Rythia Afkar is an economist with the World Bank’s Human Capital Project. She is based in Washington, DC, and engages with national governments and international organizations to help countries build, protect, and utilize their human capital. Her work focuses on quality of education service delivery, public finance in education, and gender issues among other topics. She previously served as an education economist, leading education research and operations for the East Asia and Pacific Education unit and as a consultant with the Poverty team in Indonesia. Her recent policy-oriented research focuses on intersection of demographic transition and development and strategies for countries to ensure children acquire foundational learning on basic literacy and numeracy. She holds a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Bonn and received a master’s degree in quantitative economics from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.