The authors analyze the relationship between orphan status, household wealth, and child school enrollment using data collected in the 1990s from 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and one country in Southeast Asia. The findings point to considerable diversity-so...

Addressing the question,"What is the work status of the world's working-age population and subgroups thereof?"The author gathers data for many countries and infers data where it is missing (which requires making"heroic assumptions"). The results are of course only as good as the data are...

Using data assembled from the Demographic Health Surveys of over 50 countries and from the National Family Health Surveys of individual states in India, the authors create a new data set of comparable indicators of gender disparity. They establish three findings: 1) As is by now well-known, the...

Increasing the supply of schools is commonly advocated as a policy intervention to promote schooling. Analysis of the relationship between the school enrollment of 6 to 14 year olds and the distance to primary and secondary schools in 21 rural areas in low-income countries (including some of the...

The authors use cross-national data to examine the impact on child (under 5) and infant mortality of both nonhealth (economic, cultural, and educational) factors and public spending on health. They come up with two striking findings: 1) Roughly 95 percent of cross-national variation in mortality...

Large international organizations such as the World Bank pursue many objectives in hiring policies, including reduced costs, cultural diversity, and the avoidance of discrimination. There can be sharp tradeoffs between these objectives. Diversity is enhanced by recruiting from an international...

The authors explore the hypothesis that--because of the important role children play in collection activities (firewood, water, grazing)--the demand forchildren may increase as local environmental resources are depleted, setting up a vicious circle between resource depletion and population...

Government officials and polcy analysts maintain that Indonesia's civil servants are poorly paid and have been for decades. This conclusion is supported by anecdotal evidence and casual empiricism. The authors systematically analyze the realtionship between government and private compensation...

The author empirically explores the relationship between household poverty and the incidence and treatment of fever--as an indicator of malaria--among children in Sub-Saharan Africa. He uses household Demographic and Health Survey data collected in the 1990s from 22 countriesin which malaria is...

Using internationally comparable household data sets (Demographic and Health Surveys), the author investigates how gender and wealth interact to generate within country inequalities in educational enrollment and attainment. He carries out multivariate analysis to assess the partial relationship...