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Earlier this year, Ben Leo (who recently joined our friends at the One Campaign as their new Global Policy Director) and I projected IDA graduations out to 2025 as an exercise to think through what the World Bank’s soft loan window might look like in the near future (full working paper is here).
Andy Sumner and I recently wrote about the fact that the number of low income countries in the world is rapidly shrinking –which is great news because it suggests poor countries are getting richer. But how much does graduating to ‘middle income’ mean? Here’s how the original income classification came about, according to the World Bank’s website:
Rapid changes in the world, especially the remarkable growth of so many once-poor countries and the revolutions sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, will have tremendous consequences for institutions like the World Bank. The Bank-Fund Spring Meetings start next week and it’s a chance for shareholders and Bank management to check-in and throw issues on the table. Among the many big trends and questions about the future of the Bank, here are a few on my mind:
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