The World Bank Group in 2013 made the elimination of extreme poverty by 2030 a central institutional focus and purpose. This evaluation examines how, and how well, the Bank Group has focused its support on poverty reduction over the past decade, and what lessons to draw from this moving forward. The lessons aim to strengthen the Bank’s country diagnostics, improve the design of country strategies, and build greater learning opportunities from program experience.

The recent decline in India’s rural
female labor force participation is generally attributed to
higher rural incomes in a patriarchal society. Together with
the growing share of the urban population, where female
participation rates are lower, this alleged income effect
does not bode well for the empowerment of women as India
develops. This paper argues that a traditional supply-side
interpretation is insufficient to account for the decline in

This note reviews the role legal aid can
play as a catalyst to empower and strengthen the livelihoods
of the poor in a World Bank-funded project in the Indian
state of Andhra Pradesh (AP), the AP Rural Poverty Reduction
Project. This note shows how land-related legal aid
activities can be implemented to support community-driven
development project objectives. Initial evidence on the
positive impacts of legal aid on economic and social

This report is based on a field study of
two large settlements, Satghara (a census town) and
Bhagwatipur (a rural cluster with 10,000 plus population) in
the Madhubani district of Bihar. The study explores the
social dynamics of the rural non-farm economy by empirically
mapping non-farm occupations in both the settlements. It
examines the dynamics of caste, community, and gender within
the social organization of the non-farm economy in terms of

There is a growing recognition of
agriculture's potential to spur growth and reduce
poverty in Africa. Agriculture accounts for one-third of the
continent's gross domestic product (GDP), and
two-thirds of its citizens rely on the sector for their
incomes. Investments in agriculture will hence not only
improve productivity and the continent's ability to
feed a growing population, but will also lift families out

This paper presents trends in monetary
and nonmonetary dimensions of wellbeing in Ethiopia using
data from the Household Consumption and Expenditure and
Welfare Monitoring surveys implemented in 2000, 2005, and
2011. The paper provides evidence on changes in overlapping
deprivations using a non-index approach to multidimensional
poverty. It assesses the performance of various dimensions
in education, health, and living standards, taking one

A new generation of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) is finding a small
foothold among poor, small-scale farmers in developing
countries. Even so, many barriers still prevent poor rural
people from accessing, using, and benefiting from new ICT
tools and platforms, and those barriers are arguably higher
for rural women. The relationship between gender and
agriculture has been studied intensively over the years, and

This paper analyzes environmental
reliance, poverty, and climate vulnerability among more than
7,300 households in forest adjacent communities in 24
developing countries. The data are from the detailed,
quarterly income recording done by the Poverty Environment
Network project. Observed income is combined with predicted
income (based on households’ assets and other
characteristics) to create four categories of households:

Africa has great potential for
agriculture. Although international commodity prices have
been buoyant, Africa’s supply response seems to be weak. A
variety of constraints may exist. Using the case of
Tanzania, the paper examines the impact of market
connectivity, domestic and international, on farmers’ crop
choices. It is shown that the international market
connectivity, measured by transport costs to the maritime

This paper identifies the low-elevation
coastal zone populations and developing regions most
vulnerable to sea-level rise and other coastal hazards, such
as storm surges, coastal erosion, and salt-water intrusion.
The focus is on the rural poor in the low-elevation coastal
zone, as their economic livelihoods are especially
endangered directly by coastal hazards and indirectly
through the impacts of climate change on key coastal and

This paper discusses how catastrophe
crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs
at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The
rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at
the national level is discussed. The role of technology and
remote sensing data availability as an enabler of
catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a
description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for

Myanmar is a country in transition with
great regional diversity. It is still a relatively young
country with the highest share of its population at active
working age. Myanmar’s more pressing needs are the
following: a) reducing the incidence of poverty and
improving human development outcomes, with a particular
emphasis on reaching the poor and vulnerable. Children from
poor families fare worse when it comes to nutrition, and