A Classification of Factors Affecting Adults’ Skills Distribution

This article explores cross-country patterns in how conditions relating to family background, education, and the labor market are related to literacy and numeracy skills. It seeks to assess whether these patterns are in agreement with models of skills formation as identified in the political economy literature. The novelty of this article resides in a reexamination of the findings in the literature of skills formation and education and training system with new data on adults’ skills. This research uses a two-step approach: first it applies Shapley decomposition variance on adult skills and then each country scores are clustered to search for common pattern and regularities in skills formation. This leads us to single out common regularities among groups of countries in the way skills are structured and distributed. We find three main typologies and different subgroups within them that are compatible with the literature on skills formation models.

Do ESG metrics reflect crisis resilience of equities during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We examine the role of ESG metrics in explaining crisis resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. ESG refers to Environmental, Social, and Governance aspects of companies, collectively known as ESG factors, and has gained popularity in investments. Our empirical tests cover a database of 971 company members of the MSCI World Index and examine the COVID Crisis period from February 2020 – May 2020. We performed linear regression and Owen-Shapley decomposition in our study, like the literature. Our results show that ESG is not an “equity vaccine” but is a statistically significant and economically important variable in explaining returns during the pandemic. Our findings highlight the increasing importance of sustainability aspects in finance and in investing.

Research on Difficult Family Environment and Inequality of Opportunities for Children's health: evidence from seven provinces across China

BackgroundFamily is an important environment for the adaptive development of children. A lack of family functions can affect the equality of children's access to health opportunities. Based on past survey data, there are many children in difficult families in China, and the life experiences of living in difficult families have had a serious negative impact on children's health. Therefore, the research on health equality in children in difficult families is particularly important. ObjectiveThe study aimed to examine the difference in the extent of family environment's influence on equal health opportunities between children from difficult families and ordinary families. MethodThe study based on data of a survey, "Health Status of Children in Difficult Families," which was conducted in 7 provinces in China in 2018. The D index was used to calculate the extent to which the family environment influenced the health opportunity equality in children from two types of families. Through conducting the Shapley decomposition based on ordered multi-class regression, the relative level of contribution of different family environment factors to the health opportunities equality in children from two types of families was examined. ResultsThe family variables included in this paper examined had a significant impact on the health opportunities of children from both families, and they had a greater impact on children's mental health. Based on the results of Shapley decomposition on different family environment factors, the family relationship had the greatest impact on the self-reported health opportunities of children from difficult families (32.02%). Living condition was the main factor that influenced the self-reported health opportunities of children from ordinary families (25.72%). In terms of mental health, family economic status was the main factor that affected the mental health opportunity equality in children from difficult families (21.22%). Family relationship was the main factor influencing the mental health opportunity equality in children from ordinary families (36.54%). In terms of cognition, family relationship was the main factor affecting health opportunity equality in children from two types of families (55.72% and 28.05%, respectively). ConclusionThere is a significant difference in the extent to which the family environment influences the health opportunity equality between children from two types of families across different health domains. Family relationship is the most important factor affecting the fairness of children's access to health opportunities in difficult families.

Distribution-Sensitive Multidimensional Poverty Measures

This paper presents axiomatic arguments to make the case for distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures. The commonly used counting measures violate the strong transfer axiom, which requires regressive transfers to be unambiguously poverty increasing, and they are also invariant to changes in the distribution of a given set of deprivations among the poor. The paper appeals to strong transfer as well as an additional cross-dimensional convexity property to offer axiomatic justification for distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures. Given the nonlinear structure of these measures, it is also shown how the problem of an exact dimensional decomposition can be solved using Shapley decomposition methods to assess dimensional contributions to poverty. An empirical illustration for India highlights distinctive features of the distribution-sensitive measures.