Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa

Leveling the Playing Field

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Leveling the Playing Field

Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa

Edited by

Nistha Sinha, Gabriela lnchauste, and Ambar Narayan

© 2024 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank

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Attribution—Please cite the work as follows: Sinha, Nistha, Gabriela lnchauste, and Ambar Narayan, eds. 2024. Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi: 10.1596/978-1-4648-2160-8. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO

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ISBN (paper): 978-1-4648-2160-8

ISBN (electronic): 978-1-4648-2161-5

DOI: 10.1596/978-1-4648-2160-8

Cover image: © Karine Arnou. Used with the permission of Karine Arnou. Further permission required for reuse.

Cover design: Melina Rose Yingling / World Bank Creative Services, Global Corporate Solutions.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024917591

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

About the Editors and Contributors

Key Messages

Abbreviations

CHAPTER 1

Inequality in Africa

Nistha Sinha, Gabriela Inchauste, and Ambar Narayan

Chapter highlights

Africa stands out for its high level of income inequality

Structural inequality is a major constraint on Africa’s economic growth and poverty reduction

Structural inequality accounts for a large share of income inequality in Africa

Unlocking Africa’s potential for accelerated poverty reduction requires addressing structural inequality

Road map for the report

Annex 1A: Measuring inequality of opportunity

Annex 1B: Decomposing inequality of household welfare

Notes

References

CHAPTER 2

The Poverty Reduction Challenge in Africa

Ambar Narayan, Liliana Sousa, Haoyu Wu, and Elizabeth Foster

Chapter highlights

The gap in well-being between Africa and the rest of the world has widened in the 2000s

The region’s slow rate of poverty reduction is linked to low, inequitable, and inefficient growth

Structural inequality slows Africa’s poverty reduction by limiting mobility, structural transformation, and the efficiency of growth

Conclusion

Annex 2A: Additional data for chapter 2

Annex 2B: Estimating the conditional relationship between country typology and the Multidimensional Poverty Measure

Annex 2C: Estimating the elasticity of poverty to economic growth

Annex 2D: Decomposing inequality of household welfare

Notes

References

Spotlight 1: Poverty and Inequality Influencers: Climate

Ruth Hill

CHAPTER 3

People in Africa Face an Unlevel Playing Field for Building Their Productive Capacity

Aziz Atamanov, P. Facundo Cuevas, and Jeremy Lebow

Chapter highlights

Structural inequality in building productive capacity

Ongoing and future trends: Implications for inequality in building productive capacity

Policies to build productive capacity with equity

Annex 3A: Additional figures

Annex 3B: Measuring the Human Opportunity Index

Annex 3C: Measuring intergenerational mobility

Notes

References

Spotlight 2: Poverty and Inequality Influencers: Gender Equality

Ana Maria Oviedo and Hugo Ñopo

CHAPTER 4

Workers, Firms, and Farms Face an Unlevel Playing Field in Using their Productive Capacities

Nistha Sinha, Elwyn Davies, Alastair Haynes, and Regina Pleninger

Chapter highlights

Structural inequality in using productive capacity is linked to market distortions

Africa’s jobs and earnings challenge lies in where people work, not in whether they work

Distortions in three markets matter for structural income inequality

Opening policy portals to grow jobs and better earning opportunities for all workers

Annex 4A: Analytical foundations: Links between income inequality, market distortions, and producers

Notes

References

Spotlight 3: Poverty and Inequality Influencers: Fragility, Conflict, and Forced Displacement

Olive Nsababera

CHAPTER 5

Governments Could Do Far More to Level the Playing Field Through Fiscal Policies

Gabriela Inchauste, Christopher Hoy, Mariano Sosa, and Daniel Valderrama

Chapter highlights

Fiscal redistribution in a tight macro-fiscal context

Combined impact of taxes and social spending leads to higher poverty in many African countries in the short run

Greater redistribution is possible in many middle-income and resource-rich countries

There is room to improve the efficiency and redistributive impact of government spending

It is possible to raise revenue while protecting the poor

Fiscal policies to unlock the productive potential of poor individuals

Annex 5A: Fiscal analysis

Annex 5B: Fiscal microsimulation modeling

Notes

References

Spotlight 4: Poverty and Inequality Influencers: Debt

César Calderón

CHAPTER 6

Policies to Tackle Structural Inequalities and Accelerate Poverty Reduction and Growth

Gabriela Inchauste and Nistha Sinha

Chapter highlights

This is Africa’s moment to make a change

Lessons from successful episodes: Economic growth with poverty and inequality reduction

Policies aimed at tackling structural inequalities

Note

References

Boxes

1.1Inequality is persistent and reinforces poverty traps: Insights from the literature

1.2Fragility traps and resource curses in Africa’s growth and poverty trajectories

1.3Sources of structural inequality reduce growth and weaken the link between growth and poverty reduction: Insights from the literature

2.1Health outcomes in the region reflect the human toll of extreme poverty and its long-term implications for human capital

2.2The prosperity gap: An intuitive measure of what it will take to achieve prosperity for all

2.3Top incomes in Africa

S1.1Triple wins

3.1Urban versus rural access to health

3.2Changes in the Human Opportunity Index with quality dimension

3.3Inequality in access to health opportunities

4.1Informality: A driver or a symptom of low performance?

4.2Job creation, structural transformation, and the role of manufacturing and services

5.1The Commitment to Equity methodology to assess the progressivity and regressivity of fiscal policy

5.2Use of subsidies as a response to the price shocks sparked or accelerated by the Ukraine War

5.3Adaptive social protection

5.4Simplified tax regimes for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises in Africa

6.1Successful poverty reduction episodes in six countries

FIGURES

1.1Inequality in Africa

1.2Inequality by country, FCS, and resource-rich typologies

B1.2.1Typology and population share, based on fragility and resource wealth

1.3Inequality of opportunity

1.4Triple-pronged policy framework to level the playing field and accelerate growth and poverty reduction

1A.1Inequality of opportunity using full or comparable lists of circumstances

2.1Extreme poverty in the Africa region relative to global poverty, 2000–22

2.2Evolution of poverty in Africa through 2022

2.3Composition of population, by poverty status, 2000–22

2.4Share of poor individuals at the $2.15/day poverty line in Africa, by country, 2022

2.5Evolution of urbanization and poverty in urban and rural areas of Africa

2.6Poverty by FCS and resource-rich typologies

2.7Multidimensional poverty in Africa

B2.2.1The prosperity gap improves more when incomes of the poorest increase

2.8Prosperity gap: A new measure of shared prosperity

2.9Decomposition of poverty reduction through income growth versus income redistribution, 2000–19

2.10GDP and population growth in Africa

2.11GDP per capita growth by typology, 2000–22

2.12Elasticity of poverty reduction to growth

2.13Factors contributing to inequality in Africa

2.14Profiles of poverty and inequality, by demography, education, and livelihood

2.15Gender gap in deprivation from access to education

2.16Sectoral composition of growth and value added

2.17Growth incidence curves for Botswana and Chad

B2.3.1Global income–consumption distribution versus Africa’s

2A.1Deprivation rates in school enrollment and access to improved sanitation, by poverty rate

2A.2Prosperity gap: Additional figures

S1.1Climate hazards across the income distribution, Africa

S1.2Inequality and weather shocks: A vicious cycle

S1.3Distribution of the income effects of climate change, by country

3.1Selected basic services in Africa in 2000 and 2020 compared with the average level observed in lower-middle-income countries in 2020

3.2Access to basic services for the poorest and richest 20 percent of the population

3.3Coverage and HOI across African countries, by resource and FCS status

3.4Average D-index (inequality of opportunity) across African countries, by resource and FCS status

B3.2.1Human Opportunity Index, coverage, and D-index for extended opportunities

B3.2.2Harmonized test scores circa 2020, averages by World Bank regions

B3.2.3Harmonized test scores circa 2020 across the poorest and richest welfare quintiles

B3.3.1Measles immunization coverage among two-year-olds in African countries, by mother’s education level

B3.3.2Stunting prevalence among children younger than 5 years in African countries across the poorest and richest wealth quintiles

3.5Average contributions of circumstances to inequality of opportunities (D-index)

3.6Changes in absolute upward mobility over time

3.7Absolute upward mobility, 1980s cohort

3.8Changes in relative mobility over time

3.9Relative mobility, 1980s cohort

3.10Mobility in Africa, 1980s cohort, by GDP per capita

3.11Access to land among the top 10 percent: Land value versus land area

3.12LAYS lost because of the pandemic by learning loss and dropouts by region

3.13LAYS lost because of the pandemic versus prepandemic shares of LAYS

3.14Actual and forecast share of working-age population (ages 15–64) across regions, 2020–60

3.15Education and health care expenditures, Africa versus other regions

3.16Public spending and marginal contributions to equity

3.17Marginal contributions to reducing inequality are highest for primary education

3A.1Access to basic infrastructure across regions and years

3A.2Access to education across regions and years

3A.3Urban–rural divide in access to water and sanitation services across regions and years

3A.4Access to health services using proxy indicators across regions and years

3A.5Changes in access to selected basic services in AFR in percentage points during 2000–20 conditional on performance in 2000

3A.6HOI and coverage rates for education across countries

3A.7HOI and coverage rates for basic services across countries

3A.8Absolute upward mobility, 1980s cohort

3A.9Relative mobility, 1980s cohort

3A.10Distance to health facilities

S2.1Share of women ages 15–24 with no education, by wealth quintile, Africa

S2.2Sole ownership of assets among women and men

4.1Inequality in total and wage income: Gini index

4.2Share of households with the largest income source from agriculture, household enterprises, or wage jobs, by consumption deciles

4.3Cross-country correlation between Gini index and size of the wage sector

4.4Characteristics of the labor force, ages 15–64, Africa region

4.5Structure of employment, Africa region

4.6Share of wage employment in the public sector

4.7Distribution of per capita wage, household enterprise, and agricultural revenues

4.8Firm size and employment distribution in Africa and the United States

4.9Average firm size over the firm life cycle

4.10Size distribution of household enterprises by number of workers, including owner–operator

4.11Returns to gender of owner, education, and firm size

4.12Markets and performance of firms and farms: Analytical framework

4.13Sources of start-up capital for household enterprises

4.14Financial sources for day-to-day operations

4.15Share of participation in regional value chains as a percentage of participation in global value chains, 2019

4.16Firms identifying transportation as a major constraint

4.17Main customers for own-account workers and household enterprises

4.18Firms directly or indirectly exporting

4.19Product market regulations in Africa, indexes

4.20Presence of business with state ownership in competitive markets

B4.2.1.Long-run GDP per capita and industrial sector employment shares, 1801–2021

S3.1Conflict events, 2000–23

S3.2Poverty and fragility nexus

S3.3Forced displacement trend in Africa, 2013–23

S3.4Hotspots for displacement in Africa

S3.5School attendance of children ages 6–12, by gender, in Chad, Ethiopia, Niger, and Uganda

S3.6Living conditions and access to basic services in four African countries

B5.1.1Commitment to Equity core income concepts

5.1Fiscal redistribution in Africa

5.2Impact of taxes, transfers, and subsidies on inequality in each country

5.3Impact of taxes, transfers, and subsidies on poverty in each country

5.4Marginal tax rate on nonpoor population required to close the poverty gap

5.5Share of government natural resource revenue required to close the poverty gap

5.6Composition of public spending in Africa

5.7Government spending on energy and fertilizer subsidies (percent of GDP), aggregated by income group and region

5.8Incidence of energy subsidies

5.9Social safety net coverage of the poorest quintile in Africa, by poverty headcount rate

5.10Benefit incidence by income category and region

5.11Poverty and inequality effects of removing energy subsidies, by compensation measure

5.12Public financial management indicators, 2022

5.13Types of revenue as a share of GDP in Africa

5.14Incidence of indirect taxes as a share of household consumption

5.15Poverty and inequality effects of removing VAT expenditures, by compensation measure

5.16Direct taxes paid by decile

5.17Instruments used to collect revenue from resources sector in each country

S4.1Public debt in Africa

S4.2Drivers of public debt and evolution of debt service

S4.3Risk of debt distress and gross financing needs in Africa

MAPS

2.1Poverty rates at the $2.15/day line, 2017 PPP, by country

S1.1Increases in poverty caused by climate change in Africa

B3.1.1Population-weighted average walking distance time to any health facility across rural and urban areas of African countries

S2.1Gender inequality across the world

S3.1Persistence of fragile situations, 2010 and 2019

S3.2Status of refugees’ access to education in Africa

TABLES

1A.1List of surveys used to calculate inequality of opportunity in Sub-Saharan Africa

2A.1Poverty rate (US$2.15/day, 2017 PPP), by region and world average, 2000–22

2A.2Poverty rate for Africa, by international poverty line, 2000–22

2A.3Multidimensional poverty, by country

2A.4Averages of selected development indicators, Africa and the World, 2022

2A.5Typology of countries, by FCS and resource-rich status

S1.1Exposure to extreme climate shocks in Africa

S1.2Population at risk for climate shocks

3.1Average contributions of circumstances to inequality of opportunities (D-index)

3B.1Hypothetical example for HOI: Number of children ages 6 to 10 enrolled in primary school in countries A and B, by welfare group

3B.2Opportunities to construct the HOI for African countries

3B.3List of circumstances used to construct the HOI for African countries

B5.2.1Number of measures and share of total

5A.1Country sample size, by region

5A.2List of countries included in the sample, by source

5B.1Fiscal microsimulation models

5B.2Fiscal microsimulation scenarios

6.1Policy matrix: Promoting growth and poverty reduction by reducing structural inequalities

Foreword

Accelerating progress to eliminate extreme poverty in Africa is possible. To do so, the region must address structural inequalities. Africa has enormous potential; it is rich in natural resources and home to a growing, youthful, vibrant, and entrepreneurial population that can seize opportunities to make the most of innovation, trade, and the global transition to greener technologies. With the region’s population forecast to rise from around 1.4 billion today to close to 2.5 billion by 2050, access to these opportunities is crucial for its youth.

The battle against poverty is most urgent in Africa. As of 2022, more than 60 percent of the world’s extremely poor population live in Africa. Growth has been slower, more volatile, and vulnerable to exogenous shocks over the past decade as climate change, fragility, and debt pressures have gained importance. Countries in the region also find it more difficult relative to the rest of the world to translate growth into poverty reduction, because the fruits of economic growth all too often do not reach the poorest households. At the heart of this slow progress in bringing people prosperity is inequality. More than half of the countries for which consumption data are available are highly unequal. As of 2022, Africa was the second-most unequal region in the world after Latin America.

This flagship report shows that much of this inequality is structural: instead of differences in individual effort or talent, more than half of income inequality is attributable to circumstances over which individuals have no control. Structural inequalities are the result of laws, institutions, and practices that create advantages for a few but disadvantages for many. They include differences in living standards that come from inherited or unalterable characteristics, such as where people are born and their parents’ education, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Moreover, market and institutional distortions, such as lack of competition, give some firms, farms, and workers privileged access to markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority, curtailing their productive potential and limiting earning opportunities. Tax and benefit policies are inefficient and ineffective, unable to make up for structural inequality, particularly in a tight fiscal context.

As such, structural inequality slows poverty reduction, curbs social mobility, and hampers sustainable and stable economic growth. But structural inequality is not inevitable: societies can remove and replace barriers to opportunities. Drawing on the latest evidence and global experience, this report revisits the challenges and opportunities to tackle Africa’s poverty and inequality and proposes a three-pronged policy framework aimed at leveling the playing field by building up productive capacities, creating jobs and better earning opportunities, and leveraging fair fiscal policy and state effectiveness to invest in people, firms, and farms.

For policy makers focused on helping Africa build a better future, the report’s message is that it is possible to alleviate poverty in all its forms if countries strive to create a level playing field. By bringing together comprehensive data, analysis, and country experiences, the report paints a more accurate picture of the complexity of inequality in the region and outlines the best ways to address it. The report advances knowledge of what it will take to achieve the goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet.

Acknowledgments

This report is an output of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in close collaboration with the Africa Chief Economist Office of the World Bank. The preparation of the report was co-led by Nistha Sinha, Gabriela Inchauste, and Ambar Narayan. P. Facundo Cuevas co-led the drafting at the concept stage. The core team included Aziz Atamanov (chapters 1 and 3), Cesar Calderon (debt spotlight), Elwyn Davies (chapter 4), Elizabeth Foster (chapter 2), Alastair Haynes (chapter 4), Ruth Hill (climate spotlight), Christopher Hoy (chapter 5), Jeremy Lebow (chapter 3), Hugo Nopo (gender spotlight), Ana Maria Oviedo (gender spotlight), Regina Pleninger (chapter 4), Mariano Sosa (chapter 5), Liliana Sousa (chapters 1 and 2), Olive Nsababera (conflict spotlight), Daniel Valderrama (chapter 5), and Haoyu Wu (chapter 2). Tom Bundervoet provided key inputs on the elasticity of poverty reduction. Daniel Mahler provided technical advice in calculating inequality of opportunity. Vincenzo Di Maro drafted inputs on top incomes. Walker Kosmidou-Bradley provided geospatial inputs. Valentina Martinez-Pabon and Maria Sarrabayrouse provided key assistance in finalizing the report. Rose-Claire Pakabomba, Santosh Sahoo, Tsehaynesh Seltan, and Arlette Sourou provided administrative support to the team.

This work was conducted under the overall direction of Victoria Kwakwa and Ousmane Diagana, with guidance from Abebe Adugna, Asad Alam (at concept stage), Andrew Dabalen, Luis Felipe Lopez Calva, and Hassan Zaman. The team is also grateful for guidance, advice, and critical inputs from Johan Mistiaen and Pierella Paci.

The team gratefully acknowledges the advice from peer reviewers and external advisers. The report was peer reviewed by Kathleen Beegle, Haroon Bhorat, and Keith Hansen. Mary Hallward Driemeier provided peer review comments at the concept stage. The team also benefited from many helpful discussions with experts across the World Bank Group, including Tom Bundervoet, Luc Christiaensen, Wendy Cunningham, Mitja Del Bono, David Evans, Elena Glinskaya, Aparajita Goyal, Marek Hanusch, Johannes Hoogeveen, Tehmina Khan, Vinny Nagaraj, Ambika Sharma, Venkatesh Sundararaman, Paolo Verme, and Ruslan Yemtsov. Feedback from outside experts, including with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice’s Advisory Council, is gratefully acknowledged, with special thanks to Francois Bourguignon, Ashwini Deshpande, Shanta Devarajan, Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Ravi Kanbur, Peter Lanjouw, Santiago Levy, Nora Lustig, and Danielle Resnick. The team also benefited from discussions with Nancy Benjamin.

The report would not have been possible without the support of Beatrice Berman and the communications, editorial, and publishing teams. Paul Gallagher provided key support in the drafting of the Overview. Flore Martinant de Preneuf led the communications strategy. The Overview was edited by Michael Harrup and proofread by Ann O’Malley; the full report was edited by Kathie Porta Baker and proofread by Alfred Imhoff. The Overview and full report were designed by Melina Rose Yingling. Caroline Polk from the World Bank’s Publishing Program managed the production of the Overview and full report.

About the Editors and Contributors

Editors

Gabriela Inchauste is a lead economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. Her work focuses on the distributional impact of fiscal policy, ex ante analysis of the distributional impacts of policy reforms, and understanding of the channels through which economic growth improves labor market opportunities for poverty reduction. Before joining the World Bank, she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank. She has published articles in academic volumes and journals on fiscal policy in low-income countries, decentralization, the distributional impacts of taxes and social spending, macroeconomic shocks and the poor, the informal sector, and the role of remittances in developing countries. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ambar Narayan is currently a practice manager of Poverty and Equity in the Europe and Central Asia region of the World Bank. In his current role and previously as lead economist and global lead, he leads and advises teams conducting policy analysis and research in development from a microeconomic perspective. The topics that he has worked on include inequality of opportunity, economic mobility, policy evaluation, economic transformation, and impacts of economic shocks on households. He has been a lead author for several prominent World Bank studies, including a global report on intergenerational mobility and regional reports on inequality of opportunity, and he has coauthored numerous scholarly publications that reflect the eclectic mix of topics he has worked on over the years. He holds a PhD in economics from Brown University.

Nistha Sinha is a senior economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank, focusing on the topics of poverty, inequality, and labor markets. She earned a master’s degree in economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a PhD in economics from the University of Washington in Seattle. Before joining the World Bank, Nistha was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s Economic Growth Center.

Contributors

Aziz Atamanov is a senior economist in the Poverty Global Practice Group of the World Bank. He has worked on poverty measurement and on labor market, gender, and distributional analysis across the Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa regions. He has published articles in academic journals and contributed to many edited volumes on topics such as the development impact of international migration and remittances, distributional analysis of subsidy reforms, the role of purchasing power parities in measuring international poverty, and the elasticity of poverty to economic growth. Before joining the World Bank, he worked as a research fellow at the Center for Social and Economic Research. He holds a PhD in development economics from Maastricht University.

César Calderón, a Peruvian national, is lead economist in the Office of the Chief Economist of the Africa Region. He joined the World Bank in 2005 and has worked in the Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Chief Economist Office and the Finance and Private Sector Development Chief Economist Office and was a core member of the 2014 World Development Report team. He is the task team leader of Africa’s Pulse, a regional flagship on recent macroeconomic developments in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has also been a task team leader for regional research projects such as Africa’s Macroeconomic Vulnerabilities and Boosting Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. César has worked on issues of macroeconomic resilience, growth, and development. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Rochester.

P. Facundo Cuevas is the lead economist and program leader for the World Bank’s Human Development practice groups in Brazil, where he leads and oversees engagements in the education, health, social protection, and labor sectors with national, state, and municipal governments. He joined the World Bank in 2007 and has since provided policy advice, developed operational solutions, delivered technical assistance, and conducted policy research on poverty reduction, equality of opportunity, and social protection. He has published articles in both academic and policy outlets and has worked across low- and middle-income countries in all regions of the world. Before joining the World Bank, he lived in India and worked on community development projects. Facundo is a Fulbright alumnus, and he holds a PhD and a master’s degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a summa cum laude bachelor’s degree from the National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina.

Elwyn Davies is a senior economist in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank, working on firm dynamics, productivity, and innovation in various countries, currently mostly in Africa, Central Asia and Europe. Elwyn’s work focuses on constraints on firm growth and productivity as well as on questions related to structural and economic transformation, including the role of services in development. He is an author of the flagship report At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development. He has published in the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, the World Bank Research Observer, and the Journal of African Economies, among other journals. A Dutch and British national, Elwyn joined the World Bank as a Young Professional in 2017. He holds a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford.

Elizabeth Foster is an economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the West and Central Africa region at the World Bank. She has more than 15 years’ experience living and working in West Africa in government, nongovernmental organization, and research roles. She specializes in the technical issues of poverty measurement at national and international poverty lines. She holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University.

Alastair Haynes is an economist in the Poverty and Equity Practice in the Eastern and Southern Africa region at the World Bank. His work has focused on poverty, inequality, labor markets, and social protection. Before joining the World Bank, he worked on monitoring and evaluation and impact evaluations on a range of social protection programs in East Africa. He holds a master’s degree in development economics from the University of Nottingham and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Sheffield.

Ruth Hill is a lead economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank. Ruth has been at the World Bank for 11 years and has led work on the distributional impacts of climate change, fiscal policy, markets, and institutions. She led the report Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 and the development of the Rural Income Diagnostics reports, and she conducted Poverty Assessments and Systematic Country Diagnostics in East Africa and South Asia. From 2019 to 2021, she was on external service as the chief economist at the UK government’s Centre for Disaster Protection. Before joining the World Bank in 2013, she was a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, conducting impact evaluations on insurance and market interventions. Ruth has published in the Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Experimental Economics, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and World Development. She has a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford.

Christopher Hoy is an economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank, primarily focusing on fiscal policy. He has published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and his work has been featured in top media outlets, such as The Economist. Before joining the World Bank as a Young Professional, Christopher worked as an assistant professor at the Australian National University and for a range of organizations, including UNICEF, ODI, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab / Innovations for Poverty Action, and the Australian Treasury. He has worked throughout the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. He holds a doctorate in economics from the Australian National University.

Jeremy Lebow is an economist in the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice of the World Bank, working primarily on labor, migration, and skills development. Before this, he was a Young Professional in the Poverty and Equity Practice for East Africa. He has published papers on various topics in academic journals, such as the Journal of Development Economics, in particular on the economic and social effects of mass migration in Latin America. He holds a PhD in economics from Duke University.

Hugo Ñopo is a senior poverty economist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 2022, coming from the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Peru. Previously, he was the regional economist at the International Labour Organization and lead economist of the Education Division and the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank. He was an assistant professor at Middlebury College, an affiliated researcher at GRADE, and an adviser at the Ministry of Labor and Social Promotion in Peru. Hugo works on a broad set of poverty, inequality, education, and labor market issues, with a focus on gender and ethnic inequalities. He is also a research affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, and he was a board member of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association. He holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University and an MSc in mathematical economics from the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada.

Olive Nsababera is an economist with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, where she works at the intersection of poverty, inequality, and migration. She joined the World Bank as part of the Young Professionals Program and has since worked on the Eastern and Southern Africa, as well as the Latin America and the Caribbean regions. Before joining the World Bank, she focused on fragile and conflict-affected settings, analyzing the impact of forced displacement on individual welfare, local economic development, and how alternative data sources and machine-learning techniques can be leveraged to inform policy in data-scarce contexts. She holds a BA in economics from Yale University, an MPA from Columbia University, and a PhD in economics from the University of Sussex.

Ana Maria Oviedo is a senior poverty economist in the Eastern and Southern Africa region and co-leads global gender engagement in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank. Her work focuses on intersectoral analytics and lending to improve evidence-based policies and reduce exclusion through targeted fiscal policies and service delivery. She has worked in Latin America and the Caribbean, Türkiye, and the Western Balkans, where she focused on poverty, gender equality in labor markets, social protection, and informality. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland and a BA in economics from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Regina Pleninger is an economist in the Prosperity Chief Economist Office at the World Bank. Her research interests include inequality, poverty, growth, and jobs. She has worked on the distributional effects of financial development, globalization, and natural disasters. She has published in the World Bank Economic Review and in World Development, among other journals. Since she joined the World Bank in 2022, she has worked on the Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 and contributed to the Central African Republic Poverty Assessment 2023. Regina holds a PhD in economics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Mariano Sosa is a consultant for the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank, supporting research and knowledge work in the Global Unit and several regions of the practice, including