This report draws on limited, available data to analyze selected economic, and social issues, which include better understanding of poverty, and inequality in relation to real income, and, improving the allocation of social expenditures, while increasing the effectiveness of social programs. The...

We explore whether early childhood human-capital investments are complementary to those made later in life. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts who were differentially exposed to policy-induced changes in pre-school (Head Start) spending and...

In 1997, the Mexican government designed the conditional cash transfer program Progresa, which became the worldwide model of a new approach to social programs, simultaneously targeting human capital accumulation and poverty reduction. A large literature has documented the short and medium-term...

We compare the long-run effects of replacing unconditional transfers to the poor by transfers conditional on the education of children. Unlike Mirrlees income taxation model, the distribution of skill evolves endogenously. Human capital accumulation follows the Freeman-Ljungqvist-Mookherjee-Ray...

Intergenerational persistence of poverty is generally linked to the reduced capacity of poor families to foster human capital accumulation of their children and pull them out of poverty. Supply-side interventions, which increase the availability and quality of schooling and health services,...