The standard theory of anti-poverty targeting assumes individual incomes cannot be observed, but statistical properties of income distribution in broadly defined groups are known. Targeting rules are then derived for the forms of transfers conditioned on group membership of individuals. In this...

This brief paper tries to highlight two important missing aspects for understanding poverty issues in developing countries. They are the economic analysis of the rural non-farm households, and the behavior of land markets. Taking South Asia as a case, this paper claims that without proper...

In 2003, China launched a new health insurance system - the New Cooperative Medicine Scheme (NCMS) in its rural areas, where more than 87 percent of China’ rural residents were not covered by any health insurance programs. By the end of 2009, the NCMS had expanded to cover 95 percent of...

We examine how the system of “federalism, Chinese style” functions in the context of land allocation. China’s land laws give provision of land a central role in local officials’ growth promotion strategies. Requisitions of farmland by local authorities have engendered significant rural...

In this paper we conduct a series of eld experiments in rural India in order to measure preferences related to risk, loss, and ambiguity. Disaggregating by data, we nd that on average women are signicantly more risk averse and loss averse than men, though the higher average risk aversion arises...

The flow of remittances can affect poverty rates, development, and investments in the receiving country and households. Using World Bank survey data from three countries, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya, this research addresses the senders’ and recipients’ characteristics may affect remittance...

Demographic transition due to population aging is an emerging issue throughout the developing world, and especially in China, which has undergone demographic transition more rapidly than most industrial economies. This paper quantifies the economic and distributional effects in the context of...

This paper investigates the farm-household decisions of adopting and abandoning higher-productivity technologies, under different scenarios of inclusion into the credit and deposit markets. The financial environment is further characterized by shallow financial markets, represented by a...

In low potential agricultural areas like the Honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion, organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty. We use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to...