The Philippines aspires to become a predominantly middle-class society by 2040. Significant strides have been achieved in the reduction of extreme poverty. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of recent gains and the vulnerability of many households to economic shocks. This study...

Joint programming, also referred to as convergence, in social protection and economic inclusion interventions has emerged as a critical strategy for addressing persistent poverty in the Philippines. Despite the government's ambitious target to reduce poverty from 18.1% in 2021 to 9% by 2028,...

The asymmetric impact of urbanisation on poverty reduction was examined for South Africa employing data from 1990 to 2022. The study was motivated by the need to establish the effects of positive and negative shocks on poverty reduction. The study used the non-linear autoregressive distributed...

This working paper investigates the tension between market forces and welfare policies by applying Karl Polanyi's "double movement" study to pre- and posttransformation Poland. The analysis aims at providing a comprehensive perspective on how poverty relief policies impacted and have been...

A new generation of policies can trace the path from wealth to inclusion. Building on its urban and youthful population, Equatorial Guinea can shift from a model of extraction to one of prosperity. This report—the World Bank's first Poverty and Equity Assessment for Equatorial...

Colombia has a complex legal framework meant to protect the population against basic risks through a combination of contributory and non-contributory social insurance. The population is almost perfectly split between them, with eligibility to participate in the latter determined by poverty....

This study addresses the challenges facing Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCT) by investigating whether recipients are satisfied with health services and how contextual factors affect the utilization of health services. The study used binary logistic regression to determine households'...

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...

Joint programming, also referred to as convergence, in social protection and economic inclusion interventions has emerged as a critical strategy for addressing persistent poverty in the Philippines. Despite the government's ambitious target to reduce poverty from 18.1% in 2021 to 9% by 2028,...

Child poverty is of growing concern in Ireland and internationally due to the growing body of evidence on the detrimental effects of childhood socio-economic disadvantage on children, both in the short term and in the long term through loss of education, earnings and health. In Ireland, child...

Climate shocks increase poverty and reduce development gains and productive investments, in part because vulnerable households have poor financial resilience, are often not covered by public safety nets, and therefore have little ability to cushion the impacts of shocks. Globally, nearly one in...

This paper presents the first estimates of extreme child poverty and child poverty using the World Bank's recently revised international poverty lines. Using the international poverty line of $3.00 per day and the higher $8.30 per day poverty line (both expressed in 2021 purchasing power...

This policy note examines the role of social safety nets in addressing persistent poverty and inequality in Cameroon. Building on over a decade of implementation, Cameroon's main safety nets initiative-the Projet Filets Sociaux (PFS)-has laid important foundations but remains limited in scale...

The 2011-2020 period is the final stage of poverty alleviation in China, which emphasizes regional development. Using county-level panel data from 2006 to 2015, we explore the impact of regional poverty alleviation policy on economic growth of contiguous destitute areas (CDAs) in China. The...

We develop a framework to assess when social programmes should prioritize expanding coverage versus improving targeting accuracy. Rather than treating universalism and targeting as a binary choice, we derive a practical rule-of-thumb based on observed eligibility rates and programme quotas to...

This Synthesis Report was prepared by the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAN) at the request of the European Commission. It provides a comparative overview of the situation regarding the fight against homelessness and its links with broader anti-poverty policies across the EU, with a...

This appendix describes the methodology established by the SPC Indicators' sub-group (ISG) to identify each Member States' KSCs and GSOs, which had been adapted in 2021 to follow a more policy-based approach. The methodology has been further discussed and confirmed by the ISG in its meeting of...

The attached Country Profiles sheets provide for all Member States a snapshot of progress towards the national 2030 poverty and social exclusion target, trends in the main social indicators for each country, and the main, priority social challenges and good social outcomes identified for each...

The Social Protection Committee's (SPC) annual report reviews the social situation and the policy developments in the Member States and in the EU in accordance with the SPC Treaty mandate and provides input in the context of the preparation of the 2026 cycle of the European Semester. The report...

The standard global poverty estimation method - relying on household survey data and consumer price index (CPI) - based inflation - suggests a sharp decline in Madagascar's international poverty rate (measured at 3 dollars per day in PPP terms) between 2012 and 2021. This paper, however, applies...

Ninety percent of economic inclusion programs target women, yet only a third prioritize women's economic empowerment (WEE) as a core objective. Unless programs are designed to address gender-specific barriers, they risk reinforcing rather than reducing gender inequalities. Economic inclusion...