Poverty and Inequality

The Poverty and Inequality Research Program has two main objectives: (1) improve current data as well as methods and tools for poverty and inequality analysis and (2) use the improved data and existing data sources to better understand the economic and social processes determining the extent of poverty and inequality and to assess the effectiveness of specific policies in reducing poverty.

Featured

World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies
Report, 2023
Mobility is an integral part of the development process. It is a mechanism for reallocating labor across economic sectors and geographical areas. It enables adaptation to shocks, stresses, and imbalances. Cross-border mobility inevitably comes with economic and social consequences for those who move, their communities of origin, and their destinations. The World Development Report (WDR) is taking a fresh look at these issues. It aims to shift from a narrow focus on labor markets for migrants and legal protection for refugees to a more holistic perspective — one that recognizes the humanity of migrants and the complexity of the societies of origin and destination.
Main Messages | Download the Full Report | Concept Note | WDR 2023 Learning Events
Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century
Book, March 2023
All development is about people: the transformative process to equip, link, and enable groups of people to drive change and create something new to benefit society. Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century seeks to advance the concept of social sustainability and sharpen its analytical foundations. By identifying interventions that work to promote the components of social sustainability and highlighting the evidence of their links to key development outcomes, this book provides a foundation for using social sustainability to help address the many challenges of our time
International Development: Navigating Humanity's Greatest Challenge
Book, February 2023
Whether understood as a long-run historical process or an intentional political project, international development transforms not only societies and economies but also key ideas about how the world works and how problems should be solved. In this compelling book, Michael Woolcock demonstrates that achieving peace and prosperity for all is supremely contingent and often contentious: the means and ends of development are often perceived as alien, unjust, and disruptive, its benefits and costs unequally borne.

LATEST WORKING PAPERS

A Meta-Theory for Absolute Poverty Lines
Benoit Decerf
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10519, July 2023

Social Sustainability and the Development Process: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Can It Be Enhanced?
Patrick Barron, Louise Cord, José Cuesta, Sabina A. Espinoza, Greg Larson, Michael Woolcock
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10487, June 2023

A New Distribution Sensitive Index for Measuring Welfare, Poverty, and Inequality
Aart Kraay, Christoph Lakner, Berk Özler, Benoit Decerf, Dean Jolliffe, Olivier Sterck, Nishant Yonzan
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10470, June 2023

Examining Business Reform Committees: Findings from a New Global Dataset
Dorina Georgieva, Varun Eknath, Michael Woolcock
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10467, June 2023

Implications of Using Nonstandard Poverty Lines: An Illustration Using the Case of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Benoit Decerf, Maria Eugenia Genoni, Imane Helmy, Federico Sanz
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10437, May 2023

More Benefits, Fewer Children: How Regularization Affects Immigrant Fertility
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Ana María Ibáñez, Sandra V. Rozo, Salvador Traettino
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10431, May 2023

A Framework for the Economic Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions
Thomas Wilkinson, Mengxiao Wang, Jed Friedman, Marelize Görgens
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10407, April 2023

The Electoral Consequences of Easing the Integration of Forced Migrants: Evidence from a Southern Country
Sandra V. Rozo, Alejandra Quintana, María José Urbina
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10342, March 2023

The Prices in the Crises: What We Are Learning from Twenty Years of Health Insurance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Jishnu Das, Quy-Toan Do
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10313, February 2023

Least Protected, Most Affected: Impacts of Migration Regularization Programs on Pandemic Resilience
Maria José Urbina, Sandra V. Rozo, Andrés Moya, Ana María Ibáñe
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10291, February 2023

More Working Papers

LATEST JOURNAL ARTICLES

The Unintended Consequences of Deportations: Evidence from Firm Behavior in El Salvador
Antonella Bandiera, Lelys Dinarte Diaz, Sandra V. Rozo, Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, María Micaela Sviatschi, and Hernan Winkler
Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 70, June 2023 | Working Paper Version

A Preference-based Theory Unifying Monetary and Non-Monetary Poverty Measurement
Benoit Decerf
Journal of Public Economics, vol. 222, June 2023

Least Protected, Most Affected: Impacts of Migration Amnesties on Pandemic Resilience
Maria Urbina, Sandra Rozo Villarraga, Ana Maria Ibañez, Andres Moya
AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 113, May 2023 | Working Paper Version

The Prices in the Crises: What We Are Learning from 20 Years of Health Insurance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Jishnu Das, Quy-Toan Do
Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 32 (2), Spring 2023 | Column

The Distribution of Effort: Physical Activity, Gender Roles, and Bargaining Power in an Agrarian Setting
Jed Friedman, Isis Gaddis, Talip Kilic, Antonio Martuscelli, Amparo Palacios-Lopez, Alberto Zezza
World Bank Economic Review, vol. 37 (1), February 2023 | Working Paper Version

Taxation, accountability, and cash transfers: Breaking the resource curse
Shantayanan Devarajan, Quy-Toan Do
Journal of Public Economics, vol. 218, February 2023 | Working Paper Version

The Future of Multilateralism and Global Development: Opportunities for Constitutive and Functional Reform
J. P. Singh, Michael Woolcock
Global Perspectives, vol. 3 (1), December 2022

LATEST BLOGS AND ARTICLES

Is it time for development economists to start considering the welfare of non-human animals?
Berk Özler | Development Impact | June 28, 2023

The prosperity gap: A proposed new indicator to monitor shared prosperity
Aart Kraay, Christoph Lakner, Berk Özler, Benoît Decerf, Dean Mitchell Jolliffe, Olivier Sterck, Nishant Yonzan | Development Impact | June 01, 2023

Can we have a welfare index that is easy to understand but also distribution sensitive?
Aart Kraay, Christoph Lakner, Berk Özler, Benoît Decerf, Dean Mitchell Jolliffe, Olivier Sterck, Nishant Yonzan | Development Impact | June 01, 2023

Stratum Fixed Effects: what kind of covariates are they?
Berk Özler | Development Impact | April 30, 2023

Qualitative Analysis with Representative Samples
Julian Ashwin, Vijayendra Rao | Development Impact | April 17, 2023

Missing values of baseline covariates in RCTs: an old favorite gets the nod…
Berk Özler | Development Impact | April 3, 2023

Taking care: The impacts and limitations of financial incentives in health
Damien de Walque, Eeshani Kandpal, Yahe Li | Let’s Talk Development | February 15, 2023

Reducing the environmental (and animal welfare) effects of what we eat: improving lab experiments with virtual reality supermarkets
Berk Özler | Development Impact | February 15, 2023