Rapid economic growth over the past two decades lifted millions of people out of poverty in Central Asia. But the uneven spread of prosperity left many communities struggling to catch up. To support lagging regions within countries, each of the region's five national governments has made...

In 2013, the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank Group endorsed two ambitious goals: eliminating extreme poverty in the world by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity. The latter is defined as fostering the growth in the income of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each...

"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The "Western middle class" is defined as those who are not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people...