There is little evidence showing whether health information transmitted via text messages can change health and educational outcomes. We conducted a randomized field experiment involving 900 primary students in rural China to study whether a health education campaign conducted via text message...

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a high profile initiative to narrow the inequality of access to ICT and improve educational performance. However, there is little empirical evidence on its impacts. In order to assess the effectiveness of OLPC, we conducted a randomized experiment of OLPC with...

Summary There is growing interest in the rural non-farm sector in developing countries as a contributor to economic growth, employment generation, livelihood diversification, and poverty reduction. Access to infrastructure is identified in some studies as a factor that affects non-farm rural...

We use longitudinal household data and propensity score weighting methods to assess the impact of Brazil’s Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer program on schooling outcomes of children aged 6–17years. Weak aggregate effects mask considerable heterogeneity. Among girls, the program...

Rural-to-urban migration is an inherent part of the economic development process, yet it is relatively understudied in sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we attempt to describe the present state of rural–urban migration from several different angles. Migration rates are quite low in several...

Conditional cash transfer programs with female beneficiaries have scope to increase women’s intrahousehold decision-making power. Yet quantitative evidence is limited. We show that Brazil’s Bolsa Família program has significant impacts on women’s decision making, but with considerable...

Remittances are used by households for insurance, investment, and income. Flows from internal migrants are relatively understudied in Africa, where migrants are less likely to remit to their origin households. We use a unique matched migrant sample to study what drives the low remittance rates...

Using rural household panel data from three Chinese provinces, this paper identifies determinants of long-term poverty and tests the duration dependence on the probability to leave poverty. Special emphasis is given to the selection of the poverty line and inter-regional differences across...

Summary The overall goal of the paper is to better understand the development of groundwater markets in northern China. Field survey shows that groundwater markets in northern China have emerged and are developing rapidly. Developing in a number of ways that make them appear somewhat similar to...