Consumption growth and spatial poverty traps: an analysis of the effect of social services and community infrastructures on living standards in rural Peru

Type Working Paper - Discussion papers, Ibero America Institute for Economic Research
Title Consumption growth and spatial poverty traps: an analysis of the effect of social services and community infrastructures on living standards in rural Peru
Author(s)
Issue 124
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2005
URL http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27414/1/504479024.PDF
Abstract
We test the effect of local geographic endowment of capital on household growth in living standards in rural Peru, using a four years unbalanced panel data set. Our theoretical model of household consumption growth allows for the effect of community variables to modify the returns to augmented capital in the household production function. Three different sources of data are used: the ENAHO 1997-2000 household surveys, the population census of 1993 and the district infrastructure census of 1997. Altogether the addition of these different data sources makes an unusually rich data set, at least when considered with developing country standards. As in Jalan and Ravallion (2002), we use a quasi-differencing method to identify the impact of locally determined geographic and socioeconomic variables, while removing unobserved household and community level fixed effects. GMM are then used to estimate the model parameters. Several significant interesting results appear, confirming that private consumption growth depends on local geographic variables.

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