عنوان

Essays on Development Economics, Migration and Poverty

شماره

TL51026

زبان متن نوشتاري يا گفتاري و مانند آن

انگلیسی

عنوان اصلي

Essays on Development Economics, Migration and Poverty

نام عام مواد

[Thesis]

نام نخستين پديدآور

Quiñones, Esteban J.

نام ساير پديدآوران

Barham, Bradford L.

نام ناشر، پخش کننده و غيره

The University of Wisconsin - Madison

تاریخ نشرو بخش و غیره

2019

متن يادداشت

280 p.

جزئيات پايان نامه و نوع درجه آن

Ph.D.

کسي که مدرک را اعطا کرده

The University of Wisconsin - Madison

امتياز متن

2019

متن يادداشت

My dissertation is comprised of three chapters that explore development, migration, and poverty in rural Mexico and Nigeria. The first two chapters broadly investigate the determinants of and impacts of migration with data from Mexico while the third chapter tests the presence of poverty traps in northern Nigeria. The unifying concept threaded throughout the chapters is the study of decision making by poor, rural households and individuals, experiencing shocks at times in equilibrium at others, in the context of risk and incomplete markets. The first chapter assesses whether individuals in Mexico engage in anticipatory (ex ante) migration or local labor reallocation in response to observing heat induced catastrophic crop losses of other households within their communities. The main contribution of this study is in demonstrating that individuals mitigate against the increased probability of destabilizing climate events in an anticipatory manner, particularly through domestic migration, substantiating rarely studied ex ante concepts. This work additionally shows that agriculture is a major, if not the dominant, mechanism through which the environment influences migration in rural areas while drawing attention to the salience of learning about environmental risk and the crop losses of others. In so doing, this study highlights that the observation of low levels of adaptation to climate change (aka adaptation gaps) may be partially explained by the nearly exclusive focus on reactive (ex post) responses to environmental phenomena. These findings and the heterogeneous capacity of households to mitigate the risks associated with climate shocks have important implications for and the design, targeting and implementation of climate change mitigation programs. The second chapter is a collaboration with Bradford L. Barham exploring the direct influence of migration and return migration on occupation outcomes for individuals from rural, coffee producing households in southern Mexico. This study focuses on the impact of labor mobility on occupation trajectories in conjunction with the motives and selection dynamics shaping migration. The principal contribution of this study is in demonstrating that occupation outcomes are directly and positively influenced by both migration and return migration, especially for females, net of the positive selection associated with migration and the negative selection associated with non-pecuniary factors. These results highlight the positive welfare effects of labor mobility for the rural poor and the losses associated with non-pecuniary motives, such as family reunification or forced returns. The third chapter explores asset dynamics and the presence of poverty traps in northern Nigeria over a 20-year period and is coauthored with Andrew Dillon (Northwestern University). The primary contribution of this paper is in consistently presenting evidence that does not support the poverty traps hypothesis among rural, agricultural households in a remote part of Nigeria despite testing for them (i) over a relatively long time horizon; (ii) in a setting where livestock is the primary, but not exclusive, asset accumulated by households; (iii) for a diverse set of assets including land, livestock, capital, and durables; as well as (iv) using parametric and semi-parametric estimation techniques. We show that agricultural land extensification (bringing new land into cultivation beyond intensification) in response to population pressure may explain why households are able to achieve slow growth and asset wealth mobility, thereby avoiding poverty traps. Our results underscore the important role that access to productive land can play in promoting welfare.

اصطلاح موضوعی

Demography

اصطلاح موضوعی

Economics

اصطلاح موضوعی

Public policy

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Quiñones, Esteban J.

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Barham, Bradford L.

مستند نام تنالگان تاييد نشده

The University of Wisconsin - Madison

نام الکترونيکي

فرمت انتشار

p

نوع ماده

[Thesis]

کد کاربرگه

276903

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y