In 1993, in response to persistent unemployment, and rising poverty and social unrest, the government of Albania introduced an anti-poverty program, namely Ndihma Ekonomike; in 1995 it was extended to all poor households. This paper estimates the separate effects of participation in this income...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent...

In 2013, Mexico's Social Pension Program for the Elderly was expanded by changing its eligibility threshold from age 70 to age 65. Using pooled cross-sectional data from Mexico's National Household Income and Expenditure Survey, the exogenous variation around eligibility age was exploited to...

This paper examines whether labor productivity converged across Peru?s regions (?departments?) during 2002-12. Given the large differences in labor productivity across the regions of Peru, such convergence has the potential to raise aggregate productivity and incomes, and also reduce regional...

Workfare schemes impose work requirements on beneficiaries. This has seemed an attractive idea for self-targeting transfers to poor people. This incentive argument does not imply, however, that workfare is more cost-effective against poverty than even poorly-targeted options, given hidden costs...

This paper assesses the impact of social assistance benefits on household welfare in Moldova. Ignoring standard issues of impact evaluations such as selection bias, behavioral responses, unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity, an incidence analysis suggests that increased spending on social...

The authors assess the impact of Argentina's main social policy response to the severe economic crisis of 2002. The program aimed to provide direct income support for families with dependents, for whom the head had become unemployed due to the crisis. Counterfactual comparisons are based on a...

This paper assesses the impact of fiscal policy on the incidence, depth, and severity of poverty, and examines whether there is room for an increased role for fiscal policy in improving the wellbeing of the poor. The results show that the combined effect of taxes and social spending helped...

This paper studies an innovative welfare program in Chile that combines a period of frequent home visits to households in extreme poverty, with guaranteed access to social services. Program impacts are identified using a regression discontinuity design, exploring the fact that program...

Social policy in Mexico has focused on identifying and supporting chronically poor households. Yet, Mexico has a significant number of households that are just above the poverty line who are not eligible, by definition, for antipoverty programs and are at risk of falling back into poverty in the...