Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, Chairperson

This paper was prepared as contribution to the UNU/WIDER project on Economic Shocks, Social Stress and the Demographic Impact. I am grateful to Andrea Cornia, Germano Mwabu and Albert Motivans for their useful comments. I also wish to thank Lorraine Taivainen for assistance in the preparation of the text. Of course, I am solely responsible for the contents of the paper. Research in Progress (RIP) is a UNU/WIDER in-house publication series, which is distributed free-of-charge in limited numbers. The studies issued in the series are complete drafts prepared as part of the Institute's research programme and are circulated among project networkers and other scholars to elicit feedback and comments. In several cases, the studies will be published at a later stage in a revised form in the Institute's official publication series or in edited volumes published by academic publishers. RIP studies should not be quoted without the author's permission