Evidence on long-term multigenerational dynamics is often inadequate as large datasets with multiple generations remain very uncommon. We posit that genealogical records can offer a valuable alternative. Rather than exploring the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status, we rely on birth and death dates of eighteenth and nineteenth century settlers in South Africa's Cape Colony to estimate the intergenerational transmission of longevity. We find that there is a positive and significant association between parents' and offspring's life duration, as well as between siblings. Although these correlations persist over time, the coefficients are relatively small. While the effect of grandparents' longevity on that of grandchildren is insignificant, the cousin correlations suggest that inequality in longevity might persist across more than two generations. We suggest that family and environmental factors shared by cousins, beyond grandparental longevity, can explain these results." -- Abstract.
This paper presents a survey experiment in South Africa that focuses on the role of mobilization for demand for redistribution. Previous literature has found that providing information on inequality raises concerns about inequality but need not lead to a change in tax preferences. We argue that mobilization might provide the missing link between information and political behavior regarding demand for redistribution. We operationalize mobilization from an individual perspective as the belief that a decrease in inequality is feasible. If this belief is absent, information about inequality might simply increase the pessimism of respondents and remain inconsequential for policy preferences. We test this idea with a survey experiment in two townships of Cape Town, which includes one pure information and two mobilization treatments. The first mobilization treatment informs respondents about the (much lower inequality) in neighboring countries. The second provides elite support for redistribution via video messages of South African leaders. Consistent with previous literature, we find that pure information on inequality increases concern for inequality but has no effects on tax preferences. Mobilization treatments, in contrast, shake the belief that a decrease in inequality is feasible and consequently lead to a change in tax preferences. While the mechanism regarding information on lower inequality in neighboring countries is as expected, the one for the videos is puzzling: videos make people believe that inequality is more, instead of less, inevitable, and this leads to lower tax preferences. We conjecture that this is due to a lack of credibility of the leaders considered which makes viewers more pessimistic and has a demobilizing effect."--Page 1.
Little credible evidence exists on the effect of material resources on school quality in developing countries. This paper studies the impact of non-personnel funding on educational outcomes exploiting the peculiar way in which these resources are allocated in South Africa. Government funding follows quintiles constructed on the basis of school poverty scores. This creates discrete jumps in the allocation of funding and we use a regression discontinuity approach to analyze its effects on school outcomes at the end of high school. Our results show a small but positive effect of resources on student throughput during the last years of high school, and on the number of students writing the matriculation exam. However, additional resources do not translate into a higher number of successful exams, leading to an overall negative effect on pass rates. We suggest that these findings may have to do with schools reacting to the per-pupil nature of funding."--page 1.
The paper estimates the degree of intergenerational earnings persistence in South Africa. It explores the link between this measure of social mobility and an index of inequality of opportunity. Using microdata from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the paper finds that intergenerational earnings mobility in South Africa is low. In addition, a limited set of inherited circumstances explains a significant fraction of earnings inequality among male adults. Adding South Africa to the existing international literature supports the hypothesis that low levels of intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity are emblematic of high-inequality emerging economies." -- Abstract.
This paper studies the effect of selective attrition on estimates of immigrant earnings growth based on repeated cross-sectional data in Canada. Recent evidence from longitudinal data in the United States shows that the earnings gap between immigrants and the U.S.-born closes more slowly over time in the years following landing than previous cross-sectional estimates have suggested. This is because results based on repeated cross-sectional data contained a bias introduced by selective attrition of immigrants. This study uses longitudinal tax data linked to immigrant landing records in order to estimate the change in immigrant earnings and the immigrant-Canadian-born earnings gap. The results are compared with those from repeated cross-sectional data. When one focuses on the earnings growth of immigrants, earnings trajectories based on repeated cross-sections are found to be biased marginally upwards as a result of selective immigrant attrition. However, no evidence is found of a bias in the trajectory of the immigrant-Canadian-born earnings gap on the basis of repeated cross-sectional data in Canada. While low-earning immigrants are more likely than their high-earning counterparts to leave the cross-sectional samples over time, the same is true of the Canadian-born population. Thus, no evidence of a bias is observed when one compares immigrant earnings trajectories with the trajectories of the Canadian-born.
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