Suchergebnisse

The COVID-19 pandemic and the public health measures adopted in response to it have triggered plenty of speculation about the potential impact on fertility in different regions of the globe. This study provides evidence on the fertility response in four sub-Saharan African countries during the first year of the pandemic. Using harmonized data on women of childbearing age from the Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) data series, this study compares pregnancy rates at the turn of the year 2020/21 to a pre-pandemic baseline. There is no indication of a general increase in pregnancy rates after the beginning of the pandemic. In some of the sample countries, pregnancy rates during this phase of the COVID-19 pandemic instead fell significantly among the youngest and the least educated women of childbearing age, respectively. The findings also indicate that over this period, rates of modern contraceptive usage rose significantly among the surveyed female populations in several sample countries.

AbstractFemale labor force participation rates have been stagnating despite rising female education in sub‐Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. Using representative and repeated census data from a heterogeneous sample of 13 sub‐Saharan African countries, this paper analyzes female labor force participation from a demographic perspective. We show that enrollment in education is substantially higher among the most recent female cohorts than among the earlier‐born ones. The higher enrollment mechanically depresses female labor force participation, weakening the relationship between female labor force participation and education. After taking this cohort trend into account, we find a strong and positive association between female labor force participation and female education. We further find a cohort trend toward higher female employment in the nonprimary sector and a positive association between female employment in the nonprimary sector and female education. The higher investments in education by younger female cohorts, together with the demographics of sub‐Saharan African countries, have implications for a potentially arising "demographic dividend".

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have severely affected the lives of young people globally. This paper presents evidence on the return of young women to school in six sub-Saharan African countries during the pandemic. The analysis of representative survey data on women aged 15-25 indicates that in countries where restrictions on schools have been short-lived, both school re-opening and return to school have occurred broadly, with little variation across age, while female school attendance remains strongly depressed below pre-pandemic levels in countries where restrictions were still in place. Both women whose schools have remained closed and women who have already returned to school are less likely to have given birth or supplied labor during the pandemic than women who had already left school prior to COVID- 19, while women who have not returned to school exhibit a significantly higher birth rate than the latter. Further, women who have not returned to school are less likely to perform independent and paid work than women who had already left school prior to COVID-19, while they are just as likely to supply low-quality labor, indicating labor market scarring effects among the non-returning women.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has triggered severe global restrictions on international travel with the intention of limiting the spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 across countries. This paper studies the effects of the partial relaxation of these travel restrictions in Europe during the summer months of 2020. It exploits the staggered start of the summer school breaks across German states as an ex‐ogenous shock to the travel opportunities of the population. While the school breaks also increased mobility within Germany, the event study regressions include disaggregated and time‐varying controls for domestic mobility and local COVID‐19‐related restrictions. The resulting intention‐to‐treat effects of the relaxed travel restrictions show a significant and sizable increase of the COVID‐19 incidence in German counties during the later weeks of the school breaks. The increase can be partly ascribed to a mandatory testing regime for travel returnees from risk areas.

Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent international migration can be explained by climatic variations. A gravity model of migration augmented with average temperature and precipitation in the country of origin is estimated using a panel data set of 142 sending countries for the period 1995 to 2006. We find two primary results. First, temperature is positively correlated with migration. Second, stronger changes in precipitation are also associated with aligned, but small changes in migration. Both effects are robust to various model modifications. Furthermore, we present initial explorations into the channels relating climate changes with migration via agriculture and internal conflict.


JEL Codes
F22, Q54