Despite the rapid expansion and increasing importance of private education in developing countries, very little is known about the impact of studying in private schools on educational attainment and wages. This project contributes to filling this gap by estimating the returns to private high schools in Mexico.

This project sets out to test extensively a number of different developmental measures on a large sample of children in a specific context in Latin America.

This project aims to ensure that CCT programmes deliver value for money, by engaging in robust analysis of CCT programmes through a macro-level comparative study and more importantly, in-depth case study investigations.

Researchers at IFS are using Mexican data from the Oportunidades CCT programme to extend a dynamic structural model of school attendance.

The Rio Early Child Development Evaluation is an ongoing project that takes advantage of excess demand for daycare centres in Rio de Janeiro to evaluate rigorously the impact of public daycare provision versus alternative forms of care.

This study will use data on the Chilean poor, and will revolve around a new government program designed to improve parental skills.

In this research project we develop and evaluate a cost-effective and sustainable intervention to promote early child development.

This project evaluates evidence on the relationship between shocks to relative male wages, and changes in household consumption in Mexico during the 1990s decade, which is a period characterized by high volatility.

We investigate the effects of the drastic tariff reductions of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia on the wage distribution.

This project's ultimate aim is to estimate the impact of the recent rises in food prices on the welfare of poor families in rural Mexico.

This project analyzes enforcement of regulation in Brazil, and its effects on the labor market, namely employment, informality, and inequality.

This project studies Chile Solidario, a welfare program in Chile.

The IFS is part of a team of research institutions working at the impact evaluation of the Juntos network, aimed at reducing extreme poverty in Colombia.

In this project we study the shape of food Engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia, Familias en Acción. We show that in estimating Engel curves it is crucial to control for the endogeneity of total expenditure and for the (unobserved) variability of prices across towns.

In this project we divide the seven Mexican states in which PROGRESA was carried out into two groups and check to what extent the results in one group can be extrapolated to the others.

In this project we test the risk sharing hypothesis within neighbourhoods and villages in Colombia, using detailed household data from the Familias en Accion evaluation.

This project explores the effect of the Familias en Accion conditional cash transfer programme on prices.

In this project, we study expenditure patterns among poor households in rural Colombia.

This project studies migration decisions of very poor households in an environment of high level of violence.

The objective of this project is to investigate what are the determinants of the pension system's coverage in Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

This project analyses the findings from a series of

In this project we analyse the findings from a series of risk-sharing games that were conducted in the spring of 2006 in 70 municipalities in rural Colombia with predominantly poor participants.

This project investigates the properties and plausibility of responses to a question that is designed to ascertain the response to the withdrawal of educational subsidies.

This project investigates the properties and plausibility of a measure of expected income and income risk using direct-questioning methods. This data was collected as part of the Familias en Accion evaluation.

We describe the structure of consumption of households in Mexico where large cash transfers have been made to women in households randomly selected from a poor population.

In this project, we study the effects of Hogares Comunitarios.

In this work, we explore whether early exposure to the school system (in the form of pre-primary education) appears as a successful policy option.

This project explores how the presence and characteristics of extended family members in the same village affect the economic outcomes of households.

This project analyses whether there is any evidence of income uncertainty and adverse shocks affecting choices relating to the schooling and work of children in rural Colombia.

This project investigates the main factors behind the very high and increasing return to College observed in Brazil in the decade of the 1990s. Using a joint model of education choice, labour force participation and wages with unobserved heterogeneity, we evaluate the role of changes in the composition of those completing Intermediate and Higher education and the impact of availability and quality of schooling and of local economic conditions when young in determining schooling outcomes.

We are evaluating Progresa and Oportunidades in Mexico and Familias en Accion in Colombia.