In this paper we analyze if an `urban mortality penalty\' exists for today\'s developing countries, repeating the history of industrialized nations during the 19th century. We analyze the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 19 Sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult...

In this paper, we compare Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) methods to generate weights for composite indices. In this context we also consider various treatments of non-metric variables when constructing such composite indices. Using simulation studies we find...

This paper reviews various treatments of non-metric variables in Partial Least Squares (PLS) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) algorithms. The performance of different treatments is compared in the extensive simulation study under several typical data generating processes and...

This paper estimates carbon emission from household consumption and investigates its determinants. We derive total household carbon emission by using the mechanism of input-output analysis combine with household expenditure for 2005 and 2006. Our estimation shows that fuel and light followed by...

With about five children born per woman and a population growth rate of 2.5 per cent per year, sub-Saharan Africa has been the world’s fastest growing region over the last decade. Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women’s demand for children (and not...

Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...

Conventional approaches to the measurement of income-poverty require the ability to identify the poor by reference to a specified poverty line. On the face of it, it may appear to be unproblematic to specify such a poverty line. There are, however, analytical and conceptual difficulties entailed...

Using panel data from Indonesia, this paper analyzes the linkages between child nutrition, health care, household wealth and parental education in order to detect transmission channels between health, education, nutrition, water and sanitation access, five critical MDG targets. This paper...

In this paper, we analyze how the distribution of selected non-income welfare indicators changed between 1997 and 2003 in Colombia. We use multidimensional propoor growth measurement techniques and create indices for assets, health, education, and subjective welfare using two alternative...

While it is widely presumed that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in the MDGs differ significantly between fragile and other developing countries, and between...