The Gini coefficient of labor earnings in Brazil fell by nearly a fifth between 1995 and 2012, from 0.50 to 0.41. The decline in other measures of earnings inequality was even larger, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40 percent. Applying micro-econometric decomposition...

Two related measures of educational inequality are proposed: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity. The former is the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores. Its selection is informed by consideration of two measurement issues that have typically...

A growing number of developing economies are providing cash transfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and used to assess the...

This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to the choice of poverty...

A growing number of developing economies are providing cash transfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and used to assess the...