooling may have important policy implications, especially in developing countries during periods of increasing educational attainment. Using two longitudinal labor surveys that collect direct proxy measures of cognitive skills, we study the importance of specific cognitive domains for the returns to schooling in two samples. We instrument for schooling levels and we find that each additional year of schooling leads to an increase in earnings by approximately 18-20 percent. The estimated effect sizes—based on the two-stage least squares estimates—are above the …
Do Private Household Transfers To The Elderly Respond To Public Pension Benefits? Evidence From Rural China, Plamen Nikolov, Alan Adelman
Do Private Household Transfers To The Elderly Respond To Public Pension Benefits? Evidence From Rural China, Plamen Nikolov, Alan Adelman
Economics Faculty Scholarship
Aging populations in developing countries have spurred the introduction of public pension programs to preserve the standard of living for the elderly. The often-overlooked mechanism of intergenerational transfers, however, can dampen these intended policy effects, as adult children who make income contributions to their parents could adjust their behavior in response to changes in their parents’ income. Exploiting a unique policy intervention in China, we examine using a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach how a new pension program impacts inter vivos transfers. We show that pension benefits lower the propensity of adult children to transfer income to elderly parents in the context …
What Factors Drive Individual Misperceptions Of The Returns To Schooling In Tanzania? Some Lessons For Education Policy, Plamen Nikolov, Nursat Jimi
What Factors Drive Individual Misperceptions Of The Returns To Schooling In Tanzania? Some Lessons For Education Policy, Plamen Nikolov, Nursat Jimi
Economics Faculty Scholarship
Evidence on educational returns and the factors that determine the demand for schooling in developing countries is extremely scarce. Building on previous studies that show individuals underestimating the returns to schooling, we use two surveys from Tanzania to estimate both the actual and perceived schooling returns and subsequently examine what factors drive individual misperceptions regarding actual returns. Using ordinary least squares and instrumental variable methods, we find that each additional year of schooling in Tanzania increases earnings, on average, by 9 to 11 percent. We find that on average individuals underestimate returns to schooling by 74 to 79 percent and …