Many U.S. states and cities spend substantial funds to reduce class size, especially in elementary (primary) school. Estimating the impact of class size on learning is complicated, since children in small and large classes differ in many observed and unobserved ways. This paper uses a method of...

Youth smoking can biologically reduce learning productivity. It can also reduce youths’ expected returns to education and lower their motivation to go to school, where smoking is forbidden. Using rich household survey data from rural China, this study investigates the effect of youth smoking...

We examine the impact of Brazil's Bolsa Escola/Familia program on Brazilian children's education outcomes. Bolsa provides cash payments to poor households if their children (ages 6 to 15) are enrolled in school. Using school census data to compare changes in enrollment, dropping out and grade...

This paper examines the impact of Brazil's Bolsa Escola (later renamed Bolsa Familia) program on children's progress in school in Brazil. The Bolsa program, which started in the 1990s and expanded rapidly in 2001 and 2002, provides monthly cash payments to poor households if their children...

It is important that limited government resources be channeled to the poor, but it is not always easy to identify the poor. Which households should be given tranfers when reliable information on incomes is difficult to obtain? The authors of this paper present a simple method for targeting when...

"The purpose of the research paper is to characterize biological diversity related to millets in the semi-arid regions of India at various spatial scales of analysis (e.g., farm household versus community levels) and place that evidence in a broader seed systems (includes both formal and...

Early childhood nutrition is thought to be an important input into subsequent academic achievement. This paper investigates the nutrition-learning nexus using a unique longitudinal data set, which follows a large sample of Philippine children from birth until the end of their primary education....

This paper examines the impacts of rising food prices on poverty and welfare in Vietnam. Increases in food prices raise the real incomes of those selling food, but reduce the welfare of net food purchasers. Overall, the net impact of higher food prices on an average Vietnamese household's...

Vietnam's high economic growth in the 1990s led to sharp reductions in poverty, yet over the same time period inequality increased. This increased inequality may be less worrisome if Vietnamese households experience a high degree of income mobility over time. This is because high mobility...