There is very limited experimental evidence of the impact of large-scale, government-led school meals programs on child educational achievements in Sub-Saharan Africa. We address this gap by reporting treatment effects from a nationwide randomized trial of the Government of Ghana’s school...

Social protection programs such as cash or food transfers support current poverty and inequality reduction goals, while at the same time enhance future productivity through human capital investments. Yet, the quantification of their overall productivity and equity benefits is challenging. We...

Most impact evaluations of conditional cash transfers and unconditional cash transfers focus on the returns to increased human capital investments that will be reaped largely or exclusively in the future (that is, when current children have increased productivity as adults). But such programs...

It is widely recognized that there is a continuum of physical growth and social-emotional and cognitive development across the life course, from the preconception health status of the mother through adulthood. This paper lays out a core economic model that illustrates the interrelationship of...

Agricultural insurance has attracted considerable interest in recent years. Innovations in agricultural index insurance have raised expectations that the private sector can overcome shortcomings associated with more traditional indemnity-based products like multi-peril crop insurance, and...