Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrollment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program is a randomized, ongoing conditional cash transfer intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash transfers) to current schoolgirls and recent dropouts to stay in or return to school. An average offer of US$10/month conditional on satisfactory school attendance plus direct payment of secondary school fees led to significant declines in early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and self-reported sexual activity among program beneficiaries after just one year of program implementation. For program beneficiaries who were out of school at baseline, the probability of getting married and becoming pregnant declined by more than 40 percent and 30 percent, respectively. In addition, the incidence of the onset of sexual activity was 38 percent lower among all program beneficiaries than the control group. Overall, these results suggest that conditional cash transfer programs not only serve as useful tools for improving school attendance, but may also reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy, and early marriage.
In this paper, we examine net emigration from Mexico over the period 1960 to 2000. The data are consistent with labor supply shocks having made a substantial contribution to Mexican emigration, accounting for two-fifths of Mexican labor flows to the United States over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Net emigration rates by Mexican state birth year cohort display a strong positive correlation with the initial size of the Mexican cohort relative to the corresponding U.S. cohort. In states with long histories of emigration, the effects of cohort size on emigration are relatively strong, consistent with the existence of preexisting networks.
From the 1970s to the early 2000s, the United States experienced an epochal wave of low-skilled immigration. Since the Great Recession, however, U.S. borders have become a far less active place when it comes to the net arrival of foreign workers. The number of undocumented immigrants has declined in absolute terms, while the overall population of low-skilled, foreign-born workers has remained stable. We examine how the scale and composition of low-skilled immigration in the United States have evolved over time, and how relative income growth and demographic shifts in the Western Hemisphere have contributed to the recent immigration slowdown. Because major source countries for U.S. immigration are now seeing and will continue to see weak growth of the labor supply relative to the United States, future immigration rates of young, low-skilled workers appear unlikely to rebound, whether or not U.S. immigration policies tighten further.
The world's poor are seeing a rapid expansion in access to formal savings accounts.What is the source of savings when households are connected to a formal account?We combine a highfrequency panel survey spanning two and a half years with an experiment in which a Sri Lankan bank used mobile Point-of-Service (POS) terminals to collect deposits directly from households each week.We find that the headwaters of formal savings lie in sacrificed leisure time: households work more, and improved savings options generate an increase in labor effort in both self-employment and in the wage market.The results suggest that the labor allocation channel is an important mechanism linking savings opportunities to income.
The world's poor are seeing a rapid expansion in access to formal savings accounts.What is the source of savings when households are connected to a formal account?We combine a highfrequency panel survey spanning two and a half years with an experiment in which a Sri Lankan bank used mobile Point-of-Service (POS) terminals to collect deposits directly from households each week.We find that the headwaters of formal savings lie in sacrificed leisure time: households work more, and improved savings options generate an increase in labor effort in both self-employment and in the wage market.The results suggest that the labor allocation channel is an important mechanism linking savings opportunities to income.
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