Showing papers on "Developing country published in 1986"

Routes to low mortality in poor countries.

Abstract: This paper examines how certain populations have achieved low mortality and whether these methods might be utilized by other poor populations. Mortality levels are examined relative to income levels for Third World countries classified as either superior health achievers or poor health achievers; other variables examined are population density family planning use religion and educational level. 3 societies with exceptionally low mortality are Sri Lanka Kerala India) and Costa Rica; these 3 settings are examples of successful "breakthrough" health programs. Similarities among the 3 include a substantial degree of female autonomy dedication to education an open political system a largely civilian society with no rigid class structure and a history of egalitarianism and radicalism. All 3 populations are small; dense settlement and widely diffused commercial farming in rural areas demonstrated in these 3 regions appear to favor reduction in rural-urban mortality levels. Breakthrough periods are identified for each of the societies when provision of health services was implemented on a large scale. In rural areas the primary health center is a base for midwives and health auxiliaries and household visits are an integral part of the program. By substantially raising the proportion of budgetary allocations to education and health (particularly emphasizing education for women) other countries can advance towards low mortality levels. Though the characteristics of the low mortality societies have long historical antecedents effective substitution for this historical experience has been made by some socialist countries and other substitutions are possible in the rest of the Third World. Religion is shown to have been associated with cultures that in some cases have retarded mortality decline and in others assisted it.

Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries. A World Bank Policy Study.

Abstract: Available data suggest that more than 700 million people in the developing world lack the food necessary for an active and healthy life. The problem of food security is not caused by an insufficient supply of food as has been commonly believed, but by the lack of purchasing power on the part of nations and households. This report outlines the nature and extent of food security problems in developing countries, explores the policy options available to these countries in addressing these problems, and indicates what international institutions such as the World Bank can and should do to help countries solve their food security problems. It suggests policies to achieve the desired goal in cost-effective ways. It also identifies policies that waste economic resources and fail to reach the target groups. It is in that sense as much about what should not be done as about what should be done

Growth in early childhood in developing countries.

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the effects of socioeconomic factors infection and diet on the physical growth of children in developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that growth charts prepared by the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) be used for assessing the nutritional status of children from birth to 10 years of age in developing countries. 1 approach to the investigation of ethnic differences in body size is to compare the growth of healthy well-nourished children of different ethnic origins. Data suggest that ethnic differences in growth potential are minor prior to puberty and that it is during this stage that major differentiation between ethnic groups takes place. However within ethnic groups in developing countries differences in body size between social classes are often very large. Researchers have also found that indicators of socioeconomic status even within a certain class are strong predictors of the body sizes of children. Land actual food production by the family and income are factors which predict body size. The length of children from developing countries is generally near the 15th percentile of the NCHS growth charts during the 1st few months of life. After a period of relative well-being in early infancy nutritional status rapidly deteriorates being worst in the 2nd year of life; the nutritional status of children does not seem to improve until later in the 3rd or 4th year of life. The most important infection affecting young children in developing countries is diarrheal diseases. The diarrheal diseases are important determinants of poor growth and development in poor countries. Overall an analysis of the magnitude of the differences between well-to-do children of various ethnic groups and the differences within ethnic groups that are associated with social class shows that the variation that can be attributed to environmental factors in developing countries far overshodows that which can e attributed to genetics.

Government and Economic Growth in the Less Developed Countries: An Empirical Study for 1960-1980

Abstract: Adam Smith founded modern economics with a powerful argument that free markets are the best route to prosperity and economic growth. His conclusion has been studied and debated by economists ever since, including Nobel Prize winners Friedman, Hayek, Kuznets, Lewis, Myrdal, and Schultz. Whatever economists have concluded, since World War II the majority of the less developed countries seem to have opted for extensive government regulation of the private sector and for a large public sector. Has the large government role slowed or accelerated the growth of LDCs? Obviously, this is an important issue. This study looks at government expenditure, revenue raising, and regulation. Greater emphasis is put on expenditure because (1) the revenue raised is presumably a function of the level of expenditure, and (2) there are few internationally comparable measures of regulation. There are virtually no empirical studies of the general impact of government on economic growth. An extensive literature search turned up only three papers. Gemmell analyzed the impact of nonmarket sector growth on various measures of macroeconomic performance for 27 LDCs and developed countries for 1960 and 1970. He drew no general conclusions about the relation between the size of the nonmarket sector and economic growth.' Marsden found a negative relation between tax/GDP ratios and economic growth for a cross section of 20 LDCs and developed countries for the 1970-79 period.2 I found a negative relationship between the share of government consumption expenditure in GDP and the growth of per capita GDP for a cross section of 96 LDCs and developed countries over various time periods between 1961 and 1976.3 This paper extends the approach used in my 1983 article.

Poverty and Hunger: Issues and options for food security in developing countries

Abstract: Available data suggest that more than 700 million people in the developing world lack the food necessary for an active and healthy life. The problem of food security is not caused by an insufficient supply of food as has been commonly believed, but by the lack of purchasing power on the part of nations and households. This report outlines the nature and extent of food security problems in developing countries, explores the policy options available to these countries in addressing these problems, and indicates what international institutions such as the World Bank can and should do to help countries solve their food security problems. It suggests policies to achieve the desired goal in cost-effective ways. It also identifies policies that waste economic resources and fail to reach the target groups. It is in that sense as much about what should not be done as about what should be done

The Role of Location-Related Factors in U.S. Banking Involvement Abroad: An Empirical Examination

Abstract: This study examines the role of major location-specific advantages in the international branch banking involvement of U.S. banks. Using pooled time-series (1976-82), cross-sectional (thirty countries) regression analysis, this study finds that the U.S. business presence in foreign country has a strong positive effect on U.S. branch banking activity in that country. In contrast, the local market opportunity appears to have no significant effect. These results hold for the entire set of countries, as well as each of five subsets (developed, less developed, European, Latin American, and Asian countries). The openness of the host country to the establishment of new foreign bank branches does affect U.S. branch banking involvement. This effect is most pronounced in the less developed countries, particularly those in Asia.

World development report 1986

Abstract: This is the ninth in an annual series assessing development issues. The world economy is entering its fourth year of growth since the recession of 1982. Yet the recovery is hesitant with many developing countries facing serious problems of adjustment. The recent decline in oil prices, interest rates, and inflation will provide a stimulus to developed and developing countries alike. But many debtor countries, particularly oil exporters, will find it hard to maintain growth in the near term. The effects of the recovery have been much weaker for many low-income Sub-Saharan countries. Part I of the report explores the policies required to restore growth in the developing world. It stresses the importance of developed countries maintaining the policies that have both reduced inflation and moderated distortions in their markets. Of concern however is the increase in international trade restrictions, if countries are to attain sustainable growth, the reform of domestic institutions must be accompanied by an effort towards international freer trade. Part 2 suggests that the gradual liberalization of trade should be a high priority for international action in agriculture. An examination of the policy options in developing countries suggests that economic stability and growth could be greatly enhanced by focusing on improved pricing and trade policies.

Defense Expenditures, External Public Debt and Growth in Developing Countries

Abstract: This study reexamines the relationship between growth and defense spending in developing countries. It differs from previous studies as it recognizes differences in the borrowing capacity of each country. We hypothesize that a negative relationship will exist between defense and economic growth in countries which are financially resource constrained, and a positive relationship will exist in countries which are relatively resource unconstrained. A factor and discriminate analysis are used to group countries. The variables chosen for the factor analysis depict a country's external debt, structural condition, growth, and balance of payments position. Regression equations were estimated for the total sample and each group, with the growth in Gross Domestic Product as the dependent variable. The results confirm the hypothesized positive relationship between defense and growth in the unconstrained group, but was not confirmed for the constrained group. The results suggest the importance of variables such as fo...

Urbanization in China: Town and Country in a Developing Economy 1949-2000 A. D.

Abstract: China's pattern of urbanization has provoked considerable interest and many a puzzle, both because announced policy goals seemed to contradict historical trends in other societies and because data problems abounded. Richard Kirkby's book is the best effort to date to try to disentangle both sets of issues. He argues that it was not so much ideological goals as industrialization and military/strategic goals that drove urban policy, including the relocation of manufacturing and urban facilities to the interior, the decision through the 1970s to underinvest in urban housing, and the attempt to freeze new migrants out of the larger cities with a harsh rationing and household registration system, which thereby saved scarce investment resources for heavy industry. Some of the pre-1978 policy goals were achieved. Others were more problematic. The urban population was shifted away from the coast toward the interior. Urban population growth, and migration into cities, slowed dramatically, at least from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. Money was not \"wasted\" on housing. At the same time it was only the growth of the very largest cities that was constrained. For many unanticipated reasons, including the considerable autonomy of industrial bureaus who could ignore planning guidelines, intermediate cities continued to grow even while small towns, favored in avowed policy guidelines, waned. Peasants coveted urban residence because of the continuing massive gap between urban and rural living standards. Only the strict rationing and household registration system kept them out. Programs to disperse population into satellite cities were hampered by poor planning, and such dispersal to villages and other locations as did occur was often accomplished only with unpopular administrative measures. Since 1978 China has begun to face a whole new set of policy issues. With a loosening of the urban rationing system and the opening of private markets in cities, peasants can more easily slip into cities to live off the market. In the countryside, family farming, crop specialization, and the relaxation of state control over production and labor have released hordes of peasants from grain production. More will be released in the future, and already since 1978 official urban growth rates have returned to world levels. These trends have provoked considerable policy debate in China and the launching of many new initiatives. One initiative is to reassert the policy favoring small towns. Some Chinese scholars have questioned this policy, however, suggesting that a poor society such as China can ill afford to waste resources on inefficient small towns. Even if favored in official policy, there are many practical obstacles to having small towns absorb the surplus rural population, including unattractively low standards of living, uncoordinated administration, and problems of raw material supplies, Kirkby argues. There are other post-1978 initiatives that favor large cities. These include major development projects linking large cities such as Shanghai to a regional network of cities and hinterland. Nationwide, there is a parallel policy of bringing counties under the control of nearby cities rather than the old regional administrators with no special urban interests. Both sets of policies would increase the decision-making power of urban administrators.

Outward Orientation, Import Instability and African Economic Growth: an Empirical Investigation

Abstract: Beleaguered policy-makers in developing countries have become quite tired of generalised advice. The remedies for macroeconomic malaise or stagnation that are appropriate in one country may be quite unsuited to the problems of another. Today’s ‘recipe’ for stabilisation and development in one country may be disastrous in its effects not only in other countries but also at other times in the same country. ‘Norms’ and ‘averages’ for the world, however fascinating to statisticians and development economists, are dubious guides for policy-makers in individual countries. Unhappiness with ‘global’ prescriptions has rarely been as vociferous as it has become in recent years in the context of the ‘conditionality’ attached to IMF, World Bank and other official lending. The IMF and the World Bank usually deny that they employ a single ‘model’ for all their member countries. Whether these institutions, qua institutions, do or do not, there can be little doubt that, within them, generalised prescriptions abound.

The effects of rapid population growth on labor supply and employment in developing countries.

Abstract: This document examines the principal effects of rapid population growth on labor supply and employment in the developing countries of the world. On the supply side of labor markets the discussion focuses on the lags between population growth and labor force participation; the independent effects on labor supply of accelerated population growth due to changes in fertility mortality and migration; patterns and trends in labor force participation rates; and gender differences in labor supply behavior. On the demand side attention is directed to the way in which the nature of labor markets in developing economies including government and privately induced wage distortions and rigidities conditions their labor absorption capacity. Most of the statistics analyzed were drawn from the various publications of the World Bank with some statistics from the United Nations and the International Labor Office. Countries are grouped in 2 conventional ways for purposes of the analysis: by income group and by geographic location. This review of the evidence reveals that developing countries have faced a very rapid increase in the population in the past 2 decades. Fertility and mortality patterns and developing country age structures guarantee a similar large increase in the future. Yet the experience of the past indicates that despite population increasing more than the labor force and despite inefficient dualistic labor markets (due potentially to government-induced and other imperfections) developing countries were on the whole relatively successful in improving their economic positions over the 1960-80 period. The labor markets absorbed a large population increase with per worker incomes rising and shifts occurring in the labor force distribution toward more productive sectors of the economy. Overall the experiences of the 1960-80 period provide little support for either the optimistic view that rapid population growth promotes development or the pessimistic view that it necessarily hinders development. The "neutralist" view that population growth has had little net association with economic development seems to be the most sensible conclusion to draw from the evidence though of course economic growth per capita might have been faster under slower population growth. For the remainder of the 20th century predicted population growth can likely be accommodated provided the developing economies generate human and physical capital investments of comparable relative magnitudes to the past 2 decades.

Growth and Equity in Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation of the Sri Lankan Experience

Abstract: In the important debate between the proponents of direct (basic needs) and indirect (economic growth) measures of promoting welfare, Sri Lanka has frequently been cited as one country which has successfully pursued the direct approach. It has raised living standards without much cost in terms of reduced growth. This conclusion, however, is based on analyses which do not account for the initial conditions of the countries being compared. After methodologically incorporating these concerns, neither the improvement in living standards nor the 2.0 percent per capita growth rate during the period of direct policy measures (1960-78) was exceptional. In contrast, during the period of more indirect growth-promoting policies (1977-84), i) economic growth more than doubled to an average rate of 4.3 percent per capita per annum; ii) expenditure inequality did not significantly change; iii) consumption expenditures of the population, and the poor, generally increased; and iv) several living standard indicators continued to improve.

Economic Liberalization in Developing Countries

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Regional cooperation to improve food security in southern and eastern African countries

Abstract: Food security continues to be a major concern in developing countries, particularly in Africa. Despite a strong desire for autonomy, developing countries are becoming increasingly dependent on world markets for their food supplies; they trade more with developed countries than with each other. Moreover, trade barriers are often a major deterrent to intraregional trade...

Public Expenditure Decentralization in Developing Countries

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate the extent of public expenditure decentralization among developing countries, and to identify its determinants. Using data compiled from international ...

The multilevel dependence of contraceptive use on socioeconomic development and family planning program strength

Abstract: This study examines characteristics of countries and individuals or couples in a multilevel analysis of contraceptive use in 15 World Fertility Survey countries. The multilevel model is composed of a micro component which distinguishes ever and never use of contraception as a function of wifes education and type of place of childhood residence. In the macro component the micro coefficients depend stochastically on macro variables (here country characteristics.) The macro component employs 2 variables and an interaction between them: gross national product per capita (GNP) estimated from World Bank figures and the family planning effort (FPE) index both of which have implications for ideas about fertility regulation advantages of small family size and availability of birth control techniques. Results of this study indicate that although individuals socioeconomic conditions affect their use of birth control the net effect of macro socioeconomic conditions is weak. The multilevel analysis employed empirically distinguishes between effects of socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and effects on a societal scale. GNP has effects in the fertility analysis but not in the parallel analysis of contraceptive use. It is concluded that country characteristics effect reproductive behavior directly and through interactions with individual and couple characteristics.

What's in a name? Country-of-origin influences on the earnings of immigrants in the United States.

Abstract: This paper focuses on the migration-related processes that may lead to the well-documented differences in earnings and in naturalization rates across country-of-origin groups in the US. The theoretical framework examines how the forces of selectivity associated with the decisions by residents of non-US countries to migrate to the US and with the decisions by foreign-born US residents to remain in the US are influenced by country conditions and are reflected ultimately in the observed earnings differences among the "survivors" of these processes who are enumerated in US sample surveys. In particular the paper assesses how economic condtions origin-country attractiveness costs of migration the quantity and quality of information and the country-specific restrictions of US immigration law influence bot who migrates and among the migrants who remains in the US. The framework is applied to 2 US data sets--a sample of the foreign born in the 1980 census and a sample from the 1971 cohort of legal immigrants. This paper proposes a model in which the 2 fundamental behavioral decisions--to immigrate to a given country and to remain there-- are based on a comparison of predicted maximum well-being in the origin and destination countries and which predicts the effects of 3 sets of origin-country factors on observed earnings in the destination country. The 3 sets of factors are 1) the opportunity costs of migration 2) the direct costs of migration and 3) the quantity and quality of information available in the origin country about the destination country. Estimates based on the samples provide support for the hypothesis that characterizing the country of origin by its relevant attributes rather than by a dummy variable for its proper name would destroy the observed association between a countrys proper name and the US earnings of its emigrants. These results imply that changes in the earnings of foreign-born persons in the US may depend as much on changes in the economic conditions of origin countries changes in travel costs changes in information dissemination and changes in US immigration policy as on changes in the US labor market.

Aging and Social Expenditure in the Major Industrial Countries, 1980-2025

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of prospective demographic trends on the level and structure of social expenditure by the governments of the seven major industrial countries...through the year 2025. It attempts to place these demographic factors in perspective with the other factors likely to influence the growth of social expenditure. It also reviews the key policy issues likely to emerge both at an aggregate and a sectoral level and the types of policies countries have initiated in trying to cope with the effects of these demographic trends. The focus is on government expenditure in the different social sectors....This paper is based on the results of detailed studies by the [International Monetary] Funds Fiscal Affairs Department.... Social expenditure programs for pensions medical care education unemployment insurance and family benefits are considered. The countries studied are Canada France the Federal Republic of Germany Italy Japan the United Kingdom and the United States. (EXCERPT)

Finance for the developing countries

Abstract: The Basic Principles of Development Finance Capital Market Theory and the Developing Countries The Impact of the Domestic Financial System on Economic Development Mobilising Domestic Finance: Government Mobilising Domestic Finance: Formal and Informal Financial Institutions Mobilising Domestic Finance: Securities Markets Foreign Capital for Developing Countries: Background and Public Sector Flows Foreign Capital for Developing Countries: Export Credits and Private Sector Flows Debt, Adjustment and the IMF The Financing of Capital Investment Recent Proposals to Improve the Quantity and Quality of Development Finance.

Durable solutions for developing country refugees.

Abstract: “Refugee problems demand durable solutions” is the opening statement of the Principles for Action in Developing Countries adopted by the 1984 Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissi...