The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....

Children regularly receiving health visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently simple events are taken for granted in developed countries. In Latin America, despite...

The authors estimate returns to schooling in urban Argentina for a 10-year period. In addition to comparable earnings functions, they also estimate the returns using quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution. Over time, men in higher quantiles have...

This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought....

The paper is based on the premise that effective institutional reforms for service delivery require a carefully-considered institutional "fitting" process as opposed to transplantation of "international best practices." The paper asks how the specific institutional contexts of a given country...

Social protection is absent from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and only recently has gained some prominence in the post-2015 discourse. In the past quarter century, however, rising inequality has often accompanied economic growth. At the same time, the growing importance of risk and...

Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is...

Over the last several years, the World Bank has increasingly engaged in impact evaluations as means of building evidence for results. During this process, the Bank has also produced an extensive variety of knowledge products. However, there are several institutional and resource issues that...

Participation, dialogue, openness. These are values we cherish and aspire to. Who would be in favor of unilateralism, monologue, or isolation as guiding principles of development? The call for open development as a multipolar and more democratic search for solutions is almost a platitude. The...