The financial sector in rural areas, where most of the poor people in sub-Saharan Africa are found, has transformed massively in recent times, notably through the increased penetration of several types of rural financial intermediaries in addition to rural and community banks and microfinance...

Most countries around the world implement some form of a safety net program for poor households. A widespread concern is that such programs crowd out private-sector jobs. But they could also improve workers' welfare by allowing them to take on more risk, for example through self-employment. This...

Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes are widespread in developing countries. We focus on one such administrative failure - the persistent delay in paying beneficiaries on time in India’s iconic anti-poverty programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Using a...

While political dynamics differ greatly from one place to another, rural areas continue to have legitimate grievances. Poverty in rural areas is both more prevalent and more acute than in urban areas - about 80 per cent of the world's extremely poor people live in rural areas.

The North Indian village of Palanpur has been the subject of close study over a period of six decades from 1957/8 to 2015. Himanshu et al. (2018) have documented the evolution of the village economy over this period in an exhaustive study entitled How Lives Change: Palanpur, India and...

This study aims to address a gap in existing data and literature regarding the socio-economic profile of agricultural workers within rural households. It implemented a survey collecting panel data on the full range of labor and economic activities of rural households with agricultural workers,...

Success in reducing monetary poverty in Southeast Asia does not fully translate into reduction in malnutrition. Using a three-year panel data from one province each in Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam, we study the correlation between monetary poverty and nutritional outcomes of children under...