"This study examines the effect of a safety-net program on households' well-being and work activities during an economic downturn. It considers (1) how rural Nicaraguan households without the Red de Protección Social (RPS) program fared over the period 2000–02, and (2) whether households...

"This paper presents the main findings of a quantitative evaluation of the Red de Protección Social (RPS), a conditional cash transfer program in Nicaragua, against its primary objectives. These included supplementing income to increase household expenditures on food, reducing primary school...

Longitudinal household data can have considerable advantages over much more widely used cross-sectional data. The collection of longitudinal data, however, may be difficult and expensive. One problem that has concerned many analysts is that sample attrition may make the interpretation of...

The goal of this paper is to determine the nature of the causal relationship between "social capital," as measured by household membership in formal and informal groups and household welfare in South Africa. Using a recently collected panel data set in South Africa's largest province, we...

This paper evaluates the effect (in terms of private returns) of investment in education on wages in the rural Philippines. Statistical endogeneity of education in the wage function may result from (1) unobserved determinants of education that also influence wages and/or (2) measurement error....

"A common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative (nontransfer) costs substantially reduces their effectiveness in alleviating poverty. Yet there is surprisingly little hard empirical evidence on such programs' costs. A recent international review of targeted...

This paper explores the relationship between group membership and trust. Specifically, the authors examine (1) the importance of trust in the decision to join groups, (2) the subsequent ability of groups to generate trust, and (3) the influence of group membership and trust on a measure of...

"Early childhood nutrition is thought to have important effects on education, broadly defined to include various forms of learning. We advance beyond previous literature on early childhood nut ition on education in developing countries by (1) using unique longitudinal data from a nutritional...

This paper examines attrition in the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (1993–1998) and assesses the extent of attrition bias for a specific empirical example. The analysis shows that 1993 first round nonresponse is largely unrelated to observable characteristics of the communities other than...

The paper reviews recent theory and empirical evidence testing unitary versus collective models of the household. In contrast to the unitary model, the collective model posits that individuals within households have different preferences and do not pool their income. Moreover, the collective...