Urbanization is transforming the developing world. However, understanding the pace, scale, and form of urbanization has been limited by a lack of consistent data. East Asia’s Changing Urban Landscape aims to address this problem by using satellite imagery and other data to measure urban...

Broad-based commodity price declines occurred in the second half of 2014. Crude oil prices declined the most, down 55 percent to $47 per bbl (barrel) in early January, from a high of $115 per bbl in late-June 2014, bringing an end to a four-year period of high and stable prices. The oil price...

The World Bank Group (also known as the “Bank Group”) is the largest anti-poverty institution in the world, offering loans, advice, knowledge, and an array of customized resources to more than 100 developing countries and countries in transition. Established in 1944 and headquartered in...

The World Bank Group has developed a new Strategy focusing on the ambitious goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. It is committed to helping countries reach these goals with proven solutions that integrate the WBG's development knowledge and...

The objective of this strategic framework is to mainstream citizen engagement in World Bank Group (WBG)-supported policies, programs, projects, and advisory services and analytics to improve their development results and within the scope of these operations, contribute to building sustainable...

Global growth again disappointed in 2014 but a lackluster recovery is underway, with increasingly divergent prospects in major economies. Looking ahead, growth is expected to rise slowly, supported by continued recovery in high-income countries and receding domestic headwinds in developing...

Every policy relies on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices. Those assumptions typically rest on an idealized model of how people think, rather than an understanding of how everyday thinking actually works. This year’s World Development Report argues that a more...

Today, the World Bank Group works with over 80 foundations around the world. This publication brings together examples of those partnerships. The report is not comprehensive, but an attempt to capture a sense of the breadth and extent of collaboration between the World Bank Group and the...

The biggest pension policy challenge faced by most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) today is low coverage of formal pension systems, both in terms of the proportion of workers participating in pension schemes and the proportion of the elderly receiving some kind of pension...

This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Europe and Central Asia. Building on earlier Turn Down the Heat reports, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day...