This paper analyzes the distributional effect of public spending in Zambia using the most recent data from the 2010 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey. The analysis focuses on both the"traditional"social sectors, such as education and public healthcare, as well as other spending areas less...

For years, South Korea presented the puzzling phenomenon of steeply rising sex ratios at birth despite rapid development, including in women's education and formal employment. This paper shows that son preference decreased in response to development, but its manifestation continued until the...

This paper compares how results using various methods to construct asset indices match results using per capita expenditures. The analysis shows that inferences about inequalities in education, health care use, fertility, child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes are quite robust to the...

Despite the importance of housing for people's well-being, there has been little work done to assess the causal impact of housing and housing improvement programs on health and welfare. In this paper the authors help fill this gap by investigating the impact of a large-scale effort by the...

This paper studies the relationship between gender and corruption in the health sector. It uses data collected directly from health workers, during a recent public expenditure tracking survey in Tajikistan's health sector. Using informal payments as an indicator of corruption, women seem at...

Existing evidence forms a body of"conventional wisdom"on the redistributive impact of fiscal policies that has been recently questioned by more disaggregated analyses. This paper proposes an additional extension to the traditional benefit incidence analysis to explore further the extent to which...

This paper explores the possibility that universal health coverage may inadvertently result in distorted labor market choices, with workers preferring informal employment over formal employment, leading to negative effects on investment and growth, as well as reduced protection against...

This paper develops a link between four central components of the demographic transition: survival rates; fertility decisions; altruistic intergenerational transfers from workers toward their parents; and economic growth. An increase in child survival is found to reduce the fertility rate and...

The impacts of international migration on development in the sending countries, and especially the effects on remaining household members, are increasingly studied. However, comparisons of households in developing countries with and without migrants are complicated by a double-selectivity...

The Sudanese population has suffered from years of conflict, and deep-seated security issues have severely hampered Sudan’s long-term economic stability and social development. As a consequence, Sudan is struggling to meet its MDGs. Since the secessionof South Sudan, Sudan has lost a...