This study asks a simple question that has significant implications for gender equality. After decades of increasing female participation in the labor market, advances in the labor legislation and persistent gender wage gaps, what are the effects of motherhood on labor force participation and...

Workfare programs aim to reduce poverty by providing low-wage work to those who need it. They are often turned to in a crisis when there is no time for a rigorous evaluation. This paper offers some simple analytic tools for a rapid ex-ante appraisal of an existing workfare program. For pedagogic...

Latin America has the dubious distinction of being the region with the highest level of occupational segregation in the world. In this context, this study poses four important questions. Has occupational segregation by sex decreased in the 1990s? Can we expect occupational segregation to decline...

The expansion of the informal sector in the last decades has been accompanied by a lack of almost every form of social protection and low-productivity/low-wage employment. This report summarizes the characteristics of the informal sector and provides policy recommendations to tackle it. Section...

We analyze the outcomes of 332 cases from a labor court in Mexico in which a judge awarded money to a plaintiff who claimed to have been fired by a firm without cause. The judgments were enforced in only 40% of the cases. A plaintiff may try to enforce a judgment by petitioning the court to...

This Strategy (GN 2051-1) establishes guidelines for Bank support of vocational training programs, both as stand-alone activities and as part of other projects. The word training is quite broad and often ambiguous. In this report, it is used to refer to the preparation of workers and technicians...

The guide outlines the main evaluation challenges associated with Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs), and shows how to obtain rigorous impact estimates using two leading evaluation approaches. The most credible and straightforward evaluation method is a randomized design, in which a group of...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the status of training policies in Latin America, and to review some new approaches that are shaping the evolution of policies and institutions in the region. The ideas presented here rely heavily on discussions held over the last five years with...

This paper has been prepared for the Inter-American Development Bank roundtable Consulta de San Jose 2007. It examines more efficient forms of regulating the labor market in Latin America. To that aim, I first provide a simple framework for analyzing the effects of labor market re-regulation on...

In order to assist project companies in understanding and complying with labor requirements, the PRI ESU has developed the present guideline with three main objectives first, to educate and inform project companies, financiers and other relevant parties about the labor rights conditions that for...