This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods for shaping different skills. It presents economic models that rationalize the evidence and unify the treatment effect and family influence literatures. The evidence on the empirical and policy importance of credit constraints in forming skills is examined. There is little support for the claim that untargeted income transfer policies to poor families significantly boost child outcomes. Mentoring, parenting, and attachment are essential features of successful families and interventions to shape skills at all stages of childhood. The next wave of family studies will better capture the active role of the emerging autonomous child in learning and responding to the actions of parents, mentors and teachers.

The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility

Poverty among ethnic minorities and the majority in rural China for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 is investigated taking a dynamic view and using a large sample covering 22 provinces. Based on the National Bureau of Statistics' low income line, almost one-third of the ethnic minorities experienced poverty during the three years studied while the corresponding proportion among the ethnic majority was only about half as high. Still, by far most of the poor in rural China belong to the ethnic majority. The relatively high poverty rates for ethnic minorities in rural China are found to be due to higher rates of entry than for the majority, while differences in exit rates across ethnicities are few. To a large extent, ethnic poverty differences can be attributed to differences in location together with temporary and persistent poverty in rural China having a very clear spatial character. Poverty is concentrated to the western region and villages with low average income. Determinants of persistent and temporary poverty in rural China differ due to location as well as household characteristics.

Temporary and Persistent Poverty among Ethnic Minorities and the Majority in Rural China

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is one of the main air quality pollutants of concern in many urban and industrial areas worldwide, and particularly in the European region, where in 2017 almost 20 countries exceeded the NO2 annual limit values imposed by the European Commission Directive 2008/50/EC (EEA, 2019). NO2 pollution monitoring and regulation is a necessary task to help decision makers to search for a sustainable solution for environmental quality and population health status improvement. In this study, we propose a comparative analysis of the tropospheric NO2 column spatial configuration over Europe between similar periods in 2019 and 2020, based on the ESA Copernicus Sentinel-5P products. The results highlight the NO2 pollution dynamics over the abrupt transition from a normal condition situation to the COVID-19 outbreak context, characterized by a short-time decrease of traffic intensities and industrial activities, revealing remarkable tropospheric NO2 column number density decreases even of 85% in some of the European big cities. The validation approach of the satellite-derived data, based on a cross-correlation analysis with independent data from ground-based observations, provided encouraging values of the correlation coefficients (R2), ranging between 0.5 and 0.75 in different locations. The remarkable decrease of NO2 pollution over Europe during the COVID-19 lockdown is highlighted by S-5P products and confirmed by the Industrial Production Index and air traffic volumes.

Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Pollution Monitoring with Sentinel-5P Satellite Imagery over Europe during the Coronavirus Pandemic Outbreak

The Effects and Reacts of COVID-19 Pandemic and International Oil Price on Energy, Economy, and Environment in China

Natural Disasters and Human Capital: The Case of Nepal’s Earthquake

Agricultural fertilizer use is widely acknowledged to be a leading cause of water pollution. Yet, no national estimates exist on the effect of fertilizer application on concentrations of agricultural pollutants in US watersheds. This paper employs a watershed‐level panel data on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution readings to examine the impact of fertilizer use on US water quality over a fifty‐five‐year time period from 1951 to 2005. Findings show that a 10% increase in the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers leads to a 1.52% increase in the concentration of nitrogen and a 1.37% increase in the concentration of phosphorus across watersheds. Results also indicate that there exists heterogeneity in nutrient pollution elasticity estimates across eighteen US water resource regions, ranging from 0.082 to 0.733 in the case of nitrogen and from 0.036 to 0.475 in the case of phosphorus. Combining our results with prior hydrology‐based studies, we find that a 100% increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers in the Lower Mississippi water resource region expands the size of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico by roughly 3,389 square miles, equivalent to about two‐fifths of the estimated size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jayash Paudel

Papers

Natural Disasters and Human Capital: The Case of Nepal’s Earthquake

Environmental Externalities from Agriculture: Evidence from Water Quality in the United States

Short-run environmental effects of COVID-19: Evidence from forest fires

Community-Managed Forests, Household Fuelwood Use and Food Consumption

Why are People Energy Poor? Evidence from Ethnic Fractionalization