Higher incomes for women can have significant beneficial impacts for poverty reduction both in the short run by providing more resources to households and in the long run by increasing investments in the human capital of children. While substantial research has been done using microeconomic...

This paper uses structural path analysis to examine the transmission channels through which an initial shock travels through the economy to affect other accounts of a Social Accounting Matrix. The focus is on the impact of shocks on labor income by gender in Tanzania and the analysis is used to...

In a similar way to Input-Output (IO) tables, Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) have been used in the literature mostly to assess the distributional impact of changes in production structure on household income. Yet they can also be used to assess the impact on price shocks on the cost of goods...

This paper provides a review of part of the literature on inequality and social welfare, with a special focus on the Gini index. The paper first presents the extended Gini index used for measuring inequality, as well as the source decomposition of the Gini used to analyze how changes in income...

This paper presents some analytical techniques to help policymakers gauge the technical and fiscal feasibility of development targets. While each of the techniques discussed below has deficiencies, taken together they have proven very useful in providing a sense of realism to target setting. The...

While there are different estimates of poverty in Mexico, there is general agreement that poverty is widespread, and that the reduction of poverty should be a key area of focus for the new Administration. Beyond lack of income, poverty is a complex and multidimensional phenomena which affects...

The strategy of the Zedillo Administration for the reduction of poverty relied on both broad-based social expenditures and targeted poverty programs. Broad-based social expenditures are devoted to the areas of social security and healthcare, education, job training, and housing. Targeted poverty...

Do poor people benefit more or less than the nonpoor from an expansion in access to public services? And do those benefits depend on the existing level of access? Answering these questions is essential to strategies for empowering (or “investing in”) poor people, but the lack of panel data...

For many years the government of Mexico has implemented a large training program for the unemployed. The program has been evaluated twice before with similar methodologies. These two evaluations yielded encouraging results in that the program apparently reduces unemployment and increases...

Due in part to 40 years of cyclical violence, economic growth in Burundi has remained well below the sub-Saharan Africa average, and Burundi is now the third poorest country in the world. The status quo is unacceptable, and it is essential that the Government drive the changes needed to achieve...