Recent surveys show considerable
progress in maternal and child health in Ethiopia. The
improvement has been in health outcomes and health services
coverage. The study examines how different groups have fared
in this progress. It tracked 11 health outcome indicators
and health interventions related to millennium development
goals one, four, and five. These are stunting, underweight,
wasting, neonatal mortality, infant mortality, under -five

According to the latest census of 2011,
the urbanization level in India has increased from 27.8
percent in 2001 to 31.2 percent in 2011, and for the first
time, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded the
increase in rural population. India has different
administrative arrangements for rural and urban areas, which
are based on the 73rd and 74th amendments to the
Constitution of India respectively. Since the census towns

With 2015 marking the transition from
the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, the
international community can celebrate many development
successes since 2000. Three key challenges stand out: the
depth of remaining poverty, the unevenness in shared
prosperity, and the persistent disparities in non-income
dimensions of development. First, the policy discourse needs
to focus more directly on the poorest among the poor. While

Refugee return is one of the three
so-called durable solutions to refugee displacement
envisaged by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) and the international community. The objective of
this study is to identify the conditions that influence the
decisions by refugees in protracted displacement regarding
return to their home country - when, why, and by whom are
decisions on return or other coping strategies made, and how

Countries everywhere are divided into
two distinct spatial realms: one urban, one rural. Classic
models of development predict faster growth in the urban
sector, causing rapid migration from rural areas to cities,
lifting average incomes in both places. The process
continues until the marginal productivity of labor is
equalized across the two realms. The pattern of rising
urbanization accompanying economic growth has become one of

Agriculture is among the most risk-prone
sectors in the economies of Central Asia. Production shocks
from weather, pests and diseases and adverse movements in
agricultural product and input prices not only impact
farmers and agri-business firms, but can also strain
government finances. Some of these risks are small and
localized and can be managed by producers. Others are the
result of more severe, exogenous shocks outside agriculture

As part of the 2006-2011 National
Development Plan, the Plurinational State of Bolivia
launched two cash transfer programs and one youth labor
training program aimed at promoting the accumulation of
households’ human capital: the Juancito Pinto Educational
Grant, the Juana Azurduy Mother-Child Grant, and my first
decent job. The objective of this paper is to analyze the
effectiveness of the targeting mechanisms utilized in these

Climate change and climate policies will
affect poverty reduction efforts through direct and
immediate impacts on the poor and by affecting factors that
condition poverty reduction, such as economic growth. This
paper explores this relation between climate change and
policies and poverty outcomes by examining three questions:
the (static) impact on poor people's livelihood and
well-being; the impact on the risk for non-poor individuals

This paper aims to contribute to
learning on community engagement and community driven
development (CDD) in urban areas. Specifically, the review
describes the World Bank’s use of participatory and CDD
approaches in urban areas between 2003 and 2013; identifies
the challenges of using participatory and CDD approaches in
the urban context; assesses lessons from the application of
CDD in urban areas through case studies; and makes

This systematic country diagnosis (SCD)
for Chad aims to identify how to achieve the twin goals of
ending poverty and improving shared prosperity. It
acknowledges both: (i) the need for selectivity in pro-poor
interventions, and (ii) the inherent difficulty to do so
given the many competing binding reasons for poverty.
Selectivity means the identification of principal
opportunities for sustainable poverty reduction in the next

Launched in 2011, the Second Sustainable
and Participatory Energy Management Project (PROGEDE II) for
Senegal has been hailed for effectively mainstreaming a
gender perspective into an energy project. Under the
project, women have participated more in decision making;
developed skills in technical production, entrepreneurship,
and organizational management; and benefitted from increased incomes.

In the context of Romania’s push toward
sustainable and inclusive development, the government has
asked the World Bank to support the harmonization of public
investments financed by the European Union and the state
budget. The current report describes the national program
for local development (PNDL’s) framework and project cycle
and provides an overview of the program’s project portfolio
in 2014. It also draws a number of preliminary observations