Housing development has direct and
indirect impacts on the environment. Through its design,
construction, and operation, housing represents a
significant point of direct consumption of natural
materials, water, and energy. Therefore, greenhouse gas
emissions embodied in housing can be very significant.
Moreover, in Brazil, civil construction is responsible for
the largest percentage of solid waste volume generated in

Input subsidy programs carry support as
instruments to increase agricultural productivity, provided
they are market-smart. This requires especially proper
targeting to contain the fiscal pressure, with decentralized
targeting of input vouchers currently the instrument of
choice. Nonetheless, despite clear advantages in
administrative costs, the fear of elite capture persists.
These fears are borne out in the experience from the 2008

Although many studies have explored the
impacts of political quotas for females, often with
ambiguous results, the underlying mechanisms and long-term
effects have received little attention. This paper uses
nation-wide data from India spanning a 15-year period to
explore how reservations affect leader qualifications,
service delivery, political participation, local
accountability, and individuals willingness to contribute

Fourteen years of civil conflict
(1989-2003) have destroyed Liberia's social and
economic infrastructure and brought the economy nearly to a
halt. Workers who came of age during the conflict are
largely unskilled, and the supply of workers exceeds demand
by a substantial margin. The negative effects of
unemployment, underemployment, and low productivity on
economic growth have made employment the most urgent demand

This paper aims to investigate
empirically how international migration and remittances in
Indonesia, particularly female migration, affect child
outcomes and labor supply behavior in sending households.
The authors analyze the Indonesia Family Life Survey data
set and apply an instrumental variable estimation method,
using historical migration networks as instruments for
migration and remittance receipts. The study finds that, in

The objective of this policy note is to
examine the gender dimension of the Egyptian labor market,
with a focus on identifying the scope for policies to
improve female labor force participation. An update to the
Egypt gender assessment report of 2003, it is envisioned as
a contribution to programmatic work on gender and inclusion
in Egypt, helping build evidence which can inform policy
aimed at improving the participation and retention of women

Despite their increasing prominence in policy debates, little is known about gender inequities in non-agricultural labor market outcomes in rural areas. Using matched household-enterprise-community data sets from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, this paper documents and analyzes gender differences in the individual portfolio choice and productivity of non-farm entrepreneurship. Except for Ethiopia, women are less likely than men to become nonfarm entrepreneurs.

This report describes theTransforming
Settlements of the Urban Poor in Uganda. A Secondary Cities
Support Program (TSUPU), is the first national initiative
within the Cities Alliance's global programme, Land,
Services and Citizenship for the Urban Poor (LSC). The first
premise of the Medium Term Strategy is that the Cities
Alliance should prioritise working with those governments
already committed to change and reform over time for three

In 2006-07, the Water and Sanitation
Program (WSP) initiated research to identify barriers to
service delivery for the urban poor. The findings of the
research have been presented in the Guidance Notes on
Improving Water Supply and Sanitation Services to the Urban
Poor in India. The Urban Global Practice Team of WSP decided
to expand the ambit of this research to a global context as
the learnings were relevant to experiences across Africa,

This report assesses the impact of the
movement and access regime in the period 2000-07 on the
economy and the working lives of Palestinians, exploring the
gender dimension of restrictions on labor force
participation, and how new tensions in the arena of work
resulting from movement and access restrictions have
affected relations between women and men. The findings of
this study are based on an analysis of data covering the

Ethiopia's second poverty reduction
strategy, the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development
to End Poverty (PASDEP) outlines a strategy of complementing
a continued strong focus on increasing agricultural
productivity with an increased emphasis on urban
development. In this context it highlights the importance of
facilitating accelerated employment generation to address
the issue of high levels of urban unemployment. This report

The authors analyze five rounds of
National Sample Survey data covering 1983, 1987/8, 1993/4,
1999/0, and 2004/5 to explore the relationship between rural
diversification and poverty. Poverty in rural India declined
at a modest rate during this period. The authors provide
region-level estimates that illustrate considerable
geographic heterogeneity in this progress. Poverty estimates
correlate well with region-level data on changes in