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Dissertation Committee:
Štěpán Jurajda (chair)
Randall K. Filer
Lubomír Lízal
Alina Verashchagina

Abstract:

This dissertation studies some particular aspects of income and consumption of the population of the Republic of Belarus, one of the least studied transition countries, using a dataset virtually unknown to the Western researchers. In the first chapter the low level of income and expenditure inequality in Belarus is explained with the use of Ukraine as a benchmark. Inequality decomposition by sources and application of DiNardo—Fortin—Lemieux counterfactual kernel densities show that the difference in inequality is explained by the income policies of the two countries. The second chapter explores the roles played by small land plots in Belarus and Ukraine. The conclusion is that less efficient social safety net in Ukraine makes the urban poor use their land plots as a subsistence mechanism, while in Belarus they use it mostly for leisure. The third chapter explores the effect of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on schooling, labor market and health outcomes in Belarus. The findings are that younger children coming from the more contaminated regions have more job-related health issues and lower wages than those who were older at the time of the accident or who came from the less contaminated regions. The absence of an effect on education could be caused by special privileges for prospective students from the contaminated regions.

Full Text: “Essays on Income and Consumption of the Belarusian Population” by Maksim Yemelyanau