Despite the remarkable economic performance of the Philippines in recent years, poverty remains a core policy issue. And with a relatively young population, the poverty situation concerns largely children who are at the critical stages of their physical, mental, and social development. This...

I investigate the relationship between children's endowment and parental investment using a rich dataset on a cohort of children from Ethiopia, who were surveyed at ages eight, twelve and fifteen. Children's endowment is measured by scores on tests of cognitive skills/ability. A child's...

Lesotho is a small Southern African country that has introduced two national cash transfer programmes, the Old Age Pension and the Child Grant Programme. Although Lesotho has followed what has been called the 'Southern African model', the introduction of the Old Age Pension was not the result of...

In developing countries, women's decisions concerning their children's health depend on 'empowerment' concerning decision-making, husband/partner's use of violence, woman's attitude towards this violence, available information, and resources. We derive an empowerment indicator using the 'fuzzy...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) recognizes the need to understand the link between disability and poverty. In fact this has become one of the key issues in the subject of poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific...

This paper presents a few of the latest statistics on income poverty, growth and inequality, and makes a case about the need not only to monitor current poverty, but also to reduce future poverty. An assessment of the trends in household vulnerability to income poverty is made for the years...

The recent global financial and economic crisis which started in the United States and expanded to other developed countries has, to some extent, affected developing countries as well. Given the vulnerability of most developing countries, it is important to monitor the impact of this global...

The Philippines has been posting progress in terms of poverty reduction since the early 1990s. However, reversal in the trend was observed in 2006. Further worsening of the poverty situation is expected given the various economic and natural shocks (i.e., food and fuel price hikes; global...