In this article we analyze trends in income inequality and the distribution of income in rural China from 1987 to 1999. We find an uneven but long-run increase in inequality in rural China and show that nearly half of the rural population was not much better off in 1999 than at the start of the...

Despite the widespread belief that a substantial assault on poverty requires targeting scarce resources toward the poor, practitioners frequently claim that targeted programs deliver fewer benefits to poor households than do universal programs. This article evaluates this concern through an...

In the context of Africa, which firms are driven out of business? Given that many markets do not function efficiently in Africa, the determinants of firm exit may not be the same fundamentals that force business closure elsewhere. In particular, less productive firms may not be the ones forced...

Numerous studies indicate that female education is a major determinant of fertility and that the estimated effects are large relative to other variables, including family planning program variables. There are, however, two serious deficiencies in the research relating educational attainment to...

This article examines returns to schooling in the Philippines and Thailand, using recent employee surveys in manufacturing industries. Empirical results show that (i) schooling returns steadily increase as education attainment increases in Thailand, but the returns increase only at university...

Concerns about a worsening "digital divide" between rich and poor countries parallel the hope that information technology (IT) could increase economic growth in developing countries. Little research, however, has explored the role of public policies, and of regulation in particular, in IT...

This article explores dynamic links among the health status of children, measured by standardized height, socioeconomic characteristics of their parents and communities, and related shocks, using a 4-period-long panel of children from Russia's Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. Specific attention...

In this article, we examine the link between child labor and financial development using cross-country data. We show that child labor and financial development display a significant negative relationship, which is particularly strong in the sample of low-income countries and is robust for a wide...

This article estimates the impact of language barriers on school achievement and the potential ameliorating role of bilingual education. Using large household data sets from poor rural communities in Mexico, we find that parental language (failure to speak Spanish) represents an important...

The reliability of the household consumption-based (Engel curve) methodology in detecting gender bias has been called into question because it has generally failed to confirm bias even where it exists. This article seeks to find explanations for this failure by exploiting a data set that has...