Latin American and Caribbean countries have historically been known for their rates of land inequality, highest in the world. However, these countries also exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity in their patterns of land concentration and average farm sizes. These cross-country differences play...

By 2017, one-quarter of people born in El Salvador were estimated to be living in the U.S. We show that extreme temperatures have negatively affected agricultural production and increased international migration from El Salvador. We find that labor markets act as a transmission mechanism of the...

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of...

Job training programs can be an eective policy for improving productivity and labor market outcomes in low and middle income countries. We report medium and long-term impacts of a job training program for vulnerable workers in Chile on labor market and skill outcomes using experimental and...

This paper uses variation in the timing of the Mexican antipoverty program's introduction across municipalities to identify its impact on the share of votes for the local incumbent party. Evidence is found that voters reward the mayor's party for the central benefit to their constituencies,...

This paper uses data from the Mexican Family Life Survey to estimate the impact of a household member's migration to the United States on the cognitive development of children remaining in Mexico. While there is no developmental effect of a child's sibling migrating to the United States, there...

This paper examines the efficacy of three conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs in Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua in mitigating the potential negative effects of an income shock caused by falling prices of coffee, an important cash crop to many CCT participants. A theoretical household model...

Latin American governments swiftly implemented income assistance programs to sustain families' livelihoods during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. This paper analyzes the potential coverage and generosity of these measures and assesses the suitability of current safety nets to deal with unexpected...

This document compares three versions of the same home visiting model, the well-known Jamaica model, which was gradually scaled-up from an efficacy trial (proof of concept) in Jamaica, to a pilot in Colombia, to an at-scale program in Peru. It first describes the design, implementation and...