This paper examines possible synergies between conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) and
rural development policies in Brazil. Policy synergies could exist for a variety of reasons. In environments where there are market failures for credit and insurance, CCTs could provide liquidity
and reduce vulnerability to shocks, thereby contributing to the success of rural development interventions. CCTs might improve the nutrition and health of households, allowing them to work
more productively and increase the independence and bargaining power of women, permitting

 This document sums up all
the main results of the impact assessment for Oportunidades Rurales and its interaction with
Familias en Acción. The analysis sheds light on the links between the social programs which, in
theory, could generate a greater potential in the fight against poverty but that, in practice, fall
short in their attempts because of design and targeting problems.

 Workfare programs are one of the most popular social protection and employment policy instruments in the developing world. They evoke the promise of efficient targeting, as well as immediate and lasting impacts on participants’ employment, earnings, skills and behaviors. This paper evaluates contemporaneous and post-program impacts of a public works intervention in Côte d’Ivoire. The program was randomized among urban youths who self-selected to participate and provided seven months of employment at the formal minimum wage.

Most safety net programs in low and middle-income countries have hitherto been conceived for rural areas. Yet as the global urban population increases and poverty urbanizes, it becomes of utmost importance to understand how to make safety nets work in urban settings. This paper discusses the process of urbanization, the peculiar features of urban poverty, and emerging experiences with urban safety net programs in dozens of countries.

The changing nature of work is turning traditional employment on its head. More and more people are working in the gig economy or in jobs without formal employment contracts, and the payroll-based industrial-era social insurance policies are no longer providing the safety net for which they were designed. 70 percent of the world's population is now in the informal labor market without the means to contribute to health care insurance or pension plans. Social protection needs to be reimagined in order to adapt to these changes.

The World Development Report (WDR) 2019: The Changing Nature of Work studies how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Fears that robots will take away jobs from people have dominated the discussion over the future of work, but the World Development Report 2019 finds that on balance this appears to be unfounded. Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. Firms adopt new ways of production, markets expand, and societies evolve.

This report documents cross-country findings from analysis conducted by World Bank staff working on Jobs Diagnostics. It identifies some key insights for policy makers to take into account when designing policies and programs for inclusive growth. The findings are drawn from three different sources. The macroeconomic section analyzes data for over 16,000 overlapping episodes of economic growth in 125 countries. The labor supply section analyzes labor data from the latest household surveys in 150 countries around the world.

The importance of improving outcomes for the ultrapoor is emphasised in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose first target is to eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030. An intervention showing promise in helping the ultra-poor move onto a sustainable trajectory out of poverty, is a comprehensive livelihood programme providing a ‘big-push’ with complementary investments in productive assets and skills training. First pioneered by the NGO BRAC in Bangladesh, the programme has been replicated in 20 other countries.

The Evidence In Practice
research project at the Yale
School of Management was conducted from January
2016 to January 2018 in
order to better understand
the conditions under which
rigorous evidence can be
effectively integrated into public
policies and non-governmental
organization (NGO) practices
in the field of international
development. This case study of a pilot and randomized controlled trial of an innovative poverty
alleviation program illustrates the challenges of balancing research and implementation priorities.

Productive inclusion programs provide an integrated package of services, such as grants and training, to promote self-employment and wage employment among the poor. They show promising long-term impacts, and are often proposed as a way to graduate the poor out of social assistance. Nevertheless, neither productive inclusion nor social assistance will be able to solve the broader poverty challenge independently.

Can extensions such as coaching and training augment the poverty relief effects of cash transfers, or do they unnecessarily constrain the agency of recipients in the allocation of program resources? We use a randomized trial to estimate the impacts of philosophically distinct variants of transfer-based poverty reduction approaches in rural Uganda.

Protecting farmers from crop loss related income shocks and eliminating extreme poverty are important development priorities of this century. India has made significant progress in protecting farmers from income loss due to drought and other calamities through various crop insurance schemes. At the same time, poverty rate has also been declining and Andhra Pradesh (AP) has been among the states with lowest poverty rates. Making further dent on poverty reduction in sustainable manner remains a challenge.

We know that poor women need to see a change in existing power relations and gain agency and power, and to exert influence over the political, economic and social processes that determine and, all too often, constrain their livelihood opportunities (OECD, 2012). And yet, though there is a substantial body of work on women’s economic empowerment as a whole, much of this is not disaggregated by the intersecting inequalities that magnify poverty and inequality.

This paper sets out to synthesize key lessons from studies using alternative methodologies to impact assessment. Drawing on Sen’s capability approach as a conceptual framework, it analyses two pairs of impact assessments which were carried out in West Bengal and Sindh around the same time and within close proximity to each other. Each pair consisted of a randomized control trial and a qualitative assessment of attempts to pilot BRAC’s approach to transferring assets to women in extreme poverty.

Launched in October 2014, Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) is a multi-stakeholder coalition among public sector, private sector, and civil society actors that aims to provide leadership and resources for catalytic action to increase the number of young people engaged in productive work.

Youth in many low-income countries are entering the labor force in unprecedented numbers, yet many struggle to secure rewarding livelihoods. This paper outlines the economic development challenges that constrain youth's transition into employment, and it parses the evidence on which programs and policies appear to speed that transition. It concludes that it may be time for a fundamental reassessment of approaches for addressing youth employment and the youth transition in low-income countries.

It is widely understood that poverty undermines early childhood development (ECD). In turn, poor ECD reinforces the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

This paper provides a synthesis of current global evidence on the impact of cash transfers in developing countries, and of what works in different contexts, or for different developing objectives.

Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the most ambitious goal set by the 2030 Agenda. This Goal includes eradicating extreme poverty in the next 12 years, which will require more focused actions in addition to broad-based interventions. The question is: How can we achieve target 1.1 and overcome the many challenges that lie ahead? By gaining a deeper understanding of poverty, and the characteristics of the extreme rural poor in particular, the right policies can be put in place to reach those most in need.

This document lays out the social security strategy of the International Labour Organization on the extension of social security. The ILO's two-dimensional strategy provides clear guidance on the future development of social security in countries at all levels of development. Its horizontal dimension aims at establishing and maintaining social protection floors as a fundamental element of national social security systems.