I examine the changes in poverty and inequality in South Africa during the first 5 years following the end of the apartheid era. First, I construct new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000. Second, using the “cost-of basic-needs” approach, I derive lower-bound (R322, in South...

Despite their explicit focus on reaching the poor, many community driven development (CDD) projects have been found to be only mildly pro-poor in their funding allocations. This paper presents evidence of an explanation that has been overlooked in the CDD literature to date: the requirement that...

An extensive multi-disciplinary literature examines the effects of learning one's HIV status on subsequent risky sexual behaviors. However, many of these studies rely on non-experimental designs; use self-reported outcome measures; or both. In this study, we investigate the effects of a randomly...

Despite their explicit focus on reaching the poor, many community driven development (CDD) initiatives are only partially successful in targeting spending towards them. This paper examines Tanzania's flagship CDD program and provides new evidence on the mechanisms by which the demand-driven...

Many studies evaluate the impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs on schooling using self-reports on enrollment and attendance even though there are reasons to doubt the reliability of these data. In this paper, we examine the extent to which school-age girls overstate their school...

People around the world do not have the same chances to live, learn, work, and participate in society’s activities, because these opportunities are greatly influenced by circumstances beyond their control, including their country of birth. Global equity is worth pursuing for its own sake and...

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. We construct two new metadata...

Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrolment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba...