This report provides an overview of the conceptual foundations and work program implemented by the World Bank under the Russia Financial Literacy and Education Trust Fund (RTF) generously supported by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation beginning in October 2008. The overall...

Bureaucratic complexity in citizen-government interactions can be an obstacle to accessing basic services and exercising civil rights. This paper presents a new methodology to collect contributor-based data on the regulatory framework and compliance burden of six key citizen-government...

In recent years, the number of surveys on access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries or within the same country over time. A randomized experiment in Ghana tested whether the identity of the...

Panama has made significant progress in reducing poverty in recent years, progress that compares positively to that of the rest of the Latin America and Caribbean region. This report takes stock of this progress and reflects on the constraints and opportunities that Panama faces in continuing on...

In recent years, the number of surveys of access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries, or within the same country over time. This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in Ghana to test...

In recent years, the number of surveys on access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries or within the same country over time. A randomized experiment in Ghana tested whether the identity of the...

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of gender differences by looking at the available individual and household level...

This paper compares how results using various methods to construct asset indices match results using per capita expenditures. The analysis shows that inferences about inequalities in education, health care use, fertility, child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes are quite robust to the...