How Domestic Violence is a Threat to Economic Development
Stopping violence against women is not only a moral imperative, new evidence shows that it can help the economy.
Chart of the WeekHow To Escape The Perils of Fragility
By Olusegun Akanbi, Kenji Moriyama, Keyra Primus
Already facing huge development needs, the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the challenges facing fragile and conflict states—a group of currently about 40 countries trapped in cycles of low administrative capacity, political instability, conflict, and weak economic performance. […]
The Policymaker’s Trilemma
By Abebe Aemro Selassie and Andrew Tiffin
中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
Imagine you’re a policymaker in sub-Saharan Africa. You’ve been charged with lifting your country out of the worst health crisis in living memory, and nobody around you knows when it will end—the second wave that gripped the region earlier in the year has eased, but many countries are nonetheless bracing for further waves as winter approaches. […]
Slow-Healing Scars: The Pandemic’s Legacy
By Sonali Das and Philippe Wingender
عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
Recessions wreak havoc and the damage is often long-lived. Businesses shut down, investment spending is cut, and people out of work can lose skills and motivation as the months stretch on. […]
Window for Change
By Gita Bhatt
There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. This saying could not be more apt today. The pandemic—which has disrupted the world in profound ways—has prompted countries to roll out significant policy changes that might otherwise have taken years. It has also sped the arrival of technologies and new ways of working and learning, moving us almost overnight into a new era. […]
How COVID-19 Will Increase Inequality in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies
By Gabriela Cugat and Futoshi Narita
عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
Emerging markets and developing economies grew consistently in the two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, allowing for much-needed gains in poverty reduction and life expectancy. The crisis now puts much of that progress at risk while further widening the gap between rich and poor.
Despite the pre-pandemic gains in poverty reduction and lifespans, many of these countries have struggled to reduce income inequality. At the same time, they saw persistently high shares of inactive youth (i.e., those not in employment, education, or training), wide inequality in education, and large gaps remaining in economic opportunities for women. COVID-19 is expected to make inequality even worse than past crises since measures to contain the pandemic have had disproportionate effects on vulnerable workers and women.
As part of our latest World Economic Outlook we explore two facts about the current pandemic to estimate its effect on inequality: a person’s ability to work from home and the drop in GDP expected for most countries in the world.
The impact of where you work
First, the ability to work from home has been key during the pandemic. A […]
The Declining Fortunes of the Young
By Era Dabla-Norris , Carlo Pizzinelli, and Jay Rappaport
Will I do as well as my parents?
A positive answer to this question once seemed a foregone conclusion; now, for recent generations, less so. Despite being more educated than their parents, millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—may have less job stability during their working life. Concerns that it might be more difficult to break into the middle class, or to have enough retirement savings, are also rising to the fore in policy debates in many advanced economies. […]
Delivering on Africa’s Dreams
By David Lipton
عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
Across sub-Saharan Africa, a visit to a school offers both a vision of hope for the future, and a reminder of the difficulties in attaining that vision. My recent visit to Sierra Leone and Niger brought this duality into sharp focus. […]
Fiscal Policies For Women’s Economic Empowerment
By Stefania Fabrizio, Daniel Gurara and Lisa Kolovich
Making sure that opportunities to enter the workforce are fair and rewarding for women benefits everyone. Yet, the average female workforce participation rate across countries is still 20 percentage points lower than the male rate, largely because gender gaps in wages and access to opportunities, such as education, stubbornly persist. […]