Abstract

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in access to jobs in relation to transport connectivity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 14 million working age people are added to the labor market every year. Ensuring sustained access to jobs seems to be a prerequisite for inclusive and robust economic growth. The paper examines the impact of public transit connectivity on access to jobs, especially focusing on wages. Using data from Antananarivo, Madagascar, it is shown that the wages earned by commuters are systematically higher than the wages earned by those who decided not to commute and are self-employed or engaged with family businesses around their neighborhood. Proximity to public transport, especially taxi-be, is important to promote people's access to jobs. It is also found that there is a substantial gender inequality in wages in the country: Women are more likely to use buses to commute, and yet, they earn less than men. In addition, the poor tend to benefit less from public transportation. Public bus services are affordable, however, the quality of the services may remain low. Document type: Book

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology to approximate individual income distribution dynamics using only time series data on aggregate moments of the income distribution. Under the assumption that individual incomes follow a lognormal autoregressive process, this paper shows that the evolution over time of the mean and standard deviation of log income across individuals provides sufficient information to place upper and lower bounds on the degree of mobility in the income distribution. The paper demonstrates that these bounds are reasonably informative, using the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics where the panel structure of the data allows us to compare measures of mobility directly estimated from the micro data with approximations based only on aggregate data. Bounds on mobility are estimated for a large cross-section of countries, using data on aggregate moments of the income distribution available in the World Wealth and Income Database and the World Bank's PovcalNet database. The estimated bounds on mobility imply that conventional anonymous growth rates of the bottom 40 percent (top 10 percent) that do not account for mobility substantially understate (overstate) the expected growth performance of those initially in the bottom 40 percent (top 10 percent). Document type: Book

Abstract

Rural access is among the most important infrastructure constraints in rural Africa. Using the results from comprehensive household surveys and other data from Ethiopia, the paper recasts light on the heterogeneous impacts of road accessibility on agriculture and nonagricultural growth. It is found that crop production is increased by major and feeder road improvements. Significant synergy is also found. When investigating further into this effect, there are two impacts: farmers' access to the input market, especially fertilizer, was improved mainly by major corridor improvement. And output market access was improved by feeder road improvement. In addition, the household's nonagricultural income is somehow increased by improved road connectivity. There must be secondary effects. The transport demand function estimated with additional data indicates that as the road network improves, people's mobility increases. Furthermore, local business employment is found to increase with road improvements. To meet the increasing demand for mobility, efficiency and frequency of transport services are important. Document type: Book