世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)61690-6.pdf

Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Sustainable Development Goals

In this paper, we depart from the standard way of analyzing school enrollment by accounting explicitly for educational selectivity in order to examine the determinants of child school enrollment in Ghana. Using data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey round 6 (GLSS 6), we estimate a three-step sequential logit model for the determinants of secondary school enrollment and its dependence on completing primary school. We find that family resources such as parental education, household income and the gender of the head of the household play a role in households' child schooling decisions. Educated parents are relatively more likely to enroll their children in primary school and keep them in school until they complete primary education. As well, we show that educated parents do not promote a gender-biased investment in the schooling of children at the primary level. While household welfare does not influence children's entry into primary school importantly, their completion of primary school depends on household welfare. The study sheds more light on the pro-male bias phenomenon regarding entry into primary school and primary school completion. Policies to promote the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 in Ghana must be grade sensitive.

Analysis of School Enrollment in Ghana: A Sequential Approach

We believe the massive rural electrification, which began in 1992, played a significant role in the varying fertility rates across rural Ghana Rural households with electricity, tend to have fewer children ever born to a woman than households without electricity Using control function regressions, we identify the contribution of electrification to the rural-rural variation in fertility by exploiting the exogenous variations in the access rate to electricity at the district-level Our results indicate that electrification contributes to a fall in fertility among rural women by between one and three children These results are qualitatively similar to results from our two-stage least squares estimations and counterfactual analysis Although our results may not reflect what happens in other countries, they suggest that electrification reduces fertility and should be considered when examining the costs and benefits of rural electrification programs in developing countries

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/6/3/40/pdf

Explaining Fertility Variation in Rural Communities: The Role of Electricity in Ghana

Impact of LPG promotion program in Ghana: The role of distance to refill

Purpose




Using data from the sixth round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper aims to take a critical look at issues relating to the demand for education in Ghana.




Design/methodology/approach




In doing this, the paper develops a model for the determinants of household’s educational expenditure using the full sample of data and an income-quintile disaggregated model of the determinants of household’s educational expenditures. The study adopts robust empirical estimation techniques to estimate the model.




Findings




The paper finds that household resources importantly influence children’s educational expenditures with wealthier households spending proportionately more in educating their children than poorer households; large-sized households spend more in terms of educational expenses than small-sized households reflecting largely the quantity of education purchased, given that quality and contextual factors matters for educational investments. Strikingly, the findings show that female headship is a significant positive predictor of households’ demand for education. These findings provide valuable policy options relating to the goal of ensuring inclusive and quality education for all and promoting a lifelong learning by 2030.




Originality/value




While literature on the determinants of households’ educational expenditures abound, very few of this literature focuses on sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, this study makes an important contribution to the literature by providing evidence on the determinants of households’ educational expenditure in the context of sub-Saharan Africa.

Paying for education among households in Ghana: Is there any role for household resources and contextual effects?

Purpose




Using the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey data, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributing factors of entrepreneurial propensity among males and females in Ghana.




Design/methodology/approach




Using a measure of entrepreneurial propensity that takes into account individuals who are involved in starting a new business (nascent entrepreneurs) as a dependent variable and socio-demographic characteristics, and perceptual variables as explanatory variables, the study adopts robust empirical estimation techniques to examine how these variables influence the probability of starting a new business among men and women in Ghana.




Findings




The probability of being a male nascent entrepreneur is significantly dependent upon a wide range of factors including demographic, economic, perceptual and contextual elements, albeit with important variations across gender. An individuals’ subjective assessment of fear of failure in starting a business and of having the requisite entrepreneurial capabilities; the age of the individual; gender of the individual; work status and contextual factors matters for entrepreneurial propensity in Ghana. However, important differences exist in the drivers of entrepreneurial propensity for males and females with females’ entrepreneurship attributed largely to conditions of necessity relative to their male counterparts.




Originality/value




The main value of this paper is to use the GEM survey (which is nationally representative) for Ghana to analyze the contributing factors of the entrepreneurial propensity among men and women in Ghana.

Peter Quartey

Papers

Analysis of School Enrollment in Ghana: A Sequential Approach

Explaining Fertility Variation in Rural Communities: The Role of Electricity in Ghana

Impact of LPG promotion program in Ghana: The role of distance to refill

Paying for education among households in Ghana: Is there any role for household resources and contextual effects?

Unmasking the contributing factors of entrepreneurial activities among men and women in Ghana