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Blog Post
October 17, 2023
There’s not a lot of low-hanging fruit in global development. On the issues that matter most, from preventing the next pandemic to expanding migration opportunities, and financing climate adaptation, even minor progress tends to require big financial commitments and often faces deep political resist...
Blog Post
October 11, 2023
Budget support offers direct financing to a country’s treasury to create more “fiscal space” for public programs. It has constituted some 14 percent of ODA on average, increasing to over 20 percent in times of crisis. No aid modality is more controversial. Critics argue that, without earmarking fund...
Blog Post
September 22, 2023
We’ve updated our 2022 working paper with Laura Moscoviz on long run trends in education quality with several new surveys from around the world. Notably, a new survey round for India (NFHS-5) casts doubt on earlier data (NFHS-3). Dropping the suspect data, India’s current learning levels are unchang...
Blog Post
July 30, 2023
In a new paper, we examine the connection between exposure to lead—a dangerous but prevalent neurotoxicant—and children’s learning outcomes. We find that lead poisoning alone could account for more than 20 percent of the learning gap between rich and poor countries. Given the comparative ease of, sa...
Blog Post
July 14, 2023
It’s rare to read an education report that doesn’t mention the learning crisis. As data on low learning levels have emerged in recent years, global education aid has swung its focus sharply toward improving test scores among primary school children. Of course, learning to read is a good thing in its...