Despite a substantial decline in poverty, an increase in access to water and sanitation and a large decline in open defecation, diarrhea and stunting rates in Pakistan show few signs of a decline. This report provides evidence that the policy focus on eliminating open defecation rather than the...

This note builds on previous collaboration between the World Bank Group and UNICEF to estimate the global extent of child poverty. We estimate that in 2017, 17.5 percent of children in the world (or 356 million) younger than 18 years lived on less than 1.90 Dollars PPP per day, as opposed to 7.9...

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to estimate the rate of extreme poverty among children in the developing world. The estimates are based on the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank poverty estimates. Of children under age 18 years, 19.5 percent are...

This paper looks at how changing food prices affect child undernutrition in Ethiopia. It derives height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting) as indicators of child undernutrition from the two most recent years of the Livings Standards Measurement Survey and utilizes market prices...

This paper combines remote-sensed data and individual child-, mother-, and household-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to design a prototype drought-contingent targeting framework that...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, the largest cash transfer program for international refugees in the world. The paper provides prima facie evidence that the program quickly caused substantial changes in household size and composition, with a...

Inequality of opportunity : what it is, how it can be measured, and why it matters -- A human opportunity index for children -- Uses and policy applications of the human opportunity index -- Inequality of economic opportunity in seven Latin American countries -- Inequality of opportunity in...

Lao PDR has made notable progress in improving maternal health, with materanal mortality decreasing from 1,600 per 100,000 births in 1990 to 220 in 2013.1 However, in order for further gains to be realized, at least two barriers need to be addressed - the low utilization of maternal health (MH)...

Teenage pregnancies have potential negative consequences on the next generation. Children born to adolescent mothers are particularly at risk in terms of health, nutrition, cognitive and socio-emotional development. Evidence shows that the early years - especially the first 1,000 days - are...

Early Childhood Development (ECD) is a holistic concept that refers to the physical, cognitive, socio-emotional, and linguistic development of young children until the time they transition to primary school. This policy brief highlights that developmental gaps in the early years of a child's...