We explore the relationship between the level of village inequality in 1986, and the subsequent growth of household incomes from 1986 to 1999. Using a detailed household-level data set from rural China, we find robust evidence that initial inequality is negatively related to subsequent household...

The changes in the employment structure in rural China are studied with a focus on off farm self-employment. Data from the China Household Income Project surveys covering the same 14 provinces from 1988 to 2018 are used. We find that the proportion of adults in rural China with self-employment...

We use the 2002 through 2014 Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys to construct comparable measures of household income and estimates of income inequality over this high-growth period. We focus on two questions: How have benefits from growth been distributed; and do changes in the structure...

Economists have long recognized the important role of formal schooling and cognitive skills on labor market participation and wages. More recently, increasing attention has turned to the role of personality traits, or noncognitive skills. This study is among the first to examine how both...

Subjective Poverty Line methodology is applied to rural China 2002 using a sample from 22 provinces. Respondents were asked two questions: one on amount of food necessary and another on amount of cash necessary for their households. The respondent's perception of how much cash is needed varies...

The last decade has seen a resurgence of parastatal crop marketing institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, many of which cite improving food security and incomes as key goals. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the welfare effects of these programs. This article considers one such...

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)...