The world's urban population is
expected to increase by about 2.7 billion by
2050.Virtually all of the increased population
will be in developing countries, leading to massive needs
for new and improved housing and urban infrastructures
(UNDESA 2012). The planning and design of these new
developments will reshape or create new urban landscapes
with significant implications for energy consumption,

Convenient access to safe water is
central to human health and development. Water-borne disease
remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity in the
world, much of which could be eliminated by a combination of
better water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH). The WHO
estimates that around 502 000 deaths a year in low and
middle income countries from diarrheal disease are
attributable to unsafe water, and that over 1 000 children

Remarks delivered by Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discuss Ethiopia’s commitment to climate action, the role of industrialization in delivering development, and bringing these together for low-carbon, equitable growth. He speaks about the government’s promotion of low-carbon growth, poverty reduction, and climate resilience to tackle the impact of climate changes.

China has used two main spatial policies
to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
develops a structural new economic geography model to
examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios

This report presents to the Government
of Georgia (GoG) an analysis of the implications of
potential policy changes to internally displaced person
(IDP) assistance. A pressing question for policy makers in
Georgia is the sustainability of status-based IDP assistance
and what efforts can be made to tailor this assistance to
favor the poor and vulnerable. Elimination of the IDP
benefit has been subject to debate among policymakers. The

This assessment presents a broad picture
of the main gender disparities in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(BiH) in endowments, economic opportunities, and agency. The
report builds on the framework of the 2012 World Bank World
Development Report 2012 on gender and development and the
World Bank’s regional gender report on Europe and Central
Asia: opportunities for men and women, that focuses on the
household and individual members’ bargaining power and their

Today, the world is at a conjuncture where issues of exclusion and inclusion are assuming new significance for both developed and developing countries. The imperative for social inclusion has blurred the distinction between these two stylized poles of development. Countries that used to be referred to as developed are grappling with issues of exclusion and inclusion perhaps more intensely today than they did a decade ago. And countries previously called developing are grappling with both old issues and new forms of exclusion thrown up by growth.

This program document presents the World
Bank Group (WBG) FY17-22 Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Bulgaria. The timing of the new CPF follows the
preparation of theSystematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)
prepared in FY15, and informs the areas and objectives ofthe
CPF in support of the WBG’s twin goals to reduce poverty and
boost shared prosperity1 for the bottom forty percent of the
population. The CPF proposes to focus WBG support in

This note describes the trends in, and
composition of, absolute poverty based on household
expenditures, and is thus concerned, as a matter of policy
objectives, with access of the population to a particular
minimum standard of living. This should be viewed as
complementary to the companion note on social exclusion
based on Europe 2020 indicators including the relative
at-risk-of-poverty (AROP) rate, focuses on low income in

At the end of 2013, there were about 3.3
million people who remained forcibly displaced within the
Great Lakes Region (GLR) of Africa. Of these, 82 percent
were internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 18 percent
refugees; 64 percent were under 18 years old. This Report
analyzes the extent, causes, and character of this forced
displacement, with particular attention to certain situations.

The Government of Punjab, through
Government of India’s (GoI) Department of Economic Affairs
(DEA) had requested the World Bank to provide non-lending
technical assistance (NLTA) to provide high quality basic
urban civic amenities to the residents of cities of Ludhiana
and Amritsar in the areas of: water supply, sewerage, storm
water drainage, solid waste management, and modern urban
transport system. The study is expected to recommend

This Fifth Edition of the Uganda
Economic Update presents evidence that if the urbanization
process is well managed, it has the potential to stimulate
economic growth and to provide productive jobs for a greater
proportion of Uganda s young and rapidly expanding
population. In many countries across the world, the growth
of cities has stimulated the establishment and expansion of
productive businesses by reducing the distance between