The 2008 "food price crisis" and more recent spikes in food prices have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion their impact on poverty and malnutrition. Estimating the income elasticity of micro-nutrients and assessing how they change during such crises is an important part...

International migration has increased rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the rural economic growth brought about by migration and remittances on Nepal's...

This paper estimates the impact of the 2008 food price spike and the 2009 contraction in global growth on undernourishment rates. The analysis is based on a methodology that uses a calorie-income relationship and income distribution data. The authors find that the 2008 global food price spike...

This paper attempts to quantify the degree of inequality of opportunity in labor market outcomes for a selection of countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. We adapt the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology that has been widely used to study opportunities of children to...

Focusing on the welfare of the less well off as a measure of real societal progress is the fundamental principle underlying the WBG indicator of "shared prosperity", namely income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country. This paper uses a database assembled by the World Bank Group to...

Do household consumption-smoothing strategies in poor countries entail significant long-run costs in terms of reduced human capital? This paper exploits the timing of monsoon rainfall shocks and the seasonal nature of agriculture to isolate income effects on early childhood anthropometric...

Using nationally representative household survey data from five countries -- three from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal) and two from Sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) -- this paper conducts a systematic assessment of the correlation between various measures of household food...

The 2008 global food price crisis and more recent food price spikes have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion the effects of such shocks on poverty and malnutrition. Analysis of the income elasticities of micronutrients and their changes during food price crises can shed...

This study examines which factors influence support for reducing fossil fuel subsidies and what types of information shift people's views through surveying 37,000 respondents across 12 middle-income countries that provided over USD750 billion in explicit and implicit subsidies for fossil fuels...

Motorbike-based ride-hailing services are widespread in many of the most congested cities in the developing world. These services often predate the construction of modern public mass rapid transit systems. Ride-hailing services may complement such investments by providing important first and...