Summary Households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks leading to high consumption volatility. A household's currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household's general vulnerability to poverty. In the...

With about five children born per woman and a population growth rate of 2.5 per cent per year, sub-Saharan Africa has been the world’s fastest growing region over the last decade. Economists have often argued that high fertility rates are mainly driven by women’s demand for children (and not...

The international debate on the question of whether shared and/or public sanitation facilities should be considered improved is still open. The concern is that a shared sanitation facility cannot be maintained in hygienic conditions when used by too many people. The analysis of 1’500 randomly...

Results of a representative survey conducted with 1’500 poor households in Uganda’s capital during November 2010 show that the majority of Kampala’s urban poor have access to on-site sanitation facilities. Despite the widespread accessibility to sanitation, the conditions of many...

The numerous proposed measures of multi-period poverty and vulnerability have until now not taken into account the insights from behavioral economics. In this paper we argue that recent evidence on individuals' decision making is of high relevance for the measurement of poverty when switching...

70 percent of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa does not use adequate sanitation facilities. In rural Benin, as much as 95 percent of the population has no access to improved sanitation. This paper explores why households remain without latrines analyzing a representative sample of 2000...