Vietnam's rapid economic growth in the 1990s greatly increased the incomes of Vietnamese households, which led to a dramatic decline in poverty. Over the same period, child malnutrition rates in Vietnam, as measured by low height for age in children under 5, fell from 50 percent in 1992-93 to 34...

The authors assess the extent to which Vietnam's rapid economic growth in the 1990s was accompanied by reductions in poverty. They also investigate factors that contribute to certain households benefiting more than others. Using information from two household surveys, the Vietnam Living...

Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. This paper provides an overview of the factors behind this exemplary...

This research estimates the impact of international child sponsorship on adult income and wealth of formerly sponsored children using data on 10,144 individuals in six countries. To identify causal effects, an age-eligibility rule followed from 1980 to 1992 is utilized that limited sponsorship...

Vietnam's high economic growth in the 1990s led to sharp reductions in poverty, yet over the same time period inequality increased. This increased inequality may be less worrisome if Vietnamese households experience a high degree of income mobility over time. This is because high mobility...

Impact evaluations aim to measure the outcomes that can be attributed to a specific policy or intervention. Although there have been excellent reviews of the different methods that an evaluator can choose in order to estimate impact, there has not been sufficient attention given to questions...

Many educators and policymakers have argued for lenient grade promotion policy - even automatic promotion - in developing country settings where grade retention rates are high. The argument assumes that grade retention discourages persistence or continuation in school and that the promotion of...

Data from 919 household surveys conducted between 1960 and 2012, spanning 147 economies, are used to evaluate the relationship between rising life expectancy at birth and lifetime years of schooling for successive birth cohorts between 1905 and 1988. The study finds significant positive effects...

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of whether students learn in school. Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that many students are not learning what they are expected to learn, how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of much policy debate in rich...

More attention and resources have been devoted in recent years to early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries. Rigorous studies on the effectiveness of ECD-related programs for improving children's development in various dimensions in the developing world are scant. The...