Proefschrift--Nederlandsche Economische Hoogeschool, Rotterdam. / Includes bibliographical references.

Habilitationsschrift--Freiburg i. Br. / Bibliography: p. [224]-243.

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-156).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Herakles Polemarchakis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-158). Also available online.

Each of us is solitary. Each of us dies alone. That is a fate against which we cannot struggle, but there is plenty in our condition which is not fate, and against which we are less than human unless we do struggle. The people in the industrialized countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialized countries are at best standing still: the gap is widening every day. Industrialization is the only hope of the poor. Health, food, education; nothing but industrialization could have made them available to the very poor. Economists are inclined to be impatient in attempting to ameliorate this social condition; and are inclined to think that it should be done. The lessons which the present underdeveloped countries can learn may lie as much in the past as in the contemporary history of their developed forerunners. Such common problems as capital accumulation, economic diversification, balance of payments, technological development, population, labour, employment, land distribution, colonialism, dualism or pluralism, political affairs and social ideology are of importance. However, what are absolutely necessary are systematic comparisons of the processes of economic growth and of the economic structures of different countries by linking non-economic factors to the structure of modern economics. Thereby it will be possible to clarify the character of the process of economic growth and to disclose the relative importance of the various factors. Without over-simplification, dynamic theory can be divided into two categories; economic dynamic approach and sociological institutional approach. No "dynamics of world economic development" is as simple as to be fully explained by one of these approaches. As a result of the inevitable process being a synthetic theory from different opinions founded on different bases, the theory of Professor Walt Whitman Rostow must be considered. It seems that his theory is cogent, and successful in establishing a sequence of cause and effect in the field of economic growth. A matter of factual history observed in the light of economics is fully discussed by using illustrations of sixteen countries in the world. The process of economic development is ascertained. The dynamics of Professor Rostow indicates the ways of mollifying the dangerous characteristics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of coping with the vast number of underdeveloped countries, and of clarifying the meaninglessness of Marxism. Here, our social hope can find the basis on which policies should be dependent. The trick of getting rich is no secret and the world cannot survive half rich and half poor. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

The demise of apartheid has accelerated the emergence of the African middle class. This group's expenditure pattern has recently received public scrutiny, leading to empirical research on their consumption patterns leaning on the theory of conspicuous consumption. It has also been reported that African middle-class households are becoming more reliant on the use of credit and are becoming overindebted. This study explores the composition of the middle class and the factors that lead African middle-class households to becoming over indebted. The methodology is both quantitative and qualitative. Drawing on the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) data, the study examines varying definitions of the middle class in developing country contexts, through comparisons of alternative approaches. This research paper ultimately makes use of the vulnerability approach to define the South African middle class. The empirical results show that the middle class as a whole has grown at a slow rate between 2008 and 2017. However, the African middle class has experienced the most rapid growth, outpacing its white counterpart by a significant margin. The dissertation then uses two waves of (NIDS) data, relating to the periods 2008 and 2017 to present a descriptive analysis of household overindebtedness, which is driven by life-cycle consumption needs. The results show that middle-class households hold a proportionately large amount of debt. Within the middle class, Africans hold the most debt, when compared to other races. To adequately understand the nuances of the indebted African middle class, in-depth interviews were conducted. The results indicate that pertinent issues for this group, such as black tax, contribute to households becoming over-indebted, as this mostly affects the African population group.

In a decentralised system of governance, checks and balances are important to prevent corruption and ensure the optimal performance of public service organisations. However, such regulations need to strike a careful balance between not being too simple and avoiding onerous, unnecessary complexity. Furthermore, the devolution of responsibility cannot occur in isolation – it must be accompanied by financial and operational support. Although South Africa has always had some form of a decentralised governing system, the Constitution of 1996 has formally entrenched this into the country's current public administration. Local government, now a sphere within itself, is thus responsible for bringing the Bill of Human Rights to life, acting increasingly as the implementation arm for national government's policies and initiatives. Following the passing of the Local Government Municipal Financial Management Act of 2003 (MFMA), South African municipalities are also required to comply with rigorous, annual auditing regulations. Intended to enforce sound financial governance and prevent abuse of devolved power, the influence of the audits is widely expected to positively impact other areas of municipal operations, ensuring well-run public organisations able to fulfil their service delivery mandate. Indeed, the general public uphold clean audit outcomes – a standard unique to South African municipal audits – as the only acceptable result and indication of effective local governance. However, this is not always the case. By examining the extent to which financial compliance, as represented by municipal audit outcomes, relates to local government service delivery performance, this thesis investigates whether the auditing regulations are appropriately designed to achieve their intended outcomes and asks how much of an impact sound financial management has upon municipal operations. The results suggest that, whilst there does appear to be a weak, positive relationship between clean audits and service delivery in some instances, on the whole the audit outcomes are not strongly related to municipal operational performance. The capacity of local governments to deliver services appears to be far more a function of their operational context - particularly the regional wealth levels, population density, political influence and available infrastructure - than financial compliance and audit outcomes. Given the costs of the current auditing system and difficulties faced by municipal employees in relation to the regulations, this thesis concludes with recommendations for its adaptation. These include amending its current one-size-fits-all design and moving away from a compliance focus towards performance, value-based auditing. In addition, local municipalities should be provided with greater amounts of operational support, as financial regulations alone – even when optimally designed – cannot be relied upon to keep the performance of South Africa's decentralised system of governance in check.

This dissertation examines the impact of state-subsidised housing on the realisation of the right to adequate housing in South Africa. The incremental housing policy adopted in 1994 has its roots in the work of the Urban Foundation and others, who significantly shaped the discussions in the National Housing Forum, where South Africa's first post-apartheid housing policy was formulated. As a result low-income housing policy is centred on the use of capital subsidies allocated towards homeownership. In 1996 the state promulgated the Constitution obligating government to ensure that, inter alia, 'everyone has the right of access to adequate housing'. 'Adequate housing', as per the United Nations Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, comprises of six core elements: accessibility, affordability, location, availability of services, habitability and security of tenure; which have all been affected in various ways by government's legislative and policy interventions. The delivery of state-subsidised housing has been impressive - with nearly three million completed since 1994. However, there have been significant problems. This paper emphasises four main issues: the poor quality houses that have required rectification and/or rebuilding; an overemphasis on homeownership, above rental tenure; a lack of effective transfer of title deeds; and the informal sale of state-subsidised houses. All of which have negatively impacted on progress towards full realisation of the right of access to adequate housing.

Handwashing with soap at critical times is a simple and effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infection, which are major causes of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. However, rates of handwashing remain low throughout the world, and interventions which attempt to improve handwashing behaviors have largely been unsuccessful in practice. This may be because behavior change programs often fail to recognize the habitual drivers of handwashing behavior. In contrast, this paper examines the effectiveness of a novel soap technology, HOPE SOAP©, a child-size and colorful bar of soap with a toy embedded in its center, which aims to increase handwashing in children by specifically targeting its habitual nature. To rigorously evaluate HOPE SOAP©, this paper exploits data from a pilot randomized controlled trial whereby 229 households from a poor urban community in South Africa were randomly assigned to receive HOPE SOAP© for a period of 12-weeks. In an initial analysis of the effects of the intervention on children’s health and behavior, Burns, Maughan-Brown, and Mouzinho (2017) found that that HOPE SOAP© had positive impacts on children’s handwashing behaviors and health outcomes. Children who received HOPE SOAP© children were more likely to wash their hands, and had better overall health outcomes than control children (Burns, Maughan-Brown, and Mouzinho 2017). Although HOPE SOAP© aims to induce behavior change in children, this paper explores the spillover effects that it has on other members of children’s households. Specifically, this work uses regression analysis to investigate the impacts of HOPE SOAP© on the handwashing behaviors of children’s primary caregivers, and on the health outcomes of all non-treated household members. This paper finds compelling evidence illustrating that a child’s assignment to HOPE SOAP© has a positive impact on the handwashing behavior of their caregiver. Specifically, HOPE SOAP© increases the probability that a caregiver will wash their hands before eating a snack by 13 percentage points on average (p-value 0.17). A further investigation of the causal mechanisms for this improvement suggests that HOPE SOAP© affects caregiver behavior both by disrupting existing poor-hygiene habits, and by strengthening handwashing norms within households. Despite its positive effects on household handwashing behavior, this paper finds that a child’s assignment to HOPE SOAP© has no discernable shortterm impacts on the health of individual household members. Nevertheless, the positive influence of HOPE SOAP© on caregiver handwashing behavior is promising and, in conjunction with the finding that HOPE SOAP© improves children’s behaviors, provides reason to believe the intervention may be successful in inducing habitual handwashing behaviors which can persist in the long run.