World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about how in its first year, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is pushing one hundred fifty million people into extreme poverty, ending two decades of steady progress on poverty reduction. Coronavirus (COVID-19) has altered every aspect of...

Using a high-frequency mobile phone survey of food security conducted by the World Food Programme, this paper investigates how food assistance and access to food changed following the announcement of famine-like conditions in the Republic of Yemen. Among the mobile phone-using population, the...

This paper analyzes the incentives to labor supply faced by families, particularly mothers, with young children in the context of a recently introduced fertility promotion benefit in Poland. The paper is based on an adapted version of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's...

The people of the Mashreq have seen more than their share of deaths, economic losses, and instability over the past decade. As the decade-long conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic created new challenges and worsened the existing ones, economic activity declined, labor markets deteriorated, and...

A joint analysis of poverty and living standards was conducted by a technical team from the Ministry of Planning and Finance, Government of Myanmar, and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. Poverty has previously been estimated using data from the Integrated Household Living...

Afghans represent the world's largest protracted refugee population, and one of the largest populations to be repatriated to their country of origin in this century. Between 2002 and 2016, over six million refugees returned to Afghanistan from neighboring countries. In 2016 alone, returnees...

The Enterprise Surveys (ES) focus on many aspects of the business environment. These factors can be accommodating or constraining for firms and play an important role in whether an economy's private sector will thrive or not. An accommodating business environment is one that encourages firms to...