This paper examines the role of social protection in mitigating the adverse effects of conflict on household welfare. We assess the impact of a graduation intervention linked to Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme, focusing on Amhara, a region severely affected by the Tigray conflict....

This paper summarizes the approach used to estimate monetary poverty for Pakistan in 2019-20 at the district level. The small area estimation method is used to impute welfare from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2018-19 into the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey...

The European Union has improved living standards, yet welfare disparities persist across regions, countries, and demographic groups. This paper uses data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and the at-risk-of-poverty or social...

This paper investigates the impact of a large-scale poverty alleviation program targeted at the 62 poorest districts in Viet Nam. The analysis of multiple data sets spanning the past 20 years uses a regression discontinuity design with district fixed effects. The findings do not reveal...

In the fiscal year 2018/19, 21.9 percent of the population in Pakistan lived below the national poverty line. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic, devastating floods in 2022, and a macro-fiscal crisis with record inflation have profoundly impacted economic activity and income-earning...

The economy of Kazakhstan has performed strongly since the turn of the century, growing at an annual rate of 4.7 percent from 2006 to 2021. Sustained economic and productivity growth brought higher incomes and a period of prosperity. Between 2006 and 2021, the per capita gross domestic product...

Ethiopia has seen many changes since 2016, which until now, has been the reference year for data about the level and pattern of poverty in the country. The narrative around poverty was that years of high growth resulted in a significant reduction in poverty, but by less than expected because...

The effects of poverty in childhood can last a lifetime. Research shows that children living in poverty have lower levels of health and wellbeing, attain lower levels of education, have lower levels of occupational attainment and are more likely to be poor in adulthood. In this report, we focus...

Public works programmes (PWPs) are widely used social protection instruments in low- and middle-income countries. Participants carry out temporary, labour-intensive works in exchange for cash or in-kind compensation. The available empirical evidence indicates that these programmes are usually...

The present research extends the extant literature by investigating the hypothesis on whether marriage can be a substitute for financial inclusion in energy poverty reduction in Ghana. Pooled data and two stage least squares techniques are used in the estimation process and the validity of the...

The problem of land inequality has attracted renewed interest in the development literature due to its potential effects on the welfare of smallholder farmers. Poverty reduction is an important sustainable development goal and a clearer understanding of the factors that could lead to poverty is...

The National Development Strategy (NDS) has been revised for the 2025-2044 period to guide the country's new priorities and challenges, in response to changes in the legal, conjunctural and structural context of the economy, planning and international commitments

This Medium-Term National Development Policy Framework (MTNDPF) 2022-2025 seeks to operationalize Article 36, Clause 1 of Ghana’s 1992 constitution, which enjoins Government to ensure that the national economy is managed efficiently to maximize the welfare of the citizenry. It was prepared...

Since 2016, public development action in Mauritania by 2030 has been framed by the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Shared Prosperity (SCAPP). This reference framework for strategic planning for the country's economic, social and environmental development also incorporates the United Nations...

The shift of employment towards sectors driving the twin (green and digital) transition, alongside longterm demographic trends and geo-political shocks, will influence all professions and sectors, affecting skill requirements. Apart from green and technical skills, transversal and social skills,...

The implementation of social policies is often hampered by the fact that local decision-makers may be unwilling or unable to implement the policy as intended by the central government. In contrast to research that focuses on incentivizing and holding local decision makers accountable, we examine...

This paper presents the last six borrowing agreements that were concluded between October 2023 and February 2024 to provide new loan resources to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) as part of the loan mobilization round launched in July 2021 to support low-income countries (LICs)...

This paper provides an update of the adequacy of the resources of the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) and the debt relief trusts. Demand for PRGT loans continued to exceed earlier projections. Total PRGT credit outstanding reached SDR 18.3 billion at end-2023, or three times the...

Can entrepreneurship programs be successful labor market policies for the poor? A large share of workers in developing countries are self-employed (mostly own-account workers without paid employees, often interchangeably used as micro entrepreneurs). Their share among all workers has not changed...