While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, the authors study whether financial development is pro-poor: Does financial development disproportionately raise the income of the poor? Using a broad cross-country sample, the authors find that the...

The impacts of climate change on poverty depend on the magnitude of climate change, but also on demographic and socioeconomic trends. An analysis of hundreds of baseline scenarios for future economic development in the absence of climate change in 92 countries shows that the drivers of poverty...

Changing population age structures are shaping the trajectories of development in many countries, bringing opportunities and challenges. While aging has been a matter of concern for upper-middle and high-income economies, rapid population growth is set to continue in the poorest countries over...

Alternative scenarios are considered for reducing by one billion the number of people living below $1.25 a day. The low-case, "pessimistic," path to that goal would see the developing world outside China returning to its slower pace of growth and poverty reduction of the 1980s and 1990s, though...