Gender is rarely used as a differentiating lens by which to understand more fully the various experiences and ramifications of the social protection agenda. This paper takes as its starting point the overwhelming evidence...

As patterns of poverty and vulnerability in South Asia change, households have to balance immediate needs and long–term goals. For the poor, these choices, and the costs of precautionary measures, are particularly acute and...

The history of citizenship has been an unhappy one. The denial of resources and the rights of some groups by others is typical, and no historically significant form of citizenship has been incompatible with...

The world’s population is ageing rapidly as a result of demographic transition, and it is currently ageing most rapidly in the developing world. Ageing is consequently set to become a key development issue and...

The aim of this paper is to review the literature on social protection measures in the context of India and Bangladesh, with a view to exploring some of these issues. It will bring together...

This article reviews different social science approaches to the analysis of bargaining in the specific context of family-based households. Economic approaches have tended to focus on ‘the household’ and to treat its members as...

This paper explores the reasons why recent evaluations of the empowerment potential of credit programs for rural women in Bangladesh have arrived at very conflicting conclusions. Although these evaluations use somewhat different methodologies and...

The high incidence of both child labour and out-of-school children in the South Asian region has given rise to competing explanations. Broadly speaking, these can be categorised as those which focus on poverty and...