Three Essays in Development Economics

Abstract

Structural transformation is an important transition for most emerging economies and is often characterised by the movement of the workforce from labour-intensive sectors to skill-intensive ones. Understanding the motives behind mobility and the role different geographic agglomerations played in enhancing the living standards of households at origin will provide policy implications to solve the challenges of urban poor and growing inequality in large metropolitan cities, especially workers in informal sectors. Besides, another aspect of inequality, the transmission of disadvantages across generations, that is studied in this thesis will also help to develop more effective targets of policy interventions to support underprivileged children to have a better start in their lives. This thesis contains three empirical chapters that fall under the broad branch of Development Economics. I focus on three topic areas, migration, inequality and intergenerational transmission of shocks on human capital outcomes. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the topics covered in this thesis. Chapter 2 explores the role of remittances through internal migration on household welfare using the nationally representative Household Living Standards Survey 2012. Using the multinomial logit model for our analysis, we find that the educational level of the head of households will help reduce the incentives of migrants to move out of agricultural sectors. Results from two-stage least square estimates using the historical migration network in the destination as an instrumental variable (IV) suggest that only those who migrate to secondary towns appear to contribute to the welfare of households at the origin. Chapter 3 studies the determinants of rural-urban gap household welfare in Vietnam using the nationally representative Household Living Standards Survey 2008-2012. Applying the Unconditional Quantile Regressions for detailed decomposition analysis across the entire distribution, we find that basic education is beneficial to the rural poor and ethnic minorities in improving their living standards. Another important result is that remittances improve the welfare of rural households but do not reduce within- or between- inequality. Chapter 4 examines the causal effect of the herbicide bombing on educational attainment across generations following the Operational Ranch Hand from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War in Vietnam using the latest three rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) 2014, 2016 and 2018. Merging with the data on herbicide bombing from HERBS, the chapter finds evidence that exposure to bombing has long-lasting negative effects not only on the affected generation but also on the children of those who experienced the conflicts in utero and during early childhood. Results from IV estimates show that only mothers’ exposure to shocks after birth significantly affects the schooling level of their children, especially among daughters. The final chapter provides a conclusion with discussions for further research extension.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Katsushi Imai (Supervisor) & Ralitza Dimova (Supervisor)