Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Teenage pregnancy has been a cause of concern for policy makers because it is associated with a complex and often adverse social context for women. It is seen as the cause of lower social and economic achievement for mothers and their children, and as the potential determinant of inter-generational poverty traps. However, the question of whether pregnancy-and the subsequent rearing of a child-is actually the trigger of poverty, higher dependence on social welfare and/ or other undesirable social and economic consequences has not been studied in developing countries with enough rigor to establish a causal relation. This paper follows a methodology previously applied in the United States, using Mexican data from the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics, to exploit information about miscarriages as an instrument to identify the long-term consequences of early child bearing. Thus, the paper takes the advantage of a natural experiment: it compares the outcomes of women who became pregnant in adolescence, and gave birth, to outcomes of women who became pregnant in adolescence and miscarried. This approach only allows for estimating the costs of adolescent childbearing for teenagers in a risk group, that is, teenagers who are likely to experience a pregnancy. The results are consistent with findings in the United States, suggesting that, contrary to popular thinking, adolescent childbearing does not hamper significantly the lifelong opportunities of the young mothers. Actually, women who gave birth during their adolescence have on average 0.34 more years of education, and are 21 percentage points more likely to be employed, compared with their counterparts who miscarried. The results also suggest, however, greater dependence on social welfare among women who gave birth during adolescence: their social assistance income is 36 percent higher, and they are more likely to participate in social programs, especially the conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades.

Adolescent Health --- Gender and Health --- Gender and Law --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Natural experiment --- Population Policies --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty traps --- Reproductive Health --- Teenage pregnancy --- Welfare

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper investigates whether the utilization of microcredit programs has a significant impact on the income and net worth of the participants. Several micro finance institutes are optimistic on the beneficial effects of microcredit programs. Others describe microcredit with interest rates in excess of 20 percent as a poverty trap. This paper uses more than 20 years of panel data on households in Bangladesh to estimate bounds on the causal effects of microcredit programs. The analysis rejects the hypothesis that these microcredit programs are a poverty trap. Moreover, the paper finds moderately positive effects of such programs.

Access to Finance --- Bounds Analysis --- Debt Markets --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Household Income --- Microcredit Programs --- Poverty Monitoring & Analysis --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty Traps --- Randomized Controlled Trials --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Social Development

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper examines the possibility of environmental "development traps," or "brown poverty traps," caused by interactions between the impacts of climate change and increasing returns in the development of "clean-technology" sectors. A simple specification is used in which the economy can produce a single homogeneous consumption good with two different technologies. In the "old" sector, technology has global diminishing returns to scale and depends on the use of fossil energy that gives rise to long-lived, damaging climate change. In the "new" sector, the technology has convex-concave production and is not dependent on the polluting energy input. If the new sector does not grow fast enough to move through the phase of increasing returns, then the economy may linger at a low level of income indefinitely or it may achieve greater progress but then get driven back down to a lower level of income by environmental degradation. Stimulating growth in the new sector thus may be a key element for avoiding an environmental poverty trap and achieving higher, sustained income levels.

Climate Change Economics --- Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases --- Economic Growth --- Economic Theory & Research --- Environment --- Environmental Economics & Policies --- Green Growth --- Increasing Returns --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Traps

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Upon request of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Principals at their meeting on December 11, 2015, the World Bank agreed to coordinate a process of reviewing key issues and options for significantly scaling up the use of multipurpose cash transfers (MPCTs; including digital cash and vouchers) in the humanitarian space. This note lays out the main findings and options emerging from the process. The main text is complemented by a set of seven appendixes, detailing the process and feedback received, as well as presenting a thorough review of the evidence and evidence gaps in the comparative effectiveness of cash and in-kind programs across humanitarian objectives. This note synthesizes main issues and findings from the process, including defining overarching issues (section 2), setting out the overall context in which a wider use of cash should be considered (section 3), and identifying the specific areas to help unleash a wider use of cash transfers when and where appropriate (section 4).

Administrative Costs --- Agriculture --- Capacity Building --- Cash Transfers --- Child Health --- Conflict --- Corn --- Death --- Drinking Water --- Food Assistance --- Food Consumption --- Food Security --- Food Shortage --- Grains --- Hygiene --- Income Inequality --- Inequality --- Logistics --- Maize --- Malnutrition --- Natural Disasters --- Political Economy --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty Traps --- Rice --- Savings --- School Feeding Programs --- Social Development --- Social Protections and Labor --- Sugar --- Transaction Costs --- User Fees --- Wheat --- World Food Programme

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book explores how persistent states of underdevelopment can arise in strategic environments in which players are imitative rather than fully rational. Standard growth theory teaches that poverty traps are stable, low-level balanced growth paths to which economies gravitate due to adverse initial conditions or poor equilibrium selection. In other words, societies fail to take off into sustained growth because they started out as poor, with, for example, low longevity or poor human capital, or because they cannot invent institutions that successfully coordinate their investments.Evolutionar

Game theory. --- Evolutionary economics. --- Economics, Mathematical. --- Economic development --- Poverty traps. --- Traps, Poverty --- Economics --- Growth models (Economics) --- Mathematical economics --- Econometrics --- Mathematics --- Games, Theory of --- Theory of games --- Mathematical models --- Mathematical models. --- Methodology --- Human capital --- Research --- Science --- Science research --- Scientific research --- Information services --- Learning and scholarship --- Research teams --- Human assets --- Human beings --- Human resources --- Capital --- Labor supply --- Development, Economic --- Economic growth --- Growth, Economic --- Economic policy --- Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) --- Development economics --- Resource curse --- Economic aspects --- Economic value --- E-books