This paper looks into the relations between economic growth and poverty reduction in Jamaica. A poverty profile is constructed, based on household budget survey data, and per capita growth is decomposed into pure growth effects and changes in inequality effects. I find that growth has contributed to poverty reduction mainly because there has not been any large increases in inequality. However, ...

This paper tests for the endogeneity of one of the main elements separating different models of intrahousehold allocations, namely the household information set. Based on unusually rich data, I find that split migrant couples in the Nairobi slums invest considerable resources into information acquisition through visits, sibling and child monitoring, budget submissions, and marital search. I als...

This report reevaluates PROGRESA’s targeting methods since the program began adding beneficiary households through a process called “densification.” The authors first evaluate PROGRESA’s accuracy in targeting both at the community and household levels. Second, they evaluate the targeting in terms of its impact on poverty alleviation relative to other feasible methods assuming the same total bud...

BACKGROUND Exposure to toxic chemicals in the home is a growing concern. This report presents an overview of the recruitment, methods for data collection, instruments used to collect data, and participant demographics for a study examining behaviors that influence exposure to environmental toxins in the home environment, also known as SUPERB (Study of Use of Products and Exposure Related Behavi...

OBJECTIVE To study the role of energy derived from sugar (both table sugar and sugar added to processed foods) in the total energy content of food purchases in Brazil. DESIGN Food purchase data were collected during a national household budget survey carried out between June 2002 and July 2003 on a probabilistic sample representative of all households in the country. The amount of food purcha...

The paper extends our previous class analysis of the household and family life to include children, interactions between class structures of households and enterprises, struggles over the family budget, and father's household labor. Analysis show how the good and bad of family life are connected to class. Introduction Since the 1994 publication of Bringing It All Back Home, commentators have ra...

OBJECTIVE To analyze the influence of income and food prices on household consumption of fruit and vegetables. METHODS Data from the 1998/99 Household Budget Survey were analyzed, which was conducted by the Fundação Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas (Institute for Economic Research Foundation) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The influence of income and food price on the relative participati...

Abstract: The contribution of this paper is both methodological and empirical. It proposes a methodology for evaluating the distributional implications of price movement for inequality and poverty measurement. The methodology is based on a distinction between inequalities in nominal expenditures, where the expenditures are either measured in nominal terms or a common price deflator is applied f...

In this study, we attempt to understand how household budget allocations across various expenditure categories change when the economy is in recession or expansion. The common assumption is that a household’s tastes would not change as a function of economic conditions and therefore any adjustments in expenditure patterns during economic contractions/expansions would simply be due to changes in...