Information campaigns aimed at empowering the poor often fall short of meeting their desired aims. We study literacy's role in determining their efficacy. First, exploiting an RD design, we show that receipt of information increased household rice receipts by 30 percentage points. Second, we...

During the last two decades fertility decisions have varied significantly and not uniformly along the income distribution. In this paper we study the effects of these demographic changes on two dimensions of the income distribution -poverty and inequality- by applying microeconometric...

The paper considers child poverty in rich English-speaking countries – the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland. Do all these countries really stand out from other OECD countries for their levels of child poverty, as is sometimes assumed? And what policies have they adopted...

The paper examines the link between population and per capita economic growth, and poverty, using the interesting case study of Uganda. Although Uganda has recently experienced excellent economic growth and poverty reduction, it currently has one of the highest population growth rates in the...

Poverty rates of women are usually not or only slightly higher than those of men. Thus the statement "poverty is female" cannot be confirmed empirically. This is at least the case if the typical poverty measures are used. Nevertheless gender inequalities and low pay of women are a main source of...

This paper examines the allocation of resources of poverty rates within households in Suriname. To this end we employ a bargaining model estimation framework that allows one to identify the allocation of resources across adult and children males and females. Our results using the Suriname...

We examine whether there is an inequality of opportunity to achieve higher education, partially explained by aspirations for youth age 12-15 in economically vulnerable households. Using a unique Canadian dataset (2002-2008), we find that poverty is associated with reduced university aspirations...

This paper examines the link between poverty and income, on the one hand, and human capital and location, on the other. In the process, the paper proposes a shift in the household indicator of human capital from the usual education of the household head to the education of the most educated...

The paper is based on an individual life-cycle model, which describes the purely economic components of human capital. The present value of human capital is determined by all future income flows, which at the same time constitute the individual as well as the total tax base of a nation....