Is development best achieved by going for growth, or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare? In contrast to the Human Development Reports of the UNDP, the World Bank has stressed the growth approach. Recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that...

Bangladesh has experienced rapid fertility decline and reductions in under-five mortality over the last three decades. This impact study unravels the various factors behind these changes. Economic growth has been important, but so have major public sector interventions, notably reproductive...

Child poverty matters directly as children constitute a large share of the population and indirectly for future individual and national well- being. Developed country measures of child poverty are dominated by income-poverty, although health and education are often included. But these are not...

This paper demonstrates that the delivery of hardware inputs to Ghana’s basic education system – building classrooms and supplying textbooks – has had a substantial impact on higher enrollments and better learning outcomes. The Bank’s support for school building has been a major factor...

Sector-wide approaches are being widely adopted as a new aid modality, incorporating government ownership, partnership and a move from project to programme support. The literature to date on their performance in practice is, at best, mixed. This article reviews these issues in the light of the...