Understanding the determinants of individuals’ perceptions of their risk of becoming infected with HIV and their perceptions of acceptable strategies of prevention is an essential step towards curtailing the spread of this disease. We focus in this paper on learning and decision-making about...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

Many studies document significantly positive associations between schooling attainment and wages in developing countries. But when individuals enter occupations subsequent to completing their schooling, they not only face an expected work-life path of wages, but a number of other occupational...

Using data on MZ (monozygotic, identical) female twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on completed fertility, probability of being childless and age at first birth, using the within-MZ twins methodology. We find strong cross-sectional associations...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs link public transfers to human capital investment in hopes of alleviating current poverty and reducing its intergenerational transmission. Whereas nearly all studies of their impacts have focused on youth, these CCT programs may also have an impact on...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have spread worldwide as a new form of social assistance for the poor. Previous evaluations of CCT programs focus mainly on rural settings, and little is known about their effects in urban areas. This paper studies the short-term (one and two-year)...