Demographic disparities between the rates of occurrence of an adverse economic outcome can be observed to be increasing even as general social improvements supposedly lead towards the elimination of the adverse outcome in question. Scanlan (2006) noticed this tendency and developed a...

Since the restoration and strengthening of democracy in Latin America, the vision of social policy as a guarantee of human rights, has become more relevant. On this view Government as a guarantor of basic human rights, has the responsibility to intervene with universal public policies,...

There are historical and institutional reasons behind our economic problems like poverty and environmental damage but it is not acceptable if they persist in years to come. The strategic use of information by individual economic agents establishes a biasing effect on our economy. In case of...

Information campaigns aimed at empowering the poor often fall short of meeting their desired aims. We study literacy's role in determining their efficacy. First, exploiting an RD design, we show that receipt of information increased household rice receipts by 30 percentage points. Second, we...

A stochastic frontier model is used to make a comparative estimate of the production of cognitive capacity and stature in the family, using data from the Mexican survey ENNVIH 2002. We find that child cognitive capacity is associated with the economic status of the family, public policy...

In recent years, policymaking in China has put increasing emphasis on stemming the growth in inequality, which had been fairly steep since the 1980s. Policy action has taken the form of regional development measures and of reforms of various aspects of the social safety net broadly defined. The...

We demonstrate that there is a nexus between land transfers and human capital formation. A sequence of land redistributions enables the beneficiaries to educate their children and thus to escape from poverty and to overcome child labour. We find that open access to land markets should be...

Information campaigns aimed at empowering the poor often fall short of meeting their desired aims. We study literacy's role in determining their efficacy. First, exploiting an RD design, we show that receipt of information increased household rice receipts by 30 percentage points. Second, we...

This paper provides an overview of the political and economic context under which Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades was introduced to prelude the emergence of social assistance in Latin America. The paper identifies four distinctive features of the programme that were revolutionary in their own...