Every policy relies on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices. Those assumptions typically rest on an idealized model of how people think, rather than an understanding of how everyday thinking actually works. This year’s World Development Report argues that a more...

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly...

Training programs mainly address market failures related to lack of skills (technical, cognitive, non-cognitive). This paper conducts a comprehensive review of training programs effectiveness in developing countries. Based on relevant international experiences, the paper highlights key design...

Fostering entrepreneurship is widely perceived to be a critical policy agenda to expand employment and earning opportunities and to reduce poverty. Sound macroeconomic conditions and business environment including infrastructure, regulation, and legal environment have typically been emphasized...

Middle childhood (approximately 6-12 years old) is a crucial time for developing cognitive and socio emotional competencies, and economic crises can affect children's development with long-lasting consequences for adolescence and adulthood. This note provides an overview of how economic shocks...

This paper reviews the main challenges facing countries in attempting to improve labor market outcomes among youth, focusing on the issues that became starkly visible during the recent financial crisis. In order to better identify and set uphuman development interventions, the paper proposes an...

This report presents available evidence on adult education and training in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), differentiating two separate types: continuing vocational education and training (CVET) for the employed, sought either by employers or individuals, and retraining and second chance...

This report examines the situation of child labor in Thailand in the last decade. It finds that child labor has decreased significantly, for example, the labor force participation rates of those aged 13-14 years has almost halved since 1990. Despite this decline, 1.6 million children below the...

This paper analyzes the relationship between whether a young person has a disability, the poverty status of their household, and their school participation using 11 household surveys from nine developing countries. Between 1 and 2 percent of the population is identified as having a disability....