The objective of this note is to highlight how social protection can help lay the human capital foundations needed for poverty reduction and economic growth in the East Asia and Pacific region while also building, protecting, and deploying the human capital needed to keep up with and take...

This paper investigates whether aspirations matter for education, which offers a common route out of poverty. We find that mother aspirations are strongly related to the child's grade achieved at age 18. The relation is nonlinear, suggesting there is a threshold, and depends on caste, household...

Conditional Cash Transfer programs are designed to increase human capital in poorer families. They do this directly through incentives and conditions. A further way these programs may influence household decisions is through impacts on preferences. Preferences may change as a result of new habit...