Many developing country governments determine eligibility for anti-poverty programs using censuses of household assets. Does this distort subsequent reporting of, or actual purchases of, those assets? We ran a nationwide experiment in Indonesia where, in randomly selected provinces, the...

There are at least two distinct and inconsistent views of poverty. These views, which can be called "poverty as desperation" and "poverty as vulnerability", have different implications about anti-poverty policy. It is important to confront the conflict between them before data can be applied to...

There are at least two distinct and inconsistent views of poverty. These views, which can be called "poverty as desperation" and "poverty as vulnerability", have different implications about anti-poverty policy. It is important to confront the conflict between them before data can be applied to...

The mental health of the elderly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a largely neglected subject, both by policy and research. We combine data from the health and retirement family of surveys in seven LMICs (plus the US) to document that depressive symptoms among those aged 55 and...

A wide range of interventions, from subsidized grains all the way to conditions on nutrition in conditional cash transfers, have either been tried or put in place in different countries in order to fight under-nutrition. A number of important policy experiments in recent years, directly or...

Social protection programs have become increasingly widespread in low- and middle-income countries, with their own distinct characteristics to match the environments in which they are operating. This paper reviews the growing literature on the design and impact of these programs. We review how...