The purpose of this book is to introduce, discuss, illustrate, and evaluate the colorful palette of analytical techniques that can be applied to the analysis of household survey data, with an emphasis on the innovations of the past decade or so. Most of the chapters begin by introducing a methodological or policy problem, to motivate the subsequent discussion of relevant methods. They then summarize the relevant techniques, and draw on examples – many of them from the authors’ own work – and aim to convey a sense of the potential, but also the strengths and weaknesses, of those techniques. This book is meant for graduate students in statistics, economics, policy analysis, and social sciences, especially, but certainly not exclusively, those interested in the challenges of economic development in the Third World. Additionally, the book will be useful to academics and practitioners who work closely with survey data. This is a book that can serve as a reference work, to be taken down from the shelf and perused from time to time.

Using data from several countries, including Cote d'Ivoire, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Thailand, this book analyzes household survey data from developing countries and illustrates how such data can be used to cast light on a range of short-term and long-term policy issues.

Have gaps in health outcomes between the poor and better off grown? Are they larger in one country than another? Are health sector subsidies more equally distributed in some countries than others? Are health care payments more progressive in one health care financing system than another? What are catastrophic payments and how can they be measured? How far do health care payments impoverish households? Answering questions such as these requires quantitative analysis. This in turn depends on a clear understanding of how to measure key variables in the analysis, such as health outcomes, health expenditures, need, and living standards. It also requires set quantitative methods for measuring inequality and inequity, progressivity, catastrophic expenditures, poverty impact, and so on. This book provides an overview of the key issues that arise in the measurement of health variables and living standards, outlines and explains essential tools and methods for distributional analysis, and, using worked examples, shows how these tools and methods can be applied in the health sector. The book seeks to provide the reader with both a solid grasp of the principles underpinning distributional analysis, while at the same time offering hands-on guidance on how to move from principles to practice.

In economics, the voluntary sector is surprisingly understudied. In order to fully understand economics, unpaid and voluntary work needs to be taken into account and afforded the same status as paid activities. This book constitutes a rigorous economic analysis with special emphasis on gender issues and covers every conceivable angle of unpaid work and all its ramifications for the modern economy. The unified vision offered by this group of leading contributors ensures this book is a work of excellent quality. There is every chance it will become a seminal study on unpaid work and as such will provide a useful reference for students and academics involved in gender studies, econometrics, and consumption studies.

South Asia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Most previous studies have focused on the projected impacts of sea-level rise or extreme weather - droughts, floods, heatwaves and storm surges. This study adds to that knowledge by identifying the impacts of long-term changes in the climate †“ rising temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns †“ on living standards. It does so by first building an understanding of the relationship between current climate conditions and living standards across South Asia. The study also identifies the set of climate models that are best suited for projecting long-term changes in climate across South Asia. This novel understanding of living standards and climate change is then combined to project impacts of long-term changes in climate on living standards in South Asia. The study finds that higher temperatures will reduce living standards for most of South Asia, with the severity impacts depending on future global greenhouse gas emissions. The study projects “hotspots†?, which are locations where long-term changes in climate will have negative impacts on living standards. Many hotspots are in locations that hitherto have not been identified as particularly vulnerable to climate change. Moreover, hotspots have distinguishing features that vary from country to country. This detailed assessment provides a mosaic of information that enriches our understanding of how climate change will impact people and which populations are most vulnerable. The report also provides guidance on the kinds of actions are most likely to reduce impacts of climate change in each country. The study is a major contribution to our understanding of how increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns interact with social and economic structures at a fine granular level across South Asia.

This book is about the concept of “Quality of Life”. What is necessary for quality of life, and how can it be measured? The approach is a multicriterial scheme reduction which prevents as much information loss as possible when shifting from the set of partial criteria to their convolution. This book is written for researchers, analysts and graduate and postgraduate students of mathematics and economics.

World Bank Discussion Paper No. 302. Presents an alternative way of financing development in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to address the shortcomings of past investment lending. This study discusses sector investment programs (SIPs) as an alternative way of financing development in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to address the shortcomings of past investment lending in the region. The report examines the nature and features of SIPs by drawing on the limited experience with such operations in a number of coutries to date, including Bangladesh, Mozambique, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Zambia. A SIP is distinguished by its comprehensive sector coverage, by close coordination among all parties, including stakholders and donors, and by the requirement that it be formulated under local ownership and management