Demand-side financing approaches have been introduced in a number of low and middle-income countries, with a particular emphasis on sexual and reproductive health. This paper aims to bring together the global evidence on demand-side financing mechanisms, their impact on the delivery of sexual...

Malaria continues to be a prominent global public health challenge, in part because of the slow population adoption of recommended preventive and curative behaviors. This paper tests the effectiveness of two service delivery models designed to promote recommended behaviors, including prompt...

This paper addresses the underlying causes of problems and risks faced by poor and excluded youth of 10-24 years of age. The authors develop a survey instrument that addresses poverty in a broad sense, including hunger, early pregnancy and fatherhood, violence, crime, drug use, low levels of...

Risk and protective factors influence behaviors and outcomes for youth. While risk factors expose youth to risk-taking behavior that compromises well-being and hinders personal development, protective factors mediate risk and act as protective mechanisms that insulate youth from negative...

This paper analyzes the patterns of and the challenges for youth employment in Pakistan and examines whether these challenges are youth-specific. Using the 2005/2006 Labor Force Survey, the analysis includes determinants of unemployment, determinants of working in the formal sector, rate of...

This paper analyzes the level and trends in inequality of opportunity among Egyptian children during the 2000s. The analysis uses severall tools, including comparison of the distributions of early risks and outcomes across circumstance groups; estimation of the human opportunity index;...

Although child mortality rates have declined all across the developing world over the past 40 years, they have declined the most in the Middle East and North Africa region. This paper documents this remarkable experience and shows that it is broad based in the sense that all countries in the...

Incentive-based policies have been shown to be powerful in many areas of behavior, but have rarely been tested in the sexual domain. The Rewarding Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention and Control in Tanzania (RESPECT) study is a randomized controlled trial testing the hypothesis that a...

The relationship between women's health and their (physical and economic) productivity is complex and multi-dimensional. It is characterized by"flows"in both directions and a host of intervening factors. Two simple statements summarize the major directional flows: (a) women's health affects...

Recent research has convinced the author that once all the benefits are recognized, investment in the education of girls may be the highest return of investment available in the developing world. The author stresses five major points: (1) higher death rates are symptomatic of the more general...