We use longitudinal household data and propensity score weighting methods to assess the impact of Brazil’s Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer program on schooling outcomes of children aged 6–17years. Weak aggregate effects mask considerable heterogeneity. Among girls, the program...

The migration of household members is potentially an attractive pathway out of poverty for many rural households in developing countries. Such households face the challenge of maintaining or improving their livelihoods in the presence of capital market imperfections, vulnerability to climate and...

Migration and remittances can be used by rural households as a means of insurance, investment, and income augmentation. Ample attention has been given to studying international remittance flows, since for many countries such transfers comprise a significant fraction of income. Remittance flows...

In this paper, we use a unique panel dataset of tracked migrants and non-migrants that originate from 18 villages in Ethiopia to examine the welfare impacts of internal migration. Using a number of techniques and various objective and subjective measures, we measure the impacts of migration on...

Rural-to-urban migration is an inherent part of the economic development process, yet it is relatively understudied in sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we attempt to describe the present state of rural–urban migration from several different angles. Migration rates are quite low in several...

Conditional cash transfer programs with female beneficiaries have scope to increase women’s intrahousehold decision-making power. Yet quantitative evidence is limited. We show that Brazil’s Bolsa Família program has significant impacts on women’s decision making, but with considerable...

Regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a useful tool for evaluating programs when a single variable is used to determine program eligibility. RDD has also been used to evaluate programs when eligibility is based on multiple variables that have been aggregated into a single index using...

This paper provides evidence regarding gains to agricultural market liberalization in China. We empirically identify the different effects that incentive reforms and gradual market liberalization have on China's agricultural economy during its transition period. We find that average gains within...

This paper contributes to the assessment of China's rural labor markets, while paying attention to whether these markets are developing in a manner conducive to the nations modernization. According to our household survey, we find that the rapid increase in off-farm employment has continued and...