The paper presents a first global investigation of the longer-term inequality implications of COVID-19 by examining the effect of school closures on the ability of children from different countries and backgrounds to engage in continued learning throughout the pandemic, and their implications...

This book argues that Peru faces an unprecedented opportunity to become the next success story in Latin America. In the coming five years, policy making could put the country on a development path similar to the one that, say, Chile, Costa Rica, or Spain have followed over the last two decades....

Presented in this study are nine development initiatives in six less developed countries - Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The cases show that development initiatives, which engage local communities and local level governments, are often able to have...

To benchmark is to compare performance against a standard. As part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in the policy cycle, benchmarking can be useful in three ways. First, benchmarking can help place an outcome in the next context. Was the achievement...

Reaching agreement on a reasonable performance target is a challenge, with costs associated with getting it wrong. Attention in the literature has focused on the potential negative effects of gaming or of creaming. However, even if there is no gaming or creaming taking place, there can still be...

The pregnancy project sought to expose the existence, and challenge the validity, of stereotypes about Hispanic women. The charade explored the underlying motivations of the many who responded with a wide range of reactions. The specific objectives of this regional study are: to establish a...

Teenage pregnancy has been a cause of concern for policy makers because it is associated with a complex and often adverse social context for women. It is seen as the cause of lower social and economic achievement for mothers and their children, and as the potential determinant of...

Over the past decade, 12 of 14 Latin American countries have experienced a reduction in inequality. Based on a series of counterfactual simulations, the observed changes in inequality are decomposed in order to identify the main determinants of inequality. In contrast to methods that focus on...

Demographics, labor income, public transfers, or remittances: Which factor contributes the most to observed reductions in poverty? Using counterfactual simulations, this paper accounts for the contribution labor income has made to the observed changes in poverty over the past decade for a set of...

Access to reliable electricity is a Sustainable Development Goal, and key for both economic growth and individual wellbeing. Yet, in the absence of sophisticated monitoring systems, policy makers in developing countries commonly rely on surveys to measure electricity reliability and prioritize...