The report reviews the performance of various income support systems for the unemployed, and provides guidelines for developing and transition economies. It finds that: a) Unemployment insurance enables a high degree of consumption smoothing, performs well under various types of shocks, and acts...

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of demand-side subsidy approaches for improving poor households'access to housing services. It begins with a discussion of the rationale for stand-alone housing assistance programs, and a description of the ongoing transition away from traditional...

This paper reviews Bank interventions that supported the welfare of children in the last decade. Though the Bank has always addressed children's development, and protection through its focus of broader economic development, and social protection, it has recently intensified its efforts to...

Although availability of quantitative information on the extent of AIDS in Africa is improving, the socio-economic implications of the epidemic remain poorly understood. This paper explores this issue in Uganda, focusing on households who received foster children between 1992 and 2000, a...

This report examines the two most common programs that provide cash compensation to unemployed workers: unemployment insurance (UI) and unemployment assistance (UA). It compares them in two areas: costs and labor market disincentives. The cost analysis first derives a framework for examining...

This paper will consider a range of consumer-oriented subsidy instruments, including general subsidies, and tax exemptions as well as targeted quotas. Section II discusses the distribution, or incidence of the subsidy expenditures for all these instruments. It focuses primarily on food as the...

This paper surveys many aspects and issues of child labor, including its causes and effects as well as policies associated with it. Child labor has come to be considered an expression of poverty, both a cause and an effect of underdevelopment. Child labor cannot be viewed in isolation from...

The paper presents the main approaches, and tools to measuring poverty, and vulnerability. This involves among other things, the important issues of the setting of poverty lines, of the statistical use of surveys, of the empirical measurement of living standards, and of making poverty...

The creation of fully funded, privately managed pension systems may have significant positive direct effects on savings, growth, and welfare. However, the indirect link, via capital market development, may be as important. This hypothesis is verified with evidence from emerging economies that...

At the beginning of the 21st century, worldwide spending in information and communications technology (ICT) passed the threshold of U$S 2 trillions. In this context, ICT spending in low- and middle-income countries has grown faster than in the developed countries, over recent years. The Bank has...