Early childhood is a crucial window of opportunity for improving lives. The challenge for policymakers and development experts knows which programs give children’s development the best boost and how to implement them. The World Bank is committed to helping governments understand whether...

A growing number of countries are reforming how schools are managed and are working to involve parents and com¬munities more directly into the school management process. The idea behind school-based man¬agement reform is that devolving responsibility to schools and to those who use the schools...

After an economic crisis in Argentina in 2001 plunged millions of people there into poverty and worsened health outcomes, especially for women and children, the government crafted a new, national plan for a provincial health insurance program for the poor. The program, called Plan Nacer, was...

Uganda has made important progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals, including halving its poverty rate to around 20 percent from more than 50 percent in the early 1990s. But healthcare, especially in the rural areas, is generally of poor quality. Small clinics, known as...

The World Bank is focused on developing and supporting programs that help children reach their potential and live lives free of poverty. To help build a body of evidence of what works, the World Bank financed an evaluation of a program in Jamaica that targeted mothers of babies stunted due to...

Severe weather conditions can undo even the best efforts of families to break free of poverty. Households that rely on subsistence or small-scale farming are especially at the mercy of severe weather. Droughts and floods wipe out crops, leaving families hungry or without anything to sell to pay...

Countries around the world increasingly rely on conditional cash transfers to boost health and education outcomes for the poorest citizens. In developing and middle income countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, cash transfer programs are proving effective in a range of areas, including...

Jobs are critical to ending the cycle of poverty because they give people the opportunity to support themselves and their families. Policymakers focused on helping people move into the workforce often turn to vocational training and retraining programs. But do these actually improve people s...

Policymakers and development groups are interested in innovative ways to deliver cash transfer programs and make an impact where it s needed most. In Bangladesh, World Bank researchers worked with the government to evaluate a pilot social protection program that conditioned transfers on primary...

The world has made great strides toward ending AIDS. Yet the deadly disease remains a critical development challenge for poor countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, which has only 12 percent of the global population, is home to about 68 percent of all people living with HIV. Improving rates of HIV...