We use a randomized design to analyze the effects of unconditional cash transfers to women on the food Engel curve. After the intervention, households assigned to the "treatment" group had significantly higher food shares than those assigned to the "control" group.

Iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world, affecting more than 2 billion people in developing countries. We show that a modest cash transfer substantially reduced anemia among women of reproductive age in rural Ecuador.

We provide country-specific estimates of the effect of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality for a sample of mainly middle-income countries. In most countries, infant mortality appears to be pro-cyclical or acyclical. Only when shocks to GDP are very deep, 15% or larger, are they consistently...