The world faces unprecedented opportunities to reduce global poverty and improve human welfare. Strong global growth and better economic policies in recent years have substantially reduced poverty in many developing countries. However, with the recent financial turmoil in the United States and...

The authors use a Gini index to measure inequality in educational attainment. They present two methods (direct and indirect) for calculating an education Gini index, and generate a quinquennial data set on education Gini indexes for the over-15-population in 85 countries (1960-90). Preliminary...

This paper reviews recent empirical studies linking the nature of public expenditures and taxes with the quality aspects of growth – its impact on poverty, income distribution, and the environment. The studies reviewed confirm that more spending on public goods and concomitantly less spending...

Human, natural, and physical capital assets are a country's main resources for growth and welfare improvements. Their distribution, growth and productivity largely determine people's income and welfare. The poor rely on human and natural capital in addition to physical capital, so the...

Equal access to education is a basic human right. But in many countries gaps in education between various groups are staggering. An education Gini index - a new indicator for the distribution of human capital and welfare - facilitates comparison of education inequality across countries and over...

This paper explores whether education and openness together can improve the development impact of investment projects - based on what we know of the World Bank's lending experience in the past twenty years. A framework is then proposed for the link between education, openness and investment...

The authors use a Gini index to measure inequality in educational attainment. They present two methods (direct and indirect) for calculating an education Gini index, and generate a quinquennial data set on education Gini indexes for the over-15-population in 85 countries (1960-90). Preliminary...

No country has achieved sustained economic development without substantially investing in human capital. Previous studies have shown the handsome returns to various forms of basic education, research, training, learning-by-doing, and capacity-building. But education by itself does not guarantee...

The start of the new millennium will be remembered for deadly climate-related disasters - the great floods in Thailand in 2011, Super Storm Sandy in the United States in 2012, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, to name a few. In 2014, 17.5 million people were displaced by...

The frequency of intense floods and storms is increasing globally, particularly in Asia-Pacific, amid the specter of climate change. Associated with these natural disasters are more variable and extreme rainfall and temperatures as recorded in publicly available databases for the world,...