Global poverty estimates were updated today on the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). This update includes new regional poverty aggregates in 2020 and 2021 for Latin America and the Caribbean…

Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah, R. Andres Castaneda Aguilar, Carolina Diaz-Bonilla, Tony Fujs, Christoph Lakner, Minh Cong Nguyen, Martha Viveros |

In November 2022, more than 45,000 world leaders and climate activists convened in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the preeminent international climate conference, COP27. Indeed, climate action – and…

Dieter Wang, Bryan Gurhy, Fiona Stewart |

With the global economic challenges that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, combined debt stock of low- and middle-income countries rose by 5.6%, from $8.6 trillion in 2020 to $9 trillion in 2021.…

Kifaye Didem Bayar, Anthony Tin Yu To, Ogma Dessirama Bale |

The International Comparison Program (ICP) produces purchasing power parities (PPPs) and comparable price level indexes for each of its 170-plus participating economies, as well as PPP-based…

Giovanni Tonutti |

March 22 is World Water Day. Water is vital for human health and survival, and access to water is recognized as a human right. Over the past 21 years, global access to safely managed drinking…

Haruna Kashiwase, Tony Fujs |

In the early 1990s, there was a near complete overlap between poor people and poor countries, with more than 9 out of 10 of the world’s extreme poor living in low-income countries at the time.

Daniel Gerszon Mahler, Nishant Yonzan, Christoph Lakner |

Coal prices have been retreating from their highs in 2022 but they remain well above the 2017-2021 average. Global coal consumption levels reached an all-time high in 2022, led by India and China…

Paolo Agnolucci, Peter Nagle, Kaltrina Temaj |

“Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to human health, alongside climate change”. This subtitle from a 2021 WHO article raises an alarming concern. 92% percent of pollution-…

Khadim CISSE, Ndeye Rokhaya DIENG, Aram Gassama, Sveta Milusheva, Amath Ndiaye |

Sustainable policy is driven by lessons learned from the past. To learn, people, nations, and global societies need reliable measures of progress.

Pierella Paci, Utz Pape |

Today, on International Women’s Day, we delve into data from the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal to explore some of the obstacles still preventing women from fully participating in the economy and…

Hana Brixi, Haishan Fu |