Asset ownership indices are widely used as inexpensive proxies for consumption. This paper shows that these indices can be augmented using dichotomous indicators for consumption, which are equally easy to obtain. The paper uses multiple rounds of Living Standards Measurement Study surveys from...

South Asia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Most previous studies have focused on the projected impacts of sea-level rise or extreme weather - droughts, floods, heatwaves and storm surges. This study adds to that knowledge by identifying the impacts of long-term changes in the...

A joint analysis of poverty and living standards was conducted by a technical team from the Ministry of Planning and Finance, Government of Myanmar, and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. Poverty has previously been estimated using data from the Integrated Household Living...

The Philippines Department of Social Welfare and Development has taken the lead in providingopportunities for income generating activities/livelihood development through the implementationof the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) since 2011, with the objective to reduce poverty andinequality...

Inclusive growth and poverty reduction requires an understanding of the constraints to increasing productivity of the informal sector, which employs the majority of Zambians. Zambians working in this sector are poor, have little education, die young from avoidable diseases, and live...

Despite record economic growth for more than a decade, poverty has remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, especially in the regions that suffered less from conflict. This paper aims to explain this paradox by combining a model of conflict intensity at the province level over period 2007-14...

This paper examines China's rural minimum living standard guarantee (dibao) program, one of the largest minimum income cash transfer schemes in the world. Using household survey data matched with published administrative data, the paper describes the dibao program, estimates the program's impact...

With data from the nearly 6,000 households in the Nepal Living Standards Survey of 2010-11, this paper finds that the mean reduction in household firewood collection associated with use of a biogas plant for cooking is about 1,100 kilograms per year from a mean of about 2,400 kilograms per year....

To assess the conventional view that assets uniformly improve childhood development through wealth effects, this paper tests whether different types of assets have different effects on child education. The analysis indicates that household durables and housing quality have the expected positive...

This paper presents the initial findings from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016 on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar, undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and Economic Monitoring initiative. These data provide unique insights into the ways in which broad...