G²LM|LIC

Latest News

Call of Interest on COVID-19 in Low-Income Countries

The current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global crisis with short- and long-term implications for health, the economy, and social relations. The negative impacts of the crisis are expected to be more pronounced in developing countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need for policymakers in these countries to monitor the extent of the spread as well as ongoing and future implications. Against this background, G²LM|LIC is launching a special call of interest for research on COVID-19 in low-income countries (see the list of eligible countries here). Relevant Two types of research are needed:

  • First, research aiming at collecting data utilizing innovative approaches (e.g., mobile technology, internet, etc.) to give insights on the current status of the pandemic as well as the economic and social impacts of different measures taken by governments to curb the spread of the pandemic.
  • Second, innovative research projects with designs that allow for longer-term impact evaluations of the pandemic and measures taken by governments, using wide-range of research methodologies and data sources (e.g., administrative data, publicly available data, private sector data including remote sensing data, online or phone surveys, etc.). These can be new or in addition to existing longitudinal surveys as long as they address the implications of COVID-19.

The two types of research should particularly focus on the five wide-ranging research themes of G²LM|LIC:

Theme 1: Facts about gender, jobs, and poverty

Theme 2: Fertility and labour markets

Theme 3: Barriers to gender parity

Theme 4: The future of work: automation, urbanization

Theme 5: Policies and welfare: costs and benefits of gender parity

Research projects focusing on vulnerable groups, other than women, e.g. informal workers, migrants, factory workers, etc. are also welcome to apply in this special call. Priority will be given to research providing evidence-based policy recommendations to help in achieving quick policy responses to COVID-19 challenges. Capacity building is of the imperative to the mission of G2LM|LIC, to this end, we expect proposals to engage local researchers in the core activities of research.

Funding can be provided only to institutions and may be used only to fully or partially fund COVID-19 related research. We expect individual funding amounts will not exceed 30,000 euros but if you have an exceptional higher requirement, please get in touch.

Please send a short (two pages double-spaced) proposal describing the research idea together with an estimated budget to this email covid19.g2lmlic@iza.org as soon as possible, but no later than 03 May 2020. The first round of assessments will start on 24 April with all the proposals that have been submitted until that time. A more detailed project description may be required at a later time.

The new GLMLIC synthesis report on the demography of the labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa is now available

The world is projected to add 3.1 billion people to the total population and 1.4 billion people to the working-age population between 2020 and 2100. Almost all of the additional working-age people will be added in Sub-Saharan Africa, a dramatic change from previous decades when the growth of the working-age population was concentrated in Asia. A new GLM|LIC synthesis report analyzes the demography of the African labor force in the coming decades using the latest United Nations population projections. According to the report, by 2050 Africa will be the only region in the world with a growing working-age population, and will be the only region in which the ratio of dependents to working-age population is falling. These dramatic differences between Africa and other regions are the result of Africa’s later and slower fertility decline, with fertility still high in many countries.

Check the details and implications in the new Synthesis Report “The Demography of the Labor Force in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities” by David Lam, Murray Leibbrandt and James Allen here

A GLM|LIC project launches high-resolution dataset of India

The GLM|LIC project Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Growth in India led by Paul Novosad (Dartmouth College) and Sam Asher (the World Bank), has recently launched The Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform for India (SHRUG), facilitating data sharing between researchers working on India. The repository includes a comprehensive set of data comprising of India’s 500,000 villages, 8000 towns, and 4000 legislative assemblies and spanning over the past 25 years. The datasets are publically available and designed for researcher’s accessibility to high-resolution socioeconomic data as well as giving space for communication, linking and sharing of data.

One interesting study out of this project investigates the impacts of a high-scale national rural road construction program in India on village labour and goods markets, see the policy brief here.

A small selection of our Projects

Personal Initiative Training Leads to Remarkable Growth of Women-Owned Small Businesses in Togo

There is increasing evidence in economics that better management and improved business practices matter for productivity in both large and small firms. However, evaluations of traditional business training programs offered to existing small firms have found limited impacts on business profits, particularly for women. A set of issues can play a role: while business training programs change knowledge, they may not lead to a large enough change in business practices to affect outcomes; or perhaps these programs are not teaching the right skills.
One approach to respond to the skills hypothesis has been to incorporate insights from other fields like behavioral economics and psychology. These approaches may replace the need for traditional business training or complement at the margin their effects.
In Togo, we tested the importance of alternative skills by comparing two types of training: traditional managerial training using IFC Business Edge, and a psychology-based personal initiative training pro-gram. The personal initiative had very large effects on innovation and capital investment, but also on business practices learnt in traditional programs, including record keeping and HR management. The evaluation showed that entrepreneurs who took the personal initiative training saw their profits rise by an average of 30% relative to the control group (40% for female entrepreneurs), compared with a statistically insignificant 11% effect for traditional training (5% for female entrepreneurs). The training is cost-effective, paying for itself within one year.

The Demography of the Labor Force in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

The world is projected to add 3.1 billion people to the total population and 1.4 billion people to the working-age population between 2020 and 2100. Almost all of the additional working-age people will be added in Sub-Saharan Africa, a dramatic change from previous decades, when the growth of the working-age population was concentrated in Asia. This paper analyzes the demography of the African labor force in the coming decades using the latest United Nations population projections. We show that by 2050 Africa will be the only region in the world with a growing working-age population, and will be the only region in which the ratio of dependents to working-age population is falling. These dramatic differences between Africa and other regions are the result of Africa’s later and slower fertility decline, with fertility still high in many countries. The continued growth of Africa’ working-age population creates both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, being the only region with a growing working-age population may create opportunities for investment and economic growth. On the other hand, Africa will need to produce 2 million jobs per month by 2040 to keep up with the growth of the working-age population. This will be one of the biggest challenges facing the continent in the coming decades.

Gender, Jobs and Poverty

Women are overrepresented among the world’s poorest and underrepresented in well-paid jobs. The new G²LM|LIC program aims to investigate the causes of gender disparities in labor markets, assess their implications for equity and efficiency, and guide policy design. The program, a joint venture between the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, launched with an inaugural workshop on June 19, 2019. This report provides a summary of the discussions held on the state of existing evidence and questions for future research.

Child Labor Measurement in Agricultural Households: Seasonality, Proxy Respondent and Gender Information Gaps in Ethiopia

Child labor continues to be an economic necessity for millions of children in the developing world with the agricultural sector accounting for by far the largest share of child labor. Despite the increasing availability of sources of information on child labor, and a large body of research on its main determinants, there is not much evidence on the validity of data collection methods for child labor. Unlike adult work, child labor statistics are mainly generated by proxy reporting, which could lead to measurement bias due to social values, asymmetries of information due to the gendered segmentation of labor markets, or the seasonality of the agricultural production. This study examines the extent to which seasonality and reliance on proxy respondents affects child labor statistics in Ethiopia. Specifically, our survey design intervention consists of the random manipulation of the survey respondent in the application of the same survey instrument to 1200 Fairtrade coffee households in three different seasons, which enables us to capture variation in the demand for child labor.

He Said, She Said: Child Labor Measurement in Ethiopia

This study reports the findings of three randomized survey design experiments implemented in different seasons of the agricultural calendar among Fairtrade coffee households in rural Ethiopia. The design focuses on the random allocation of the same survey instrument across child and proxy respondents for the measurement of child labor statistics. Our findings show the work of girls in agricultural settings is systematically underreported by the head of household relative to the child’s reports. Underreporting is explained by the child/proxy gender mismatch as differences in child labor reports ranges from 7 to 10 percentage points for girls when the proxy respondent is male. On the contrary, no reporting differences are found for boys across all seasons when the head of household is male. The magnitude of the child labor underreporting is larger among households with mixed child gender composition relative to households with homogeneous child gender composition. Underreporting by the proxy respondent, relative to the child’s own report, is not observed across other related outcomes such as schooling and household chores. Knowledge of Fairtrade standards and the degree and scope of effective commercial links between farmers and Fairtrade cooperatives do not have a systematic differential effect on the proxy reporting of child labor.