Women may face systematically greater benefits than men from adopting certain technologies. Yet women often hold lower bargaining power, meaning that men's preferences may constrain household adoption when decisions are joint. When low female bargaining power constrains adoption of the...

This paper develops a model of healthcare demand to study healthcare choices in resourcelimited settings with poor health indicators, especially for women. Using data from rural Nigeria on individual illnesses and injuries as well as the entire portfolio of locally available providers, we...

In 2007, UNAIDS corrected estimates of global HIV prevalence downward from 40 million to 33 million based on a methodological shift from sentinel surveillance to population-based surveys. Since then, population-based surveys are considered the gold standard for estimating HIV prevalence....

This paper provides a short-term impact evaluation of a home-visiting Early Child Development (ECD) program in the Caribbean aimed at vulnerable children from birth to three years. The analysis is based on a quasi-experimental research design including approximately four hundred children in...

The literature on social capital clearly shows the significant relationship between social capital and individual outcomes such as educational attainment. However, there is little evidence so far on outcomes of very young children. This report studies the role of social capital in enhancing...

Summary Community-based development projects are often argued to strengthen social capital. This paper investigates the impact of a women's empowerment program in India on trust and cooperation, using data on 2,000 households. The program significantly increases trust and stimulates...

Impact evaluations of development programmes usually focus on a comparison of participants with a control group. However, if the programme generates externalities for non-participants such an approach will capture only part of the programme’s impact. Based on a unique large-scale quantitative...

Health shocks are among the most important unprotected risks for microfinance clients, but the take-up of micro health insurance typically remains limited. This paper attributes low enrolment rates to a social dilemma. Our theory is that in jointly liable groups, insurance is a public good....

Impact evaluations of development programmes usually focus on a comparison of participants with a control group. However, if the programme generates externalities for non-participants such an approach will capture only part of the programme’s impact. Based on a unique large-scale quantitative...