This paper examines support for reducing inequality and for income redistribution to specific groups in Europe and Central Asia. The paper uses the Life in Transition Survey to analyze cross-country differences in redistributive preferences and the determinants of individual-level differences in...

This study analyzes opportunities for children in Cote d'Ivoire, where opportunities refer to access to basic services and goods that improve the likelihood of a child maximizing his or her human potential. The principle that guides this analysis is one of equality of opportunity, which is that...

The relationship between income inequality and crime has attracted the interest of many researchers, but little convincing evidence exists on the causal effect of inequality on crime in developing countries. This paper estimates this effect in a unique context: Mexico's Drug War. The analysis...

This paper examines how Nepal's 1996-2006 civil conflict affected women's decisions to engage in employment. Using three waves of the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, the authors employ a difference-in-difference approach to identify the impact of war on women's employment decisions. The...

Parental involvement in matchmaking may distort the choice of spouse because parents are willing to substitute love for market and household production, which are more sharable between parents and their children. This paper finds supportive evidence in a survey of Chinese couples. In both rural...

The importance of gender equality is reflected not only in the Millennium Development Goals, but also in the World Bank's Gender Action Plan launched in 2007 as well as in other treaties and actions undertaken at regional and international levels. Unlike other work on gender and poverty, which...

This paper is an attempt to shed some light on issues relating to social protection in transition countries, emerging from ethnic conflict. It analyzes how constraints posed both by conflict itself, and its ethnic nature, affect social protection policies, and suggests ways out. Both conflict,...

Although non-farm enterprises are ubiquitous in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, little is yet known about them. The motivation for households to operate enterprises, how productive they are, and why they exit the market are neglected questions. Drawing on the Living Standards Measurement Study --...

Policies to tax farmers in low-income countries and policies to subsidize them in high-income countries have been identified as a major source of the disequilibrium of world agriculture. Recently, as many high-performing economies in Asia advanced from the low-income to the middle-income stage...

Workfare programs aim to reduce poverty by providing low-wage work for those who need it. They are often turned to in a crisis when there is too little time for a rigorous evaluation. They are also relatively complex programs, and difficult to evaluate. The author offers some simple analytical...