How and why do the benefits of better transport differ between genders? A non-experimental impact evaluation of a large-scale rural roads project in Vietnam combined with qualitative data collection suggests some possibilities. While roads improve trading opportunities for all households, only...

Migrant workers are a key part of Indonesia’s economy. The equivalent of almost 7 percent of Indonesia’s labor force, an estimated 9 million people, work overseas and in 2016, over IDR 159 trillion (US dollar 11.2 billion) was sent back to Indonesia in the form of remittances. However,...

An analysis of the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project (LASED) in Cambodia suggests that the project was highly successful in identifying "poor" beneficiaries. In this brief we look into the community-based targeting mechanism used in LASED to understand what design...

Indonesian secondary students perform worse academically than their peers in other countries, especially boys. In the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Indonesia ranked among the worse of the 72 participating countries. More than half of 15-year-olds could read a...

Agriculture is the predominant economic activity in Timor-Leste, with more than 80 percent of households engaged in at least minor farming work, with 70 percent of farmers over the age of 401. Despite its leading role in the livelihoods of Timorese households, the agricultural sector has not...

Female labor force participation (FLFP) in Indonesia lags behind other countries in the region. Building on previous work that shows that unmet childcare needs are associated with low FLFP in Indonesia, here, we look at the impact of childcare availability on FLFP. The findings suggest that an...

Vietnam has achieved important progress in closing the gender gap in education and increasing women’s labor force participation. However, are women’s labor market opportunities on par with those of men? We analyze the gender earnings gap and establish that women’s propensity to work in...

In this brief, the authors explore whether lack of access to childcare is a constraint to female labor force participation (LFP) in Indonesia, a country where female LFP lags far below the regional average. Using household and labor force survey data, we find that low female LFP is linked to...