This document presents a systematic review of empirical approaches to the identification and measurement of the middle class as the concept is used in the applied literature. It then presents an arguably less arbitrary definition of the middle class which is based on sound principles of...

This study investigates the impact of recent crises in Argentina (including the severe downturn of 2001-2002) on health and education outcomes. The identification strategy relies on both the inter-temporal and the cross-provincial co-variation between changes in regional GDP and outcomes by...

Understanding the selection of workers into informality is a policy priority to design programs to increase formalization across Sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten workers are informal. This paper estimates a model of self-selection with entry barriers into the formal sector to identify...

Measuring job quality across countries has been challenging and has relied typically on a single indicator, such as formality or wages. To contribute to this critical policy issue, this paper presents a first global estimate of job quality departing from microdata. It assembles a harmonized...

Understanding the selection of workers into informality is a policy priority to design programs to increase formalization across Sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten workers are informal. This paper estimates a model of self-selection with entry barriers into the formal sector to identify...

Senegal has experienced a rapid expansion in fixed and mobile broadband Internet infrastructure over the past decade. This paper examines the relationship between access to broadband internet and household welfare between 2011 and 2018 by integrating the latest two rounds of household budget...

Evidence about the effect of exports on welfare at the local level is scarce. Using a unique dataset of international trade and poverty maps for almost 2,000 Mexican municipalities between 2004 and 2014, the study presented in this paper provides new evidence on the impact of a significant rise...

Over the last two decades Mexico has had an open trade regime, experienced macroeconomic stability, and made substantial progress in education. However, average workers¿ earnings have stagnated and earnings for workers with more schooling have declined, compressing the earnings distribution and...

Middle class values have long been perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. In this paper we investigate the relation between class (measured by the position in the income distribution), values, and political orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin American...

Adopted on September 8 of 2000, the United Nations Millennium Declaration stated as its first goal that countries ...[further] resolve to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world's people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from...