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SAGA PUBLICATIONS Included here are Working Papers and Conference Papers. Publications on this page are organized by geographical focus: RETURN TO MAIN PUBLICATIONS BY GEOGRAPHY PAGE UGANDA Do Free Goods Stick to Poor Households? Experimental Evidence on Insecticide Treated Bednets March 2009 Hoffmann, Vivian, Christopher B. Barrett, and David R. Just If the market allocates goods to those willing and able to pay the most for them, efforts to target durable health goods such as insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) to poor populations may prove ineffective, with the poor reselling donated goods to the non-poor who value them more highly. However, low market demand may be due to liquidity constraints rather than low valuation of nets. The endowment effect also militates against the resale of in-kind transfers. We quantify these two effects through a field experiment in Uganda. Our results indicate that very few nets will be resold by recipient households. In World Development 37(3):607-617, March, 2009 Are Africans Practicing Safer Sex: Evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys for Eight Countries January 2008 Glick, Peter and David E. Sahn We use repeated rounds of Demographic and Health Survey data from eight African countries to examine changes in and determinants of three HIV risk behaviors: age at first intercourse; number of current sexual partners, and use of condoms. As a prelude, we assess the within- country comparability of DHS surveys over time. We find some evidence of changes in sample composition, which is easily handled in a multivariate framework, and find evidence as well of changes in how people respond to questions about HIV behavior. Because of the latter, which likely represents an increase in social desirability bias over time, our estimates of risk reduction may be upper bounds on the true effects. Overall the picture is one of reductions in risk behaviors over recent 4-6 year intervals, especially with respect to condom use; in some cases the changes seem large given the short time periods involved. With some exceptions, however, the extent and pervasiveness of these changes seems inadequate in relation to the urgency of the public health crisis represented by AIDS. With respect to the determinants of behaviors, schooling and wealth have contradictory impacts on risk behavior: they both tend to increase the likelihood of using condoms while (for men) also increasing the demand for additional sexual partners. Presented at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) Seminar on “Interactions between Poverty and HIV/AIDS,” Cape Town, South Africa, December 2005. Alternate version in Economic Development and Cultural Change 56(2):397-439, January, 2008 Robust Multidimensional Spatial Poverty Comparisons in Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda April 2006 Duclos, Jean-Yves, David E. Sahn, and Stephen D. Younger We investigate spatial poverty comparisons in three African countries using multidimensional indicators of well-being. The work is analogous to the univariate stochastic dominance literature in that we seek poverty orderings that are robust to the choice of multidimensional poverty lines and indices. In addition, we wish to ensure that our comparisons are robust to aggregation procedures for multiple welfare variables. In contrast to earlier work, our methodology applies equally well to what can be defined as "union", "intersection," or "intermediate" approaches to dealing with multidimensional indicators of well-being. Further, unlike much of the stochastic dominance literature, we compute the sampling distributions of our poverty estimators in order to perform statistical tests of the difference in poverty measures. We apply our methods to two measures of well-being, the log of household expenditures per capita and children’s height-for-age z-scores, using data from the 1988 Ghana Living Standards Survey, the 1993 Enquête Permanente auprès des Ménages in Madagascar, and the 1999 National Household Survey in Uganda. Bivariate poverty comparisons are at odds with univariate comparisons in several interesting ways. Most importantly, we cannot always conclude that poverty is lower in urban areas from one region compared to rural areas in another, even though univariate comparisons based on household expenditures per capita almost always lead to that conclusion. In World Bank Economic Review 20(1):91-113 Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor in 36 Villages of Central and Western Uganda February 2006 Krishna, Anirudh, Daniel Lumonya, Milissa Markiewicz, Firminus Mugumya, Agatha Kafuko, Jonah Wegoye Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions. In Journal of Development Studies 42(2): 346-370, 2006 In Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa, Christopher Barrett, Peter Little, Michael Carter (eds.), Routledge, 2007. Children’s Health Status in Uganda July 2005 Bahiigwa, Godfrey and Stephen D. Younger This paper studies trends and determinants of children's standardized heights, a good overall measure of children's health status, in Uganda over the 1990s. During this period, Uganda made impressive strides in economic growth and poverty reduction (Appleton, 2001). However, there is concern that improvements in other dimensions of well-being, especially health, has been much weaker. We find that several policy variables are important determinants of children's heights. Most importantly, a broad package of basic health care services has a large statistically significant effect. Provision of some of these services, especially vaccinations, appears to have faltered in the late 1990s, which may help to explain the lackluster performance on stunting during that period. We also find that civil conflict, a persistent problem in some areas of the country, has an important (negative) impact on children's heights. Better educated mothers have taller children, but the only substantial impact is for children of mothers who have completed secondary school. Finally, we find that households that rely more on own-production sources of income tend to have more malnourished children, even after controlling for their overall level of income and a host of other factors. This latter conclusion is supportive of the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture, which aims to shift farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture or other more productive activities. Economic Success or Human Development Failure? Development Partners or Development Parasites? The truth behind the truth: Evidence from Uganda July 2005 Diego Angemi During the 1990s, and especially over the second half of the decade, Uganda experienced high economic growth, falling income poverty, and relative political stability. In addition, while it’s still too early to assess properly the medium term impact of direct budget support (DBS) on the lives of poor people, Uganda features among the few countries where real gains have been made in terms of scaling up the delivery of basic health and education services, increasing the focus of the budget, and giving people confidence to claim their rights (DFID, 2004). There is evidence to support the claim that the period between 1992 and 2000 may mark the transition of Uganda from recovery to fresh growth. Recovery has necessitated the rehabilitation of traditional export crops, the restoration of the public sector and a reversal of the retreat to subsistence. In this economic environment, the percentage of Ugandans who were poor decreased sharply from 56% in 1992 to 34% in 2000. . . . Presented at the International Conference on "Shared Growth in Africa," July 21-22, 2005, Accra, Ghana Infant Mortality in Uganda: Determinants, Trends, and the Millennium Development Goals January 2005 Ssewanyana, Sarah and Stephen D. Younger Unusually for an African economy, Uganda’s growth has been rapid and sustained for an extended period of time. Further, this growth has clearly translated into substantial declines in poverty for all socio-economic groups and in all regions of the country. Despite this, there is concern in the country that other indicators of well-being are not improving at the same rate as incomes. This paper studies one such indicator, infant mortality. We use three rounds of the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys to construct a national time series for infant mortality over a long period of time, 1974-1999. We also use these survey data to model the determinants of infant mortality and, based on those results, to examine the likelihood that Uganda will meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving infant mortality by 2015. Presented at the DPRU-TIPS-Cornell University Forum on "African Development and Poverty Reduction: The Macro-Micro Linkage," October 13-15, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa Alternate version in Journal of African Economies 17(1):34-61, 2008 The Missing Links—Uganda’s Economic Reforms and Pro-Poor Growth October 2004 Robert Kappel, Jann Lay and Susan Steiner This article illustrates changing growth regimes in Uganda from pro-poor growth in the 1990s to growth without poverty reduction, actually even a slight increase in poverty, after 2000. Not surprisingly, we find that good agricultural performance is the key determinant of direct pro-poor growth in the 1990s as well as lower agricultural growth is the root cause of the recent increase in poverty. Yet after 2000, low agricultural growth appears to have induced important employment shifts out of agriculture, which have dampened the increase in poverty. We also assess the indirect way of pro-poor growth by analysing the incidence of public spending and the tax system and find that indirect pro-poor growth has only been achieved to a limited extend. Presented at the DPRU-TIPS-Cornell University Forum on "African Development and Poverty Reduction: The Macro-Micro Linkage," October 13-15, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa Credit demand and credit rationing in the informal financial sector in Uganda October 2004 Nathan Okurut, Andrie Schoombee and Servaas van der Berg This paper focuses on identifying the factors that influence credit demand and also those that result in the poor being credit rationed by lenders. An understanding of both these sets of determinants could assist policy formulation to enhance the welfare of the poor through improved credit access. In this respect we were fortunate in having a dataset that contains questions not only on actual credit given, but also on loans applied for. This allows us to investigate both credit demand and credit supply, and to model these using observed household and individual characteristics. Presented at the DPRU-TIPS-Cornell University Forum on "African Development and Poverty Reduction: The Macro-Micro Linkage," October 13-15, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa Access to Primary Education in Rural Uganda May 2004 Nyankori, James C. O. and Marios Obwona In this paper, we present an extensive statistical description of rural primary schools, schooling and students in Uganda and estimate the relationship between academic performance and selected personal, demographic, and school characteristics using a linear probability model subsequently extended to predict academic performance. The survey data indicate considerable categorical differences in personal, household and school characteristics, and these have important implications for schooling behaviors and outcomes. Linear probability model predictions of academic performance reveal significant categorical differences in age, sex, nutritional status, after school activities, post primary education preference, school attendance, household production activities, occupation of head of household, and relation to head of household relative to academic performance. Final Report for SAGA Competitive Research Grants Program An Investigation into the Relationship Between Household Welfare and Social Capital in Eastern Uganda February 2004 Hu, Chia-Hsin and Ben Jones This paper studies the relationship between social capital and household welfare. Social capital is taken to mean, very simply, ’durable social networks’. The relationship is investigated using survey work conducted in two villages in eastern Uganda. The surveys gathered information on the quality and extent of people’s participation in local organizations, as well as household welfare. To organize the analysis of the data the paper utilizes econometric tools designed for investigating the relationship between dimensions of organizational social capital and household welfare. At the same time, the paper recognizes some of the limitations inherent in relying on econometric work to analyze this relationship. As such, the econometric analysis is limited in examining only social capital as expressed through household participation in village level organizations. Our results show that "organizational social capital", as we have termed it, has only a small effect on household welfare. That said, we also draw on anthropological work conducted in the two survey villages, and from ethnographic material we argue that social capital, as expressed in less institutionalized social networks, has a significant affect on household welfare. In others words, it is the social capital that resides in such networks as personalized relationships, peer groups, or brokerage positions between development projects and the village that has a strongly determinate effect on household. Organizational social capital, which is the type of social capital "captured" in village level survey work, does not help us explain the most significant part of the relationship social capital and household welfare. Final Report for SAGA Competitive Research Grants Program Growth and Poverty Reduction in Uganda, 1992-1999: A Multidimensional Analysis of Changes in Living Standards October 2003 Younger, Stephen D. This paper examines Uganda’s progress on poverty reduction when poverty is measured in multiple dimensions. In particular, I consider poverty measures that are defined across household expenditures per capita or household assets, children’s health status, and in some cases, mother’s literacy. The comparisons are robust to the choice of poverty line, poverty measure, and sampling error. In general, I find that multidimensional poverty declined significantly in Uganda during the 1990s, although results for the latter half of the decade are more ambiguous. While there was clear progress in the dimension of expenditures and assets, improvement in children’s height-for-age z-scores is less certain for the 1995-2000 period. I also make poverty comparisons for individual regions and urban and rural areas in the country. Rather surprisingly, progress on multivariate poverty reduction is less clear in Central region and in urban areas. RETURN TO MAIN PUBLICATIONS BY GEOGRAPHY PAGE

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