This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on...

A method is proposed to provide robust poverty comparisons and robust evaluations of marginal policy reforms under income variability. Given that a household’s certainty equivalent income depends on both expected income and income variability, stochastic dominance tests are developed in order...

Apart from fiscal measures, another initiative taken by the government of Liberia to respond to the economic crisis consisted in the launch of a cash for work temporary employment program. This part of the study consists of three chapters devoted to the analysis of the program. First, in this...

The Christian Health Association of Ghana is the largest federation of faith-inspired provider of health services in Ghana. With 168 hospitals and clinics at the time this paper was written, 70 percent of which are affiliated with the Catholic Church, the federation accounts for more than a...

This chapter uses matching techniques and a recent nationally representative household survey for Yemen combined with weather data to measure the impact of remittances, both domestic and international, on poverty and human development outcomes (school enrolment, immunization, and malnutrition)....

To help households cope with the recent economic crisis, and especially the increase in food prices, the government of Liberia announced a number of fiscal measures. A first measure was to implement a temporary exoneration of import duties on food products, and especially imported rice. A second...

This chapter offers a primer on poverty, inequality, and vulnerability analysis and a guide to resources on this topic. It is written for decision makers who want to define the type of information they need to monitor poverty reduction and make appropriate policy decisions and for the technical...

The President and the Government of Liberia have placed a strategic priority on youth employment and have asked development partners for support in these areas. The Office of the President, the government, and development partners have undertaken over the last two years several steps to generate...

This chapter was originally drafted in 2007 to inform the diagnostic of Liberia’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy. It is based on an analysis of the Core Welfare Questionnaire Indicator survey implemented in 2007 by Liberia’s Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services. The chapter...