This paper documents inequality in health and education outcomes by constructing an index of human capital … disaggregated by quintiles of socioeconomic status (SES) for a sample 51 mostly low- and middle-income countries. The index measures …, accounting for roughly one-third of the total variation. On average, human capital outcomes increase with income at roughly the …

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the existence of poverty traps, understood as self-reinforcing mechanisms … through which poor individuals or countries remain poor. Poverty traps have captured the interest of many development policy … makers, because poverty traps provide a theoretically coherent explanation for persistent poverty. They also suggest that …