This paper compares how results using various methods to construct asset indices match results using per capita expenditures. The analysis shows that inferences about inequalities in education, health care use, fertility, child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes are quite robust to the...

In recent years, the number of surveys on access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries or within the same country over time. A randomized experiment in Ghana tested whether the identity of the...

Panama has made significant progress in reducing poverty in recent years, progress that compares positively to that of the rest of the Latin America and Caribbean region. This report takes stock of this progress and reflects on the constraints and opportunities that Panama faces in continuing on...

In recent years, the number of surveys of access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries, or within the same country over time. This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in Ghana to test...

In recent years, the number of surveys on access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries or within the same country over time. A randomized experiment in Ghana tested whether the identity of the...

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of gender differences by looking at the available individual and household level...

Across six Sub-Saharan African countries, grade 4 students of teachers who were hired after a free primary education reform perform worse, on average, on language and math tests-statistically significantly so in language-than students of teachers who were hired before the reform. Teachers who...

This study explores whether Free Primary Education reforms in 6 Sub-Saharan Africa countries affected the quality of teachers in a way that can be detected several years after the reform. It does so by analyzing student- and teacher-level data collected between 5 (Togo) and 16 (Uganda) years...

The authors combine data from 84 Demographic and Health Surveys from 46 countries to analyze trends and socioeconomic differences in adult mortality, calculating mortality based on the sibling mortality reports collected from female respondents aged 15-49. The analysis yields four main findings....

This book is about the threats to education quality in the developing world that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews the observed phenomenon of service delivery failures in public education: cases where programs and policies increase the inputs to education but do not produce...