Minimum wages have been in place for South Africa’s one million domestic service workers since November of 2002. Using data from seven waves of the Labour Force Survey, this paper documents that the real wages, average monthly earnings, and total earnings of all employed domestic workers have...

In 1996, the safety net for poor households with children fundamentally changed when Federal legislation replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This study investigates participation in, and benefits received from, AFDC/TANF...

Although healthy foods can be affordable, if less healthy foods are cheaper, individuals may have an economic incentive to consume a less healthful diet. Using the Quarterly Food-at-Home Price Database, we explore whether a select set of healthy foods (whole grains, dark green vegetables, orange...

Food away from home (FAFH) has been associated with poor diet quality in many studies. It is difficult, however, to measure the effect of FAFH on diet quality since many unobserved factors, such as food preferences and time constraints, influence not just our choice of where to eat but also the...

The net benefits of CAFTA and their distribution among sectors of the economy and social groups are major concerns of policy makers in Central America. The objective of the Bank's support to Central America is to assist in the design of policies that maximize total net benefits while improving...

In order to support poor families in the developing world to seek and use health care, a multi-pronged strategy is needed on both the supply and the demand side of health care. A demand-side program called Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) strives to reduce poverty and also increase food...

The financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development. Morrisson and Thorbecke (MT) have used a constant-price social accounting matrix (SAM) framework to rigorously measure the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the...

A household's decision to send migrants is based on information the household has on the expected returns and the costs of migration. Information on migration flows from both family migrant networks and community migrant networks. Direct assistance - in the form of money, housing,...

The practice of mutual insurance is conditioned by two types of transaction costs: "association" costs in establishing links with insurance partners and "extraction" costs in using these links to implement insurance transfers. Data on insurance-motivated water exchanges among households along...

In this paper, we examine whether the causes and patterns of Mexican rural female migration differ significantly from rural male migration. A number of hypotheses are discussed to explain why female migration may differ from male migration, with a particular emphasis on the role of migrant...