A large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early-life environments, so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes. These developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood. Yet, remarkably little is known...

This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the...

Long regarded as a region beset by macroeconomic instability, high inflation, and excessive poverty and inequality, Latin America has undergone a major transformation over the last 20 years. The region has seen improved macroeconomic management and substantial and sustained reductions in poverty...

Iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world, affecting more than 2 billion people in developing countries. We show that a modest cash transfer substantially reduced anemia among women of reproductive age in rural Ecuador.

Cash transfer programs have become extremely popular in the developing world. There is a large literature on the effects of these programs on schooling, health and nutrition, but relatively little is known about possible impacts on child development. This paper analyzes the impact of a cash...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and noncognitive abilities appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

Changes in the relative wages of workers with different amounts of education have profound implications for developing countries, where initial levels of inequality are often very high. In this paper we use micro data for five Latin American countries over the 1980s and 1990s to document trends...

We examine the relationship between early cognitive development, socio-economic status (SES), child health, and parenting in a developing country. Using a sample of over 3000 preschool age children from Ecuador, we analyze determinants of children’s scores on a widelyused test of language...

Using micro data for the urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, the authors document trends in men's returns to education during the 1980s and the 1990s and estimate the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the changes in skill premia. They propose a model of...

The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....