Leisure-inclusive welfare indices, such as the real wage index, have been previously investigated only with aggregate data. Using micro data, however, these indices show the effects of increasing labor market employment of household members. Real wage, expenditure, and nonlabor income indices are compared across six types of husband/wife households. These indices are also compared to ad hoc rea...

Article history: Received 14 January 2011 Received in revised form 9 March 2012 Accepted 11 March 2012 Available online 28 March 2012 JEL classification: D1 J2 Q1

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The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is increasingly becoming one of the major impediments to sustainable development. Zimbabwe is one of the southern African countries that is severely affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic which has already reversed hard won national health. At the global level, 46% of the 33.6 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS are women. The trend in the proportion of fema...

The use of mobile phones has increased rapidly in many developing countries, including in rural areas. Besides reducing the costs of communication and improving access to information, mobile phones are an enabling technology for other innovations. One important example are mobile phone based money transfers, which could be very relevant for the rural poor, who are often underserved by the forma...

Monica Fisher Rural Poverty Research Center, Oregon State University, 221 Ballard Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331; [email protected] Abstract This paper examines the role forests play in alleviating poverty in rural Malawi. Data from three villages in southern Malawi indicate high levels of forest dependence. Gini decomposition shows that access to forest income reduced measured income inequal...

In 1996, federal welfare reform legislation eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Numerous studies have estimated impacts of reform on welfare caseloads, employment, earnings, family structure, income, and poverty. Two principal challenges to identifying TANF’s impact have been discussed in the literature. ...

In 1996, federal welfare-reform legislation eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Numerous studies have estimated impacts of reform on welfare caseloads, employment, earnings, family structure, income, and poverty. Two principal challenges to identifying TANF’s impact have been discussed in the literature. ...

Using data on older individuals and couples, we estimate a collective model of household consumption of a variety of goods, showing how resources are shared between husbands and wives, and how this allocation is affected by retirement and health status. We identify the extent to which shared consumption of goods by older married couples reduces the costs of living together relative to living al...

BACKGROUND Natural disasters have severe impacts on the health and well-being of affected households. However, we find evidence that official damage cost assessments for floods and other natural disasters in Vietnam, where households have little or no insurance, clearly underestimate the total economic damage costs of these events as they do not include the welfare loss from mortality, morbidit...