We assess the economic risk of ill health for households in Indonesia and the role of informal coping strategies. Using household panel data from the Indonesian socio-economic household survey (Susenas) for 2003 and 2004, and applying fixed effects Poisson models, we find evidence of economic risk from illness through medical expenses. For the poor and the informal sector, ill health events imp...

In 1981, Chile reformed its social security system. An inefficient and insolvent pay-asyou-go regime was replaced by system based on individual retirement accounts. Over the years Chile’s reform has been widely praised, and has been carefully studied by policy makers throughout the world. In this paper we focus on a neglected aspect of Chile’s social security reform: its impact on labor market ...

There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that relative to male-owned businesses, female-owned businesses suffer various disadvantages leading to their lower efficiency—the female-owned business underperformance hypothesis. Firm performance is typically measured by firm-size, labor productivity or various estimates of total factor productivity. However, a key shortcoming of this litera...

making capital and investment is the main driving forces of economic development. based on the investment sensitivity to the changes of some of macro-economic variables and risk and uncertainty, the present study evaluated the effective factors on investment in private sector in iran during 1980-2007. at first, the uncertainty variables of real informal exchange rate, nominal interest rate and ...

How to align public sector compensation with the market? In industrial countries, a common reference is the salary paid by private employers for similar jobs. But comparable jobs are formal, whereas in developing countries the relevant alternative for many public sector workers is in the informal sector. Another approach uses as a reference the earnings of similar workers in the private sector,...

OBJECTIVES To explore systematically the care seeking trajectories of tuberculosis (TB) cases up to four subsequent places of care and to assess the type of services provided at each place. METHODS TB cases detected actively during the 2007-2009 national TB prevalence survey and passively under the routine programme in the same period were interviewed by administering a standardised questionn...

Social health insurance (SHI) is enjoying something of a revival in parts of the developing world. Many countries that have in the past relied largely on tax finance (and out-of-pocket payments) have introduced SHI, or are thinking about doing so. And countries with SHI already in place are making vigorous efforts to extend coverage to the informal sector. Ironically, this revival is occurring ...

Background Sudan established a National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) in 1995. NHIF, despite the name, is a social health insurance scheme that predominantly enrols the formal sector workers, compulsorily, and the informal sector workers, voluntarily. The Government is targeting universal health coverage by 2031, by expanding the existing scheme. This paper aims to assess the insurance enrolment...

3 Introduction The food processing industry is increasingly becoming an important sector in developing countries for its role in generating employment and attracting foreign investment. During the period 1980-91, the food industry (including tobacco and beverages) grew at a rate of 87% in developing nations (doubling in many Asian countries) compared to only 20% in developed countries. Moreover...