World Bank eLibrary Resources

Learning from Megadisasters
Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake

While not all natural disasters can be avoided, their impact on a population can be mitigated through effective planning and preparedness. These are the lessons to be learned from Japan's own megadisaster: the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the first disaster ever recorded that included an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear power plant accident, a power supply failure, and a large-scale disruption of supply chains. more ...
Understanding Changes in Poverty

The 2015 Millennium Development Goal to reduce by 50 percent the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty was met early. The number of individuals in developing countries who live in extreme poverty had decreased from 43 percent in 1990 to 21 percent by 2010. more ...
Area C and the Future of the Palestinian Economy

This is the first report to systematically evaluate and quantify the economic potential of Area C, which constitutes approximately 61 percent of the West Bank. The report reveals that lifting the restrictions on economic activity in Area C could have a large positive impact on Palestinian GDP, public finances, and employment prospects. more ...
Voice and Agency
Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity

Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain. These challenges reflect widespread deprivations and constraints and include epidemic levels of gender-based violence and discriminatory laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, being educated, and making meaningful decisions about their own lives-such as whether and when to marry or have children. more ...
A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity
Concepts, Data, and the Twin Goals

In 2013, the World Bank Group adopted two new goals to guide its work: ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. More specifically, the goals are to reduce extreme poverty in the world to less than 3 percent by 2030, and to foster income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each country. more ...
Violence Against Women and Girls
Lessons from South Asia

Violence against Women and Girls: Lessons from South Asia examines the prevalence and factors associated with various types of violence against women and girls in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It analyzes the nature of violence throughout the life cycle and highlights gaps where intensive research or interventions might be undertaken. more ...
The IBNET Water Supply and Sanitation Blue Book 2014
The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities Databook

The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities of the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program (IBNET) has been involved in water sector monitoring since 1997. It has set a global standard for performance assessment of utilities, with information from more than 4,400 utilities from 135 countries. more ...
Urban China
Building Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Cities

In the last 30 years, China's record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people's health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. more ...