BACKGROUND
Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults,... more BACKGROUND Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults, knowledge regarding typical age-related developmental changes in living arrangements is of a major concern for public health policymakers, particularly in low- and middle income countries dealing with growing aging populations. However, the much-needed empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics is hindered by a lack of proper data. OBJECTIVE To exploit often-available short-term longitudinal data in the study of long-term phenomena, in this paper we accelerate the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) panel as a means to explore, over a broad age span, the household dynamics of Mexican older adults. METHODS Instead of working with a priori definitions of different household structures when analyzing transitions between them, we introduce a novel approach that estimates latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of older people as they age. RESULTS We show how accelerated longitudinal designs, coupled with latent class analysis, can offer new insights into living arrangement dynamics. Our findings suggest that in Mexico the typical living arrangements at 50 years old serve as an important predictor of future living arrangements, and that typical living-arrangement trajectories are strongly gendered in Mexico. This new approach may prove to be indispensable when determining the social support needed by high-risk population groups and as a means to better anticipate the necessary financial resources to do so.
Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy, 2019
Extracting classification-relevant information from complex spectral data usually takes extensive... more Extracting classification-relevant information from complex spectral data usually takes extensive expert knowledge and a lot of time and effort. The main challenge remains processing, in a practically feasible manner, huge amounts of highly variable data to recognize patterns useful to explain away classifications. In this paper we present a statistical hypothesis testing approach to select, with minimum knowledge regarding the spectral matrix, the LIBS spectral features potentially most useful to feed supervised classification algorithms. In probing the capabilities of our approach, starting from raw spectral data, a bio-LIBS application was used in an attempt to uncover the chemistry behind the severity diagnosis of liver fibrosis. By coupling our approach with Kernel Density Estimation and Gradient Boosting as normalizing strategy and classification algorithm, respectively, we managed to correctly classify 84% of the spectra, 91% of spots and 95% of samples with error rates comparable to computationally costlier learning-methods such as Random Forest. A definite advantage of the proposed approach is that it is highly scalable, parallelizable, and susceptible to carry-out in a piecemeal fashion.
Two decades after the inception of Mexico’s conditional
cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this stu... more Two decades after the inception of Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this study analyzes the intergenerational occupational mobility and occupational attainment of a group of rural beneficiary youths between ages 18 and 35 years, segmented into subgroups by sex, ethnic background and migratory status. Furthermore, it evaluates if a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment increases the equality of labor opportunities for the youths. Half of the youths achieved upward mobility relative to their occupation of origin, but, at the same time, there also was a high probability of having an occupation in a lower stratum of the occupational hierarchy, experiencing high occupational inheritance and barriers to climbing the social ladder. The variables related to social origin have a significant correlation with the occupational destinations of the youths, although their education, first occupation and cognitive abilities are factors that, altogether, have a greater weight and may reduce the effect of social origins on occupational destinations. Women and migrants present the highest rates of upward mobility and greater equality in labor opportunities, compared to men and non-migrants, respectively. No differences due to ethnicity were found. The findings on the effects of PROSPERA suggest that higher levels of treatment intensity may generate greater probabilities of better occupations, although this effect is considered modest. The results are only valid for the analyzed subpopulation and reflect a reduced difference in the treatment intensity, which must not be considered as the complete effect of the program’s intervention.
Even though it has been widely recognized the importance of economic-dependence relationships in... more Even though it has been widely recognized the importance of economic-dependence relationships in the households’ capacity to build economic resources, in analyzing consumption and income in Mexico, economists have approached the subject empirically focusing (almost exclusively) on the individual’s age in a life- cycle/permanent-income framework. However related an individual’s age is to his or her living arrangements, it is our argument that this professional (economic) approach misses the opportunity to bring to bear decades of fruitful socio-anthropological knowledge regarding the crucial role that the number and characteristics of household members affect microeconomic behaviour. In order to bring family living arrangements into play, unlike existing studies that use a priori defined typologies, in this paper we statistically identify, through Latent Class Analysis, the most typical household structures in the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2014. We then use these classes of family structures to show how taking into account particular socio-economic dependency-relations can help us better inform public policy, providing relevant heterogeneity analysis on the age profiles of savings in Mexico.
We analyze the effects that the expansion of Seguro Popular (SP), Mexico’s universal health insur... more We analyze the effects that the expansion of Seguro Popular (SP), Mexico’s universal health insurance program, has had on the human and material resources needed to meet the new demand. Unlike previous evaluations, we use Sanitary Jurisdictions (SJs) as units of analysis and operationalize SP’s intervention as a continuous treatment indicator (relative number of recipients). Estimates using a variety of propensity score approaches suggest that, on the average, SP has effectively had a positive impact on Mexico’s health resources. However, quantile and interaction treatment effects suggest that the program may be leaving behind some of the most vulnerable geographical areas.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wel... more Abstract BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wellbeing of elderly and, consequently, a major factor to consider in public health planning. OBJECTIVE: In this paper we propose and illustrate methods that can extract understandable data patterns for further use in longitudinal studies of household dynamics. METHODS: Based on an accelerated version of the Mexican Health and Aging Study, we estimate latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of the elderly as they grow older. RESULTS: We circumvent working with a priori definitions of different household structures and estimate four typical living-arrangement trajectories of the elderly in Mexico based directly on household demographic indicators. CONCLUSIONS: The elderly individual’s living arrangement at 50 years old serve as important predictor of future living arrangements. CONTRIBUTION: We show a new approach to the empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics that overcomes some methodological limitations set by the relatively short time frame of most longitudinal surveys and the large number of different living arrangement transitions observed.
Background
We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popul... more Background We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popular, on key variables associated with the provision of healthcare services. Given that the program was introduced gradually over a period that lasted more than a decade, the dynamics of the roll-out of the program and its reaction to the expansion of healthcare services it caused should be accounted for when evaluating the program.
Methods We present a new semiparametric procedure to analyze time-varying continuous interventions. This is accomplished by bringing together the literatures on continuous and on dynamic treatments. Our approach allows the researcher to estimate mean and quantile dose-response functions by applying local regression methods to appropriately weighted samples that control for time-dependent confounding.
Results Using administrative data, we show compelling evidence that Seguro Popular has incremented the human and physical resources available for healthcare services over the period 2001–2013. Moreover, we show that these effects have been heterogeneously distributed.
Conclusions The program has proven most helpful in less vulnerable territories, leaving behind those in greater need.
In this paper we present a continuous extension for longitudinal analysis settings of the recentl... more In this paper we present a continuous extension for longitudinal analysis settings of the recently proposed Covariate Balancing Propensity Score (CBPS) methodology. While extensions of the CBPS methodology to both marginal structural models and general treatment regimes have been proposed, these extensions have been kept separately. We propose to bring them together using the generalized method of moments to estimate inverse probability weights such that after weighting the association between time-varying covariates and the treatment is minimized. A simulation analysis confirms the correlation-breaking performance of the proposed technique. As an empirical application we look at the impact the gradual roll-out of Seguro Popular, a universal health insurance program, has had on the resources available for the provision of healthcare services in Mexico.
A recent evaluation of the Mexican interinstitutional coordination program Estrategia 100×100, pu... more A recent evaluation of the Mexican interinstitutional coordination program Estrategia 100×100, published by Coneval in 2013, did not find many satisfactory results with respect to its target population. However, in Coneval's evaluation all statistical quantities of interest were computed at the group level only, thereby overlooking individual within-group heterogeneity. In this paper we estimate the heterogeneity of these treatment effects as a function of the level of investment per capita received through the program's actions. We provide evidence that the program was in fact effective whenever it was accompanied by the required investment.
Evidence based budgeting is a relatively new movement in Mexico that seeks to put public manageme... more Evidence based budgeting is a relatively new movement in Mexico that seeks to put public management on a firmer scientific footing. This paper strives to adjust the pointer of the balance that weighs the expected risks and benefits of federal social program evaluation by examining the epistemological grounds of social experiments. Our argument consists in showing that the dogmatic believe that social experiments carry special scientific weight may lead to an unjustified modification of the expected risk and benefits structure that face the subjects of development against their interests. With this paper we hope to start a public discussion of the ethical matters of social program evaluation and the dearly need of an institutional framework that safeguards the social rights of the people.
This paper presents empirical evidence that allows us to understand how does the
welfare level of... more This paper presents empirical evidence that allows us to understand how does the welfare level of beneficiary households of the conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades evolve, both in the short and in the medium term. Understanding this evolution is relevant in order to design efficient exit mechanisms for this type of programs —something that concerns at least 27 conditional cash transfer programs worldwide. Using administrative data of the universe of beneficiary households, we study changes in welfare levels of rural and urban households in the short and medium term. Furthermore, recognizing that the evolution of each household’s welfare level might be heterogeneous, we analyze the paths different types of households have followed over time. Our results confirm the existence of heterogeneity in the evolution of welfare levels among households. The data shows that poorer households have achieved greater improvements in their welfare level than (relatively) better off households.
This paper discusses, estimates and compares microeconometric strategic interaction
models applie... more This paper discusses, estimates and compares microeconometric strategic interaction models applied to the labor supply of households in Mexico. Because the possibility of decentralized decision-making within the household provides a motivation for a game theoretic framework, the model estimates are based on the assumption that the observed variables represent the outcome of a static discrete game. The models are estimated using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey 2002 (MxFLS). The maximum likelihood estimation, based on the non-cooperative Nash and Stackelberg equilibrium concepts, proved feasible and gave plausible results. The main results suggest the interdependence of individual choices within the household.
Our study focuses on the impacts of fiscal incentives, as an instrument of public policy for loca... more Our study focuses on the impacts of fiscal incentives, as an instrument of public policy for local industries, on Mexican firms during previous years. The analysis departs from an identification of the main public policy strategies in Mexico in terms of technological development, focusing our attention on policies of fiscal incentives as instruments for such strategies. We review in detail the application of resources from policies of fiscal incentives on supported firms. In particular, we focus our attention on a proposed division for Mexican industry: High-Tech and Low-Tech firms, which is based on firms' ability to develop technological capabilities, and we conclude that existing policies of fiscal incentives are not necessarily designed for those firms (High-Tech ones) that are more able to exploit the received resources in terms of innovation or technological progress. Additionally, we argue that existing policies are disperse, which limits the impact that the public policy for local industries could have on technological development and innovative behavior of Mexican firms.
Inventario de la Ciudad de México: presente y futuro de su gente. Diez encuestas sobre la Ciudad de México, 2019
Delfino Vargas, Curtis Huffman, Iliana Yaschine y Servando Valdés, en el capítulo “Característica... more Delfino Vargas, Curtis Huffman, Iliana Yaschine y Servando Valdés, en el capítulo “Características laborales y bienestar subjetivo de los trabajadores en la Ciudad de México”, se enfocan en caracterizar las condiciones del trabajo en la Ciudad de México, las oportunidades que en materia de empleo ésta ofrece, así como sus efectos sobre algunas dimensiones del bienestar de las personas.
BACKGROUND
Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults,... more BACKGROUND Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults, knowledge regarding typical age-related developmental changes in living arrangements is of a major concern for public health policymakers, particularly in low- and middle income countries dealing with growing aging populations. However, the much-needed empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics is hindered by a lack of proper data. OBJECTIVE To exploit often-available short-term longitudinal data in the study of long-term phenomena, in this paper we accelerate the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) panel as a means to explore, over a broad age span, the household dynamics of Mexican older adults. METHODS Instead of working with a priori definitions of different household structures when analyzing transitions between them, we introduce a novel approach that estimates latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of older people as they age. RESULTS We show how accelerated longitudinal designs, coupled with latent class analysis, can offer new insights into living arrangement dynamics. Our findings suggest that in Mexico the typical living arrangements at 50 years old serve as an important predictor of future living arrangements, and that typical living-arrangement trajectories are strongly gendered in Mexico. This new approach may prove to be indispensable when determining the social support needed by high-risk population groups and as a means to better anticipate the necessary financial resources to do so.
Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy, 2019
Extracting classification-relevant information from complex spectral data usually takes extensive... more Extracting classification-relevant information from complex spectral data usually takes extensive expert knowledge and a lot of time and effort. The main challenge remains processing, in a practically feasible manner, huge amounts of highly variable data to recognize patterns useful to explain away classifications. In this paper we present a statistical hypothesis testing approach to select, with minimum knowledge regarding the spectral matrix, the LIBS spectral features potentially most useful to feed supervised classification algorithms. In probing the capabilities of our approach, starting from raw spectral data, a bio-LIBS application was used in an attempt to uncover the chemistry behind the severity diagnosis of liver fibrosis. By coupling our approach with Kernel Density Estimation and Gradient Boosting as normalizing strategy and classification algorithm, respectively, we managed to correctly classify 84% of the spectra, 91% of spots and 95% of samples with error rates comparable to computationally costlier learning-methods such as Random Forest. A definite advantage of the proposed approach is that it is highly scalable, parallelizable, and susceptible to carry-out in a piecemeal fashion.
Two decades after the inception of Mexico’s conditional
cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this stu... more Two decades after the inception of Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this study analyzes the intergenerational occupational mobility and occupational attainment of a group of rural beneficiary youths between ages 18 and 35 years, segmented into subgroups by sex, ethnic background and migratory status. Furthermore, it evaluates if a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment increases the equality of labor opportunities for the youths. Half of the youths achieved upward mobility relative to their occupation of origin, but, at the same time, there also was a high probability of having an occupation in a lower stratum of the occupational hierarchy, experiencing high occupational inheritance and barriers to climbing the social ladder. The variables related to social origin have a significant correlation with the occupational destinations of the youths, although their education, first occupation and cognitive abilities are factors that, altogether, have a greater weight and may reduce the effect of social origins on occupational destinations. Women and migrants present the highest rates of upward mobility and greater equality in labor opportunities, compared to men and non-migrants, respectively. No differences due to ethnicity were found. The findings on the effects of PROSPERA suggest that higher levels of treatment intensity may generate greater probabilities of better occupations, although this effect is considered modest. The results are only valid for the analyzed subpopulation and reflect a reduced difference in the treatment intensity, which must not be considered as the complete effect of the program’s intervention.
Even though it has been widely recognized the importance of economic-dependence relationships in... more Even though it has been widely recognized the importance of economic-dependence relationships in the households’ capacity to build economic resources, in analyzing consumption and income in Mexico, economists have approached the subject empirically focusing (almost exclusively) on the individual’s age in a life- cycle/permanent-income framework. However related an individual’s age is to his or her living arrangements, it is our argument that this professional (economic) approach misses the opportunity to bring to bear decades of fruitful socio-anthropological knowledge regarding the crucial role that the number and characteristics of household members affect microeconomic behaviour. In order to bring family living arrangements into play, unlike existing studies that use a priori defined typologies, in this paper we statistically identify, through Latent Class Analysis, the most typical household structures in the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2014. We then use these classes of family structures to show how taking into account particular socio-economic dependency-relations can help us better inform public policy, providing relevant heterogeneity analysis on the age profiles of savings in Mexico.
We analyze the effects that the expansion of Seguro Popular (SP), Mexico’s universal health insur... more We analyze the effects that the expansion of Seguro Popular (SP), Mexico’s universal health insurance program, has had on the human and material resources needed to meet the new demand. Unlike previous evaluations, we use Sanitary Jurisdictions (SJs) as units of analysis and operationalize SP’s intervention as a continuous treatment indicator (relative number of recipients). Estimates using a variety of propensity score approaches suggest that, on the average, SP has effectively had a positive impact on Mexico’s health resources. However, quantile and interaction treatment effects suggest that the program may be leaving behind some of the most vulnerable geographical areas.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wel... more Abstract BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wellbeing of elderly and, consequently, a major factor to consider in public health planning. OBJECTIVE: In this paper we propose and illustrate methods that can extract understandable data patterns for further use in longitudinal studies of household dynamics. METHODS: Based on an accelerated version of the Mexican Health and Aging Study, we estimate latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of the elderly as they grow older. RESULTS: We circumvent working with a priori definitions of different household structures and estimate four typical living-arrangement trajectories of the elderly in Mexico based directly on household demographic indicators. CONCLUSIONS: The elderly individual’s living arrangement at 50 years old serve as important predictor of future living arrangements. CONTRIBUTION: We show a new approach to the empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics that overcomes some methodological limitations set by the relatively short time frame of most longitudinal surveys and the large number of different living arrangement transitions observed.
Background
We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popul... more Background We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popular, on key variables associated with the provision of healthcare services. Given that the program was introduced gradually over a period that lasted more than a decade, the dynamics of the roll-out of the program and its reaction to the expansion of healthcare services it caused should be accounted for when evaluating the program.
Methods We present a new semiparametric procedure to analyze time-varying continuous interventions. This is accomplished by bringing together the literatures on continuous and on dynamic treatments. Our approach allows the researcher to estimate mean and quantile dose-response functions by applying local regression methods to appropriately weighted samples that control for time-dependent confounding.
Results Using administrative data, we show compelling evidence that Seguro Popular has incremented the human and physical resources available for healthcare services over the period 2001–2013. Moreover, we show that these effects have been heterogeneously distributed.
Conclusions The program has proven most helpful in less vulnerable territories, leaving behind those in greater need.
In this paper we present a continuous extension for longitudinal analysis settings of the recentl... more In this paper we present a continuous extension for longitudinal analysis settings of the recently proposed Covariate Balancing Propensity Score (CBPS) methodology. While extensions of the CBPS methodology to both marginal structural models and general treatment regimes have been proposed, these extensions have been kept separately. We propose to bring them together using the generalized method of moments to estimate inverse probability weights such that after weighting the association between time-varying covariates and the treatment is minimized. A simulation analysis confirms the correlation-breaking performance of the proposed technique. As an empirical application we look at the impact the gradual roll-out of Seguro Popular, a universal health insurance program, has had on the resources available for the provision of healthcare services in Mexico.
A recent evaluation of the Mexican interinstitutional coordination program Estrategia 100×100, pu... more A recent evaluation of the Mexican interinstitutional coordination program Estrategia 100×100, published by Coneval in 2013, did not find many satisfactory results with respect to its target population. However, in Coneval's evaluation all statistical quantities of interest were computed at the group level only, thereby overlooking individual within-group heterogeneity. In this paper we estimate the heterogeneity of these treatment effects as a function of the level of investment per capita received through the program's actions. We provide evidence that the program was in fact effective whenever it was accompanied by the required investment.
Evidence based budgeting is a relatively new movement in Mexico that seeks to put public manageme... more Evidence based budgeting is a relatively new movement in Mexico that seeks to put public management on a firmer scientific footing. This paper strives to adjust the pointer of the balance that weighs the expected risks and benefits of federal social program evaluation by examining the epistemological grounds of social experiments. Our argument consists in showing that the dogmatic believe that social experiments carry special scientific weight may lead to an unjustified modification of the expected risk and benefits structure that face the subjects of development against their interests. With this paper we hope to start a public discussion of the ethical matters of social program evaluation and the dearly need of an institutional framework that safeguards the social rights of the people.
This paper presents empirical evidence that allows us to understand how does the
welfare level of... more This paper presents empirical evidence that allows us to understand how does the welfare level of beneficiary households of the conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades evolve, both in the short and in the medium term. Understanding this evolution is relevant in order to design efficient exit mechanisms for this type of programs —something that concerns at least 27 conditional cash transfer programs worldwide. Using administrative data of the universe of beneficiary households, we study changes in welfare levels of rural and urban households in the short and medium term. Furthermore, recognizing that the evolution of each household’s welfare level might be heterogeneous, we analyze the paths different types of households have followed over time. Our results confirm the existence of heterogeneity in the evolution of welfare levels among households. The data shows that poorer households have achieved greater improvements in their welfare level than (relatively) better off households.
This paper discusses, estimates and compares microeconometric strategic interaction
models applie... more This paper discusses, estimates and compares microeconometric strategic interaction models applied to the labor supply of households in Mexico. Because the possibility of decentralized decision-making within the household provides a motivation for a game theoretic framework, the model estimates are based on the assumption that the observed variables represent the outcome of a static discrete game. The models are estimated using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey 2002 (MxFLS). The maximum likelihood estimation, based on the non-cooperative Nash and Stackelberg equilibrium concepts, proved feasible and gave plausible results. The main results suggest the interdependence of individual choices within the household.
Our study focuses on the impacts of fiscal incentives, as an instrument of public policy for loca... more Our study focuses on the impacts of fiscal incentives, as an instrument of public policy for local industries, on Mexican firms during previous years. The analysis departs from an identification of the main public policy strategies in Mexico in terms of technological development, focusing our attention on policies of fiscal incentives as instruments for such strategies. We review in detail the application of resources from policies of fiscal incentives on supported firms. In particular, we focus our attention on a proposed division for Mexican industry: High-Tech and Low-Tech firms, which is based on firms' ability to develop technological capabilities, and we conclude that existing policies of fiscal incentives are not necessarily designed for those firms (High-Tech ones) that are more able to exploit the received resources in terms of innovation or technological progress. Additionally, we argue that existing policies are disperse, which limits the impact that the public policy for local industries could have on technological development and innovative behavior of Mexican firms.
Inventario de la Ciudad de México: presente y futuro de su gente. Diez encuestas sobre la Ciudad de México, 2019
Delfino Vargas, Curtis Huffman, Iliana Yaschine y Servando Valdés, en el capítulo “Característica... more Delfino Vargas, Curtis Huffman, Iliana Yaschine y Servando Valdés, en el capítulo “Características laborales y bienestar subjetivo de los trabajadores en la Ciudad de México”, se enfocan en caracterizar las condiciones del trabajo en la Ciudad de México, las oportunidades que en materia de empleo ésta ofrece, así como sus efectos sobre algunas dimensiones del bienestar de las personas.
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articles by Curtis Huffman
Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults, knowledge regarding typical age-related developmental changes in living arrangements is of a major concern for public health policymakers, particularly in low- and middle income countries dealing with growing aging populations. However, the much-needed empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics is hindered by a lack of proper data.
OBJECTIVE
To exploit often-available short-term longitudinal data in the study of long-term phenomena, in this paper we accelerate the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) panel as a means to explore, over a broad age span, the household dynamics of Mexican older adults.
METHODS
Instead of working with a priori definitions of different household structures when analyzing transitions between them, we introduce a novel approach that estimates latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of older people as they age.
RESULTS
We show how accelerated longitudinal designs, coupled with latent class analysis, can offer new insights into living arrangement dynamics. Our findings suggest that in Mexico the typical living arrangements at 50 years old serve as an important predictor of future living arrangements, and that typical living-arrangement trajectories are strongly gendered in Mexico. This new approach may prove to be indispensable when
determining the social support needed by high-risk population groups and as a means to better anticipate the necessary financial resources to do so.
cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this study analyzes the
intergenerational occupational mobility and occupational
attainment of a group of rural beneficiary youths between
ages 18 and 35 years, segmented into subgroups by sex,
ethnic background and migratory status. Furthermore, it
evaluates if a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment
increases the equality of labor opportunities for the youths.
Half of the youths achieved upward mobility relative to
their occupation of origin, but, at the same time, there
also was a high probability of having an occupation in a
lower stratum of the occupational hierarchy, experiencing
high occupational inheritance and barriers to climbing the
social ladder. The variables related to social origin have a
significant correlation with the occupational destinations
of the youths, although their education, first occupation
and cognitive abilities are factors that, altogether, have a
greater weight and may reduce the effect of social origins
on occupational destinations. Women and migrants present
the highest rates of upward mobility and greater equality in
labor opportunities, compared to men and non-migrants,
respectively. No differences due to ethnicity were found.
The findings on the effects of PROSPERA suggest that
higher levels of treatment intensity may generate greater
probabilities of better occupations, although this effect is
considered modest. The results are only valid for the analyzed subpopulation and reflect a reduced difference in the
treatment intensity, which must not be considered as the
complete effect of the program’s intervention.
misses the opportunity to bring to bear decades of fruitful socio-anthropological knowledge regarding the crucial role that the number and characteristics of household members affect microeconomic behaviour. In order to bring family living arrangements into play, unlike existing studies that use a priori defined typologies, in this paper we statistically identify, through Latent Class Analysis, the most typical household structures in the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2014. We then use these classes of family structures to show how taking into
account particular socio-economic dependency-relations can help us better inform public policy, providing relevant heterogeneity analysis on the age profiles of savings in Mexico.
BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wellbeing of elderly and, consequently, a major factor to consider in public health planning.
OBJECTIVE: In this paper we propose and illustrate methods that can extract understandable data
patterns for further use in longitudinal studies of household dynamics.
METHODS: Based on an accelerated version of the Mexican Health and Aging Study, we estimate latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of the elderly as they grow older.
RESULTS: We circumvent working with a priori definitions of different household structures and estimate four typical living-arrangement trajectories of the elderly in Mexico based directly on household demographic indicators.
CONCLUSIONS: The elderly individual’s living arrangement at 50 years old serve as important
predictor of future living arrangements.
CONTRIBUTION: We show a new approach to the empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics that overcomes some methodological limitations set by the relatively short time frame of most longitudinal surveys and the large number of different living arrangement transitions
observed.
We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popular, on key variables associated with the provision of healthcare services. Given that the program was introduced gradually over a period that lasted more than a decade, the dynamics of the roll-out of the program and its reaction to the expansion of healthcare services it caused should be accounted for when evaluating the program.
Methods
We present a new semiparametric procedure to analyze time-varying continuous interventions. This is accomplished by bringing together the literatures on continuous and on dynamic treatments. Our approach allows the researcher to estimate mean and quantile dose-response functions by applying local regression methods to appropriately weighted samples that control for time-dependent confounding.
Results
Using administrative data, we show compelling evidence that Seguro Popular has incremented the human and physical resources available for healthcare services over the period 2001–2013. Moreover, we show that these effects have been heterogeneously distributed.
Conclusions
The program has proven most helpful in less vulnerable territories, leaving behind those in greater need.
welfare level of beneficiary households of the conditional cash transfer program
Oportunidades evolve, both in the short and in the medium term. Understanding this evolution is relevant in order to design efficient exit mechanisms for this
type of programs —something that concerns at least 27 conditional cash transfer
programs worldwide. Using administrative data of the universe of beneficiary
households, we study changes in welfare levels of rural and urban households in
the short and medium term. Furthermore, recognizing that the evolution of each
household’s welfare level might be heterogeneous, we analyze the paths different
types of households have followed over time. Our results confirm the existence of
heterogeneity in the evolution of welfare levels among households. The data shows
that poorer households have achieved greater improvements in their welfare level
than (relatively) better off households.
models applied to the labor supply of households in Mexico. Because the possibility of decentralized decision-making within the household provides a motivation for a
game theoretic framework, the model estimates are based on the assumption that the
observed variables represent the outcome of a static discrete game. The models are
estimated using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey 2002 (MxFLS). The maximum likelihood estimation, based on the non-cooperative Nash and Stackelberg
equilibrium concepts, proved feasible and gave plausible results. The main results
suggest the interdependence of individual choices within the household.
Books by Curtis Huffman
Because living arrangements have many implications for the well-being of older adults, knowledge regarding typical age-related developmental changes in living arrangements is of a major concern for public health policymakers, particularly in low- and middle income countries dealing with growing aging populations. However, the much-needed empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics is hindered by a lack of proper data.
OBJECTIVE
To exploit often-available short-term longitudinal data in the study of long-term phenomena, in this paper we accelerate the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) panel as a means to explore, over a broad age span, the household dynamics of Mexican older adults.
METHODS
Instead of working with a priori definitions of different household structures when analyzing transitions between them, we introduce a novel approach that estimates latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of older people as they age.
RESULTS
We show how accelerated longitudinal designs, coupled with latent class analysis, can offer new insights into living arrangement dynamics. Our findings suggest that in Mexico the typical living arrangements at 50 years old serve as an important predictor of future living arrangements, and that typical living-arrangement trajectories are strongly gendered in Mexico. This new approach may prove to be indispensable when
determining the social support needed by high-risk population groups and as a means to better anticipate the necessary financial resources to do so.
cash transfer program, PROSPERA, this study analyzes the
intergenerational occupational mobility and occupational
attainment of a group of rural beneficiary youths between
ages 18 and 35 years, segmented into subgroups by sex,
ethnic background and migratory status. Furthermore, it
evaluates if a higher intensity of PROSPERA’s treatment
increases the equality of labor opportunities for the youths.
Half of the youths achieved upward mobility relative to
their occupation of origin, but, at the same time, there
also was a high probability of having an occupation in a
lower stratum of the occupational hierarchy, experiencing
high occupational inheritance and barriers to climbing the
social ladder. The variables related to social origin have a
significant correlation with the occupational destinations
of the youths, although their education, first occupation
and cognitive abilities are factors that, altogether, have a
greater weight and may reduce the effect of social origins
on occupational destinations. Women and migrants present
the highest rates of upward mobility and greater equality in
labor opportunities, compared to men and non-migrants,
respectively. No differences due to ethnicity were found.
The findings on the effects of PROSPERA suggest that
higher levels of treatment intensity may generate greater
probabilities of better occupations, although this effect is
considered modest. The results are only valid for the analyzed subpopulation and reflect a reduced difference in the
treatment intensity, which must not be considered as the
complete effect of the program’s intervention.
misses the opportunity to bring to bear decades of fruitful socio-anthropological knowledge regarding the crucial role that the number and characteristics of household members affect microeconomic behaviour. In order to bring family living arrangements into play, unlike existing studies that use a priori defined typologies, in this paper we statistically identify, through Latent Class Analysis, the most typical household structures in the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2014. We then use these classes of family structures to show how taking into
account particular socio-economic dependency-relations can help us better inform public policy, providing relevant heterogeneity analysis on the age profiles of savings in Mexico.
BACKGROUND: Household structure has been considered as a crucial determinant for the wellbeing of elderly and, consequently, a major factor to consider in public health planning.
OBJECTIVE: In this paper we propose and illustrate methods that can extract understandable data
patterns for further use in longitudinal studies of household dynamics.
METHODS: Based on an accelerated version of the Mexican Health and Aging Study, we estimate latent classes of developmental trends in the household composition of the elderly as they grow older.
RESULTS: We circumvent working with a priori definitions of different household structures and estimate four typical living-arrangement trajectories of the elderly in Mexico based directly on household demographic indicators.
CONCLUSIONS: The elderly individual’s living arrangement at 50 years old serve as important
predictor of future living arrangements.
CONTRIBUTION: We show a new approach to the empirical analysis of living arrangement dynamics that overcomes some methodological limitations set by the relatively short time frame of most longitudinal surveys and the large number of different living arrangement transitions
observed.
We analyze the effects of the Mexican universal health insurance program, Seguro Popular, on key variables associated with the provision of healthcare services. Given that the program was introduced gradually over a period that lasted more than a decade, the dynamics of the roll-out of the program and its reaction to the expansion of healthcare services it caused should be accounted for when evaluating the program.
Methods
We present a new semiparametric procedure to analyze time-varying continuous interventions. This is accomplished by bringing together the literatures on continuous and on dynamic treatments. Our approach allows the researcher to estimate mean and quantile dose-response functions by applying local regression methods to appropriately weighted samples that control for time-dependent confounding.
Results
Using administrative data, we show compelling evidence that Seguro Popular has incremented the human and physical resources available for healthcare services over the period 2001–2013. Moreover, we show that these effects have been heterogeneously distributed.
Conclusions
The program has proven most helpful in less vulnerable territories, leaving behind those in greater need.
welfare level of beneficiary households of the conditional cash transfer program
Oportunidades evolve, both in the short and in the medium term. Understanding this evolution is relevant in order to design efficient exit mechanisms for this
type of programs —something that concerns at least 27 conditional cash transfer
programs worldwide. Using administrative data of the universe of beneficiary
households, we study changes in welfare levels of rural and urban households in
the short and medium term. Furthermore, recognizing that the evolution of each
household’s welfare level might be heterogeneous, we analyze the paths different
types of households have followed over time. Our results confirm the existence of
heterogeneity in the evolution of welfare levels among households. The data shows
that poorer households have achieved greater improvements in their welfare level
than (relatively) better off households.
models applied to the labor supply of households in Mexico. Because the possibility of decentralized decision-making within the household provides a motivation for a
game theoretic framework, the model estimates are based on the assumption that the
observed variables represent the outcome of a static discrete game. The models are
estimated using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey 2002 (MxFLS). The maximum likelihood estimation, based on the non-cooperative Nash and Stackelberg
equilibrium concepts, proved feasible and gave plausible results. The main results
suggest the interdependence of individual choices within the household.