Cash transfers and index insurance have become popular interventions by development agencies worldwide, yet surprisingly little is known about these programs' comparative impacts on participant behavior or well-being. This paper exploits exogenous variation in program participation and panel...

Progressively targeted cash transfers remain the dominant policy response to chronic poverty in developing countries. But are there alternative social protection policies that might have larger poverty impacts over time for the same public expenditure? To explore this question, this paper...

Progressively targeted cash transfers remain the dominant policy response to chronic poverty in developing countries. But are there alternative social protection policies that might have larger poverty impacts over time for the same public expenditure? To explore this question, this paper...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Barrett, Christopher B. / Carter, Michael R. / Chavas, Jean-Paul -- I. Nutrition, Health, and Human Capital Formation -- 1 Human Capital and Shocks. Evidence on Education, Health, and Nutrition / Frankenberg, Elizabeth / Thomas, Duncan...

This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational...