This report presents a diagnostic study of barriers to private sector participation focusing on young Kuwaitis. The General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development (GSSCPD), Kuwait Public Policy Centre (KPPC) and the World Bank's behavioral science team, the Mind,...

In the wake of the pandemic, the greatest obstacle to COVID-19 vaccination in the Caribbean is vaccine acceptance and uptake rather than supply. Social media surveys were conducted in three Caribbean countries to better understand the socio-behavioral drivers of vaccine acceptance and uptake to...

Natural resources management (NRM) helps protect forests and promote sustainable development. Although women are key in strengthening activities in NRM, they are dramatically underrepresented in public funding for forest projects in many countries, such as Mexico, limiting their participation...

This paper validates a recently proposed method to estimate intra-generational mobility through repeated cross-sectional surveys. The technique allows the creation of a "synthetic panel" -- done by predicting future or past household income using a set of simple modeling and error structure...

Between 2004 and 2007, no annual official statistics on poverty existed in Peru. This was due to serious problems with the household survey used to estimate poverty and implemented by the National Statistical Institute (INEI). Many of the technical issues arose from changes in the survey...

Peruvian public policy is currently focused on economic growth with social inclusion. The Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS)-created in October 2011-leads the sector and promotes evidence-based public policy using three strategic guidelines: 1) matching criteria and mechanisms...

Cash transfer programs have become extremely popular in the developing world. A large literature analyzes their effects on schooling, health and nutrition, but relatively little is known about possible impacts on child development. This paper analyzes the impact of a cash transfer program on...

Low aspirations can limit households investments and contribute to sustained poverty. Vice versa, increased aspirations can lead to investment and upward mobility. Yet how aspirations are formed is not always well understood. This paper analyzes the role of social interactions in determining...

While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households' risk-management through income...

Interventions aimed at increasing the income generating capacity of the poor, such as vocational training, micro-finance or business grants, are widespread in the developing world. How to target such interventions is an open question. Many programs are self-targeted, but if perceived returns...