Showing papers on "Developing country published in 1985"

Returns to education : a further international update and implications

Abstract: This paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 The new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns, namely, that returns are highest for primary education, the general curricula, the education of women, and countries with the lowest per capita income The findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which, for efficiency and equity purposes, should concentrate on these priority areas

Teenage pregnancy in developed countries: determinants and policy implications.

Abstract: PIP: Because of the high adolescent fertility rates in the US, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) conducted a 1985 study of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing in 37 developed countries. This was an effort to unveil those factors responsible for determining teenage reproductive behavior. This article presents the data from that study. Birthrates were collected and separated into 2 age groups: for those under 18 and those women 18 to 19 years of age. A 42 variable questionnaire was sent to the public affairs officer of the American embassy and family planning organization in each foreign country to provide additional socioeconomic, behavioral, and educational data. Childbearing was found to be positively correlated with agricultural work, denoting a socioeconomic influence. Adolescent birthrates showed a positive correlation with levels of maternity leaves and benefits offered in the country. The lowest birthrates were found in those countries with the most liberal attitudes toward sex as demonstrated through media representation of female nudity, extent of nudity on public beaches, sales of sexually explicit literature, and media advertising of condoms. A negative correlation was seen for equitable distribution of income and the under 18 birthrate. The older teenage birthrate was found to be lower for countries with higher minimum ages for marriage. They also suggested a responsiveness to government efforts to increase fertility. Some general patterns emerged to explain the high teenage birthrate for the US: it is less open about sexual matters than countries with lower adolescent birthrates and the income in the US is distributed to families of low economic status. A more subtle factor is that although contraception is available, it is not that accessible to young men and women because of the cost. Case studies were presented to provide a more detailed understanding of the reasons for the high adolescent birthrates. Examined are desire for pregnancy, exposure to risk of pregnancy, contraceptive use, access to contraceptive and abortion services, and sex education.

The Effect of Political Events on United States Direct Foreign Investment: A Pooled Time-Series Cross-Sectional Analysis

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of political events on the manufacturing direct foreign investment (MDFI) decisions of U.S. multinational corporations. The relationship between political events (and nonpolitical factors) and MDFI is investigated through regression analysis of pooled time-series (21 years) and cross-sectional (24 countries) data and through various tests of the homogeneity of the relationship across groups of countries. The study finds that the relationship between political events in MDFI is different for less developed countries as opposed to developed countries. For the less developed countries, both inter-nation and intra-nation conflict and cooperation affect MDFI. In contrast, U.S. MDFI in developed countries appears to be affected only by inter-nation conflict and cooperation.

The old-age security motive for fertility.

Abstract: The conditions under which the old-age security motive could be expected to be significant for fertility are described. Such conditions are likely to prevail in rural areas of developing countries and especially among women. Empirical studies on the subject are evaluated and the inconclusive and contradictory nature of the findings are attributed to failures to select appropriate samples and variables. Most findings derive from studies only marginally concerned with the old-age security motive for fertility. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. Some of the earlier studies found surprisingly little or no relation between the old-age pension participation variables and various measures of fertility especially in developing countries. More recent studies have generally found significant negative relationships. Entwisle and Winegarden obtained evidence of a reinforcing feedback from low fertility to the expansion of the depth and breadth of coverage of participation in old-age security programs. A study done by DeVany and Sanchez concluded that the land-retention and other benefits of children to their parents are greater for those living on land which cannot be bought or sold than for those on privately owned land. Nugent and Gillaspy found that fertility changes between 1960 and 1970 across counties were negatively related to the size of the social security proxy variable. Cains 1981 study showed that the insecurity characterizing rural areas of developing countries is not limited to old age and disability but also includes calamitous events whose presence contribute to high fertility. The 1980 study of Vlassoff and Vlassoff concluded that old-age security was unimportant as a motive for fertility. There is a need for additional more systematic and more special-purpose empirical studies to investigate the impact of old-age security on fertility. Studies should be conducted in rural areas of developing countries where the old-age pension motive is expected to be strong. The sample size should be large enough to afford the opportunity to isolate the old-age pension affects from the effects of other variables and data collection should be repeated at various times. (summaries in ENG FRE SPA)

The Global Factory: Foreign Assembly in International Trade

Abstract: Since the early 1960s exports of manufactures from developing countries have grown rapidly. Widening gaps between the wages of rich and poor countries, coupled with dramatic declines in transportation costs and increased technological capabilities, led to this growth. Production of labor-intensive goods in newly industrializing economies became a significant factor in work markets. Industrial country firms responded to this situation by integrating production processes were transferred abroad to countries with an abundance of cheap labor, while technologically advanced components were supplied at home. In this book the authors evaluate the positive and negative aspects of foreign assembly and suggest ways in which it may develop and affect the future of North-South relations. They examine in detail the U.S. semiconductor industry, the first to go abroad on a large scale. They also chart the development of the semiconductor industries of Western Europe and Japan, and show the strengths and weaknesses of the various policy alternatives available in this rapidly growing, highly competitive industry. In other chapters they present case studies of the assembly industries in Mexico, Haiti, and Colombia. Mexico, which shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States, is the most important partner of the United States in assembly activities abroad. Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, has received a strong economic stimulus from assembly. The explosive growth of Colombian assembly for the U.S. market came as that country rose to be the fifth largest industrial producer in Latin America. The book concludes with an overview of the domestic political, social, and economic effects of the reorganization of industry abroad and a summary of the policy implications, both for the United States and for the developing countries that are its manufacturing partners.

Self-Employment and Self-Selection in Developing Country Labor Markets

Abstract: Labor markets in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have traditionally been characterized as non-competitive. This view is expressed in well-known models in the development economics literature. For example, the labor surplus model of Lewis [16] asserts that labor in rural areas of LDCs in early stages of development is so abundant that if the wage rate were determined competitively it would be below the subsistence level. Hence institutions are assumed to arise to determine the wage rate non-competitively, and to provide the resulting excess supply of labor to agriculture with a subsistence level of living. The HarrisTodaro [11] model of rural-urban migration asserts that labor unions, minimum wage laws, public sector hiring practices and other institutional factors tend to keep formal sector wages in urban areas above labor-market clearing levels. The resulting excess supply of labor in urban areas is assumed to survive at a subsistence level by becoming selfemployed in the low productivity "informal sector." Recent empirical studies provide little support for the non-competitive view of LDC labor markets. Evidence from India, Thailand, Malaysia, Kenya, and Guatemala suggests that labor markets are much less imperfect than often assumed.' An important empirical finding in several of these studies is that self-employed workers appear to have higher earnings than their wage employee counterparts in urban areas.2 This fact is inconsistent with the notion that self-employment is typically a low-productivity occupation engaged in by individuals who are searching for scarce, well-paying formal sector jobs. The purpose of this study is to analyze and estimate a model of individual choice between wage and self-employment in the LDC context. The model incorporates a production function in the self-employment sector that includes managerial ability as an input. Analysis of the influence of managerial ability on the choice of self-employment leads to a theory that can explain the observed pattern of earnings of the urban self-employed compared to wage employees. Implications of the model for estimation of production function

Foreign Demand for United States Higher Education: A Study of Developing Countries in the Eastern Hemisphere

Abstract: Foreign student enrollments in the United States have increased rapidly over the past 25 years. The total number increased from 36,494 in 1954 to 336,990 in 1982. While foreign students still represent less than 2% of all higher education enrollments in the United States, this proportion is likely to grow over the next decade as enrollments of American citizens decline. One consequence of the growth to date has been that many colleges and universities depend on foreign students for an important part of their tuition revenue or enrollment-determined budget, and this dependence is also likely to grow over the next decade. Another important consequence of larger flows of foreign students is an increase in immigration to the United States of skilled labor as students adjust their visa status to immigrant. The growing influence of foreign students as consumers of U.S. higher education services underscores the importance of better understanding the nature of this phenomenon. This paper sets forth a model of foreign demand for U.S. higher education and estimates that model for several countries using time-series data for 1954-73. The only countries selected for study are lowor middle-income Eastern Hemisphere nations. These countries were chosen in part because they had the highest rates of enrollment growth in the United States. In addition, these countries were treated similarly by U.S. immigration legislation and were treated differently from Western Hemisphere and Western European countries. In what follows, the theory of student demand for U.S. higher

Multilevel Effects of Socioeconomic Development and Family Planning Programs on Children Ever Born

Abstract: This article describes an approach to an explanation of fertility that is sensitive to the dependence of the behavior of individuals or couples on social context and sets forth hypotheses about micro and macro determinants of children ever born (CEB). Data from 15 World Fertility Survey countries are used in a multilevel test of these hypotheses. The findings are that per capita GNP and family planning program effort affect not only country-specific average levels of CEB, but also the direction and magnitudes of the within country effects of two micro socioeconomic variables on CEB. These findings, which are largely consistent with the hypotheses, illustrate the utility of a multilevel approach.

Interest Rate Determination in Developing Countries: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract: As a number of developing countries move towards more liberalized financial systems, the question of how interest rates respond to foreign influences and domestic policies is one that policymakers in these countries have started to face. Most existing studies of interest rates typically treat only the extreme cases of either a fully open economy, where some form of interest rate arbitrage holds, or a completely closed economy, in which interest rates are determined solely by domestic monetary factors. Developing countries, however, generally fall somewhere between these two extremes, so that the standard models of interest rate determination would not seem to be relevant to their case.The purpose of this paper is to outline a theoretical framework that can serve as a starting point for analyzing interest rate determination in those developing countries that are in the process of removing controls on the financial sector and restrictions on capital flows. The approach suggested here combines elements of the closed-economy and open-economy models, and thus is able to incorporate the influences of foreign interest rates, expected changes in exchange rates, and monetary developments on domestic interest rates. An interesting feature of the resulting model is that the approximate degree of financial openness, defined as the extent to which domestic interest rates are linked to foreign interest rates, can in fact be as certained from the data of the particular country. To illustrate the empirical validity of the proposed model it was applied to two countries -- Colombia and Singapore. These two countries are quite different in terms of levels of financial development and degrees of openness, and thus provide a useful first test of the general nature of the model. The model is able to represent both these cases quite adequately. The estimates indicate that in Colombia both foreign and domestic factors are important, while domestic interest rates in Singapore are fully determined by foreign interest rates and variations in the exchange rate. This is precisely what would have been expected, given the characteristics of the respective financial systems in the two countries.

The flight of capital from developing countries

Abstract: The export of capital, legally and illegally, is a major problem for many developing countries. The following study analyses the causes and nature of the flight of capital and estimates its scale in 34 countries.

Adolescent fertility: worldwide concerns.

Abstract: PIP: There is growing concern over the adverse health, social, economic, and demographic effects of adolescent fertility. Morbidity and mortality rates ar significantly higher for teenage mothers and their infants, and early initiation of childbearing generally means truncated education, lower future family income, and larger completed family size. Adolescent fertility rates, which largely reflect marriage patterns, range from 4/1000 in Mauritania; in sub-Saharan Africa, virtually all rates are over 100. In most countries, adolescent fertility rates are declining due to rising age at marriage, increased educational and economic opportunities for young women, changes in social customs, increased use of contraception, and access to abortion. However, even if fertility rates were to decline dramatically among adolescent women in developing countries, their sheer numbers imply that their fertility will have a major impact on world population growth in the years ahead. The number of women in the world ages 15-19 years is expected to increase from 245 million in 1985 to over 320 million in the years 2020; 82% of these women live in developing countries. As a result of more and earlier premarital sexual activity, fostered by the lengthening gap between puberty and marriage, diminished parental and social controls, and increasing peer and media pressure to be sexually active, abortion and out-of-wedlock childbearing are increasing among teenagers in many developed and rapidly urbanizing developing countries. Laws and policies regarding sex education in the schools and access to family planning services by adolescents can either inhibit or support efforts to reduce adolescent fertility. Since contraceptive use is often sporadic and ineffective among adolescents, family planning services are crucial. Such programs should aim to reduce adolescents' dependence on abortion through preventive measures and increase awareness of the benefits of delayed sexual activity. Similarly, sex education should seek to provide a basis for intelligent, informed decision making. Programs tailored to reach teenagers in schools, recreational centers, and the workplace have particular potential.

Telenovelas: A Latin American Success Story

Abstract: The success of Spanish-language telenovelas a type of soap opera illustrates major changes that have occurred in recent years in television systems in Latin America. There has been a trend toward decreased reliance on programming imported from the US and a flow of telenovelas from country to country within Latin America. This article based on interviews with 65 television personnel and communications experts in Mexico Peru Argentina Brazil and Venezuela in 1982 focuses on the development of the telenovela as the paramount form of popular culture. Latin American audiences consistently prefer locally produced television programs followed by programs imported by other Latin American countries and finally programs imported from the US. Even telenovelas with an educational slant (e.g. promotion of adult literacy training or family planning) earn both high audience ratings and substantial advertising income. In 1977 the year in which a telenovela promoting positive role models for Mexicos family planning program was broadcast the number of family planning acceptors increased by 560000. Mexico and Brazil are the main producing nations. This phenomenon is an example of how Third World nations can create their own products to compete successfully with products from developed countries. Inspired by the Latin American experience other developing countries such as India plan to broadcast educational soap operas to promote national development goals such as family planning and the equality of women.

Health policy social policy and mortality prospects

Abstract: These are the proceedings of a seminar that was held in Paris France February 28-March 4 1983 and was sponsored by the IUSSP Committee on Factors Affecting Mortality and the Length of Life. The 25 papers are organized into three sections: health intervention programs in developing countries health intervention programs in developed countries and the impact of social and economic policies. Focusing on the policy dimension of factors affecting mortality these papers are concerned with such developments in recent decades as the control of major diseases the establishment of social security systems and the initiation of major health programs in developing countries. The impact of these developments on mortality patterns worldwide is assessed.

How to evaluate the solvency of an indebted nation

Abstract: Reassessing third world debt Daniel Cohen The conventional measures of the solvency of developing countries usually rely on such indices as debt-export or debt-GNP ratios. The underlying rationale is that, to be solvent, a country must eventually pay back all its debt. This paper starts from two simple but important remarks. First, solvency need not require the full eventual repayment of all debt. Continued borrowing may be possible. Rather, what is required is that a country's debt accumulation does not outstrip its capacity to make future repayments and the capacity of lenders to make future loans. Second, solvency therefore cannot be defined independently of the growth rates of lender and borrower countries, nor of the interest rate at which past debts accumulate. Putting these ideas together, a new solvency index is proposed, and this is computed for all the less developed countries. This new index suggests a less gloomy view of the international debt crisis. The largest debtors may have already accomplished an adjustment which is more than sufficient to restore their solvency when this is properly computed. To investigate this claim, there is a detailed analysis of the policies recently adopted in Argentina and Brazil.

An Intercountry Comparison of Agricultural Production Efficiency

Abstract: Intercountry cross-section comparison of total productivity in agriculture showed that differences in production efficiency were small relative to differences in labor productivity among countries at a same stage of economic development but very large among different stages of development. Moreover, the large differences in total productivity between the developed and the less developed countries widened further during the past two decades. The results suggest a hypothesis that agriculture in the less developed countries as a whole has not yet entered the phase of "modern economic growth" a la Kuznets.

International Trade and Economic Development: The Recent Experience of Developing Countries

Abstract: In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, based on the experience of the Great Depression and the early post-World War II period, a strong pessimism evolved among professional economists and policymakers about trade prospects of developing countries and the role that international trade could play in the process of economic development. The trade-pessimists argued that the capacity of developing countries to import goods and services expands very slowly because world demand for their exports does not grow at a rapid pace and the terms of trade constantly move against them. I Demand for exports of poor countries is apt to grow slowly because of the shift of industrial production in advanced countries from low-technology, material-intensive goods to high-technology, skill-intensive products; increased efficiency in industrial uses of material inputs; substitution of synthetics for natural raw materials; low income elasticity of demand for many agricultural commodities and simple manufactures in which low-income countries have a comparative advantage; the rising productivity of agriculture in developed countries; and the protection of agriculture and laborintensive industries in advanced countries. Furthermore, there is a secular tendency for commodity terms of trade to turn against developing countries because factor and commodity markets are more oligopolistic in developed countries, and since demand for exports of poor nations expands at a much slower rate than their demand for imported manufactures from advanced countries. Based on their assessment of trade prospects of developing countries and a number of other assumptions, the trade pessimists also maintained that an "outward-oriented" trade policy could act as an impediment to economic

Indian emigrants: numbers characteristics and economic impact

Abstract: Trends in emigration from India are reviewed with a focus on estimates of the numbers involved migrant characteristics and the economic impact of this migration. The author estimates that as of 1981 between 5 million and 5.5 million persons born in India were living outside India; 85 percent of these migrants were living in developing countries. The concentration of the migration of highly skilled workers to developed countries is noted. Consideration is given to remittances from abroad and their effect on the Indian economy. (summary in FRE SPA) (ANNOTATION)

Mortality and development revisited.

Abstract: This paper attempts to update results reported in 2 earlier papers about the role of socioeconomic factors in worldwide mortality declines since the 1930s. Preston (1975) demonstrated that the relationship between life expectancy at birth and per capita income (in constant dollars) had shifted between the 1930s and the 1960s. A country at a particular level of national income per capita was estimated to have a level of life expectancy at birth that was on average 9.7 years higher in the 1960s than it would have been in the 1930s at the same level of income. That shift clearly was attributable to factors other than measured income gains. To identify the contribution of advances in literacy and nutrition to the apparent shift Preston (1980) added those variables to income in regression equations estimated with data on 36 countries around 1940 and 120 countries around 1970. For the less developed countries (LDCs) the shift in the relationship between 1940-70 was estimated to be 8.8 years after those variables were introduced along with income. Thus literacy and nutritional gains were responsible for relatively little of the shift. The goal here is to estimate the amount of shift in the relation between mortality and other development indicators during the 1965-69 to 1975-79 period. The focus is on the 70% of the developing world (exclude China) where in the aggregate there are indications of a slowdown in the pace of mortality change during the 1960s and the early 1970s. In all cases a mortality indicator was used as the dependent variable in a cross-national regression analysis that includes data from LDCs and from developed countries. Also in all cases the set of independent variables included some transformation of the following: the percentage of adults who were literate gross domestic product per capita in constant dollars and the excess of per capita daily calories supplied above 1500. Data were drawn from the standard UN UNESCO and World Bank compendia. Contrary to previous periods the social and economic variables of income literacy and nutrition were the dominating factors in explaining mortality decline during the 1965-69 to 1975-79 decade. That greater relative role does not result from faster improvements in social and economic conditions during the recent period or from an increased responsiveness of mortality to social and economic variables but the exogenous factors appear to have operated with sharply reduced intensity in the more recent period. Reduced international commitment to health in developing countries may be 1 explanation. The results also suggest the major role that can be played by educational change in fostering mortality gains.

Rates of returns to education and the determinants of earnings in Pakistan.

Abstract: This paper is a straightforward exercise in estimating earnings functions and computing the private rates of returns to different levels of education. The latter summarizes the incentives to the individual to invest in human capital formation, while the former helps in ascertaining the influence of both human and non human capital variables on the earnings of the individual. A few studies conducted in the past found the rates of returns to education in Pakistan not in conformity with those of the majority of the developing countries for which such estimates exist. The estimated rates were lower for all levels of education in Pakistan than in the developing world. Moreover, the computed rates of returns had a positive association with the level of education.

The Economics of health in developing countries

Abstract: This useful collection examines the ways in which economic concepts and techniques can be applied to health and health services in developing countries, indicating the present scope of economic analysis and its potential use in the future planning and management of the health sector. Written by experts in the field, each essay presents theoretical developments and research findings, providing a state of the art review of the uses of economic analysis in such areas as health insurance, primary health care, immunization programs, and the interrelationship between health sector and national development planning.

National Security In The Third World

Abstract: For nations of the Third World, national security poses serious dilemmas. Unlike Western nations, less developed countries must balance the complex and often contradictory requirements of socioeconomic and political development with problems of internal stability and the requirements of national defense. For these countries, a concept of national s