This paper evaluates how Vietnam's Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program, an educational reform for primary schools supported by the World Bank, affected the cognitive (mathematics and Vietnamese) and non-cognitive (socioemotional) skills of students in that country. We use propensity score matching to...

The international development community has used the World Bank's Statistical Capacity Index since its inception in 2004. The Sustainable Development Goals create new challenges for national statistical systems to produce high-quality and internationally comparable data. This paper reviews...

Despite a rich literature studying the impact of inequality on policy outcomes, there has been limited effort to bring these insights into the debates about comparative support for government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We fill in this gap by analyzing rich survey data from six countries...

Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam performed much better than all other developing countries, and even ahead of wealthier countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments. We provide a rigorous investigation of Vietnam's strong...

Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam performed much better than all other developing countries, and even ahead of wealthier countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments. We provide a rigorous investigation of Vietnam's strong...

Despite a rich literature studying the impact of inequality on policy outcomes, there has been limited effort to bring these insights into the debates about comparative support for government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We fill in this gap by analyzing rich survey data from six countries...

We offer the first study on vulnerability adaptation to subjective well-being, using rich panel data over the past two decades for Russia. We found no adaption to vulnerability for life satisfaction and subjective wealth, with longer vulnerability spells being associated with more negative...

We offer an updated and comprehensive review of recent studies on the impact of climate change, particularly global warming, on poverty and inequality, paying special attention to data sources as well as empirical methods. While studies consistently find negative impacts of higher temperature on...

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

Various challenges are thought to render female-headed households (FHHs) vulnerable to poverty in the Arab region. Yet, previous studies have mixed results and the absence of household panel survey data hinders analysis of poverty dynamics. We address these challenges by proposing a novel...