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Could a partial subsidy for child education increase children's participation in paid work? In contrast to much of the theoretical and empirical child labor literature, this paper shows that child work and school participation can be complements under certain conditions. Using data from the randomized evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program in the Philippines, the analysis finds that some children, who were in neither school nor work before the program, increased participation in school and work-for-pay after the program. Earlier cash transfer programs, notably those in Mexico, Brazil, and Ecuador, increased school attendance while reducing child labor. Those programs fully offset schooling costs, while the transfers under the Philippine transfers fall short of the full costs of schooling for a typical child. As a result, some beneficiary children from poor Philippine households increased work to support their schooling. The additional earnings from this work represent a substantive share of the shortfall in the schooling costs net of transfer. The paper rules out several potential alternative explanations for the increase in child labor, including changes in household productive activities, adult labor supply, and household expenditure patterns that, in principle, can arise after a cash transfer and may also affect the supply of or demand for child labor.

Cash Transfers --- Child Labor --- Education Subsidy;Education --- Schooling Costs

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With rapid development of wind power in China, the following three issues have become barriers for further scale-up: 1) concentration of wind farms in the Three-North region, which became significantly underutilized because of a limited capability of local power grids to off-take and consume wind-generated electricity and because of a lack of coordinated development of long-distance transmission lines to deliver electricity to load centers in the South and East regions; 2) increasing subsidies and, thus, a burden on final consumers; and 3) resistance of local authorities to develop new projects because the new value added tax policy reform. How to deal with these issues will have significant impact on the future development of wind in China. This note proposes a methodology to enhance a comprehensive approach by taking both generation and transmission into account in crafting the development plan and formulating the incentive policies, which may be useful in addressing these issues.

Cost and effectiveness --- Increasing subsidy burden --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- VAT reform impact --- Wind power concentration

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Transit subsidies in the urban area of Buenos Aires are high, amounting to a total of USD 5 billion for 2012. They have been challenged on several counts: suspected of driving urban sprawl and associated infrastructure costs, diverting resources from system maintenance, and failing to reach the poor among others. In this context, this paper examines the impacts of cost recovery fares under a range of different policy scenarios that could cushion the impact of fare increases. The alternative scenarios that are scrutinized are the uncompensated removal of the transit subsidy, its replacement by a lump sum transfer, and its replacement by two different construction subsidy schemes. Using a dynamic urban model (NEDUM-2D) calibrated for the urban area of Buenos Aires, all scenarios are assessed along four dimensions: (i) the efficiency/welfare impact on residents, (ii) the impacts on the internal structure of the urban area and sprawl, (iii) the impact on commuting-related carbon dioxide emissions, and (iv) the redistributive impacts, with a focus on the poorest households. A series of results emerge. First, there are consumption-related welfare gains for residents associated with replacing the transit subsidy by a lump sum transfer. Second, there are only moderate reductions in urbanization over time and thus infrastructure costs associated with the subsidy removal. Third, the replacement of the transit subsidy leads to only moderate increases in carbon dioxide emissions despite lower public transport mode shares, because households will chose to settle closer to jobs, thereby reducing commuting distances. Finally, the replacement of the transit subsidy by a lump sum transfer will lead to short-term harsh redistributive impacts for captive transit users in some areas of the urban area. Medium-term adjustments of land and housing prices will partially mitigate the negative impacts of higher transport costs for tenants, but will further hurt homeowners.

Cash Transfers --- Construction Subsidies --- Household Welfare --- Land Use --- Transit Subsidy --- Urbanization

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April 2000 - By gradually reducing the number of subsidized foods, and by focusing subsidies on foods consumed more by the poor than by the rich - like coarse baladi bread - Egyptian policymakers have found a way to self-target food subsidies to the urban poor. Yet because the rural poor do not consume as much baladi bread, this system is not as well-targeted to the rural poor. The Egyptian food subsidy system is an untargeted system that is essentially open to all Egyptians. For this reason, the budgetary costs of this system have been high and the ability of this system to improve the welfare status of the poor has been questioned. Since the food riots of 1977, Egyptian policymakers have been reluctant to make large changes in their food subsidy system. Rather, their strategy has been to reduce the costs and coverage of this system gradually. For example, since 1980 policymakers have reduced the number of subsidized foods from 20 to just four. Despite these cutbacks, Adams uses new 1997 household survey data to show that the Egyptian food subsidy system is self-targeted to the poor, because it subsidizes inferior goods. In urban Egypt, for instance, the main subsidized food - coarse baladi bread - is consumed more by the poor (the lowest quintile group of the population) than by the rich (the highest quintile). So subsidizing baladi bread is a good way of improving the welfare status of the urban poor. But in rural Egypt where the poor do not consume so much baladi bread, the poor receive less in income transfers than the rich. In many countries, administrative targeting of food subsidies can do a better job of targeting the poor than self-targeting systems. In Jamaica, for example, poor people get food stamps at health clinics, so the Jamaican poor receive double the income transfers from food subsidies that the Egyptian poor receive. But starting a comparable system in Egypt would be costly both in financial and political terms, because many nonpoor households currently receiving food subsidies would have to be excluded. For these reasons, it is likely that the government will continue to refine the present food subsidy system, perhaps by eliminating current subsidies on sugar or edible oil. Neither of these foods is an inferior good, so eliminating these subsidies will have only a minimal impact on the welfare status of the poor. This paper - a product of the Poverty Division, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network - is part of a larger effort in the network to identify the impact of transfer programs on the urban and rural poor. The author may be contacted at radams@worldbank.org.

Agriculture --- Basic Foods --- Bread --- Cigarettes --- Eggs --- Food --- Food Aid --- Food and Beverage Industry --- Food Imports --- Food Rationing --- Food Riots --- Food Subsidies --- Food Subsidy --- Food Subsidy Programs --- Frozen Fish --- Frozen Me Rice --- Industry --- Sugar --- Tea --- Whe Wheat Flour

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In Addis Ababa, an increasing block tariff has been used to calculate households' monthly bills for electricity and water services. This study estimates the magnitudes of the combined water and electricity subsidies received by households with private connections to the electricity grid and piped water network in 2016, and it evaluates the distribution of these subsidies among wealth groups. Customer billing data supplied by utility companies are matched with socioeconomic information collected through a household survey. It is the first detailed analysis of the combined effects of increasing block tariffs for electricity and water in an urban area in a developing country. The results show that the combined subsidies are large. The average household receives a subsidy of US

Block Tariff --- Electric Power --- Electricity Consumption --- Energy --- Energy and Poverty Alleviation --- Energy Consumption --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Residential Consumption --- Subsidies --- Subsidy Incidence --- Subsidy Leakage --- Taxation and Subsidies --- Water Consumption --- Water Pricing and Subsidies --- Water Supply and Sanitation