This paper examines data on urbanization. We review the most commonly used data sources, and highlight the difficulties inherent in defining and measuring the size of urban versus rural populations. We show that differences in the measurement of urban populations across countries and over time...

Ichiro Kawachi suggests that studies of social capital and health indicate that community trust and networks can improve health. Although there is no a priori basis for assuming that social capital will always lead to good health, he suggests that investment in social capital for human...

We test the view that the large differences in income levels we see across the world are due to differences in the intrinsic geography of each country against the alternative view that there are poverty traps. We reject simple geographic determinism in favor of a poverty trap model with high-...