The use of asset indices in welfare analysis and poverty targeting is increasing, especially in cases in which data on expenditures are unavailable or hard to collect. We compare alternative approaches to welfare measurement. Our analysis shows that inferences about inequalities in education, health care use, fertility, and child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes, are quite robust to the economic status measure used. Different measures-most significantly per capita expenditures versus the class of asset indices-do not, however, yield identical household rankings. Two factors stand out in predicting the degree of congruence in rankings. First is the extent to which expenditures can be explained by observed household and community characteristics. Rankings are most similar in settings with small transitory shocks to expenditure or with little random measurement error in expenditure. Second is the extent to which expenditures are dominated by individually consumed goods, such as food. Asset indices are typically derived from indicators of goods that are effectively public at the household level, while expenditures are often dominated by food, an almost exclusively private good. In settings in which individually consumed goods are the main component of expenditures, asset indices and per capita consumption yield the least similar results.

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This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of gender differences by looking at the available individual and household level information. The estimates are based on the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank poverty estimates. The paper focuses on the relationship between age, sex and poverty. And finds that, girls and women of reproductive age are more likely to live in poor households (below the international poverty line) than boys and men. It finds that 122 women between the ages of 25 and 34 live in poor households for every 100 men of the same age group. The analysis also examines the household profiles of the poor, seeking to go beyond headship definitions. Using a demographic household composition shows that nuclear family households of two married adults and children account for 41 percent of poor households, and are the most frequent household where poor women are found. Using an economic household composition classification, households with a male earner, children and a non-income earner spouse are the most frequent among the poor at 36 percent, and the more frequent household where poor women live. For individuals, as well as for households, the presence of children increases the household likelihood to be poor, and this has a specific impact on women, but does not fully explain the observed female poverty penalty.

One-company towns, characterized by the presence of a large employer in a local labor market, are a frequent legacy of state-led development strategies. How will downsizing or closing unprofitable state-owned enterprises affect these towns? This article develops a simple model combining monopsony power in the labor market with a Keynesian closure of the product market and uses it to interpret the findings of previous studies. The article evaluates the impact of the company's employment level on the town's labor earnings in Kazakhstan, where one-company towns are still prevalent. The evaluation is based on data from the 1996 Living Standards Measurement Survey. The results show that labor earnings in the town decrease roughly 1.5 percent when the share of its population working for the company decreases 1 percent. The results are robust to changes in the definition of labor earnings and to the inclusion of a variety of other community characteristics in the analysis. These results and the theoretical model are combined to evaluate the welfare impact of company downsizing and, consequently, to derive the optimal extent of labor retrenchment. Many developing countries, and especially transition economies, have onecompany towns whose distinctive feature is the presence of a large employer in a local labor market. In spite of their name, one-company towns are not necessarily urban agglomerations. In some transition economies, the label applies to the rural area surrounding a large agricultural producer, such as a state-owned farm. More often, however, it applies to mining towns and to the communities developed next to large manufacturing plants, such as steel mills or armament factories. In all cases, the company accounts for a substantial share of the jobs in the town, and even those who do not work for the company depend on it to make a living. If the company were to cease its operations, the one-company town could easily become a ghost town. One-company towns also exist, or at least existed, in industrial countries. The coal mining company towns in the U.S. region of Appalachia at the turn of the century were in some respects similar to the one-company towns in transition economies and developing countries nowadays. In coal mining company towns, a vertically integrated enterprise provided a variety of affiliated services