Teenage pregnancy has been a cause of concern for policy makers because it is associated with a complex and often adverse social context for women. It is seen as the cause of lower social and economic achievement for mothers and their children, and as the potential determinant of...

This paper constructs a model in which a social norm is internalized. The social disapproval of people who violate the norm -stigmatization-- is incorporated as a reduction in their utility. That reduction in utility is lower as the proportion of the population that violates the norm increases....

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 2001–02) 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...

Este estudio investiga el impacto de las recientes crisis en Argentina (incluyendo la grave recesión de 2001-2002) en la salud y la educación. La estrategia de identificación se basa en la covarianza entre los cambios en el PIB regional y los resultados por provincia en términos...

In 1993 two thirds of the labour force were working in the informal sector, without the benefits of both social security and labor legislation. Three facts will reinforce this: the working population grows at a faster rate than the global population, the participation of women in labor will...

Identifying relevant variables for multidimensional poverty analysis depends on how different dimensions complement or substitute each other, given the existence of attributes highly correlated with household income. Dimensions weakly correlated with household income highlight the relevance of...

Turkey's poverty reduction performance in the 2000s has been remarkably consistent. Extreme and moderate poverty have fallen considerably since 2003. Between 2002 and 2011, extreme poverty fell from 13 percent to 5 percent, while moderate poverty halved from 44 percent to 22 percent...

Tajikistan was one of the fastest growing countries in the Europe and Central Asia region during the last decade. The economic growth was widely shared by the population and as a result poverty (measured by the national poverty line) declined from 73 percent in 2003 to 47 percent in 2009...

The paper combines state-level fiscal data with household survey data to assess the links between sub-national fiscal policy and income inequality in Brazil over the period 1995-2011. The results indicate that a tighter fiscal stance at the sub-national level is not associated with a...