In the 2000s, global inequality fell for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, driven by a decline in the dispersion of average incomes across countries. Between 1988 and 2008, a period of rapidly increasing global integration, income growth was largest for the global top 1 percent and...

This research estimates the impact of international child sponsorship on adult income and wealth of formerly sponsored children using data on 10,144 individuals in six countries. To identify causal effects, an age-eligibility rule followed from 1980 to 1992 is utilized that limited sponsorship...

What is the pathway to development in a world with less international integration? This paper answers this question within a model that emphasizes the role of demand-side constraints on national development, which is identified with sustained poverty reduction. In this framework, development is...

The long-term effects of Mexico's conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, on poor households are of great interest to policy makers and academics alike. This paper analyzes the long-term effects on the welfare of the original participant households and their offspring, about 20 years after...

Global poverty is becoming increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and among households engaged in subsistence agriculture in environments characterized by uncertainty. Understanding how to achieve sustainable increases in household incomes in this context is key to ending extreme...

Governments play a very important role in supporting innovation, managing the disruptive effects of innovation, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation are broadly shared in the long run. This paper reviews the literature on market mechanisms that translate innovation into jobs and policies...

This paper estimates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South-East-West Highways in India on welfare, social inclusion, and environmental quality. The analysis uses district-level data for 1994-2011 and the difference-in-difference method. The results suggest that the highways...

How do labor income shocks affect household investment in upper secondary and tertiary schooling? Using longitudinal data from 2005-15 for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this paper explores the effect of a negative household income shock on the enrollment status of youth ages 15 to 25. The...

The European Union (EU) Regular Economic Report (RER), is an annual publication of the World Bank Group and covers economic developments, prospects, and economic policies in the European Union. The report finds that while growth is back on track, the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution...

Sweden's gender pension gap is about 33 percent at retirement, reflecting the gender earnings gap - itself a reflection of a structural gender difference in low-pay jobs for women and men and career advancement opportunities. The individual nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) account data...