The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to human capital. This report presents new evidence and analysis to provide a comprehensive diagnostic of the effects of the pandemic on human capital outcomes and identify promising policy responses for governments faced with the task of rebuilding...

Using a unique longitudinal data set collected from primary school students in Pakistan, this paper documents four new facts about learning in low-income countries. First, children's test scores increase by 1.19 standard deviation between Grades 3 and 6. Second, going to school is associated...

This paper presents a fundamental reassessment of the global human resources crisis in primary health care, using nationally representative survey data from 7,915 health facilities across 10 Sub-Saharan African countries. The reassessment consists of three main parts. First, in contrast to a...

Social scientists frequently rely on the cardinal comparability of test scores to assess achievement gaps between population subgroups and their evolution over time. This approach has been criticized due to the ordinal nature of test scores and the sensibility of results to order-preserving...

In many low- and middle-income countries, the lack of access to essential infrastructure such as roads, electricity, and information and communications technology may hinder the provision of many critical services such as health care. For instance, scarce and deficient roads might limit the...