Economics Commons^™

An Exploration Into Individual Development Accounts As An Anti-Poverty Strategy, Timothy G. Reutebuch

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A non-random, cross-sectional sampling procedure was utilized in this study to determine what factors are related to households choosing to utilize Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) as a means to escape poverty. Surveys from 111 households were collected from September 1997, to April 1999, in seven Ohio counties to elucidate the relationship between the level of assets in working poor households and selected household demographic variables, and the decision on whether or not to actually participate in an IDA program. Findings revealed that households 1) with more than one wage earner and 2) with higher levels of education are more likely …

Are More Children A Blessing? Determinants Of The Demand For Children In Jimma, Ethiopia, Bedassa Tadesse, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

Based on data from a cross-section of urban households in Southwestern Ethiopia, in this paper, we examine some endogenous household characteristics that could be targeted through market-based policy measure(s). We use a count data model and the theory of consumer behavior to first identify some important socio-economic determinants of the demand for children. Then, we simulate the average number of children desired by a woman of median household characteristics and the extent to which an exogenously set population policy goal of lower fertility can be achieved. Finally, we present the extent by which market based policy measures could help reduce …

Papers Of International Conference On Contemporary Development Issues In Ethiopia, August 16-18, 2001, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

Introductory remarks of the First International Conference on Contemporary Development Issues in Ethiopia held in Kalamazoo, Michigan August 16-18, 2001.

1st Annual International Conference On Contemporary Development Issues In Ethiopia, Western Michigan University

International Conference on African Development Archives

No abstract provided.

“Today's Children, Tomorrow's Leaders”: Are We Neglecting The Agents Of Change?, Assegedetch Hailemariam

International Conference on African Development Archives

There is an abundant body of knowledge that suggests that early experience influences later human behavior. This paper reviews and analyzes existing literature to demonstrate that human development, at the individual level, has far reaching consequences on social, economic and political development of a people. For instance, education, one measure of human development, has been inaccessible to more than 50% of school age children in Ethiopia. To effect fundamental changes in Ethiopia, attention and resources must be dedicated to children’s well being and potential. In addition, the paper discusses early psychological processes in human development in contrast to the current …

Nationalism As A Contingent Event: Som Ereflections On The Ethio-Eriterean Experience, Mesfin Araya

International Conference on African Development Archives

What is politically significant and what really attracts scholarly research in any nationalism is the awakening of the masses - i.e. the effective transition from elite-based to mass-based nationalism; this study is concerned with that transition in the Eritrean experience in the modern political history of Ethiopia.

Soil And Water Resources And Degradation Factors Affecting Their Productivity In The Ethiopian Highland Agro-Ecosystems, Paulos Dubale

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia has not been able to maintain its economic, political and social development because of internal and external pressures for many years. The natural resource is the worst hit by the slow progress in economic development and this has made matters worse. To get out of the stagnation the present government has adopted a policy called Agricultural Development Led Industrialization taking agriculture as the stepping stone to industrialization.

The soil and water resources of Ethiopia although, still rich, is going through fast degradation processes. Topography, soil types and agro-ecological parameters are playing significant role in the degradation processes influenced by …

Financing Small Famer Development In Ethiopia, Haileleul Getahun

International Conference on African Development Archives

Agriculture in Ethiopia is the most important sector, as measured by its contribution to total output, employment, and export earnings. Small –scale peasant farming is the most predominant mode of cultivation, and it is the peasant farmer who has suffered the most from the lack of capital, lack of technology and deterioration of the soil. Although agriculture remains the backbone of the Ethiopian economy, production has been declining since the 1960s while the rate of population growth has been steadily rising. Thus Ethiopia, which could once feed itself, has been importing food on a large scale. The fall in agricultural …

Differential Adoption Of Technologies And Its Implications For Policy Choice Between Equity And Growth, Beyene Tadesse

International Conference on African Development Archives

Government policies often attempt to create simultaneous impact on economic efficiency and equity. The Ethiopian government optimistically has targeted to simultaneously achieve at improvement in agricultural efficiency (growth) and equitable distribution of the benefits by all farmers in the whole part of the country. However, many scholars most often argue that growth and equity are inversely related in most development processes. Thus, the main objective of the paper was to evaluate the interhousehold and interregional technology adoption pattern (implies both growth and equity). The conceptual relationship of growth and equity, and experiences in adoption studies were first assessed. Then three …

Deforestation And Land Degradation On The Ethiopian Highlands: A Strategy For Physical Recovery, Badege Bishaw

International Conference on African Development Archives

Deforestation, accelerated soil erosion, and land degradation are serious problems in Ethiopia. To overcome these problems, efforts have been made to launch afforestation and conservation programs; however, success to date has been limited. This paper will discuss agriculture and forestry practices on the Ethiopian Highlands and try to identify the causes of deforestation and land degradation there. Agroforestry and social forestry practices, plantation forestry, and conservation of the remaining forests are proposed as a strategy for physical recovery. Social and policy issues, such as participation of the local people in natural resource management and the existence of clear land and …

Deforestation, Wood Famine And Environmental Degradation In Highland Ecosystems Of Ethiopia: Urgent Need For Actions, Demel Teketay

International Conference on African Development Archives

One of the major challenges facing Ethiopia in its strive for development is environmental degradation, which is manifested in the form of land and water resources degradation as well as loss of biodiversity. Land degradation, in turn, is expressed in terms of soil erosion and loss of soil fertility. Deforestation/devegetation has been held as one of the major factors contributing to land degradation through exposing the soil for various agents of erosion. Ethiopia, with high-intensity rainstorms and extensive steep slopes, is highly susceptible to soil erosion, especially in the highlands. The organic content of soils is often low due to …

Ethiopia, The Tplf And Roots Of The 2001 Political Tremor, Paulos Milkias

International Conference on African Development Archives

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Development In Ethiopia, Paul B. Henze

International Conference on African Development Archives

I visited Ethiopia frequently and traveled extensively in all parts of the country during the Derg period. I observed firsthand the deleterious effects of the Derg's attempt to turn the country into a communist "people's republic".1 Since the fall of the Derg in May 1991 I have made eleven visits to Ethiopia (with a twelfth scheduled for June 2001), usually for periods of several weeks, totaling well over a year of travel in the country in all. During these same years I have also spent time in 16 other post-communist countries, ranging from Slovenia and Armenia to Mongolia, observing the …

Perspectives On Institutional Reform And Development In Ethiopia: The Critical Role Of Building Enabling Institutions For Economic Growth And Development, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper provides some normative perspectives on sustainable economic and political reform in contemporary Ethiopia, by focusing on the need to establish enabling institutions for economic growth and development. The paper begins with the basic premise that poverty in Ethiopia is primarily a problem of institutional failure, and that at a successful economic reform not only must be focused on poverty-focused economic growth in a country where about 50 percent of the population is below the poverty line, but it must also be accompanied with institutional reform and development that may result in a positive-sum outcome for all constituent groups …

Sustainable Small Hydropower Development In Ethiopia Case Study Ropi Hydropower Plant (Bilate Basin, Ethiopia), Zelalem Hailu, H.B. Horlacher

International Conference on African Development Archives

The paper considers a case study of the Ropi hydropower site in the Bilate basin in Ethiopia to show the effect of seasonal variability of river flow on the magnitude and reliability of power supply.

Bureaucratic Neutrality In An Ethnic Federalism: The Case Of Ethiopia, Berhanu Mengistu, Elizabeth Vogel

International Conference on African Development Archives

The question addressed in this paper is whether bureaucratic neutrality, or the depoliticization of civil service, is compatible with ethnic federalism. This question is explored by reviewing the classic theories of bureaucracy as a foundation for examining the research question and contextualizing bureaucratic neutrality in Ethiopian ethnic federalism.

Distance Education Initiative For Ethiopia, Abebe Kebede

International Conference on African Development Archives

In Ethiopia the last three decades have been marred with political, social and economic turmoil. These decades have also witnessed a significant decline in the education system of the country. The system has failed miserably to keep up with demand. Among the major contributing factors for the deterioration of the educational system are the growth in enrollment, lack funding for infrastructure and innovation. For example primary school enrollment increased from about 957,300 in 1974/75 to nearly 2,450,000 in 1985/86. (Country Studies, 1996) According to government statistics during the same period primary schools grew from 3,196 to 7,900. These numbers are …

Private Sector Development In Ethiopia, Solomon Deneke

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia is known for its longstanding freedom and civilization that go as back as over three thousand years. Unfortunately the country is now known as backward, least developed and one of the poorest of the poor. This historic plight has its own background and long process that this paper does not intend to get into. The major objective of this paper is to assess private sector that plays a paramount role in the Ethiopian economy.

Foreign Direct Investment And Uncertainty: Implications For Ethiopia, Adugna Lemi, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

The paper examines the effect of price and exchange rate uncertainty and political instability on the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to selected African economies. Measures of uncertainty of inflation rate and real exchange rate are incorporated by taking the conditional variance of the residual of the Autoregressive (AR) processes of each series. Pooled data result without accounting for country specific factors is misleading. Fixed effects model provides a better explanation of the variation of FDI flow to African economies. The results show that uncertainty in the rate of inflation and political instability constrain the flow of FDI only …

Exports, Trade Liberalization And Economic Growth In Sub-Saharan Africa, Seid Hassan

International Conference on African Development Archives

Despite the various efforts made to promote sustainable economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, there had been little achievement in terms of progress in standard of living and poverty reduction in this part of the world. Given the absence of a perfect strategy to overcome these problems, most Sub-Saharan African countries have tended to place undue emphasis on export promotion in the context of worldwide economic liberalization and globalization. Moreover, as a result of opening up their economies in the 1990s, especially in the export/import sector of these economies, it has been reported, some Sub-Saharan African countries have experienced some positive …

The Macroeconomics Of Foreign Aid To Ethiopia: Internal Balance And Fiscal Response-An Alternate Framework, Getnet Alemu

International Conference on African Development Archives

Foreign aid recipient fiscal response in developing countries is studied using utility/welfare maximization principle. The underlying assumption of this function (utility/welfare can be maximized by narrowing the deviations of the actual values from their desired values subject to the constraints of finance) doesn’t capture the interplay between project aid inflows and the adjustment process of the government budget. This paper proposes an alternative framework in conceptualizing the recipients fiscal response. This was possible due to the special feature of this paper that aid is disassociated from foreign capital inflow and also identified by its usage which is not the case …

Health And Education Issues In Ethiopia, Meskerem Shiferaw

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper is written for use in the International Conference on Contemporary Development Issues in Ethiopia that will be held, at Western Michigan University, from August 16-18, 2001. It is written for participants of the conference who are interested to know about the current situation of health and education sectors in Ethiopia, in the overall framework of the country's economy. In the paper, the earlier and existing policies and their impact on the development of the sectors is touched up on.

Looking At African Value System Through Cultural Dimensions: How Do African Countries Culturally Differ Among Themselves And From The United States?, Habte G. Woldu

International Conference on African Development Archives

The study through a variety of cultural dimensions, measures the cultural differences and similarities of four different African countries: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa. The national cultures of the four African countries are analyzed through a methodology for systematically assessing cultural differences. The African countries are compared with that of the United States of America. The output of the study clearly shows that there are cultural differences among the African countries as well as between the African countries and the United States. African respondents demonstrated significantly higher cultural traits in collective & hieratical relations, being/feeling & risk avoidance related …

The Conflict Of Ethnic Identity And The Language Of Education Policy In Contemporary Ethiopia, Teshome G. Wagaw

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper examines the current language policy of Ethiopia, especially its significance for the educational systems of that country. The policy in its present form was proclaimed in 1991 after the present government drove out the former Marxist-Leninist military junta, which had ruled the country for the preceding twenty years2. The language policy, along with other human rights and ethnic-related policies, was incorporated into the new constitution that took effect in 1996. Among other things, the policy provides for Ethiopia’s more than 90 language groups to develop and use their respective languages in the courts, in governmental and other political …

Women's Higher Education In Ethiopia Under Three Regimes, 1950-1997, Alem Habtu

International Conference on African Development Archives

A recent World Bank report sums up the condition of the "typical" Ethiopian woman as follows: "She is a victim of her situation, without the capacity to initiate change within the quagmire of her poverty, high fertility, poor health and domestic drudgery" (cited in Ethiopia, NPA, April 1995, pp. 14-15).

Generally speaking, most Ethiopian women live in impoverished subsistence. They are expected to marry early, and bear many children. They lack knowledge of hygiene, nutrition or family planning. They live in conditions of very high maternal, infant and child mortality. Lack of education, high fertility, infant mortality, and generally poor …

Colonizing Ideas: A Comparative Look At Receptivity To The Adoption Of Western Education In Japan And Ethiopia, Getachew Felleke

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper examines the challenges and promises that accompanied the introduction of modern education into two non-modern societies. The study is motivated by an interest to fathom some of the causes and sources of Ethiopia’s multifaceted social and economic problems. Taking as its point of departure the view that, over the long run, evolutionary progress of societies should be the norm, the study seeks to identify the impediments that have blocked such a normal pace of progress in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s early experience in building up its education system is compared and contrasted with that of Japan’s. The roles played by …

The Effects Of Food Aid And Household Composition On Child Farm Labor Supply In Rural Ethiopia, Takashi Yamano

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper determines the effects of household demographic composition and food aid on child farm labor supply controlling for household fixed effects. The results indicate that a child has a higher probability of working on farm if he or she is living with younger children, suggesting that older children are reducing resource constraints. The results on food aid indicate that receiving free distribution has relatively larger positive effects on the probability of girls working on farm than boys, while participating in food for work has relatively larger negative effects.

Causes Of Seasonal Food Insecurity In Oromiya Zone Of Amhara Region: Farmers' View, Degefa Tolossa

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia is currently facing challenging problems, ranging from those induced by environmental crises to those caused by demographic and socio-economic constraints which adversely affect peoples` production system. The country is generally characterized by extreme poverty, continued and high population growth rate, severe environmental degradation and recurrent drought (Getachew 1995; Markos,1997, NOVIB, 1999). Resulting from these, the performance of agriculture, the sector that makes livelihood for 85% of the country’s population, has been poor over the last few decades, to the extent that the country could not adequately feed its population from domestic production. This has been manifested in the prevailing …

Emerging Informal Land Markets: A Quest For Equitable And Efficient Land Tenure Systems, Tesfaye Teklu

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper is motivated by the need for an informed analytical discussion on land issues and policy options. “There is a danger that if a process of learning and policy dialogue on land tenure issues is not started soon, Ethiopia, like a number of other African countries, will adopt ‘ready made’ land tenure reforms that are based on ideological considerations and misconceptions about current problems” (Bruce, Hoben and Rahmato, 1994). This paper shares this view (or, warning) and follows it as a guiding principle.

Simulating Strategy Options For Enhancing Hyv-Maize Technology Adoption In Oromia, Ethiopia, Bedassa Tadesse

International Conference on African Development Archives

Using a sample selection induced bivariate probit model fitted to data collected from small scale, resource poor farmers in Western Oromia (Jimma, Ilu-Ababaor, Estern and Western Welega zones), I define and simulate different strategy (Pure and Mixed) scenarios. The scenarios provide the extent to which the adoption of maize technology package (HYV-seeds, fertilizers and planting methods) among currently non-adopter maize growers could be increased with the use of different strategies. Among the scenarios evaluated, I find a strategy that emphasizes information approach, as a pure strategy, or when integrated with education and/or the agent approaches-in a mixed strategy, significantly influential …