Educational expansion followed by economic decline in Kenya has been associated with a decline in the social return to secondary education, conventionally calculated, from 20% in 1978 to 6% in 1995. Wage benefits from primary school have fallen but returns remain unchanged because of...

ABSTRACT: The concept of a poverty function is introduced, modelling the shortfall of household consumption from the poverty line as a function of reduced form determinants such as human capital and land holdings. The model is estimated using a tobit and data from Uganda. Parameters from the...

(Updated as WPS/1999-22)

What keeps some people persistently poor, even in the context of relative high growth?  In this paper, we explore this question using a 15-year longitudinal data set from Ethiopia.  We compare the findings of an empirical growth model with those derived from a model of the determinants of...