In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban--rural differences for several African countries for which we have data and find that living standards in...

We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to make international and inter-temporal welfare comparisons. While most poverty analyses rely on expenditures or income, we use anthropometric measures of nutrition as indicators of living standards. The advantages are that we observe individual—not...

We consider an asset-based alternative to the standard use of expenditures in defining well-being and poverty. Our motivation is to see if there exist simpler and less demanding ways to collect data to measure economic welfare and rank households. This is particularly important in poor regions...

The prevalence of overweight children in the United States has increased dramatically over the past two decades, and is creating well-known public health problems. Moreover, there is also evidence that children who are not overweight are becoming heavier. We use quantile regression models along...

This article evaluates the Vaso de Leche (VL) feeding programme in Peru in order to illustrate an evaluation methodology based on targeting criteria for a decentralised transfer programme. We find that the degree of overall targeting of poor individuals attributable to the central government's...