The Nepal Poverty Alleviation Fund is a World Bank supported community-driven development program. Its objective is to improve rural welfare, particularly for groups that have traditionally been excluded for reasons of gender, ethnicity, caste, and location. Since its launch in 2004, the Fund...

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Continuous drinking of such metal-contaminated water is highly cancerous; prolonged drinking of such water risks developing diseases...

This paper looks at the determinants of school selection in rural Bangladesh, focusing on the choice between registered Islamic and non-religious schools. We consider a two period framework where children are a source of old age transfers. The amount of old age transfers made by children as...

Instead of mean-tested conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, some countries have implemented gender-targeted CCTs to explicitly address intra-household disparities in human capital investments. This study focuses on addressing the direct impact of a female school stipend program in Punjab,...

The specific objectives of the program are to: a) keep children in school, b) keep children healthy, and c) invest in the future of children. It reflects the Government's commitment to promoting inclusive growth by investing in human capital to improve education and health outcomes for poor...

What factors influence community participation in the delivery of urban services? In particular, does security of tenure enhance the probability of participation as it provides individuals with incentives to act collectively in pursuit of a common objective? And are collective efforts less...