In this paper, the authors investigate the effect of positive income shocks on the mental health of adolescent girls using experimental evidence from a cash transfer program in Malawi. They find that the provision of monthly cash transfers had a strong beneficial impact on the mental health of...

Poor breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices predict child stunting and wasting in South Asia, suggesting that initiatives to end undernutrition in the region should focus on improving the diets of young children. This review of the literature finds that South Asia has made relatively...

The COVID-19 pandemic has closed schools around the world, forcing school systems and students to quickly attempt remote learning. A rapid response phone survey of over 1,500 high school students aged 14 to 18 in Ecuador was conducted to learn how students spend their time during the period of...

Mental health, well-being, and lasting economic outcomes are intimately connected. However, in geographies marked by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV), entrepreneurs of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) experience chronic stress and poor mental health on a regular basis. These...

People migrate to improve their well-being, whether through an expansion of economic and social opportunities or a reduction in persecution. Yet a large literature suggests that migration can be a stressful process, with potentially negative impacts on mental health, reducing the net benefits of...

This paper examines the relationship between caste and gender inequality in three states in India. When households are grouped using conventional, government-defined categories of caste the paper finds patterns that are consistent with existing literature: lower-caste women are more likely to...

This paper describes the design of a multi-stage stratified sample for the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016/17. This survey instrument will be used by the Government of Bangladesh to estimate reliable poverty and welfare statistics at three different levels: (i) annual...

Using firm-level survey data for a large cross section of countries, the paper assesses the gap in labor productivity between formal and informal firms in developing countries for which comparable data are available. It also investigates the impact of competition from informal firms on the labor...

The majority of firms in developing countries are informal, and encouraging them to register with the tax authority has proven challenging and costly. This paper argues that incomplete tax filing among registered firms constitutes an important intermediate form of informality, which can be...

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of poverty in India. It shows that no matter which of the two official poverty lines is used, poverty has declined steadily in all states and for all social and religious groups. Accelerated growth between fiscal years 2004-2005 and 2009-2010 led to an...