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This paper uses a prospective randomized trial to assess the impact of two school feeding schemes on health and education outcomes for children from low-income households in northern rural Burkina Faso. The two school feeding programs under consideration are, on the one hand, school meals where students are provided with lunch each school day, and, on the other hand, take-home rations that provide girls with 10 kg of cereal flour each month, conditional on 90 percent attendance rate. After running for one academic year, both programs increased girls' enrollment by 5 to 6 percentage points. While there was no observable significant impact on raw scores in mathematics, the time-adjusted scores in mathematics improved slightly for girls. The interventions caused absenteeism to increase in households that were low in child labor supply while absenteeism decreased for households that had a relatively large child labor supply, consistent with the labor constraints. Finally, for younger siblings of beneficiaries, aged between 12 and 60 months, take-home rations have increased weight-for-age by .38 standard deviations and weight-for-height by .33 standard deviations. In contrast, school meals did not have any significant impact on the nutrition of younger children.

Adolescent Health --- Adolescents --- Age --- Boys --- Child labor --- Children --- Children and Youth --- Education --- Education for All --- Educational outcomes --- Educational Sciences --- Enrollment --- Enrollment rates --- Gender --- Gender and Education --- Girls --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Human development --- Interventions --- Investment --- Nutrition --- Primary Education --- Primary school --- Primary school attendance --- Primary school fees --- School feeding programs --- Schooling --- Street Children --- Students --- Tertiary Education --- Urban Development --- Youth and Government

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The Central America region is a small market. The region contains around 43 million inhabitants (0.6 percent of total world population) who generate around 0.25 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the region has successfully embarked on a regional integration agenda and has strong commercial links with the US, extra-regional trade-mainly with large fast-growing emerging economies-remains a challenge. Export performance is analyzed along three dimensions that, together, give a fairly comprehensive picture of competitiveness: 1) the composition, orientation and growth of the export basket; 2) the degree of export diversification across products and markets; and 3) the level of sophistication and quality of their main exports. This analysis allows exports dynamics at the different margins of trade (intensive, extensive, and quality) to be evaluated and individual countries' to be benchmarked with peers in the Central American region. The results of this report allow policy makers to identify key areas to explore in the overall discussion of export competitiveness in the Central American region. This paper relates to the literature on challenges and opportunities that trade liberalization can bring to the Central American region. Much of the recent literature focuses on the role of the free trade agreement negotiated by Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, with the US.

Access to Markets --- Accounting --- Agriculture --- Cash Transfers --- Collective Action --- Employment --- Export Competitiveness --- Highways --- Household Income --- Household Size --- Insurance --- Labor Policies --- Malnutrition --- Population Density --- Poverty Reduction --- Productivity --- Rural Communications --- Rural Development --- Rural Economy --- Rural Population --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Rural Roads & Transport --- School Feeding Programs --- Social Protections and Labor --- Spatial analysis --- Transaction Costs --- Transport --- Transport Economics Policy and Planning --- Wages

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Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While some countries have introduced new safety net programs, others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Since many countries have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, these programs have been used as an important starting point for a response. This paper aims to describe how conditional cash transfers have been used by different countries to respond to the crises (e.g. by expanding coverage and/or increasing benefit amounts), distill lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programs, identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and assess how they can complement other safety net programs.

Child Development --- Child Health --- Child Labor --- Corruption --- Developing Countries --- Disability Benefits --- Educational Attainment --- Expenditures --- External Shocks --- Financial Crisis --- Financial Literacy --- Fraud --- Health Insurance --- Household Consumption --- Household Income --- Household Surveys --- Human Capital --- Inflation --- Innovation --- Labor Market --- Labor Policies --- Living Standards --- Malnutrition --- Means Testing --- Minimum Wage --- Opportunity Cost --- Poverty Reduction --- Productivity --- Public Investment --- Purchasing Power --- Recession --- Refugees --- Remittances --- Risk Management --- Savings --- School Attendance --- School Feeding Programs --- Services & Transfers to Poor --- Severance Pay --- Social Development --- Social Insurance --- Social Networks --- Social Protections and Labor --- Social Safety Nets --- Technical Assistance --- Unemployment --- Urban Areas --- Villages --- Vulnerable Groups --- Wages --- Working Hours

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Uganda's progress in reducing poverty from 1993 to 2006 is a remarkable story of success that has been well told. The narrative of Uganda's continued, albeit it slightly slower, progress in reducing poverty since 2006 is less familiar. This was a period in which growth slowed as the gains from reforms years earlier had been fully realized, and weak infrastructure and increasing corruption increasingly constrained private sector competitiveness (World Bank 2015). This report examines Uganda's progress in reducing poverty, with a specific focus on the period 2006 to 2013. The report shows that high growth from 2006 to 2010 benefited poverty reduction. Before turning in further detail to the key findings of the report, it is important to note that the analysis undertaken in this report is only possible because the Government of Uganda has invested in a high quality series of household surveys to document progress in wellbeing since 1993. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics has conducted high-quality household surveys that every three to four years that have provided a comparable series of data on poverty and other household characteristics for the last twenty years. Uganda is one of the few countries in the region to have achieved this level of comparable, frequent poverty monitoring over time. Without this, it would not be possible to document the lessons Uganda provides.

Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Sector --- Cash Transfers --- Child Mortality --- Conflict --- Death --- Drinking Water --- Economic Diversification --- Employment Opportunities --- Food Consumption --- Food Production --- Household Consumption --- Household Income --- Household Size --- Household Surveys --- Human Capital --- Income Distribution --- Income Poverty --- Inequality --- Insurance --- Irrigation --- Land Management --- Land Reform --- Malnutrition --- Nutrition --- Political Economy --- Poverty --- Poverty Assessment --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty Strategy, analysis and Monitoring --- Pro-Poor Growth --- Public Spending --- Rural Development --- Rural Electrification --- Rural Poverty --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Sanitation --- Savings --- School Feeding Programs --- Social Protection and Risk Management --- Social Protections and Labor --- Technical Assistance --- Unemployment

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This paper reviews a small community-based school feeding program launched in Togo in response to the 2007/08 food price crisis. The discussion focuses on the operational and policy lessons emerging from the program, to better understand opportunities for scale up and sustainability in the future. A focus of the discussion is how to build safety nets in fragile states and in situations where there is weak and fragmented government capacity to deliver services to disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. In this context school feeding is explored as an entry point through the use of informal mechanisms based on the commitment of communities and civil society. The analysis is premised on quantitative and qualitative analysis carried out at program sites. The discussion identifies the operational challenges and opportunities in customizing school feeding within Togo with an emphasis on targeting, cost effectiveness, procurement and institutional aspects. Evidence on the economic and social benefits of the program is also presented, focusing on dietary impacts, as well as household and local community effects. The objective of the discussion is to share lessons learned from evaluation findings so that they can be useful for implementing similar programs in the future in Togo itself or in other countries. Findings from the analysis highlight the possibilities of implementing school feeding in a low capacity setting and the scope for using the program as a springboard towards a broader and more comprehensive social safety net.

Access to Education --- Administrative Costs --- Agricultural Sector --- Agriculture --- Capacity Building --- Child Development --- Communities --- Conflict --- Conflict and Development --- Cooking --- Coping Strategies --- Corn --- Drinking Water --- Education --- Education For All --- Employment Opportunities --- External Shocks --- Food Consumption --- Food Production --- Food Safety --- Food Security --- Gender --- Health Insurance --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Household Consumption --- Household Size --- Human Capital --- Hygiene --- Mainstreaming --- Maize --- Malnutrition --- Meat --- Minimum Wage --- Nutrition --- Parent-Teacher Associations --- Poverty Line --- Poverty Reduction --- Primary Education --- Rice --- Risk Management --- Rural Population --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Sanitation --- Savings --- School Attendance --- School Feeding Programs --- School Health --- Schools --- Sharecropping --- Social Development --- Social Protections and Labor --- Staple Foods --- Tomatoes --- Wheat --- World Food Program