The authors probe further into how household attributes affect the probability that children will work, and the probability of enrollment and success in school. Focusing on four household surveys in Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru, they find that most child labor is takes place in rural...

Pension fund charges reduce the rate of return on pension accounts in some countries by up to by two percentage points. Do charges of this scale undermine the case for funded pension provision? How can governments hold back costs and charges? This paper looks at evidence from thirteen coutries,...

This report examines the various challenges and opportunities of mainstreaming gender issues in social fund projects and offers five good practice examples of gender integration in social fund projects in Ethiopia, Honduras, Malawi, Moldova, and Romania. Each case study takes gender into...

Institutions matter in the design, and implementation of social programs in general, and for social safety net programs in particular. This paper argues that what matters most for the success of programs, are the incentives that are provided to stakeholders, and actors through institutions., The...

Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the...

The paper outlines a forward-looking role of social protection against the background of increasing concerns about risk, and vulnerability, exemplified by the recent East Asian crisis, the concerns of the World Development Report (WDR) 2000, the need for a better understanding of poverty...

This paper reviews the experience with public works programs (PWPs) in several countries over the past 20 years to delineate use patterns and to determine the factors contributing to its use as a successful safety net program. The analysis shows that PWP have been used extensively in response to...

The authors use the"Pesquisa Nacional por Amostragem a Domicilio"(PNAD) data for Brazil. Their paper asks two related questions. First, does the child labor status of parents impact the child labor incidence of their children? The authors find strong evidence that it does. Second, is this link...

This paper examines one type of program that is used by many OECD and CEEC countries (Central and Eastern European countries) to ease the pain of structural adjustment and create jobs, namely Public Service Employment (PSE). Such programs are characterized by the employment of unemployed...

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach offers an opportunity for civil society organizations, to join governments in the development, and implementation of poverty reduction strategies. Trade unions have been encouraged to participate. This report notes that most unions have been...