At the core of the very rapid growth in the number of urban dwellers living in illegal settlements is the gap between the cost or availability of legal land sites on which housing can be built and what most individuals or households can afford to pay for accommodation. For most cities, the problems are further exacerbated by the high spatial concentration of economic activities (and thus employment opportunities). This paper looks at the many ways in which governments can increase the supply and lower the cost of land for housing.

In the context of Romania’s push toward
sustainable and inclusive development, the government has
asked the World Bank to support the harmonization of public
investments financed by the European Union and the state
budget. The current report describes the national program
for local development (PNDL’s) framework and project cycle
and provides an overview of the program’s project portfolio
in 2014. It also draws a number of preliminary observations

Recent surveys show considerable
progress in maternal and child health in Ethiopia. The
improvement has been in health outcomes and health services
coverage. The study examines how different groups have fared
in this progress. It tracked 11 health outcome indicators
and health interventions related to millennium development
goals one, four, and five. These are stunting, underweight,
wasting, neonatal mortality, infant mortality, under -five

Countries everywhere are divided into
two distinct spatial realms: one urban, one rural. Classic
models of development predict faster growth in the urban
sector, causing rapid migration from rural areas to cities,
lifting average incomes in both places. The process
continues until the marginal productivity of labor is
equalized across the two realms. The pattern of rising
urbanization accompanying economic growth has become one of

This paper evaluates the impact of
access to credit from banks and other financial institutions
on household welfare in Mauritania. Micro-level data from a
2014 household survey are used to evaluate the relationship
between credit access, a range of household characteristics,
and welfare indicators. To address potential endogeneity
issues, the household isolation level is used to instrument
access to credit. The results show that households headed by

Launched in 2011, the Second Sustainable
and Participatory Energy Management Project (PROGEDE II) for
Senegal has been hailed for effectively mainstreaming a
gender perspective into an energy project. Under the
project, women have participated more in decision making;
developed skills in technical production, entrepreneurship,
and organizational management; and benefitted from increased incomes.

Honduras’ recent economic performance
has been positive, especially taking into account the global
economic context. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
accelerated from 2.8 percent in 2013 to 3.1 percent in 2014
and 3.6 percent in the first half of 2015. Growth has been
supported by improved terms of trade, higher remittance
inflows and export demand driven by the on-going recovery of
the United States (US), and improved investor confidence.

As part of a national experiment, in
2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property
rights reforms, including complete registration of all land
together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate
labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity
design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages
just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results
suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned

The purpose of this note is to provide
policy recommendations to improve access to credit of rural
populations and small agricultural producers under
financially sustainable schemes. Although the agricultural
sector remains an important source of employment,
agricultural credit is a small fraction of commercial credit
in Colombia. The share of agricultural credit in Colombia is
below levels observed in other countries in the region.

Iraq appears to have firmly entered the
ranks of upper middle-income countries in 2012, having
experienced strong economic growth following the
establishment of a civilian elected government in 2005-06.
In 2012 the years of growth culminated in a per capita GDP
of 2472 constant 2005 US$. This three-volume poverty and
inclusion assessment provides the first in-depth analysis of
Iraq's economic and social development during the

Sustainable development goals (SDGs)
placed access to basic services at the center of
international development in 2016-2030. Out of 17 goals,
five address the access of poor people to basic services: to
health in SDG3, to education in SDG4, and SDG5, to water and
sanitation in SDG6, to energy in SDG7, and to urban services
in SDG11. The mutually reinforcing relationship between
electricity access, economic development, and poverty

El Salvador is the smallest country in
Central America, and one of the most densely populated in
the world. El Salvador is among the countries most affected
by weather-related events and other hazards, incurring
annual losses of around 2.5 percent of GDP. Worldwide, it
ranks second highest for risk exposure to two or more
hazards and highest for the total population at a relatively
high risk of mortality. Furthermore, climate change is