This paper estimates the impacts of mobile broadband coverage on household consumption and poverty in Nigeria, the largest economy and mobile broadband market in Africa. The analysis exploits a unique dataset that integrates three waves of a nationally representative longitudinal household...

Although household well-being is anchored in long-term average rates of consumption, welfare comparisons typically rely on shorter-duration survey measurements. This paper develops a new strategy to identify the distribution of these long-term rates by leveraging a large-scale randomization that...

Do poor households shop in a way that leaves money on the table? A simple way to maximize consumption, conditional on available cash, is to avoid regularly purchasing small amounts of nonperishable goods when bulk discounts are available at modestly larger quantities. Using two-week transaction...

Senegal has experienced a rapid expansion in fixed and mobile broadband internet infrastructure over the past decade. This paper examines the relationship between access to broadband internet and household welfare between 2011 and 2018 by integrating the latest two rounds of household budget...

The share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 but has continued to increase in many fragile and conflict-affected areas where half of the extreme poor are expected to reside by 2030. These areas are also where the least evidence exists on how to...

This paper examines the effect of fertility on parental labor force participation in a developing country in the Balkans, with particular attention to the intervening role of childcare provided by grandparents in extended families. To address the potential endogeneity in the fertility decision,...

This paper analyzes the differential impact of migration on labor supply of the left-behind household members in Nepal, where international migration for employment, predominantly a male phenomenon, increased substantially between 2001 and 2011. Using the Nepal Living Standard Survey data, the...

The ancient custom of dowry, that is, bride-to-groom marriage payments, remains ubiquitous in many contemporary societies. This paper examines whether dowry impacted household decision making and resource allocation in rural India during 1986-2007. Utilizing variation in firstborn gender and...

Colombia has reduced extreme poverty in the past 16 years by almost half, moderate poverty by 22 percentage points, and made more than four million Colombians jump the threshold of multidimensional poverty. However, it remains one of the most unequal countries in the region, after Brazil and...

Fiscal policy is central to not only macroeconomic stability and growth, but also to poverty and inequality reduction. This paper provides the most comprehensive assessment of the distributional incidence of Turkey's fiscal policy to date. It analyzes the combined and individual incidence of...