Small entrepreneurs in poor countries achieve relatively high marginal returns to capital but show only low re-investment rates. The literature is rather inconclusive about the possible causes. We explore whether ‘forced redistribution’, i.e. abusive demands by the kin, affects the...

This doctoral thesis analyzes children welfare in Western African where societies are characterized by a large economic instability and an unequal access to resources among members of a same household. Exposure to high downside risk to income and livelihoods generates inter-generational poverty...

Survey data reveals that the pace of increase in height stature experienced by successive cohorts born in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana during the late colonial period (1925–1960) is almost as high as the pace observed in France and Great Britain during the period 1875 to 1975, even when correcting...

This article develops indicators of vulnerability in employment in seven economic capitals of West Africa and studies their links with individual incomes. Quantitative, distributional and qualitative analyses show that vulnerability compensating mechanism is mainly seen in the informal sector,...

This cross-country study examines the determinants of school attendance through household surveys conducted the same year in seven West African countries. The aim of this comparison, based on the relatively homogeneous population of urban households living in the capitals, is to look at national...

Did colonization change the distribution of prosperity within French-speaking West Africa? Using a new database on both pre-colonial and colonial contexts, this paper gives evidence that Europeans tended to settle in more prosperous pre-colonial areas and that the European settlement had a...

In this paper, we analyse the size and determinants of gender and ethnic earnings gaps in seven West African capitals (Abidjan, Bamako, Cotonou, Dakar, Lome, Niamey and Ouagadougou) based on a unique and perfectly comparable dataset coming from the 1-2-3 Surveys conducted in the seven cities...

Democratic Republic of Congo has known dramatic events for the last three decades. Statistical social economic data did not exist really or not available in the period. The Labour force survey, the first phase of the 1-2-3 survey, carried out in 2004-2005 and conducted by the National Statistic...

Democratic Republic of Congo has known dramatic events for the last three decades. Statistical social economic data did not exist really or not available in the period. The Informal Sector survey, the second phase of the 1-2-3 survey, carried out in 2004-2005 and conducted by the National...