Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an $8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22% of households to send a seasonal migrant, their...

This paper examines structural change in the Russian economy in 1990-2001, as measured by the changing composition of output and consumption, using international panel data sets as a frame of reference. It calculates a series of indexes to determine the extent to which the Russian economy is...

Life cycle savings is proposed as one explanation for much of the increase in savings and economic growth in Asia. The association between the age composition of a nation's population and its savings rate, observed within 16 Asian countries from 1952 to 1992, is re-estimated here to be less than...

Germany's turbulent history in the past two centuries has left its mark on her population. The industrialization of the nineteenth century promoted rapid population growth, and the spatial concentration of that industrialization provoked enormous internal migration. Germany's relatively late...

Germany's turbulent history in the past two centuries has left its mark on her population. The industrialization of the nineteenth century promoted rapid population growth, and the spatial concentration of that industrialization provoked enormous internal migration. Germany's relatively late...

This empirical study brings together data on the local timing of the rural household responsibility system (HRS) reforms in China from 1979 to 1987, and assesses the association of the local reforms with individual parity-specific fertility changes as measured in the in-depth-fertility survey....

We look at the effects of rainfall forecasts and realized rainfall on equilibrium agricultural wages over the course of the agricultural production cycle. We show theoretically that a forecast of good weather can lower wages in the planting stage, by lowering ex ante out-migration, and can...

An extensive literature uses anthropometric measures, typically heights, to draw inferences about living standards in the past. This literature's influence reaches beyond economic history; the results of historical heights research appear as crucial components in development economics and...

This paper explores the links between economic growth and human development, identifying two chains, one from economic growth to human development, the other, from human development to economic growth. The importance of various links in each chain are explored empirically with the help of...

This paper uses data from Matlab, Bangladesh to examine the characteristics of female-headed households and estimate the impact of female-headship on children's schooling. Female householdheads in Matlab fall into two broad groups: widows and married women, most of whom are wives of migrants....