This paper examines the earnings premiums associated with different types of employment in 73 countries. Workers are divided into four categories: non-professional own-account workers, employers and own-account professionals, informal wage employees, and formal wage employees. Approximately half...

This paper analyzes heterogeneity among the self-employed in 74 developing countries, representing two-thirds of the population of the developing world. After profiling how worker characteristics vary by employment status, it classifies self-employed workers outside agriculture as "successful"...

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to estimate the rate of extreme poverty among children in the developing world. The estimates are based on the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank poverty estimates. Of children under age 18 years, 19.5 percent are...

Using data from Indonesia, Newhouse and Beegle to evaluate the impact of school type on academic achievement of junior secondary school students (grades 7-9). Students that graduate from public junior secondary schools, controlling for a variety of other characteristics, score 0.15 to 0.3...

Can features extracted from high spatial resolution satellite imagery accurately estimate poverty and economic well-being? This paper investigates this question by extracting object and texture features from satellite images of Sri Lanka, which are used to estimate poverty rates and average log...

This paper presents results from four simulations of the impact of potential tax reforms in Pakistan on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. The simulations are carried out in the context of a dynamic computational general equilibrium model that incorporates endogenous tax evasion. The...

Crime rates in Papua New Guinea's capital city of Port Moresby are among the highest in the world. Few youth work, and good jobs are scarce. In 2013, the National Capital District Commission partnered with the World Bank to implement the Urban Youth Employment Project. The project offers...

Although Sri Lanka has made significant progress in social and economic development over the past decade, the Northern and Eastern provinces that faced the brunt of the decades-long conflict remain disproportionately poor. To understand the labor market dimensions of poverty in these regions,...

This paper investigates the relationship between sectoral growth patterns and employment outcomes. A broad cross-country analysis reveals that in middle-income countries, employment responds more to growth in less productive and more labor-intensive sectors. Employment in middle-income countries...

This paper utilizes a cross-country panel of 83 developing countries to examine how changes in cohort size are correlated with subsequent employment outcomes for workers at different ages. The results depend on countries' level of development. In low-income countries, young adults that are born...