Population policies are defined here as voluntary programs which help people control their fertility and expect to improve their lives. There are few studies of the long-run effects of policy-induced changes in fertility on the welfare of women, such as policies that subsidize the diffusion and...

In developing countries, rising incomes, increased demand for more skilled labor, and government investments of considerable resources on building and equipping schools and paying teachers have contributed to global convergence in enrollment rates and completed years of schooling. Nevertheless,...

This paper is a practical guide (a toolkit) for researchers, students and practitioners wishing to introduce randomization as part of a research design in the field. It first covers the rationale for the use of randomization, as a solution to selection bias and a partial solution to publication...

We analyze in this chapter the development and evaluation of a new genre of social programs termed conditional cash transfer programs which have become widespread across Latin America and are now extending outside the region. Conditional transfer programs typically link monetary transfers to...

Building on the large and growing empirical literature on the political behavior of individuals in low income countries, this Chapter seeks to understand corruption through the lens of political economy - particularly in terms of the political and economic differences between rich and poor...

What do we know about the role of extended families and kinship networks for redistributing resources? What gaps in our knowledge most need to be filled? How can we best organize current work and identify priorities for future research? These questions are important for several reasons:...

This chapter surveys the voluminous literature on household formation and marriage markets in developing countries. We begin by discussing the many social and economic factors that incite individuals to live together in households. Many of these factors are particularly important in poor...

Hundreds of millions of children in less developed countries suffer from poor health and nutrition. Children in most less developed countries also complete far fewer years of schooling, and learn less per year of schooling, than do children in developed countries. Recent research has shown that...

This chapter considers methods for evaluating the impact of social programs in the presence of nonrandom program placement or program selection. It first presents the evaluation problem as a missing data problem and then considers various solutions proposed in the statistics and econometrics...