Using results from the ethnographic literature and two qualitative studies on people’s representations of different means of birth control (abstinence, contraception, abortion) in two populations in Burkina Faso (one rural and one urban), we designed a multi-dimensional quantitative scale...

Rising food prices cause considerable policy dilemmas for developing country governments. Letting domestic prices adjust to reflect the full change in international prices generates inflationary pressures and causes severe hardship for poor households lacking access to social safety nets....

Access to clean water should be declared a basic human right for three reasons. First, access to clean water can substantially reduce the global burden of disease caused by water-borne infections. Second, the privatization of water—as witnessed in Bolivia, Ghana, and other...

The demographic study of nuptiality in African countries is not very developed and often of secondary interest in a discussion of the proximate determinants of fertility. This paper uses unusual marriage history data to examine divorce and remarriage in rural Malawi. Life table probabilities of...

This paper carries out a theoretical and empirical investigation of the role of informal institutions in facilitating intergenerational contracts governing investments in schooling and payments of pensions in the form of remittances. We show, using detailed household level data from rural...

The certified organic cotton supply chain is compared to the conventional cotton supply chain in Mali. The most important differences between the two supply chains are highlighted in this study. Switching to organic production may offer a range of potential advantages to cotton farmers,...

This article reviews, on the basis of observation made between 1994 and 2004 during eight reforms in developing countries, a series of ten factors which significantly have affected the success of the projects of reforms. The success of a reform, according to the author, counts on factors of...