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 last 10 years have been rough for many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Following a decade-and-a-half of turbocharged growth between 1999 and 2014, when growth on the continent averaged…

Haoyu Wu, Aziz Atamanov, Tom Bundervoet, Pierella Paci |

In 2022, the number of children that died before their fifth birthday worldwide dropped to below 5 million for the first time, according to a recent United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child…

Emi Suzuki |

As we mark International Women’s Day this month, we spotlight the main hurdles to women’s labor force participation in Iraq to shape future programs and policies for enhanced equality in the labor…

Soraya El-Khalil, Tala Ismail |

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced low economic growth per capita, a very slow decline in poverty incidence, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has been rising steadily. As a…

Johannes Hoogeveen, Johan A. Mistiaen, Haoyu Wu |

Almost half of Nigerians are estimated to live below the national poverty line. However, unemployment is less than 5 percent, and even when many Nigerians are working, they remain poor. Why is…

Jonathan Lain, Utz Pape |

The numbers on poverty in Madagascar are alarmingly high. More than 24 million people lived on less than 4,000 ariary ($0.89) per person per day in 2022 in Madagascar, setting the national poverty…

Ana María Oviedo, Francis Muamba Mulangu |

Risks and hazards are particularly relevant in El Salvador, one of the most risk-exposed countries in the world. Extreme climatic events, such as earthquakes or floods, make the country especially…

Monica Robayo-Abril, Britta Rude, Hugo Ñopo |

Since 2018, the World Bank’s multidimensional poverty measure has gone beyond monetary deprivation to include other dimensions such as access to education, health, nutritional, and basic…

Olivier De Schutter, Luis Felipe López-Calva |

Development policies need to support the most vulnerable Central Africans, especially those who have been forcibly displaced by conflict. The outbreak of conflict in 2012 led to almost one million…

Harriet Kasidi Mugera, Gervais Chamberlin Yama, Jonathan Lain |