The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act(PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state.One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with youngchildren, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concertwith a strong...

In October 1998, we convened scholars, policy makers, and practitionersto review what we know about the processes that affect childdevelopment and how we might wisely increase public and privateinvestments in children to promote both their well-being and theproductivity of the next generation....

In this paper we use microdata on employment and earnings from avariety of industrialised countries to investigate the family gap in pay –the differential in hourly wages between women with children andwomen without children. We present results from seven countries:Australia, Canada, the...

Recent advances in brain research have provided new evidence thatearly experience matters and have greatly increased interest in theeffects of early childhood interventions on outcomes for children. Thispaper reviews what is now known about the potential benefits andpotential ill effects of...

This paper uses microdata from the United States, Britain, and Japan toexamine the effects of family leave coverage on women's employment afterchildbirth. Our three sample countries provide a range of family leavepolicy regimes. The United States had no national family leave legislationprior to...

A weakening dependence on rain-fed agriculture has been a hallmark of the economictransformation of countries throughout history. Rural citizens in developing countries to-day, however, remain highly exposed to fluctuations in the weather. This exposure affectsthe incomes these citizens earn and...

Almost one third of the population in developing countries is under age 15. Hence improvingthe effectiveness of policy interventions that target adolescents might be especiallyimportant. We analyze the intention to participate in training programs of adolescent girlsin Uganda, a country with...

Industrial delicensing which began in 1985 in India marked a discrete break from apast of centrally planned industrial development. Similar liberalization episodes are takingplace across the globe. We develop a simple Schumpeterian growth model to understand how…rms respond to the entry threat...

State led credit and savings programs have been implemented in nu-merous low income countries, but their success in reaching the poorremains widely debated. We report on research which exploits the pol-icy features of the Indian social banking program to provide evidenceon this issue. State-led...

This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate inIndian states has affected the pattern of manufacturing growthin the period 1958-92. We show that states which ammendedthe Industrial Disputes Act in a pro-worker direction experiencedlowered output, employment, investment and...