This paper is prepared as a chapter for the Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2 (edited by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Elsevier-North Holland, forthcoming). Like the other chapters in the volume (and its predecessor), the aim is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area...

Most Latin American countries have ABC (acronyms from the Spanish words of voucher, mortgage and savings) designed social housing program. Little is known of the impacts of these programs. In this paper we estimate the welfare affects of twelve of these programs. We estimate whether the programs...

The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World...

While the science of program evaluation has come a tremendous distance in the past couple of decades, measurement error remains a serious concern and its implications are often poorly understood by both data collectors and data analysts. The primary aim here is to offer a type of...

Violence has a striking gender pattern. Men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger, while women experience violence mostly from their partners. This paper estimates the costs of violence against women in terms of intangible outcomes, such as women's reproductive health, labor supply, and...

There are few reliable estimates of the effects of violence on economic outcomes. This study exploits the manifold increase in homicides in 2008-2011 in Mexico resulting from its war on organized drug traffickers to estimate the effect of drug- related homicides on housing prices. Using an...

Iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world, affecting more than 2 billion people in developing countries. We show that a modest cash transfer substantially reduced anemia among women of reproductive age in rural Ecuador.

Cash transfer programs have become extremely popular in the developing world. There is a large literature on the effects of these programs on schooling, health and nutrition, but relatively little is known about possible impacts on child development. This paper analyzes the impact of a cash...

European welfare states are under considerable stress. On the one hand, the recession has caused unemployment to rise and household incomes to fall, which both raise the demand for social protection. On the other hand, austerity policies and programme reforms affect the capacity of welfare...

Childcare services are increasingly regarded as a major policy lever to mitigate social inequalities. Such services are believed to be effective in reducing poverty and increasing employment rates by allowing both parents to engage in paid employment, as well as to benefit the cognitive and...