We estimate the impact of changes in unearned income on the height and weight of young children in a developing country. As source of variation we use changes in the eligibility criteria for receipt of an unconditional cash transfer in Ecuador. Two years after families lost the transfer, which...

Many poverty, safety net, training, and other social programs utilize multiple screening criteria to determine eligibility. We apply recent advances in multidimensional measurement analysis to develop a straightforward method for summarizing changes in groups of eligibility (screening)...

Cash transfer programs are widely used in settings where child labour is prevalent. Even if many of these programs are explicitly implemented to improve children's welfare, in theory their impact on child labour is undetermined. This paper systematically reviews the empirical evidence on the...

We conducted a unique randomized experiment to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on household demand for routine preventative health services in rural Burkina Faso. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or...

Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such...

We examine the effect of immigration on public spending from a theoretical (political economic) and an empirical perspective. We distinguish between public spending on private goods and on public goods. Our model implies that whether immigration increases or decreases public spending primarily...

This paper compares for 13 Latin American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of cash transfer programs that are given to all children and the elderly (that is, "categorical" transfers), to programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor within each population group (that is,...

Regarding social needs in Germany long-term care is an important issue due to an ageing population. Shrinking social networks are leading to a greater need for a public long-term care system. In 1995 the social long-term care insurance was introduced in Germany. In recent years some drawbacks of...

This paper examines the effect of the One Laptop Per Child program in Uruguay [Plan Ceibal] on household labor income. Since 2007, the Uruguayan government has delivered one laptop to every child and every teacher in public primary schools. This program has considerably increased access to...

Public works programs, aimed at building a strong social safety net through redistribution of wealth and generation of meaningful employment, are becoming increasingly popular in developing countries. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), enacted in August 2005, is one such...