The relationship between wealth and
child labor has been widely examined. This paper uses three
rounds of time-series, cross-sectional data to examine the
relationship between wealth and child labor and schooling.
The paper finds that wealth is crucial in determining a
child's activities, but that this factor is far from
being a sufficient condition to enroll a child in school.
This is particularly the case for rural girls. Nonparametric

Lack of access to electricity is one of
the major impediments to growth and development of the rural
economies in developing countries. That is why access to
modern energy, in particular to electricity, has been one of
the priority themes of the World Bank and other development
organizations. Using a cross-sectional survey conducted in
2005 of some 20,000 households in rural Bangladesh, this
paper studies the welfare impacts of households' grid

The spike in food prices between 2005
and the first half of 2008 has highlighted the
vulnerabilities of poor consumers to higher prices of
agricultural goods and generated calls for massive policy
action. This paper provides a formal assessment of the
direct and indirect impacts of higher prices on global
poverty using a representative sample of 63 to 93 percent of
the population of the developing world. To assess the direct

Seasonal poverty in Bangladesh, locally
known as monga, refers to seasonal deprivation of food
during the pre-harvest season of Aman rice. An analysis of
household income and expenditure survey data shows that
average household income and consumption are much lower
during monga season than in other seasons, and that seasonal
income greatly influences seasonal consumption. However,
lack of income and consumption smoothing is more acute in

This paper evaluates the impact of the
Thailand Village and Urban Revolving Fund on household
expenditure, income, and assets. The revolving fund was
launched in 2001 when the Government of Thailand promised to
provide a million baht (about $22,500) to every village and
urban community in Thailand as working capital for
locally-run rotating credit associations. The money about
$2 billion in total was quickly disbursed to locally-run

China has seen a huge reduction in the
incidence of extreme poverty since the economic reforms that
started in the late 1970s. Yet, the growth process has been
highly uneven across sectors and regions. The paper tests
whether the pattern of China´s growth mattered to poverty
reduction using a new provincial panel data set constructed
for this purpose. The econometric tests support the view
that the primary sector (mainly agriculture) has been the

Trade policy reforms in recent decades
have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming
agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in
farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade
in nonfarm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of
poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects
are unclear without empirical modeling. This paper
summarizes a series of new economy-wide global and national

Despite the popularity and unique nature
of women's self-help groups in India, evidence of their
economic impacts is scant. Based on two rounds of a 2,400
household panel, the authors use double differences,
propensity score matching, and pipeline comparison to assess
economic impacts of longer (2.5-3 years) exposure of a
program that promoted and strengthened self-help programs in
Andhra Pradesh in India. The analysis finds that longer

The 2009 edition of the little green
data book includes a focus section, four introductory pages
that focus on a specific issue related to development and
the environment. This year the focus is on urban areas and
the environment, exploring how cities and climate change are
affecting the way we live and how good public policies can
improve prospects for future generations. Urbanization and
economic growth move in tandem. As emerging market economies

The name Tanzania is a portmanteau of
Tanganyika, the mainland, and Zanzibar, the nearby
archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The two united to become
the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964. With a surface area
of 947,300 square kilometers, Tanzania is comparable in size
to Nigeria and is slightly more than twice the size of the
U.S. state of California. Tanzania's population of
approximately 40.4 million (as of 2007) is the second

This paper shows that support from the
family continues to be an important source of support for
the rural elderly, particularly the rural elderly over 70
years of age. Decline in likelihood of co-residence with, or
in close proximity to, adult children raises the possibility
that China's rural elderly will receive less support in
the forms of both income and in-kind instrumental care.
Although descriptive evidence on net financial transfers

This paper addresses two vital concerns
in the debate on adaptation to climate change. First, how
can countries prepare to manage the impact of climate-change
induced natural disasters? Second, how can countries ensure
that they have the governmental institutions required to
manage the phenomenal challenge of adaptation to climate
change? A range of economic and institutional measures are
tested for their potential effects on natural disaster