Showing 1 - 10 of 422
This paper uses household surveys from 13 developing countries to describe consumption choices, health and education investments, employment patterns and other features of the of the economic lives of the “middle classes” defined as those whose daily consumption per capita is between $2 and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791405
The paper develops a new approach to measuring the impact of government cash transfers on poverty alleviation that takes into account endogenous reactions and consumption smoothing of households. We use the methodology to study the impact of changes in government cash benefits on poverty rates...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005124403
In this paper we re-examine poverty among working class households in inter-war London using the newly computerized records from the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL), a survey of living standards in London undertaken in 1929–31. First, we examine how the use of different poverty...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005136690
In his third social survey of York carried out in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree reported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in poverty. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms enacted during and after the War. Some observers have been uneasy about...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005656469
This paper develops a theory of employment guarantees when labor markets are imperfect and when the credibility of government policy announcements could be in doubt. The basic feature of an EGS is that any individual who satisfies a set of specified criteria is guaranteed public employment at a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005666558
We study the demand for household water connections in urban Morocco, and the effect of such connections on household welfare. In the northern city of Tangiers, among homeowners without a private connection to the city’s water grid, a random subset was offered a simplified procedure to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008915808
Group loans with joint liability have been a distinguishing feature of many microfinance programs. While such lending has benefitted millions of borrowers, major lending institutions have acknowledged their limited impact among the very poor and have recently favored individual contracts. This...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008854489
A seven-year randomized evaluation suggests education subsidies reduce adolescent girls’ dropout, pregnancy, and marriage but not sexually transmitted infection (STI). The government’s HIV curriculum, which stresses abstinence until marriage, does not reduce pregnancy or STI. Both programs...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011145417
The construction of large dams is one of the most costly and controversial forms of public infrastructure investment in developing countries, but little is known about their impact. This paper studies the productivity and distributional effects of large dams in India. To account for endogenous...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005656412
We examine the case for maintaining welfare and income redistribution programs even when their adverse general equilibrium effects reduce total earnings of poor households. Using a Cournot model of intra-household decision-making, we show that even if welfare cutbacks generate large increases in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10004971322