We investigate the impact of childcare provision on cases of child maltreatment. For identification, we exploit a governmental reform introducing mandatory early childcare in Germany that generated large temporal and spatial variation in childcare coverage at the county-level. Using high-quality...

Numerous microfinance initiatives around the world aim to alleviate poverty in developing countries. However, debate persists about their effectiveness and sustainability - a concern for transnational corporations and the international business community, which contribute about $9.4 billion to...

Over the past two decades, poverty and income inequality declined sharply in Espírito Santo. About half of the observed reduction in poverty was due to the concomitant and also sharp drop in inequality that characterized the period under review. This sharp reduction in poverty and inequality,...

The progress occurred over the last decade is undeniable, combining less poverty, with more choice and access to better services, as well as better use of these services by families with children. However, more important than the speed of progress may be the fact that it was clearly equalizing....

Forward-looking poverty analyses are essential for targeting and implementing poverty prevention interventions. In the presence of uncertainty and risk, the current poverty status of households is not a good indicator of whether they will be poor in the future. This paper examines consumption...

Evaluating insurance coverage at the individual level abstracts away from the family-level decision making behind healthcare utilization. While traditional private insurance tends to be offered to either adult individuals or whole families, public insurance eligibility is determined...

Although universal childcare has become an essential tool to support child development, few economic studies analyze its effects on non-cognitive skills and little is known about causal effects on these skills in the long run. In this paper we go beyond short run analyses and examine the long...

This paper estimates the causal effect of increased availability of early childcare on maternal health. We focus on a substantial expansion of childcare for children under three years in West Germany from 2006 to 2019. By matching county-level childcare attendance rates with individual data from...

This paper examines the returns to university education in Japan, using tuition, availability of universities, and labor market conditions as instrumental variables. To measure availability of universities, this paper uses total accredited capacity of all universities in the prefecture of...