Whether social transfers should be targeted or universal is an unsolved debate that is particularly relevant for the implementation of social protection schemes in developing countries. While the limited availability of public resources encourages targeting, the difficulty in identifying the...

This paper studies the relationship between pre-famine living conditions and famine severity. I digitise the parish-level returns of the Irish Poor Inquiry and use these to explain the co-variates of increasing poverty in the early nineteenth century and examine how they impacted the severity of...

This research aimed to examine the factors affecting the participation of female rural-urban migrants in online marketplaces, and the welfare gains and their distribution from their participation. Our analysis was based on a unique data set of rural households, villages, and rural-urban migrants...

The middle-income trap is a serious problem in developing Asia and Pacific economies. Middle-income trap is the situation in which a country's growth slows after reaching middle-income levels and the transition to high-income levels becomes unattainable. International remittances of immigrants...

The turbulent 1830s saw a sequence of great political and social reforms in the UK. One such reform was the introduction of a locally funded poor law in Ireland. The development of a nascent welfare system in 1838 coincided with a boom in the formation of microfinance institutions in Ireland....

International remittances represent the second most important source of external funding for developing countries after foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper examines the impact of international remittances on poverty reduction using the panel data of 10 Asian developing countries. In...

Forward-looking poverty analyses are essential for targeting and implementing poverty prevention interventions. In the presence of uncertainty and risk, the current poverty status of households is not a good indicator of whether they will be poor in the future. This paper examines consumption...

This overview of the Great Irish Famine is unfolded in terms of the three major phases of British government policy. The understanding of poverty underlying the paper is in terms of diet, not income per capita, housing or literacy, or any of the other more conventional measures in use by...

The economic crisis hit many countries in 2007 and the effects are still being felt, especially in poorer developing nations. Much of the debate surrounding the economic crisis and its impacts has focused on the financial and economic aspects - import/export impacts, economic growth losses,...