The world is facing both a health and an economic crisis due to COVID-19. This threatens progress towards universal health coverage – a policy commitment of the United Nations’ Sustainable…

Wayne Irava, Ajay Tandon |

How did Bangladesh achieve a successful demographic transition by decreasing the total fertility rate – and what important lessons can its experience hold for other countries?

Trina Haque, Rifat Hasan, Hellen Wagura |

These are some of the most pressing development priorities in South Asia and the topics for our most popular blogs in 2020.

Trishna Thapa |

A World Bank report, "Enhancing Government Effectiveness and Transparency: The Fight Against Corruption," examined three examples of positive reform experiences in public procurement to…

Joel Turkewitz |

The World Bank’s Sustainable Enterprise Project provides access to loans for microenterprises to adopt cleaner and greener methods of operation. In light of the pandemic, the project started to…

Zahir Uddin Ahmed |

While the poor have suffered severely during the crisis, many informal workers in the middle of the income distribution also experienced a large drop in earnings.

Maurizio Bussolo, Siddharth Sharma, Hans Timmer |

The Emergency Multi-Sector Rohingya Crisis Response Project is supporting the Bangladesh government to scale up access to essential services such as energy, water, sanitation, and disaster-…

Swarna Kazi, Ignacio Urrutia |

Whether it happens in public spaces or the workplace, sexual harassment is a form of gender-based violence, inflicting harm and stress on its victims and limiting their career or education…

Maria Beatriz Orlando, Rohini P. Pande, Uzma Quresh |

This entry highlights 13 papers that were published in the weeks of November 2nd and 9th. In these weeks’ publications, a number of papers were published related to the impact assessment of the…

Policy Research Working Paper team |