SAGA Progress Report

SAGA
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SAGA Progress Report
April, 2003

I. RESEARCH
5. Uganda

The following is a report on the status of SAGA research proposals and projects in Uganda:

1) Poverty dynamics

This project will use the 1992-1999 panel data to explore variables correlated with a household’s probability of falling into or escaping from poverty. Ideally, we would like to relate this to public policy, although we recognize that this is difficult. We are also interested in the coping strategies of households that fall into poverty.

Ashie Mukungu and Ibrahim Kasirye have begun work on this project. They have successfully isolated the panel households and begun exploratory regressions. They are also studying the most efficient way to estimate poverty dynamics. (See the Technical Assistance section below.)

2) Multidimensional measures of poverty changes over time

This project is based on the observation that, while income poverty has been declining steadily for more than a decade, certain alternative welfare measures, e.g., infant mortality and children’s heights, are stagnant. We want to first explore whether this description is accurate (for example, the DHS data are collected during different seasons, which might affect the results), and then try to understand the reasons behind this contradiction.

Sarah Ssewayana and Stephen Younger have begun work on this project. They have completed a time series of infant mortality rates from the mid-1970s to the present based on the DHS birth history data. As expected, this series shows, at best, modest improvement in IMRs, despite the healthy economic growth observed during the 1990s. They will now relate this time series to possible determinants of IMR at a national level, including GDP, HIV infection rates, vaccination rates, and the timing of decentralization of health services.

Future extensions will examine other non-monetary welfare indicators such as children’s nutritional status and adult literacy rates, comparing progress on these indicators with Uganda’s impressive growth in incomes.

3) Time saving benefits of clean water supply

The idea for this project comes from other research at Cornell which looks at gender differences in benefits from public expenditures across the income distribution. It is surprising to find that there are few cases in which the "gender gap" for services is correlated with income, i.e., where it is worse for poor people than for the rich. One case where we do find this, though, is in time saved from easy access to safe water. Women mostly have to collect water. If they are better off, they probably live closer to a water source and so don’t have to spend so much time at collecting water.

An implication is that if the government or a donor provides easier access to water, then women will benefit disproportionately, and poor women even more disproportionately. Unless... they don’t have control over their time, so that other duties get pushed onto them.

We would like to explore this issue, ideally, with an experiment. We began discussions with Richard Cong at the Directorate for Water Development during Stephen Younger’s trip to Kampala in January. DWD is enthusiastic about the idea of a study, and expressed willingness to randomize new rural water supply interventions (within certain limits).

This project will require our own survey work, and thus will require funding beyond what SAGA can provide.

Our main concern at this point is that the intervention (tube wells or bore holes, typically) may not have much impact on time use, even if it does improve water quality. Exploratory analysis of the time use data in the 1992 Integrated Household Survey shows little difference in time spent collecting water in rural areas, regardless of source. We are discussing this issue further with DWD and will decide whether to pursue the project soon, probably at Younger’s next visit to Uganda in May.

4) Tax Incidence

John Matovu and Margaret Banga will build on Matovu’s previous study of tax incidence in Uganda to study changes in incidence since 1992 using the 1999 and, hopefully, 2002 National Household Survey(s). He will focus especially on local taxes like the graduated tax and market fees. As the only sources of local tax revenue, these items are important in the context of Uganda’s decentralization plans, but they are also extremely unpopular.

5) Multidimensional Poverty Comparisons

In conjunction with a WIDER project on spatial aspects of inequality and poverty, Stephen Younger is preparing a comparison of poverty in different regions of Uganda as measured in incomes and nutritional status. The initial paper will be ready by the end of May. Future extensions will examine changes in multidimensional poverty across regions in Uganda.

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