The authors present a non-altruistic model of demand for children, in the presence of uncertainty about children's survival. Children are seen as assets, as they provide help during old age. If certain conditions are met, both the financial market, and the family network are used to transfer...

Although availability of quantitative information on the extent of AIDS in Africa is improving, the socio-economic implications of the epidemic remain poorly understood. This paper explores this issue in Uganda, focusing on households who received foster children between 1992 and 2000, a...

Growth at high altitude has been the object of many investigations after experimental studies on animals showed that hypoxia at high altitude slows growth. Many studies have also looked at the Andean populations and found different results. Even though a few studies find that individuals living...

Scaling up early childhood development services has the potential to increase children's cognitive and socio-emotional development and promote school readiness in a large segment of the population. This study used a randomized controlled trial approach to evaluate three scaled-up programs...

Paxson and Schady examine the relationship between early cognitive development, socioeconomic status, child health, and parenting quality in a developing country. They use a sample of over 3,000 predominantly poor pre-school age children from Ecuador and analyze determinants of their scores on...

Environmental concern in developing countries has risen rapidly over the past decade. At the same time, decentralization and civic participation in environmental policy-making have also burgeoned. This paper uses data from the Brazilian Municipal Environmental Survey 2001 to examine the causal...

Little evidence is available on whether changing global rules so as to promote human rights can enhance development outcomes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was almost universally ratified by the mid-1990s, but it is unclear whether treaty ratification was associated with better or...

Most people agree that a good investment climate is essential for growth and poverty reduction. Less clear is how to achieve it. Many reforms are complex, involving more than technical design and content. They are both political, facing opposition from organized and powerful groups-and...

Knowledge is central to development. The World Bank invests about one-quarter of its budget for country services in knowledge products. Still, there is little research about the demand for these knowledge products and how internal knowledge flows affect their demand. About 49 percent of the...

Collective action by women's networks has been a strong driver of legislative change in many countries across the world. Women's groups in Botswana have used advocacy tools such as testing the implementation of gender equality principles in the national court system. In 1992, women's legal...