The Unassuming Economist

A new World Bank  independent evaluation report finds that “the World Bank has made a significant effort to incorporate the shared prosperity goal—since its introduction in 2013–into its various products and services, across regions, global practices and World Bank Group institutions. In addition to the World Bank Group’s first goal of poverty reduction, shared prosperity goal is defined as the growth of real incomes of the bottom 40 percent. Lessons from the evaluation of early implementation of the goal and the World Bank Group’s related, equity oriented operations pre-2013 period, however, suggest that an increased focus on distributional issues in the World Bank’s lending projects does not automatically lead to improved development outcomes.”