The paper investigates to what extent the Brazilian SENAI system of vocational training could be a role model for easing the substantial challenges African countries face to tackle rising urbanization, high youth unemployment, and a skills gap. We first discuss relevant features of the SENAI and...

We investigate the effect of the Vietnam War and the socialist regime in the Northern part of the country on female labour force participation. We differentiate the effect across birth cohorts, thus comparing immediate and long-term impacts. After presenting a theoretical model implying effects...

We study the surprisingly low level and stagnation of female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2009. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education levels, women's labor force participation stagnated at around 18%. Using five large...

While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross-country regressions analysing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect insignificant or even surprising negative effects of schooling. In this...

The MDGs are interlinked: acceleration in one goal is likely to speed up progress in others. Nevertheless, these synergies are not always visible, and may differ across countries. Using bivariate cluster analysis, this paper investigates whether distinct groups of developing countries can be...

A large literature claims that female labor force participation (FLFP) follows a U-shaped trend over the course of economic development. This feminization U hypothesis is motivated by secular patterns of structural change in combination with education and fertility dynamics. We show that...

We study the surprisingly low level and stagnation of female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2009. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education levels, women's labor force participation stagnated at around 18%. Using five large...

Although empowerment is seen as intrinsically important and instrumentally valuable to escape poverty, there is very little research on the empirical drivers of empowerment. Using custom-made household-level information and using advanced econometric techniques that also correct for endogeneity,...

In contrast to UNDP's wildly successful Human Development Index (HDI), UNDP's gender-related indices have had a rather rocky history. To this day, the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) has not produced a measure that has met the requirements of policy-makers, academics and development...

We investigate the micro-level determinants of labor force participation of urban married women in eight low- and middle-income economies: Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jordan, South Africa, Tanzania, and Vietnam. In order to understand what drives changes and differences in participation...