Abstract

AbstractHow does income uncertainty affect individual well‐being? Combining individual‐level panel data from rural Ethiopia with high‐resolution meteorological data, we estimate that mean‐preserving increases in rainfall variability are associated with reductions in objective consumption and subjective well‐being. Mediation analysis suggests that the estimated reduction in consumption does not fully explain the total effect on individual well‐being. Increased rainfall variability also has a large direct effect on individual well‐being.

Interactions among peers of the same social network play significant roles in facilitating the adoption and diffusion of modern technologies in poor communities. We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial in rural India to identify the impact of information from friends on willingness to pay (WTP) for high-quality and multipurpose solar lanterns.

We use a field experiment to identify how differences in preferences and spousal influence result in low willingness to pay (WTP) for technologies that can benefit all household members. We create income-earning opportunities to empower households and conduct an actual stove purchase experiment to elicit their WTP for fuel, time, and indoor air pollution-reducing improved cookstoves. The decision to buy the stove was randomly assigned to either wives, husbands, or couples using either individually or jointly earned income.

We study distributional preferences in adolescent peer networks. Using incentivized choices between allocations for themselves and a passive agent, children are classified into efficiency-loving, inequality-loving, inequality-averse, and spiteful types. We find that pairs of students who report a friendship link are more likely to exhibit the same preference type than other students who attend the same school. The relation between types is almost completely driven by inequality-loving and spiteful types.

AbstractChildren tend to punish norm transgressions, even when they are mere external observers—a phenomenon known as Third‐Party Punishment (TPP). This behavior is influenced by intergroup bias, as children unevenly punish ingroup and outgroup members. Here, we explored the influence of intergroup bias in TPP decisions in children between six and 11 years of age (N = 124) using costly versus non‐costly decisions while measuring response times as a proxy of the mechanisms underlying intergroup bias in TPP.

This study address persistent wealth inequality in anthropometric failure in India by analyzing two rounds of the Indian National Family Health Survey (2019-2021 and 2015-2016) focusing on children aged 0–59 and 6–23 months, reveals a negative wealth gradient for each anthropometric failure measure. Over 60% of the anthropometric failure burden lies in the poorest wealth groups. Notably, even with similar risk factors, children from poorer backgrounds exhibit higher prevalence. Maternal BMI, media exposure, and sanitary facility access are key factors explaining the poor-rich gap.

From a theoretical perspective, the effect that remittances have on the labour decisions of those that receive them is ambiguous; the empirical evidence reported in the literature is mixed and shows, unsurprisingly, that the net effect of remittances on labour supply is context-dependent. We contribute to this literature by using a detailed data set for rural Mexico that allows us to understand how remittances reshape rural livelihoods by modifying labour allocation decisions. Following previous evidence, we analyse female and male responses separately.

While much attention has been given to the effects of migration and remittances on agricultural activities in the communities of origin, the relationship between remittances and rural households' use of natural resources remains understudied. This paper contributes in filling this gap by using a Mexican data set that contains detailed information on both remittances and use of natural resources at the household level.

AbstractThis paper contributes to the literature by testing the effect of a household's relative position on its subjective well‐being. Our results show that both self‐perceived status and relative income have significant effects on the subjective well‐being of households located in the Peruvian Amazon. The paper also considers negative random shocks and shows that non‐agricultural shocks have a negative effect on subjective well‐being.