The 2012 World Development Report recognized that
expanding women's agency - their ability to make
decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to
improving their lives as well as the world. This report
represents a major advance in global knowledge on this
critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys
distilled in this report cast important light on the nature
of constraints women and girls continue to face globally.

As in many developing countries, data
collection has proved to be a considerable challenge in
Papua New Guinea (PNG). A welcome effort at data collection
on dispute incidence and personal security was made in
PNG's household income and expenditure survey (HIES or
the Survey), (2009-2010) an experience that also highlights
some of the challenges of such an exercise. For the first
time, the HIES asked questions about dispute incidence and

With limited land, capital, and a fast
growing population, Burundi's main asset is its
youthful population. Its main challenge is also to create
good quality jobs for its youth. With low levels of
educational attainment and poor health status, the quality
of this young population is poor. After more than 13 years
of conflict ending in 2000, and a period of modest recovery,
Burundi has the opportunity to stimulate growth. Burundi is

This report lays the groundwork for a
safety net system that can address the needs of the poor in
Cameroon. Cameroon does not have a coordinated system of
safety nets; rather, small, isolated interventions which
together do not address the needs. Moreover, food and fuel
price subsidies which mainly benefit the rich cost around 2
percent of GDP/year much more than total safety net
spending. There is a need for a social protection strategy

This report aims to update knowledge of
gender disparities in Ethiopia using the latest household
survey data. The aim of this analysis is to support ongoing
efforts to implement Plan for Accelerated and Sustained
Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) vision. The significant
progress in addressing key dimensions of gender disparities
such as education shown in this report as well as in the
recent annual progress report on the implementation of

Over the last few years, the Indian
economy has been in a phase of unparalleled growth of about
8-10 percent per year, making it one of the fastest growing
economies in the world. Sustaining this rate of growth will
need huge investments in physical infrastructure such as
roads, water, power, and urban sectors. Preliminary
estimates suggest that investment in infrastructure would
need to increase from the current 4.6 percent of gross

The dramatic increases in world food and
fuel prices during 2007 and early 2008 may set back
Mozambique's considerable advances in poverty reduction
during the past decade. This study assesses the impact of
higher fuel and food prices at both household and
macroeconomic levels, and also considers policy options to
mitigate some of the negative impacts of higher prices.
Rising world prices certainly represents a negative

This history illustrates a number of
themes encountered in Swaziland that faces developing
countries and their external partners in Africa and beyond.
Firstly, the history relates the experience of a small and
comparatively insular country in addressing complex
challenges deriving from rapid urbanization and, as a
result, the growing need to adapt governance systems and
structures. A second key issue is the challenge that small

The World Bank's revised forest
policy came into being in 2002 and covers all types of
forests. It has the following key objectives: (i) harnessing
the potential of forests to reduce poverty in a sustainable
manner; (ii) integrating forests effectively into
sustainable development; and (iii) protecting vital local
and global environmental services and values. The policy
enables the bank to fully engage in forestry throughout the

Strong boy-bias and its consequences for
young and unborn girls have been widely documented for Asia.
This paper considers a country in Sub-Saharan Africa and
finds that parental gender preferences do affect fertility
behavior and shape traditional social institutions with
negative effects on adult women's health and
well-being. Using individual-level data for Nigeria, the
paper shows that, compared to women with first-born sons,

Improving access to affordable and
reliable energy services for cooking is essential for
developing countries in reducing adverse human health and
environmental impacts hitherto caused by burning of
traditional biomass. This paper reviews empirical studies
that analyze choices of fuel and adoption of improved stoves
for cooking in countries where biomass is still the
predominant cooking fuel. The review highlights the wide

Since economic liberalization in the
early 1990s, India has experienced high economic growth and
made considerable progress in gender equality in areas such
as primary education. However, it fared poorly on
gender-parity in labor force participation (LFP). During the
period between 1993-94 and 2011-12, female labor force
participation rate (LFPR) remained consistently low as
compared to male participation. More alarming is the fact