Endogenous coresidence and program incidence: South Africa's Old Age Pension

Amar Hamoudi and Duncan Thomas

Journal of Development Economics, 2014, vol. 109, issue C, 30-37

Abstract: We investigate whether living arrangements respond to an arguably exogenous shift in the distribution of power in family economic decision-making. In the early 1990s, the South African Old Age Pension was expanded to cover most black South Africans above a sex-specific age cut-off resulting in a substantial increase in the income of older South Africans and potentially their say in the economic decisions of their families. Beneficiaries of the program are more likely to coreside with adults who have less human capital as measured by height and education. Since height and education are fixed for adults, this cannot be an effect of the pension income but reflects selective changes in living arrangements resulting from the pension. The findings highlight the endogeneity of living arrangements and illustrate the potential value of moving beyond theory and data that are confined to a spatially determined definition of the household.

Keywords: Living arrangements; Program evaluation; Old Age Pension (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387814000327
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:109:y:2014:i:c:p:30-37

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.03.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().