Welcome to this month’s World Bank Research E-Newsletter, a monthly summary of research conducted by our department.
This month our Policy Research Talk focused on Opportunities and Challenges of Urbanization: Planning for an Unprecedented Future. While urbanization is widely viewed as a key engine of development, urban population growth gives rise to both opportunities and challenges. In the near future, Africa and Asia will face an unprecedented growth in the number of people residing in their cities. The urban population in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to double within the next 25 years. In this talk Senior Economist Harris Selod shed light on the costs and benefits of
This month’s newsletter focuses on the theme of promoting effective governance. In the developing world, education spending may increase, but children do not learn. Clinics are built and drugs bought, but sickness persists. According to research by Michael Woolcock, a social scientist in our department, only a handful of developing country governments have achieved the state capabilities of an OECD government, putting into doubt continued progress against extreme poverty. Recent papers on promoting effective governance examine the challenges civil servants face in serving the poor; how civil society leaders can use social pressure to improve governance; exploring why the implementation of a participatory anti-poverty project in India worsened as it expanded; and
Enjoy!
—Asli
