Mauritania is a vast country covering
over a million square kilometers, where a relatively small
population of 3.5 million people lives on just one-fifth of
the country’s total area. With extremely advanced
desertification, the country is particularly vulnerable to
the impact of climate change and other external shocks. The
main sources of income in Mauritania are agriculture, which
is either irrigated or rain-fed, and livestock. This is

This paper analyzes the effects of land
market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to
non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a
theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due
to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the
possibility of a reverse structural change where the share
of nonagricultural employment declines. The reverse
structural change can occur under plausible conditions: if

While scholars agree on the importance
of land rental markets for structural transformation in
rural areas, evidence on the extent and nature of their
operation, including potential obstacles to their improved
functioning, remains limited. This study uses
household-level data from six countries to start filling
this gap and derive substantive as well as methodological
lessons. The paper finds that rental markets transfer land

This paper analyzes the effects of land
market restrictions on the rural labor market outcomes for
women. The existing literature emphasizes two mechanisms
through which land restrictions can affect the economic
outcomes: the collateral value of land, and (in) security of
property rights. Analysis of this paper focuses on an
alternative mechanism where land restrictions increase costs
of migration out of villages. The testable prediction of

Land and property rights, migration, and
citizenship are complex issues that cut across all social,
economic, and political spheres of West Africa. This paper
provides an overarching scoping of the most pressing
contemporary issues related to land, migration, and
citizenship, including how they intersect in various
contexts and locations in West Africa. The way issues are
analytically framed captures structural challenges and sets

This study exploits a natural experiment
to investigate the impact of land reform on the fertility
outcomes of households in rural Ethiopia. Public policies
and customs created a situation where Ethiopian households
could influence their usufruct rights to land via a
demographic expansion of the family. The study evaluates the
impact of the abolishment of these pronatal property rights
on fertility outcomes. By matching aggregated census data

The Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Montene gro covers the period from July 1, 2015 to June
30, 2020 (fiscal years 2016-2020). This CPF builds on the
results and lessons of the previous World Bank Group (WBG)
Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), which originally covered
the period July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014, and was
subsequently extended to June 30, 2015.The one-year CPS)
extension was intended to provide greater clarity on the

This issue includes the following
headings: Changes in Poverty and Female-Headed Households in
Africa; Growth and Capital Inflows in Africa; Growth and
Capital Inflows in Africa; Vulnerability to Climate Change
in Coastal Bangladesh; Improving Agricultural Data for
Better Policies; Enhancing Transparency of Large-Scale Land
Acquisition; Explaining the Gender Gap in Agricultural
Productivity; Changing Patterns of Growth and Poverty

In 2013 the World Bank set itself two
ambitious goals: to end extreme poverty within a generation
and to boost the prosperity of the bottom 40 percent of the
population worldwide. In Latin America, the significance of
both goals cannot be overstated. Indigenous people account
for about 8 percent of the population, but represent 14
percent of the poor and over 17 percent of all Latin
Americans living on less than United States (U.S.) $2.50 a

The Malawi Urbanization Review aims to
provide fresh perspectives on urbanization in Malawi, by
analyzing the current and potential contribution of
urbanization to long-term national development and the
current institutional and financial capacity of local
governments to manage the process. Analyses presented in
this report are particularly timely as Malawi is planning
for the coming half decade through the Malawi Growth and

To explain persistent gender gaps in
market outcomes, a lab experimental literature explores
whether women and men have innate differences in ability (or
attitudes or preferences), and a separate field-based
literature studies discrimination against women in market
settings. This paper posits that even if women have
comparable innate ability, their relative performance may
suffer in the market if the task requires them to interact

Honduras is Central America’s
second-largest country with a population of more than 8
million and a land area of about 112,000 square kilometers.
The 20th century witnessed a profound economic
transformation and modernization in Honduras. Honduras’
persistent poverty is the result of long-term low per capita
growth and high inequality, perpetuated by the country’s
high vulnerability to shocks. First, over the past 40 years