As the financial crisis has spread
through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it
difficult to track its impact in developing countries. This
paper uses a micro-simulation approach to assess the poverty
and distributional effects of the crisis in the Philippines.
The authors find increases in both the level and the depth
of aggregate poverty. Income shocks are relatively large in
the middle part of the income distribution. They also find

This paper examines whether and to what
extent amendments in inheritance legislation impact
women's physical and human capital investments, using
disaggregated household level data from India. The authors
use inheritance patterns over three generations of
individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu
Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth
rights in joint family property that were denied to

This paper investigates the impact of
rising wheat prices -- during the 2007/08 global food crisis
-- on food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting the temporal
stratification of a unique nationally-representative
household survey, the analysis finds evidence of large
declines in real per capita food consumption and in food
security (per capita calorie intake and household dietary
diversity) corresponding to the price shocks. The data

The sustainable development of ger areas
in Ulaanbaatar (UB), the capital city of Mongolia, is one of
the critical development issues facing the country. The
transitions to a market economy and a series of severe
winters (called zud) have resulted in the large-scale
migration of low-income families into the ger areas of UB.
The city represents 40 percent of the nation's
population and generates more than 60 percent of

Although Bulgaria now implements the
European Union's (EU's) "common"
agricultural policy (CAP), national policymakers still
maintain responsibility to tailor CAP implementation to meet
the specific development needs of the country. The National
Rural Development Program (NRDP) very appropriately lays out
the challenges that Bulgarian agriculture and rural
development face, but the early implementation of a

Lesotho began a structural economic
transformation in the early 1990s. The transformation has
brought higher, more secure incomes to households while the
government succeeded in dramatically improving access to
services such as education, health, water, and
transportation. Yet today, Lesotho faces a number of serious
development challenges, including a high rate of chronic
poverty, entrenched income inequality, and most troubling

Economic growth in Solomon Islands since
the end of civil conflict in 2003 has been driven by rapid
expansion of the forestry sector and large increases in
international aid flows. Stocks of natural forest logs are
nearing exhaustion and, as the security situation improves,
aid flows are likely to flatten off. The Solomon Islands
Government asked the World Bank to investigate future growth
prospects. This note summarizes the findings and presents a

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

The study presents an analysis of the
situation of the Pygmies in Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC), including their history and relations with the other,
mainly Bantu, populations. It provides a brief description
of their lifestyle, their socioeconomic status, and a
participatory diagnosis of the key factors that lead to
their current impoverishment and marginalization. The study
discusses the rationale for protecting Pygmy culture and

This paper develops a methodology for
regional disaggregated estimation and mapping of the areas
that are ex-ante the most vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change and variability and applies it to Tajikistan,
a mountainous country highly vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change. The authors construct the vulnerability
index as a function of exposure to climate variability and
natural disasters, sensitivity to the impacts of that

This paper examines the impacts of
weather shocks, defined as rainfall or growing degree days
more than a standard deviation from their respective
long-run means, on household consumption per capita and
child height-for-age. The results reveal that the current
risk-coping mechanisms are not effective in protecting these
two dimensions of welfare from erratic weather patterns.
These findings imply that the change in the patterns of

The authors use regression analysis to
assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in
rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks:
(i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant
shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset
period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses,
the analysis finds that a delay in the monsoon onset does
not have a significant impact on the welfare of rice