International financial institutions (IFIs) appear to agree that quality of policymaking sees gains from diversifying the body of policymakers, all issuing diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. But how do these institutions perform when it comes to their own staff— do they lead by example? We...

Bangladesh’s Primary Education Stipend Program provides stipends for 13 million primary schoolchildren to 10 million mothers. In 2017 the method of payment changed from cash to mobile money. This study considers the experience of the mothers with the shift to mobile money, and to the change in payme...

Does channeling government-to-person (G2P) payments through bank accounts encourage financial inclusion and use? This paper explores the factors that have driven the adoption of digital payments in India by beneficiaries of PMGKY, the large-scale COVID-19 relief program launched in May 2020.

India imposed a lock-down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and began a gradual re-opening in June. A telephonic survey in April examined the early effectiveness of information and the massive PMGKY social protection program (Policy Paper 217). This paper analyzes a second-round sur...

Together with a lockdown and an information campaign, India’s early response to the Covid-19 pandemic included the launch of PMGKY, a major social protection package. This built on previous digital investments including in direct benefit transfer to financial accounts as well as on several establish...

The ILO estimates that the number of women employed in low- and middle-income countries fell 4.7 percent between 2019 and 2020, compared to a 3.3 percent decline for men. Here, we examine one potential element of the story: the fact that women-owned businesses, which tend to hire more women emp...

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic saw schools close across the globe. The huge majority of children worldwide are in developing countries, and the considerable majority of unpaid care is provided by women. That means women in low- and middle-income countries were likely to have been disproportio...