July 1999 - A workfare program was introduced in response to high unemployment in Argentina. An ex-post evaluation using matching methods indicates that the program generated sizable net income gains to generally poor participants. Jalan and Ravallion use propensity-score matching methods to...

December 1997 - In rural China, those in the poorest wealth decile are the least well-insured, with 40 percent of an income shock being passed on to current consumption. By contrast, consumption by the richest third of households is protected from almost 90 percent of an income shock. Jalan and...

We define 'transient poverty' as the component of time-mean consumption poverty at household level that is directly attributable to variability in consumption; this can be thought of as a measure of vulnerability to falling consumption. The non-transient component then depends solely on mean...

It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient poverty will be an investment with lasting benefits,...

The authors use propensity-score matching methods to estimate the income gains to families of workers participating in an Argentinian work-fare program. The methods they propose are feasible for evaluating safety net interventions in settings in which many other methods are not feasible. The...

The effects of public investments aimed at directly improving children's health are theoretically ambiguous, since the outcomes also depend on indirect effects through parental inputs. The authors investigate the role of such inputs in influencing the incidence of child health gains from access...