Nepal made remarkable progress in poverty reduction between 1995 and 2010, a period coinciding with a decade-long violent conflict followed by tumultuous post-conflict recovery. Although improving agricultural productivity was long regarded as instrumental to lifting the living conditions of...

This paper introduces a variety of concepts and methods to examine living standards improvements in Nepal in a dynamic perspective. Using data from three rounds of Nepal Living Standards Surveys conducted in the past two decades, together with data from a nationally representative survey that...

This paper attempts to determine the extent to which inequality in wage earnings in the Russian Federation is unfair. Unlike other similar attempts that can, at best, produce a lower bound on the estimate of the share of inequality that is unfair, this paper exploits the longitudinal nature of...

This paper assesses inequality of opportunity in educational achievement using the Human Opportunity Index methodology on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment. The findings suggest that there are large inequalities in learning outcomes as measured by demonstrated...

This paper discusses equality of opportunity in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, with an emphasis on access to labor market opportunities. It develops an inequality of opportunity index on access to good jobs and decomposes the contributing factors in the prevailing inequality. Then, it...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of economic and social mobility in countries in the South Caucasus by complementing available household survey data in each of the countries in the subregion with other sources, such as the Life in Transition Survey (2016). The first part of the paper...

Focusing on the welfare of the less well off as a measure of real societal progress is the fundamental principle underlying the WBG indicator of "shared prosperity" , namely income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country. This paper uses a database assembled by the World Bank Group to...

Using nationally representative household survey data from five countries -- three from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal) and two from Sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) -- this paper conducts a systematic assessment of the correlation between various measures of household food...

Do household consumption-smoothing strategies in poor countries entail significant long-run costs in terms of reduced human capital? This paper exploits the timing of monsoon rainfall shocks and the seasonal nature of agriculture to isolate income effects on early childhood anthropometric...

International migration has increased rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the rural economic growth brought about by migration and remittances on Nepal's...