Households in developing countries use a variety of informal mechanisms to cope with risk, including mutual support and risk-sharing. These mechanisms cannot avoid that they remain vulnerable to shocks. Public programs in the form of food aid distribution and food-for-work programs are meant to...

This paper provides an overview on the impacts of food aid. We consider its effects on consumption, nutrition, food markets and labour supply, as well as the extent to which it exacerbates or mitigates conflict. We also consider the comparative evidence on alternatives to food aid including...

This paper reviews the developments in the population program from 1986-2002. It summarizes the main components of the program as well as highlights the developments in its management and financing. The activities of donors, other government agencies and nongovernment organizations in these...

This paper addresses the lack of information on the disparity of outcomes, utilization and access to Family Planning and Maternal and Child Health services by socioeconomic classes. Household statistics on these services by asset class are presented in this paper. The asset classes were derived...

Early child-bearing and high fertility still persist especially among the poor, despite the more than two decades of family planning program implementation in the Philippines. Using an evaluation framework that links inputs, outputs, utilization of outputs and outcomes, the paper analyzes the...

This paper looks at the interaction of poverty, fertility preferences and family planning practice in the Philippines using the series of nationally representative Family Planning Surveys conducted annually since 1999 augmented by census and other survey data. Its contribution lies on providing...

The paper analyzes the impact of an experimental maternal and child health and family-planning program that was implemented in Matlab, Bangladesh in 1977. Village data from 1974, 1982 and 1996 suggest that program villages experienced extra declines in fertility of about 17%. Household data from...

This paper contributes to a broader understanding of the role of marriage in gender stratification from a comparative perspective by providing important descriptive evidence of the distribution of the marriage wage gap for men and women crossnationally. This paper focuses on marital status and...

From the canonical model of Becker onward, models of population dynamics have been based on assumptions which fit the family structure of developed countries. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework that fits the family structure of poor countries. The building blocks of the model...

Economists have long recognized and measured the effect of education on an individual's own lifetime earnings. More recently, attention has been paid to the effects of education on other personal and social outcomes, such as criminal behavior, health and mortality, and voting and democratic...