Despite significant improvement in female schooling over the last two decades, only a small proportion of women in South Asia are in wage employment. We revisit this puzzle using a nationally representative data set from Bangladesh. Probit regression results show that even after accounting for...

This paper analyzes child poverty in Bangladesh and China during periods of rapid economic growth in both countries. It compares the extent as well as profile of child poverty in both countries. Comparisons on the extent of child poverty, over time and across countries, are made using a...

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)...

This paper examines the impact of micro-credit on employment. Household-level data was collected, following a quasi-experimental design, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Three borrower groups are compared: Current borrowers; Pipeline borrowers and Non-borrowers. Pipeline borrowers are included to...

Using a four-round panel data set from the first phase of the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR – TUP) programme of BRAC, we investigate whether a one-off transfer of livestock assets improves well-being of the very poor women in Bangladesh....

Welfare analyses conducted by policy practitioners around the world usually rely on equivalized or per-capita expenditures and ignore the extent of within-household inequality. Recent advances in the estimation of collective models suggest ways to retrieve the complete sharing process within...

This paper revisits the debate over the importance of absolute vs. relative income as a correlate of subjective well-being using data from Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world with high levels of corruption and poor governance. We do so by combining household data with...

Non-formal schools play an increasingly important role in the delivery of educational services in poor communities, but little systematic evidence is available about their placement choices. We study location choice of "one teacher, one classroom" non-formal primary schools pioneered by BRAC...

Evidence on the effectiveness of workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries is weak compared with the relatively well-established role of public works during economic crisis as a social safety net. This paper contributes to evidence building by examining the impact of a...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...