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

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune
October 2020
The report presents new estimates of COVID-19’s impacts on global poverty and inequality. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already-poor and vulnerable people hard, while also partly changing the profile of global poverty by creating millions of “new poor.” Furthermore, the report breaks ground by jointly analyzing three factors whose convergence is driving the current crisis and will extend its impact into the future: the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflict, and climate change.
Report | Feature Story
Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict
June 2020
This Policy Research Report documents how permeable country borders have become in many different domains, and the troubling human and economic costs as the geographical spillovers of conflict and crime and political instability have intensified. The report suggests international institutions can play a critical role in stabilizing domestic fragility by moving settlement of disputes away from battlefields and toward global platforms.
Policy Research Report | Video | Blog
Research Newsletter on Gender and Development
September 2020
This month's newsletter highlights research on gender bias, female business leaders, gender pension gaps, and more.

LATEST WORKING PAPERS

Intergenerational Mobility around the World
Roy van der Weide, Christoph Lakner, Daniel Gerszon Mahler, Ambar Narayan, Rakesh Ramasubbaiah
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9707, June 2021

Information, Loss Framing, and Spillovers in Pay-for-Performance Contracts
Sebastian Bauhoff, Eeshani Kandpal
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9687, June 2021

The Intergenerational Mortality Tradeoff of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies
Lin Ma, Gil Shapira, Damien de Walque, Quy-Toan Do, Jed Friedman, Andrei A. Levchenko
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9677, May 2021

Death and Destitution: The Global Distribution of Welfare Losses from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Olivier Sterck, Daniel Mahler, Benoît Decerf
Policy Research Working Paper 9673, May 2021

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 Policy Research Working Paper 9634, April 2021

More Working Papers

LATEST JOURNAL ARTICLES

Using Labor Supply Elasticities to Learn about Income Inequality: The Role of Productivities versus Preferences
Katy Bergstrom, William Dodds
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 13(3): 28-62, August 2021 | Working Paper Version

The globalization of refugee flows
Xavier Devictor, Quy-Toan Do, Andrei A. Levchenko
Journal of Development Economics 150: 102605, May 2021 | Working Paper Version

Relief from usury: Impact of a self-help group lending program in rural India
Vivian Hoffmanna, Vijayendra Rao, Vaishnavi Surendra, Upamanyu Dattab
Journal of Development Economics 148: 102567, January 2021 | Working Paper Version