In our efforts to better understand how policies geared towards poverty reduction may impact teen childbirth, we analyzed the impact of the 10-20-30 provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, P.L. 111-5) on teen childbirth. The 10-20-30 provision allocated at least...

The persistence of absolute poverty in Brazil is associated with high levels of income inequality. For this article, this association is the departing point for presenting a schematic evolution of poverty in Brazil in the last three decades: a sharp decline in the 70's as income grew at high...

Medicaid provides health insurance for 54 million Americans. Using the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (which subtracts out-of-pocket medical expenses from family resources), we estimated the impact of eliminating Medicaid. In our counterfactual, Medicaid beneficiaries would become...

Targeting of national anti-poverty programs in low-income countries commonly relies on statistical procedures involving household-level survey data, while small-scale poverty-alleviation programs often employ so-called community-based targeting, where village communities themselves identify...

Targeting of national anti-poverty programs in low-income countries commonly relies on statistical procedures involving household-level survey data, while small-scale poverty-alleviation programs often employ so-called community-based targeting, where village communities themselves identify...

The Kufuor (New Patriotic Party) administration of 2000-2008 implemented substantial reforms of the contributory social insurance system (including the introduction of a national health insurance scheme and a new 'three tier' pensions system), and introduced a range of social assistance schemes...

We examine the living standards and health of working-age disabled people and disability benefits recipients over time in the UK. The UK’s disability benefits system (which is non-means-tested and in which receipt is unrelated to work status) has gone through a significant transformation since...

A body of recent studies has compared the ability of proxy-means testing (PMT), a data-driven poverty targeting procedure, and community-based targeting (CBT), a participatory method, to identify consumption-poor households. Motivated by the facts that targeted benefits typically reach...

In 2012 the Philippines launched its "K to 12" Program, a comprehensive reform of its basic education. Through this reform, the Philippines is catching up with global standards in secondary education and is attaching a high value to kindergarten. The structure, curricula, and philosophy of the...

Timor-Leste is among the world’s poorest countries and poverty reduction is high on the country’s policy agenda. The National Development Plan emphasizes a poverty reduction strategy based on economic growth and a focus on improvements in the health and education sector. This paper describes...