India's huge expansion in rural electrification in the 1980s and 1990s offers lessons for other countries today. The paper examines the long-term effects of household electrification on consumption, labor supply, and schooling in rural India over 1982-99. It finds that household electrification...

Poor rural women in the developing world spend considerable time collecting water. How then do they respond to improved access to water infrastructure? Does it increase their participation in income earning market-based activities? Does it improve the health and education outcomes of their...

The transformation of work during China s rapid economic development is associated with a substantial but little noticed re-allocation of traditional farm labor among women, with some doing much less and some much more. This paper studies how the work, time allocation, and health of non-migrant...

December 1999: Yes - and more efficiently by women than by men, according to this analysis of household survey data for Bangladesh. An illiterate adult earns significantly more in the nonfarm economy when living in a household with at least one literate member. According to theory, a member of a...