Although there is a widespread belief that scaling up HIV voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) programs in Africa will have large prevention benefits through reductions in risk behaviors, these claims are difficult to establish from existing evaluations of VCT. Considerations from behavioral...

Little is known in developing country environments about how a child's cognitive skills manifested in the first years of schooling are related to later educational success, because the panel data needed to analyze this question have been lacking. This study takes advantage of a unique data set...

Summary This paper considers evidence for the effects of policies on gender gaps in education, distinguishing between policies that are ostensibly gender neutral and those that explicitly target girls. The demand for girls' schooling is often more responsive than boys' to gender neutral changes...

The effects of changes in various health indicators on hourly earnings in different sectors of the labour market are examined using survey data from Conakry, Guinea. Greater height, which is associated with greater strength, raises earnings of men both in self-employment and the private wage...

This paper uses linked household, school, and test score data from Madagascar to investigate the relation of household characteristics and school factors to the cognitive skills of children ages 8--10 and 14--16. In contrast to most achievement test studies in developing countries, the study...

Client satisfaction surveys in developing countries are increasingly being promoted as a means of understanding healthcare service quality and the demand for these services. However, concerns have been raised about the reliability of responses in such surveys: for example, 'courtesy bias' may...