Matthew Wai-Poi is a Lead Economist for the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank, where he supports the Bank’s work in East Asia and the Pacific on measuring and understanding drivers of poverty and inequality in the region, and the design and implementation of policies to address them. He is also Global Lead for the Distributional Impacts of Fiscal and Social Policies. Previously he has worked on poverty and inequality issues in the Middle East, including the role of gender and displacement, and was based in Jakarta with the World Bank for eight years. He has a PhD in Economics from Columbia University.