This paper investigates the effect of a food subsidy programme in India on child malnutrition by addressing the following linked questions using household survey data that includes information on usage of the public distribution system. First, does the food subsidy induce higher expenditures on...

Income-based as well as most existing multidimensional poverty indices (MPI) assume equal distribution within the household and thus are likely to lead to yield a biased assessment of individual poverty, and poverty by age or gender. In this paper we first show that the direction of the bias...

Income-based as well as most existing multidimensional poverty indices (MPI) assume equal distribution within the household and thus are likely to lead to yield a biased assessment of individual poverty, and poverty by age or gender. In this paper we first show that the direction of the bias...

Financial inclusion plays an important role in giving households greater access to borrowing opportunities, which in turn can be used to improve human capital accumulation, socioeconomic status, and long-run economic development. One way to enhance households' access to and usage of the...

Lower fertility can translate into a more male-biased sex ratio if son preference is persistent and technology for sex-selection is easily accessible. This paper investigates whether financial incentives can overcome this trade-off in the context of an Indian scheme, Devirupak, that seeks to...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between individual trust in financial institutions and individual access to these institutions. Based on a large-scale survey of savings patterns of Indians, we find that individuals reporting that they do not have access to certain financial...

Informal eldercare is often supplied by family members, more so in Asia than in the West. Children and their parents as well as members of adjacent generations linked by marriage (in-laws) are modeled as self-interested agents offering or responding to material incentives. A first implication...