Working Paper
Health Shocks and Coping Strategies
The objectives of the study are three-fold: to investigate who are vulnerable to welfare loss from health shocks, what are the household responses to cope with the economic burden of health shocks and if policy responses like state health insurance...
Policy Brief
Vulnerability in Developing Countries
The first Millennium Development Goal aims to halve the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty. In this Research Brief, emanating from the UNU-WIDER project on ‘Fragility and Development’, the premise is that we should also be...
Working Paper
Informality, Growth, and Development in Africa
The informal sector makes up an overwhelming share of both gross domestic product and total employment in Africa. In this paper, we lay out some of the basic characteristics of the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa, relevant institutions, and...
Journal Special Issue
Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Violent Conflict in Developing Countries
This study surveys the small but growing field of entrepreneurship and conflict in developing countries, which is also the topic of this special issue of the Journal of Small business and Entrepreneurship. We review recent contributions on how mass...
Working Paper
The Impact of Food Price Volatility on Consumer Welfare in Cameroon
The objective of this paper is to analyse the welfare effects of food price volatility on Cameroonian consumers. Using data from the third Cameroonian Household Consumption Surveys, the price elasticities are obtained from a Quadratic Almost Ideal...
Working Paper
Intra-Household Inequalities in Child Rights and Well-Being
This paper attempts to measure the extent of inequality within households and its contribution to overall levels of inequality in child well-being. The paper analyses the distribution of resources (outcomes) between girls and boys for four indicators...
Working Paper
New patterns of structural change and effects on inclusive development
This study explores the question of structural change and inclusive development in South Africa and Brazil. Using Census data from the two countries, the analysis combines a household level multidimensional indicator of well-being with the...
Working Paper
Social capital, political connections, and household Enterprises
Social capital and political connections can play an important role in developing countries where markets fail and institutions are weak. This paper explores their role in household micro-enterprise operation and success in the rural low-income...
Working Paper
Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change in Uganda
This paper hypothesizes that adaptation to climate change is influenced by the gender of the decision maker of the household. Using a two-wave household panel survey dataset, choice of adaptation strategies employed by female- and male-headed...
Working Paper
Modeling Fuel Choice Among Households in Northern Cameroon
The present study aims to explore economic and socio-demographic factors that influence the household’s probability to switch from firewood to clean fuels in northern Cameroon. The paper employs an ordered probit model to construct cooking patterns...
Working Paper
Connections and the Allocation of Public Benefits
We explore the relationship between connections and public transfers in decentralized poverty-targeting programmes. Using panel data from Vietnam we find evidence that households with connections to local government are more likely to be classified...
Working Paper
Health shocks and the intergenerational transmission of inequality
This paper explores the intergenerational effects of parental health shocks using longitudinal data from the Young Lives project conducted in Andhra Pradesh, India. It is found that health shocks to poorer parents reduce investments in children...
Book Chapter
Implications of Accelerated Agricultural Growth on Household Incomes and Poverty in Ethiopia :
Book chapter in: P. Dorosh and S. Rashid (eds) Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges.Ethiopia’s economy has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Although growth in agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) from 1998 to...
Working Paper
Economics Theories of the Household
The aim of this paper is to review the principal assumptions and aspects of the unitary household model and collective models of household behaviour. Empirical studies are presented to assess whether the theories can offer adequate descriptions of...
Working Paper
Gender-based violence and gender bias in schooling decision
This paper examines the impact of gender based violence against women and girls (GBV), in the environment the children live in, on school attendance, school achievement, as well as boys’ and girls’ dropouts. Based on the sixth phase of the...
Working Paper
Inter- and Intra-household Linkages Between the Informal and Formal Sector
Given the current focus of international development policy on pro-poor growth and poverty reduction, the role of the informal sector in the process of economic development is again at the top of the research and policy agenda. A key question is if...
Working Paper
Intersociety Literacy Comparisons
Basu and Foster (1998) characterized a sophisticated literacy measure using five axioms. In this paper we argue that if a measure satisfies three of their five axioms, namely, anonymity, monotonicity and externality, then also it becomes suitable in...
Journal Article
Commodity Prices and Intra-Household Labor Allocation
Volatility in commodity markets poses a distinct risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture. We combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long-running panel on coffee-growing households in Vietnam to...
Working Paper
Coffee price volatility and intra-household labour supply
Volatility in commodity markets poses an acute risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture. We combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long-running panel on coffee-growing households in Vietnam to...
Working Paper
Gender Aspects of Urban Economic Growth and Development
The urbanization process is frequently shaped by prevailing constructions of gender. The recognition of this phenomenon is vital both in diagnosis and policy terms. This paper aims at illustrating the importance of gender in three major related...
Book Chapter
Informality, Growth and Development in Africa
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Working Paper
Does Women’s Status Matter for Food Security? Evidence from Bangladesh
Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper investigates the link between female status and food security. Employing three different indicators of female status – husband’s and wife’s assets brought at marriage, female share of...
Working Paper
Domestic Violence Against Women
Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper explores the determinants of domestic violence against women as well as its implications for the resources allocated to women. The findings reveal that higher education of women and that...
Working Paper
Environmental Determinants of Child Mortality in Kenya
This paper focuses on the determinants of infant and child mortality in Kenya. It specifically examines how infant and child mortality is related to the household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics, such as mother’s education, source...
Working Paper
Household Access to Microcredit and Children’s Food Security in Rural Malawi
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit...
Working Paper
Women’s Status and Child Labour in Nepal
This paper uses data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey 2 (2003/2004) to find evidence to whether children are less likely to work and more likely to attend school in a household where the mother has a say in the intra-family decision-making...
Working Paper
Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in China 1995-2002
This paper investigates some major changes in the wealth distribution in China using the data from two national household surveys conducted in 1995 and 2002. The surveys collected rich information on household wealth and its components, enabling a...
Journal Article
Do gender wage differences within households influence women's empowerment and welfare?
Using household data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper utilizes machine learning techniques – IV LASSO – that allows for the treatment of unconfoundedness in the selection of observables and unobservables to...