While providing the most reliable method of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the chances of adopting them. In this paper the authors use a unique data set from...

A forward-looking measure of “vulnerability to poverty” is estimated and a concerted effort is made to understand the sources of vulnerability in the drought-prone lowlands of Ethiopia. Using the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey and the Welfare Monitoring Survey of 2016, the analysis...

This paper uses Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys data from the Republic of Congo and São Tomé and Príncipe to study the relationships between child stature, mother's years of education, and indicators of early childhood development. The relationships are contrasted between two empirical...

This paper combines remote-sensed data and individual child-, mother-, and household-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to design a prototype drought-contingent targeting framework that...

Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nightlights are used to model damage caused by earthquakes, floods, and typhoons in five Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). The data are used to examine the extent to which for each type of...

This paper builds on the existing literature assessing retrospectively the quantitative effects of natural disasters on different dimensions of household welfare, to make progress toward the ex ante identification of households that are vulnerable to poverty due to natural disasters, especially...

This paper combines district-level government spending data from Indonesia and natural disaster damage indices to analyze the extent to which districts are forced to reallocate their expenditures across categories after the incidence of floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. The results...

Combining nightlight data as a proxy for economic activity with remote sensing data typically used for natural hazard modeling, this paper constructs novel damage indices at the district level for Indonesia, for different disaster events such as floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the...

This paper examines the extent to which the three key underlying determinants of nutrition -- food security; adequate caregiving resources at the maternal, household, and community levels; and access to health services and a safe and hygienic environment -- on their own and interactively are...

The performance of the Simple Poverty Scorecard is compared against the performance of established regression-based estimators. All estimates are benchmarked against observed poverty status based on household expenditure (or income) data from household socioeconomic surveys that span nearly a...