I study the effects of income uncertainty on household schooling decisions. Households with more volatile incomes have a greater incentive to build a buffer stock to insure against unforeseen adverse shocks, and non-enrollment can be part of such a strategy. I use data from rural Burkina Faso,...

This paper presents the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), a measure of acute poverty, understood as a person’s inability to meet minimum international standards in indicators related to the Millennium Development Goals and to core functionings. It constitutes the first implementation of...

Estimates of the historic and future scale and location or “geography” of global poverty by income/expenditure have a long and contentious history. In recent projections made on global poverty, methods and assumptions vary so widely it is impossible to compare studies in a systematic way...