Negative attitudes toward groups in society are widespread and underpin systematic processes of social exclusion that marginalize people and deny them opportunities and dignity. This paper looks at the processes underlying social exclusion. It uses data covering Eastern Europe and Central Asia...

Over the past decade (2003-12), Latin America has experienced strong income growth and a notable reduction in income inequality, with the region's Gini coefficient falling from 55.6 to 51.8. Previous studies have warned about the sustainability of such a decline, and this paper presents evidence...

All over the world, people are prevented from participating fully in society through mechanisms that go beyond the structural and institutional barriers identified by rational choice theory (poverty, exclusion by law or force, taste-based and statistical discrimination, and externalities from...

Empowering women to engage in productive employment is not only critical to achieving gender equality but also critical for economic growth and poverty reduction. This paper studies the pattern of female activity and gender segmentation in the Indian manufacturing and services sectors. Although...

Behavioral economics recognizes that mental models -- intuitive sets of ideas about how things work -- can bias an individual's perceptions of himself and the world. By representing an ascriptive category of people as unworthy, a mental model can foster unjust social exclusion of, for example, a...

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...

This paper sheds light on the impact of improving employment and education conditions on poverty and social exclusion indicators. More specifically, it answers the following question: Will achieving the Europe 2020 national targets on employment and education lead countries to achieve the Europe...

This paper presents the most expansive and current cross-country dataset on education quality. The database includes 164 countries/territories covering over 98 percent of the global population from 2000-2017. Of these countries, 111 are low or middleincome economies. Harmonized learning outcomes...

This report presents findings from the baseline assessment of International Rescue Committee's (IRC) Girl Empower (GE) program in Nimba County, Liberia. GE seeks to help 13 to 14 year-old girls make healthy life choices and decrease their risk of sexual abuse. The program centers on weekly...

This paper adopts a new approach to the issue of foreign aid fungibility. In contrast to most existing empirical studies, panel data are employed that contain information on the specific purposes for which aid is given. This allows linking aid that is provided for education and health purposes...