Understanding the institutional features that can improve learning outcomes and reduce inequality is a top priority for international and development organizations around the world. Economists appear to have a good case for support to non-governmental alternatives as suppliers of schooling....

Does the government control of school systems facilitate equality in school quality? There is a trade-off. On the one hand, government direct control of schools, typically through a large scale hierarchical organization, could produce equalization across schools by providing uniformity in...

Most countries' education policies make raising average student performance their priority. Yet just as in the football World Cup, the quality of the top performers is the key to competing successfully at the global level. Lant Pritchett and Martina Viarengo explore this challenge in the...

This paper examines the variation across countries and evolution over time of life expectancy. Using historical data going back to the beginning of the 20th century several basic facts about the relationship between national income and life expectancy are established. The paper shows that even...

In this paper we establish six stylized facts related to marriage and work in Latin America and present a simple model to account for them. First, skilled women are less likely to be married than unskilled women. Second, skilled women are less likely to be married than skilled men. Third,...

In this paper we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap and ranking countries by the year in which it reversed. Then we turn to an analysis of the state of other gaps...

We provide new estimates of migrant flows into and out of America during the Age of Mass Migration at the turn of the twentieth century. Our analysis is based on a novel data set of administrative records covering the universe of 24 million migrants who entered Ellis Island, New York between...

type="main" <p>The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro-level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between...</p>