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....

The World Bank has recently adopted a target of reducing the proportion of population living below US$1.25 a day at 2005 international prices to 3 percent by 2030. This paper reviews different projection methods and estimates the global poverty rate of 2030 modifying Ravallion (2013)'s approach...

This report aims to familiarize those involved in estimating official poverty statistics with the SWIFT framework to enhance the frequency and quality of poverty data. It presentshow SWIFT works, discusses the advantages and caveats of the methodology, and provides examples of country-specific...

This research examines the heterogeneous impact of out-migration on the informal employment within the framework of rural transformation in Nepal. Employing a multinomial Probit model with instrumental variables, we analyze the influence of household-level migration on the informal employment...

The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was initiated in 2008 in Pakistan to aid the poor and vulnerable, particularly in response to the global financial crisis. The National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER), established by BISP, is a key component for determining eligibility for Kafaalat...

This paper studies the effect of rolling out mobile money agents in rural Northern Uganda. In a randomized experiment, 168 areas were randomly selected to receive an agent in 2017, with another 163 areas serving as a control group. Administrative data on mobile money transactions suggest that...

Poor households are heterogeneous in the circumstances preventing an improvement in their welfare. It is important to understand the nuances within different types of poor households so that critical pathways out of poverty that remedy the variegated sets of constraints they face can be...

Improving the livelihoods of poor households and transitioning them to the labor force is a major challenge in Ethiopia. Productive safety nets that include livelihood grants and other support services could be a promising intervention toward this end. However, the evidence on the welfare and...

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...