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...

Possession of land is often associated with higher levels of child labour. This paper will look closer at the “wealth paradox†by testing in rural Mali the relationship between landownership and one of the hidden forms of child labour, namely family-based work. We also experiment a...

Given the current focus of international development policy on pro-poor growth and poverty reduction, the role of the informal sector in the process of economic development is again at the top of the research and policy agenda. A key question is if pro-poor growth policies have to address the...

Under Indonesia's anti-poverty program, IDT, the government provided selected poor villages with grants of the same value, regardless of population size. Exploiting the variation in per household grant value that is caused by this program design, I estimate the returns to public grants, which...

Of the world's 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) - the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept - on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita...

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) - the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept - on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita...

Of the world’s 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the...