With the recent appointment of the High‐Level Panel to advise on the post‐2015 development agenda, the preparation of a successor process to the MDGs is (finally) moving into high gear. In this note I provide an input to these discussions by briefly reviewing successes and failures of the...

We investigate the accuracy of ex ante assessments of vulnerability to income poverty using cross-sectional data and panel data. We use long-term panel data from Germany and apply di erent regression models, based on household covariates and previous-year equivalence income, to classify a...

In this paper we examine trends in economic well-being in transition countries from 1988 to 2008 to determine whether the populations of transition countries are better off today than prior to the transition process. To do this, we examine economic performance, inequality-adjusted well-being...

One of the most serious weaknesses of the human development index (HDI) is that it does not take into account the distribution of human development within a country. All attempts to capture inequality in the HDI have used aggregate information and there exists no HDI at the household level. We...

While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross‐country regressions analyzing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect an insignificant or even surprisingly negative effect of schooling. In...

This paper investigates whether heterogeneous subgroups of female-headed households are worse off than traditional households headed by men. We analyze the determinants of consumption, shock exposure and vulnerability to poverty. Using unique panel data of over 4000 rural households from...

While progress in developing countries as a whole, in terms of growth, poverty reduc-tion, and several MDGs, has been quite good in recent years, fragile states lag behind in levels of MDG achievement. To understand the link between fragility and MDG progress, and also to identify the most...