The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....

Children regularly receiving health visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently simple events are taken for granted in developed countries. In Latin America, despite...

Returns to schooling in urban Argentina for a ten-year period are estimated. In addition to comparable earnings functions, we also estimate the returns using quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution. Over time, men in higher quantiles have higher...

This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought....

The paper is based on the premise that effective institutional reforms for service delivery require a carefully-considered institutional "fitting" process as opposed to transplantation of "international best practices." The paper asks how the specific institutional contexts of a given country...