International migration has profound
implications for human welfare, and African governments have
had only a limited influence on welfare outcomes, for good
or ill. Improved efforts to manage migration will require
information on the nature and impact of migratory patterns.
This book seeks to contribute toward this goal, by reviewing
previous research and providing new analyses (including
surveys and case studies) as well as by formulating policy

The female population deficit in India
has been explained in a number of ways, but the great
heterogeneity in the deficit across districts within India
still remains an open question. This paper argues that
across India, a largely agrarian economy, soil texture
varies exogenously and determines the workability of the
soil and the technology used in land preparation. Deep
tillage, possible only in lighter and looser loamy soils,

This paper studies the use of labor
markets to mitigate the impact of violent shocks on
households in rural areas in Colombia. It examines changes
in the labor supply from on-farm to off-farm labor as a
means of coping with the violent shock and the ensuing
redistribution of time within households. It identifies the
heterogeneous response by gender. Because the incidence of
violent shocks is not exogenous, the analysis uses

This paper revisits the role of land
measurement error in the inverse farm size and productivity
relationship. By making use of data from a nationally
representative household survey from Uganda, in which
self-reported land size information is complemented by plot
measurements collected using Global Position System devices,
the authors reject the hypothesis that the inverse
relationship may just be a statistical artifact linked to

This report aims to show how
macroeconomic policies create differential opportunities for
women and men. This volume comprises nine chapters covering
four broad themes: gender as a category of analysis in
macroeconomics; the implications of gender for macroeconomic
aggregates, in particular consumption and economic growth;
the role of gender in the labor market, globalization, and
access to credit; and gender budgeting. Chapters one and two

The countries of Central and Eastern
Europe and Central Asia have a long history of striving for
gender equality, especially in the public sphere. Not only
was this an important goal during the socialist era, but
governments continued to pursue gender equality even during
the difficult years of transition. The governments in the
region allocated substantial resources toward the health and
education of both women and men. They also adopted

Poor rural women in the developing world
spend considerable time collecting water. How then do they
respond to improved access to water infrastructure? Does it
increase their participation in income earning market-based
activities? Does it improve the health and education
outcomes of their children? To help address these questions,
a new approach for dealing with the endogeneity of
infrastructure placement in cross-sectional surveys is

The diaspora of developing countries can
be a potent force for development for their countries of
origin, through remittances, but also, importantly, through
promotion of trade, investments, research, innovation, and
knowledge and technology transfers. This book brings
relevant experience from both developed and developing
countries to bear on issues confronting today's
governments in linking with their diaspora. The chapters

This book suggests how that exploration
should be undertaken, and how a monitoring system that has a
solid conceptual basis and is both easy to operate and
reasonable in cost can then be put into practice. Long the
ideal of many scholars and observers of urban problems, such
a system may now be close to realization. In this book,
examples of Latin American cities are used as case studies.
As argued in the first chapter, there are good reasons to

This paper examines the dynamics of
poverty and vulnerability in Haiti using various data sets.
As living conditions survey data are not comparable in this
country, we first propose to use the three rounds of the
Demographic Health Survey (DHS) available before the
earthquake. Decomposing household assets changes into age
and cohort effects, we use repeated cross-section data to
identify and estimate the variance of shocks on assets and

This book reports on the status and
evolution of human opportunity in Latin America and the
Caribbean (LAC). It builds on the 2008 publication in
several directions. First, it uses newly available data to
expand the set of opportunities and personal circumstances
under analysis. The data are representative of about 200
million children living in 19 countries over the last 15
years. Second, it compares human opportunity in LAC with

This book provides an overview of the
World Bank's Eco2 cities : ecological cities as
economic cities initiative. The objective of the Eco2 cities
initiative is to help cities in developing countries achieve
a greater degree of ecological and economic sustainability.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the
Eco2 cities initiative framework. It describes the approach,
beginning with the background and rationale. Key challenges