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"Feeny, Simon"
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Beyond monetary benefits of restoring sight in Vietnam: Evaluating well-being gains from cataract surgery
A more holistic understanding of the benefits of sight-restoring cataract surgery requires a focus that goes beyond income and employment, to include a wider array of well-being measures. The objective of this study is to examine the monetary and non-monetary benefits of cataract surgery on both patients as well as their caregivers in Vietnam. Participants were randomly recruited from a Ho-Chi-Minh City Hospital. A total of 82 cataract patients and 83 caregivers participated in the survey conducted for this study. Paired t-tests, Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests, and regression analysis are used to detect any statistically significant differences in various measures of well-being for patients and caregivers before and after surgery. There are statistically significant improvements in monetary and non-monetary measures of well-being for both patients and caregivers approximately three months after undergoing cataract surgery, compared with baseline assessments collected prior to surgery. Non-monetary measures of well-being include self-assessments of overall health, mental health, hope, self-efficacy, happiness and life satisfaction. For patients, the benefits included statistically significant improvements in earnings, mobility, self-care, the ability to undertake daily activities, self-assessed health and mental health, life satisfaction, hope, and self-efficacy (p<0.01). For caregivers, attendance at work improved alongside overall health, mental health, hope, self-efficacy, happiness and life satisfaction, three months post-surgery (p<0.01). Restoring sight has positive impacts for those suffering from cataracts and their caregivers. Sometimes the benefits are almost equal in their magnitude. The study has also demonstrated that many of these impacts are non-monetary in nature. It is clear that estimates of the rate of return to restoring sight that focus only on financial gains will underestimate the true returns to society of restoring sight from cataract surgeries.
Journal Article
Aggregating the Human Development Index: A Non-compensatory Approach
The United Nations’ Human Development Index remains a widely used and accepted measure of human development. Although it has been revised over the years to address various critiques, a remaining concern is the way the three dimensions are aggregated into the single index. A deterioration in one dimension can be compensated for by an improvement in another. Since compensability is inextricably linked with trade-offs and intensity of preferences, a non-compensatory (i.e., Condorcet) approach to aggregation is employed in this paper. Although non-compensatory approaches have been employed previously, this paper adds to the literature by undertaking an application of the Condorcet approach to the entire HDI. This approach, which does not use intensities of preferences, ensures that the degree of compensability connected with the aggregation model is at the minimum possible level. To achieve this, country level rankings are then compared to those for the 2020 Human Development Index which aggregates dimensions using a geometric mean. The findings demonstrated substantial changes in rank-order between the HDI and Condorcet approach. This outcome provides empirical evidence which demonstrates that the non-compensatory Condorcet approach can mitigate issues of compensation present within the geometric aggregation technique currently employed by the HDI. These findings have potential implications in aiding the identification and employment of potential policy priorities—specifically, the notion that policy should emphasise the development of a country as opposed to economic growth alone.
Journal Article
What are Valid Weights for the Human Development Index? A Discrete Choice Experiment for the United Kingdom
The United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index (HDI) aggregates information on achievements in health, education and income. These achievements are given a weight of one-third each. These weights have been the subject of long-standing controversy, from the moment the HDI was released in 1990. Alternative weights reflecting stated citizen preferences are obtained in this paper using a discrete choice experiment involving a survey 2578 adult residents of the United Kingdom. Health is the most important achievement, with a mean weight of 0.428, followed by income and education, with mean weights of 0.292 and 0.280 respectively. Evidence in support of the view that HDI weights should vary among achievements and countries is provided, based on cluster and econometric analysis of the survey data.
Journal Article
Household Vulnerability and Resilience to Economic Shocks
Focusing on the vulnerability and resilience to economic shocks at the household level, this book draws on extensive research activities carried out in two Melanesia countries: the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In particular, the book identifies the household impacts of the recent food, fuel and economic crises. The authors also examine resilience by identifying how households responded to these recent economic events in order to cope with their impacts. The authors highlight key areas in which public policy and development programmes can reduce household vulnerability and increase their resilience to future economic shocks.
eBook
Improving Well-Being in Bhutan
Increasing happiness is a key priority for the Bhutanese government. This priority displaces more traditional (economic) objectives such as the pursuit of income growth and the reduction of income poverty. This paper examines the implications of this approach by examining whether there are common correlates of the four following measures of human well-being in Bhutan: income poverty; multidimensional poverty; perceived poverty; and happiness. Our findings suggest that whilst there is a degree of commonality, determinants of the different measures of well-being are distinct. Common factors include having a savings account, levels of literacy and household size. Further we show that higher levels of income poverty, multidimensional poverty and perceived poverty are found to be negatively associated with happiness. Importantly, our findings suggest that a focus on increasing happiness might come at the expense of improving other measures of wellbeing.
Journal Article
Weighting the Dimensions of the Multidimensional Poverty Index
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative's Multidimensional Poverty Index has become a widely adopted measure of wellbeing. However, it is criticised for applying equal weights to its three dimensions: health; education; and living standards. There is no a priori reason to expect that all three dimensions equally contribute to wellbeing. This article reports on a Discrete Choice Experiment that involved a sample of 670 Sri Lankans who selected their preferences for the weights. The findings suggest that health is the most important dimension and should receive a weight of 0.38. In comparison, education has a weight of 0.33 and living standards a weight of 0.29. Cluster analysis reveals that location, age, education level and number of dependents are important in explaining differences in weight preferences. Finally, the paper demonstrates that poverty rankings of districts and provinces differ across the different approaches to weighting the index dimensions.
Journal Article
The impact of natural disasters on migration: findings from Vietnam
Increasingly, studies are examining whether the incidence of natural disasters influences household migration. This paper examines whether the severity of natural disasters is important for migration decisions in Vietnam, rather than just examining their occurrence. Data for a sample of 1,003 farm households from the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey are examined for the period 2006–2008. A residual generated regressor approach is adopted to isolate the direct impact of disasters on migration from the indirect impact they have on migration through reducing agricultural output and income. Findings suggest that more severe disasters are directly associated with a greater probability of migration. Furthermore, such outcomes are the same for poor households vis-à-vis their non-poor counterparts.
Journal Article
Donor motives, public preferences and the allocation of UK foreign aid
This paper develops a prescriptive model for the inter-country allocation of aid from the UK government. The model incorporates three broad motives for allocating aid: recipient need, donor interests and absorptive capacity (the ability of recipient countries to use aid effectively). To determine each motive’s relative importance, a discrete choice experiment (DCE) involving more than 1600 members of the UK general population was conducted. Absorptive capacity is the most important motive, and recipient need and donor interests are equally but much less important. Current UK aid allocations are compared with those prescribed by the model. Some countries, including China, India and Indonesia, would receive much more if aid were allocated according to the model; other countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan, would receive much less. Cluster analysis reveals that the political parties voted for by DCE participants at the 2015 general election are, inter alia, related to their aid preferences.
Journal Article
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Interventions in the Pacific: Defining, Assessing and Improving ‘Sustainability’
Through the conduct of
ex post
evaluations, this article examines the impact of aid projects and programmes beyond the funding period in the water and sanitation sector, which, since the inclusion of hygiene, has recently become known as Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). The evaluations were conducted in rural areas of three Pacific countries: Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. This article argues that in assessing the lasting impact of community development projects (in this instance, WASH) the term benefit persistence better captures the wider scope of impact that a project might have on a community extending beyond the stated project goals and objectives. These ‘additional’ or unstated impacts can extend the benefit that aid projects can have. A number of areas that strengthen the likelihood of benefit persistence were also identified.
Journal Article