In this paper authors use non-experimental data from government schools in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, two of the largest Indian states, to present average school outcomes by contract status of teachers. The authors find that after controlling for teacher characteristics and school fixed...

This paper uses survey data from representative samples of government and private schools in two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, to explore systematic differences between the two school types. The authors find that private school students have higher test scores than...

The education sector in Bhutan has been growing steadily since the 1960s and concomitantly the literacy rates of the population have also been steadily going up over time. The mostly mountainous country regards education as central to its national development. Every cohort has seen an increasing...

At a time when the World's leading economies are rapidly greying, India is set to have the largestand youngest workforce the world has ever seen. Indeed, by 2020, when the global shortage ofmanpower soars to 57 million, India is expected to be the world's leading provider of human resources,...

This paper stresses that despite the fact that India is a fast developing economy difficulties have led the Government to conclude that far more needs to be done to engender more employment opportunities for the majority of Indians, to enable them to participate in the benefits of growth and to...

As yet, little is known about the HIV epidemic status and potential in Afghanistan. The country seems to be at an early epidemic phase with low HIV prevalence, but there are a number of underlying vulnerability factors that could lead to the conditions for epidemic expansion, including drug...

After three decades of conflict, Afghanistan needs a well-trained and flexible workforce to help rebuild the country. The conflict has decimated Afghanistan's training infrastructure, torn the fabric of human society, and relegated the country to the status of one of the least developed in the...

This paper looks at Nepal's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with respect to health and education. The paper is organized with part one dealing with education and is divided into three sections: section A details the current state of Nepal's MDG indicators and analyzes progress towards the...

Addressing the social protection needs of households during emergencies is a major development issue. Without social protection measures, such as cash transfers for basic needs or workfare programs, many households faced with large economic and natural shocks might deplete their human and...

The Chief Minister's Initiative on Primary Health Care (CMIPHC) is an innovative effort in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is aimed at improving the delivery of primary health care by strengthening the services provided in basic health units (BHUs). There are about 3,060 BHUs in the Punjab...