With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), world leaders made a bold pledge in 2015 to leave no one behind on the path of development by 2030. Half-way to the target date, some 22 countries…

Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah, Christoph Lakner, Umar Serajuddin |

The conditions and circumstances of people across the world cannot be boiled down to only national averages. Within the same country, economic development can be unbalanced, with some regions…

Judy Yang, Minh Cong Nguyen, Carlos Sabatino |

The World Bank updated its global poverty lines last month and the number of poor is now significantly different in certain countries and regions. For the EAP region, this changes our view of the…

Rinku Murgai, Hassan Zaman |

Why are fertilizer prices so high, and what can countries in Central America do about this?

Luis Flores, Viviana Perego, Diego Arias |

Costa Rica lost the momentum for poverty reduction towards the end of the twentieth century. This makes Costa Rica an outlier in a region that conti…

Jacobus de Hoop, Agustin Arakaki |

Despite major strides in improving education in Vietnam, inequalities persist. There are wide differences among socioeconomic groups with regards to education completion, the quality of the…

Anh Thi Bao Tran, Judy Yang |

While countries should take advantage of the apparel industry to bring more women in the labor force, they also need policies to tackle barriers that prevent women from pursuing careers.

Stacey Frederick, Gladys Lopez-Acevedo, Raymond Robertson, Mexico Vergara |

Central America and the Dominican Republic have a good track record of economic growth. Between 1991 and 2019, Central America grew by an average of 4.5% per year, and the Dominican Republic by an…

Michel Kerf |

Countries in the East Asia and Pacific region will benefit from cooperation in three major areas: vaccine deployment, reviving sectors of the regional economy, and building on their close…

Victoria Kwakwa |

The report “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty” summarizes current evidence on the long-term welfare impacts of conflict and fragility. Conflict and fragility…

Daniel Gerszon Mahler, Tara Vishwanath |