Essays in Labor and Development Economics.

Abstract

Chapter 1: "Aid and Agency in Africa: Explaining Food Disbursements Across Ethiopian Households in the Nineties."

We study the distribution of food aid in Ethiopia using data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey. We find that households with characteristics commonly associated with poverty and food insecurity are more likely to receive aid than other households, but that within this group of recipients, political connections and involvement in village-level organizations are important determinants of aid allocations. Our findings show that agency problems may be important and that these are more likely to distort the distribution of aid receipts than the set of aid recipients.

Chapter 2: "Food Aid and Adult Nutrition"

Understanding the role that safety nets play in adult nutrition is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of poverty in developing countries. In this paper, I use panel data from rural Ethiopia on individual nutritional status to first test whether there is an effect of public transfers on nutritional levels for adults and secondly to test whether the effect differs depending on the gender of the recipient and/or the gender of the individual. Results suggest that adult household members in low-asset households benefit from FD whereas the effect of FD on adult nutrition was not significant in high-asset households. Gender of the aid recipient did not matter, male and female recipients appeared to allocate resources the same.

Chapter 3: "(Why) Do Self-Employed Parents Have More Children?"

We provide an examination of the hypothesis that non-benevolent, self-employed households increase their expected family size to raise the likelihood that an inside family member will be a good match at running the business. Using data from the General Social Survey, we find that respondents have approximately .2 to .4 more actual and expected number of children if they are self-employed as compared to if they are not self-employed. As well, strong supporting evidence is also provided using U.S. Census data that also demonstrates both a preference for more children, and in some cases sons, by the self employed.