Communities urbanize when the net benefits to urbanization exceed rural areas. Body mass, height, and weight are biological welfare measures that reflect the net difference between calories consumed and calories required for work and to withstand the physical environment. Individuals of African-decent had greater BMIs, heavier weights, and shorter statures. Urban farmers had lower BMIs, shorter statures, and lower weight than rural farmers. Over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, urban and rural BMIs, height, and weight were constant, and rural farmers had greater BMIs, taller statures, and heavier weights than urban farmers and workers in other occupations.

To guide investments in ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) in developing countries, numerous stated preference valuation studies have been implemented to assess the value of ecosystem services. These studies increasingly use time payments as an alternative to money. There is limited knowledge, however, about how to convert time to money and how the type of payment affects willingness to pay (WTP). In this study, the results of choice experiments using time and money payments are compared in the context of EbA measures in Vietnam. Six, of which five individual-specific, conversion rates are applied. WTP estimates are found to be higher for time payments. Moreover, the type of payment vehicle as well as the conversion rate has substantial effect on mean WTP and WTP distributions. We discuss implications of these results for the conversion of time to money and the use of resulting WTP estimates in cost benefit analyses in developing countries.

Average stature reflects cumulative net nutrition and health during economic development. This study introduces a difference-in-decompositions approach to show that although 19th century African-American cumulative net nutrition was comparable to working class whites, it was made worse-off with the transition to free-labor. Average stature reflects net nutrition over the life-course, and adult blacks born under bound-labor had greater age related statures loss than blacks under free-labor. Agricultural worker's net nutrition was better than workers in other occupations and was better-off under free-labor and industrialization. Within-group stature variation was greater than across-group variation, and white within-group stature variation associated with socioeconomic status was greater than African-Americans.

Although adoption of agricultural innovations has been extensively examined in the literature, its impact on indicators of farm production and household welfare measures remains ambiguous in the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study contributes to the literature by conducting a meta-regression analysis on 92 studies published between 2001 and 2015 in the SSA region. Overall, empirical results from the meta-analysis suggest that adoption of agricultural innovations has a positive and significant effect on indicators of farm production and household welfare measures. However, the magnitude of the impact is relatively small, which also suggests a weak relationship.

Following the EU Gender Directive, that obliges insurance companies to charge the same premium to policyholders of different genders, we address the issue of calculating solvency capital requirements (SCRs) for pure endowments and annuities issued to mixed portfolios. The main theoretical result is that, if the unisex fairness principle is adopted for the unisex premium, the SCR at issuing time of the mixed portfolio calculated with unisex survival probabilities is greater than the sum of the SCRs of the gender-based subportfolios. Numerical results show that for pure endowments the gap between the two is negligible, but for lifetime annuities the gap can be as high as 3–4%. We also analyze some conservative pricing procedures that deviate from the unisex fairness principle, and find that they lead to SCRs that are lower than the sum of the gender-based SCRs because the policyholders are overcharged at issuing time.

A previous study showed that imposing economic restrictions improves the forecasting ability of food demand systems, thus warranting their use even when they are rejected in-sample. This article evaluates whether this result is due to economic restrictions enhancing degrees of freedom or containing nonsample information. Results indicate that restrictions improve forecasting ability even when they are not derived from economic theory, but theoretical restrictions forecast best.