When host countries allow refugees to earn income, two main groups benefit: refugees, who become financially autonomous, and international institutions that can reduce the humanitarian aid that would otherwise be needed to support refugees. Uganda is one of the more progressive countries when it...

On February 29, 2012, the World Bank released an updated dataset of internationally comparable poverty estimates. Poverty is assessed against two internationally comparable poverty lines: $1.25 and $2 a day per capita (measured using 2005 purchasing power parity exchange rates). The new global...

This quick note is based on the report of the same name which was prepared just prior to the Arab Spring. The study anticipates the demands for social and economic inclusion articulated by Moroccan young people, especially February 2011. Since then, these demands have been amplified and reached...

One of the recurrent explanations of the Arab spring is that governments were disconnected from their populations and that public policies were simply not in line with people's sentiments and expectations. This paper provides a methodology to better understand how objective conditions of...

The Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of extreme poverty from its 1990 level will be achieved in 2015, and the international development community is now moving to a new goal of “ending extreme poverty.” However, the data needed to monitor progress remain severely limited....

As the Arab Spring unfolded and political unrest spread across the Arab world, Jordan faced an adverse economy as well. Fundamental to the economic challenge was high and rising energy prices, already heavily subsidized for consumers. With the government intent on staving off emerging political...

The Sustainable Development Goals recently adopted by the United Nations represent an important step to identify shared global goals for development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals are not as straightforward and easy to interpret as they appear on the surface. Review of the...

The Sustainable Development Goal agenda lays out an ambitious set of 231 indicators to track progress. Countries continue to fall short in terms of reporting on the indicators in general, and this is particularly the case for the subset of 50 gender-related indicators, where countries reported...

Data-driven research on a country is key to producing evidence-based public policies. Yet little is known about where data-driven research is lacking and how it could be expanded. This paper proposes a method for tracking academic data use by country of subject, applying natural language...

Country statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. This paper offers the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. It...