This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth...

The informal sector is generally believed to be more vulnerable to various risks due to limited access to social insurance, but little empirical evidence exists to support this statement. This paper examines the relationship between informality and protection from health risks in Yemen. The...

This paper contributes new evidence from two large household surveys on the compliance of firms with severance pay regulations in Indonesia, and the extent to which changes in severance pay regulations could affect employment rigidity. Compliance appears to be low, as only one-third of workers...

This paper reviews evidence from 44 middle-income countries on how the recent financial crisis affected jobs and workers' incomes. In addition to providing a rare assessment of the magnitude of the impact across several middle-income countries, the paper describes how labor markets adjusted and...

This paper examines the relationship between the type of senior high school attended by Indonesian youth and their subsequent labor market outcomes. This topic is very timely, given the government s recent decision to dramatically expand vocational enrollment. The analysis controls for an...

In rural Indonesia, around 60 percent of workers engage in agriculture and face regular climatic shocks that may threaten their crop production, household income, and human capital investments. Little is known about households ability to maintain consumption in response to these shocks. This...