New Zealand’s success story is often told in terms of its lamb, wool, kiwifruit and agricultural exports. But our country’s greatest asset has always been our people who have been equipped to do…

Annette Dixon |

The 2018 World Development Report (WDR), Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, launched this week.  While it draws on research and collective experience—both from within and outside the World…

Deon Filmer, Halsey Rogers |

Entering data. Photo: World Bank In the fiscal transparency arena, people often hear two conflicting claims. First, governments complain that few people take advantage of fiscal information that…

Paolo de Renzio, Massimo Mastruzzi |

Photo credit: Graham Crouch/World Bank In my blog “The Governance Gap – can we bridge it?”, I stressed that strengthened institutions and improved governance are especially critical for the world’…

Deborah Wetzel |

Also available in: Français | العربية   A boat trip from Port Elizabeth to Kingstown, in the Caribbean country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, is a one-hour trip that locals take several…

Valerie Lorena |

I like entertaining my western friends with stories of growing up in the post-communist Kazakhstan limbo, when everything ended, but nothing had yet started. Stories of how my friends and I would…

Alua Kennedy |

Good governance is critical for all countries around the world today. When it doesn’t exist, many governments fail to deliver public services effectively; health and education services are often…

Jim Yong Kim |

Part of the World Bank’s new vision is to step up its efforts to help fragile and conflict-afflicted states break the vicious cycle of poverty. But this is no easy task.   The destruction of…

Massimiliano Calì |

In a new study on gender equality, researchers asked 4, 000 people in 20 countries to describe the gender norms in their communities and the influence those norms have on their lives and their…

Stacy Morford |