Carbon prices are needed to incorporate climate change costs into economic decision making. Carbon pricing should be included as part of a broader arsenal of tools to achieve domestic climate targets, but it is not a silver bullet: other policy instruments and investments (for example, public...

Welcome to the Spring 2019 edition of the World Bank's Madagascar Economic Update, which presents recent economic developments and our medium-term outlook. The economy has continued to perform well, with growth in 2018 estimated at 5.2 percent, above regional and global averages. External demand...

It has long been recognized that poverty is multidimensional, comprising not only insufficient income but also deprivations in access to basic services, the quality of living conditions, personal security, and other aspects of well-being. Since 2010 there has been rapid growth in the development...

Sri Lanka has made strong progress in reducing poverty and sharing prosperity among the less well-off in recent years. The poverty rate using the World Bank's 3.20 Dollars poverty line (in 2011 purchasing power parity) declined from 16.2 percent in 2012/13 to 11 percent in 2016, a reduction that...

Traditional measures of poverty have focused on income or expenditure based on a minimum threshold required to purchase a basket of essential goods and services. However, important aspects of well-being might not be fully captured through monetary measures alone. Multidimensional poverty...

Transport connectivity is an essential part of the enabling environment for inclusive and sustained growth. In many developing countries, particularly in Africa, the vast majority of farmers are still disconnected from local, regional, and global markets. To reduce poverty and support inclusive...

Zanzibar recorded an important decline in urban poverty, while rural poverty did not change, and poverty increased on the island of Pemba Basic needs poverty and extreme poverty both declined by 4.5 and 1 percentage points, respectively, at the national level in Zanzibar since 2010. Consumption...

Small area estimates of poverty and inequality statistics, through survey-to-census imputation that lets consumption be estimated for each and every household in a census, are useful for at least three reasons. First, they can help improve the effectiveness of public spending, by targeting to...

Transport connectivity is an essential part of the enabling environment for inclusive and sustained growth. In many developing countries, particularly in Africa, most people are still not connected to local, regional, or global markets. Such rural accessibility is crucial to reduce poverty and...