Previous studies report that adult height has significant associations with wages even controlling for schooling. But schooling and height are imperfect measures of adult cognitive skills (“brains”) and strength (“brawn”); further they are not exogenous. Analysis of rich Guatemalan...

El objetivo de este documento es averiguar lo que sabemos, tanto a nivel conceptual como de la experiencia (tanto de ALC como de otros lugares), sobre los tradeoffs de usar diferentes planes de focalización para la protección social que se dirigen hacia los pobres actuales y a aquellos en...

Financial literacy and schooling attainment have been linked to household wealth accumulation. Yet prior findings may be biased due to noisy measures of financial literacy and schooling, as well as unobserved factors such as ability, intelligence, and motivation that could enhance financial...

Summary The Mexican PROGRESA/Oportunidades anti-poverty and human resource conditional cash transfer (CCT) program has influenced considerably policies in many countries. The Mexican government engaged the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to undertake the initial evaluation...

What one does not know, in the form of unobserved heterogeneity, can mislead one in empirical estimates. A simple model of intrahousehold allocations illustrates the possible importance of unobserved factors such as abilities in determining human resources and their impacts. The author reviews...

High inequality has long been regarded as one of the main problems facing Latin American countries. To understand better the determinants of inequality and to help guide thinking about policy options, it is useful to know whether inequality mainly reflects low intergenerational mobility or...

Many studies document significantly positive associations between schooling attainment and wages in developing countries. But when individuals enter occupations subsequent to completing their schooling, they not only face an expected work-life path of wages, but a number of other occupational...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs link public transfers to human capital investment in hopes of alleviating current poverty and reducing its intergenerational transmission. However, little is known about their long-term impacts. This paper evaluates longer-run impacts on schooling and...

In this paper, we present a framework for considering whether the marginal social benefits of demographic and social science research on various health conditions in developing countries are likely to be relatively high. Based on this framework, we argue that the relative current and future...

<DIV>How do parents allocate human capital among their children? To what extent do parental decisions about resource allocation determine children's eventual economic success? <BR><BR>The analyses in <I>From Parent to Child</I> explore these questions by developing and testing a model in which the earnings of...</i></div>