Third Worlds
Distributional Growth Accounting: Education and the Reduction of Global Poverty, 1980-2019
Amory Gethin
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article quantifies the role played by education in the reduction of global poverty. I propose tools for identifying the contribution of schooling to economic growth by income group, integrating imperfect substitution between skill groups into macroeconomic growth decomposition. I bring this “distributional growth accounting” framework to the data by exploiting a new microdatabase representative of nearly all of the world’s population, new estimates of the private returns to schooling, and historical income distribution statistics. Education can account for about 45% of global economic growth and 60% of pretax income growth among the world’s poorest 20% from 1980 to 2019. A significant fraction of these gains was made possible by skill-biased technical change amplifying the returns to education. Because they ignore the distributional effects of schooling, standard growth accounting methods substantially underestimate economic benefits of education for the global poor.
How Is Fertility Behavior in Africa Different?
Claus Pörtner
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sub-Saharan Africa's fertility decline has lagged behind that of other regions. Using large-scale, individual-level data, I provide new evidence on how fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compares with that in East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America by examining differences in fertility outcomes by grade level across regions. Unlike prior research that compared aggregate fertility and education outcomes, I estimate fertility outcomes separately for each combination of region, area of residence, age group, and grade level. I find that differences in fertility between sub-Saharan Africa and other regions increase with education up to the end of primary school and then rapidly decrease. There is little consistent evidence of differences among women with secondary education or higher. Moreover, for grade levels where fertility is significantly higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions, the differences are substantially smaller for surviving children than for children ever born. Using women's literacy as a proxy for school quality, I show that the results for literacy rates follow a similar pattern to the fertility outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that higher offspring mortality and lower quality of primary schooling contribute to higher fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compared with other regions.
Composition Beats Collapse: Insights from the Bisin–Verdier Model on Endogenous Fertility Reversal
Sebastian Galiani & Raul Sosa
NBER Working Paper, August 2025
Abstract:
Fertility rates have fallen below replacement in most countries, fueling predictions of demographic collapse and even human extinction. These forecasts overlook a crucial fact: societies are not homogeneous. Using the Bisin–Verdier model of cultural transmission with endogenous fertility and direct socialization, calibrated to U.S. and global religion data, we identify an evolutionary counterforce. Subpopulations with persistently high fertility survive, expand their share, and push the total fertility rate (TFR) upward over time. Even if every country’s TFR reaches a below-replacement level, the persistence of above-replacement groups makes extinction unlikely. Our simulations point to a future of growth with pronounced compositional change -- driven above all by high-fertility religious communities -- rather than collapse. In particular, in our baseline ten-generation world calibration, Muslims become the largest tradition by share.
Engineering Ukraine's Wirtschaftswunder
Ufuk Akcigit et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2025
Abstract:
As Ukraine emerges from the devastation of war, it faces a historic opportunity to engineer its own Wirtschaftswunder -- a productivity-driven economic transformation akin to post-war West Germany. While investment-led growth may offer quick wins, it is efficiency, innovation, and institutional reform that will determine Ukraine’s long-term economic trajectory. Drawing on rich micro-level firm data spanning 25 years, this paper uncovers deep structural distortions that have suppressed creative destruction and productivity in Ukraine. It finds that business dynamism is on the decline, alongside rising market concentration among incumbent businesses, including low productivity state owned enterprises. To inform priorities for reviving business dynamism, this study develops a model of creative destruction drawing on Acemoglu et al. (2018) and Akcigit et al. (2021). The quantitative assessment highlights that policies that discipline entrenched incumbents are the bedrock for reviving business dynamism and engineer Ukraine’s Wirtschaftswunder. Policies targeting specific types of firms have limited efficacy when incumbents run wild.
The long-term effect of television on children’s human capital development in China
Fangjing Zha & Di Zhou
Journal of Development Economics, September 2025
Abstract:
This paper examines the long-term impacts of childhood exposure to educational television on human capital formation. We focus on CCTV-14, China’s first nationally broadcast channel specifically designed for children. Exploiting variation in the timing of cable and satellite television rollout across communities, we document that access to CCTV-14 led to significant and persistent improvements in non-cognitive skills. These gains are particularly pronounced among left-behind children, suggesting that the channel played a compensatory role in addressing early developmental disadvantages. In contrast, we find no evidence of sustained effects on cognitive outcomes. The observed asymmetry underscores the importance of program content in shaping skill development. Finally, children exposed to CCTV-14 are more likely to achieve a higher socioeconomic status, better health, and enhanced digital literacy than those who did not.
Sleep hours fall as income rises: Macro and micro evidence on sleep inequality around the world
Cristián Jara, Francisca Pérez & Rodrigo Wagner
Economics & Human Biology, September 2025
Abstract:
People spend about a third of their lives sleeping. Our paper utilizes detailed time-use data to study sleep inequality by income. Our contribution lies in analyzing this relationship both within and across countries, using a global sample. At the micro level, we find that full-time male workers in the top income quartile sleep around half an hour less per day than those in the lowest quartile. This qualitative result is robust to various alternative tests and measurement of key variables. At the macro level, the average sleep hours decrease as the country’s GDP per capita increases. Interestingly, both our micro and macro estimations are coherent with an estimated income elasticity of sleep around −0.04. Using this elasticity we replicate the implicit relationships identified in previous single-country studies. Additional results suggest that other leisure activities may be positively correlated to income, such as internet use and social outings, substituting sleep.
Campaigning for Extinction: Eradication of Sparrows and the Great Famine in China
Eyal Frank et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2025
Abstract:
How do large disruptions to ecosystems affect human well-being? This paper tests the long-standing hypothesis that China's 1958 Four Pests Campaign, which exterminated sparrows despite scientists’ warnings about their pest-control role, exacerbated the Great Famine -- the largest in human history. Combining newly digitized data on historical agricultural productivity in China with habitat suitability modeling methods in ecology, we find that, after sparrow eradication, a one-standard-deviation increase in sparrow suitability led to 5.3% larger rice and 8.7% larger wheat declines. State food procurement exacerbated these losses, resulting in a 9.6% higher mortality in high-suitability counties -- implying nearly two million excess deaths.
Global earthquake detection and warning using Android phones
Richard Allen et al.
Science, 17 July 2025, Pages 254-259
Abstract:
Earthquake early-warning systems are increasingly being deployed as a strategy to reduce losses in earthquakes, but the regional seismic networks they require do not exist in many earthquake-prone countries. We use the global Android smartphone network to develop an earthquake detection capability, an alert delivery system, and a user feedback framework. Over 3 years of operation, the system detected an average of 312 earthquakes per month with magnitudes from M 1.9 to M 7.8 in Türkiye. Alerts were delivered in 98 countries for earthquakes with M ≥4.5, corresponding to ~60 events and 18 million alerts per month. User feedback shows that 85% of people receiving an alert felt shaking, and 36, 28, and 23% received the alert before, during, and after shaking, respectively. We show how smartphone-based earthquake detection algorithms can be implemented at scale and improved through postevent analysis.
Can Winegrowing Cause Rural Development? Evidence from Baden-Württemberg
Thilo Huning & Fabian Wahl
European Review of Economic History, August 2025, Pages 354-384
Abstract:
Historical winegrowing shaped modern rural development, even in areas in which its cultivation was given up after the early modern period. We provide evidence for this idea from municipality level data on Southwestern German viticulture over the last 1,300 years, and find a significant link between historical winegrowing and modern economic development. We rely on cross-sectional regressions and on an instrumental variable strategy using precipitation seasonality. Our findings highlight two mechanisms through which historical viticulture affected modern development: by leaving behind a more egalitarian inheritance norm, and a more collectivist society.