When a disaster strikes, it not only affects households' physical assets, but also their income levels and ability to contribute to the local economy. Critically, these socio-economic disparities shape not only the severity of shocks on household-level economies, but also the duration of...

This report follows up on a 2007 World Bank study, Financial Sector Integration in Two Regions of Sub-Saharan Africa: How Creating Scale in Financial Markets Can Support Growth and Development (FSITR henceforth) which identified the opportunities associated with regionalization of financial...

This report focuses on Japan's experiences to showcase how the country incrementally strengthened the resilience of its health system by enhancing its capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises, drawing valuable lessons from its experience of major earthquakes, floods, and...

The Government of Malawi put in place a mechanism that enables its flagship unconditional cash transfer program-the Social Cash Transfer Program (SCTP)—to scale up response to additional beneficiaries when shocks occur. Making the SCTP shock-responsive is a key strategic pillar of the...

"Do aggregate economic shocks, such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts, reduce child human capital? The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children, they may transmit poverty from one generation to the next. This...

"Developing countries face a host of macroeconomic challenges in the design and implementation of development strategies and policies. The importance of the underlying poverty and distributional issues creates a need for relevant and reliable ways of tracking the social impact of shocks and...