Short Articles, Commentaries & Blogs

From Evidence to Action: Strengthening Africa's Learning Data Ecosystems

Reflections from the ADEA Triennale 2025 in Accra on building fit-for-purpose, comparable learning assessments across Africa.

When the Future Arrives Faster Than Expected: Reflections on AI and Education at CIES 2025

Initial reflections on AI and Education from the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2025 conference in Chicago.

Strengthening Child and Adolescent Statistics in Africa

Launch of the Africa Expert Group on Child and Adolescent Statistics at the UN 56th Statistical Commission side event.

A Year of Insights, A Future of Action: UNICEF Data and Analytics 2024

Highlights from UNICEF Data and Analytics Team publications in 2024, covering child mortality, FGM, immunization, and more.

Data that Matters: Achieving Both Precision and Public Trust in Statistics

How Colombia transformed its poverty measurement through the MESEP process, rebuilding public trust in statistics.

Analyzing Intergenerational Mobility in Brazil: Education and Poverty Trends

Analysis of Brazil's progress in education and poverty reduction across generations using age-period-cohort data.

UNICEF report puts children at the heart of sustainable development

UNICEF report argues that accelerating progress on the SDGs requires centring child rights and child well-being, drawing on 20+ years of data across 48 indicators and 190+ countries.

School closures and longer-term implications of COVID-19 for inter-generational mobility

In the absence of remedial measures, learning losses are likely to significantly reduce intergenerational mobility in a wide range of countries.

Why hasn’t the pandemic sparked more concern for learning losses in Latin America? The perils of an invisible crisis

There is now overwhelming evidence that children’s learning plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Latin America. Surprisingly, we found that there has been little public outcry in the region for school systems to act on learning ...

The global education crisis – even more severe than previously estimated

The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery report (produced jointly by UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank), we sounded the alarm: this generation of students now risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value, or...

Five lessons from remote learning during COVID-19

Five lessons from remote learning during COVID-19

Will every child be able to read by 2030?

Will every child be able to read by 2030?

Building Back Better After COVID-19: The Importance of Tracking Learning Inequality

As school systems reopen after extended closures due to COVID-19, it will be critical to meet students where they are and to monitor changes in the learning distribution among the poor, given that evidence suggests that a significant source of ine...

How the SDG 4.1.1 Framework and Learning Poverty Can Help Countries Focus Their Education Policy Response to COVID-19

Most governments and development partners are working on identifying, protecting, and supporting learning of the most vulnerable members of the COVID-19 generation.

Multiple exposures to learning assessments: A photo mosaic from Brazil

Measuring learning is a key part of evidence-based education policy, and the choices of measures matter.

How could COVID-19 hinder progress with Learning Poverty? Some initial simulations

Even before COVID-19 forced a massive closure of schools around the globe, the world was in the middle of a learning crisis that threatened efforts to build human capital—the skills and know-how needed for the jobs of the future.

Learning for All: Within-country learning inequality

Efforts to equalize learning across groups are essential but not sufficient. We must also scale programs and interventions that tackle inequality of similar students within schools and demographic groups. We have the tools for this, and we owe it ...

Learning Poverty and COVID-19 School Closures: Initial Simulations

Simulation scenarios showing potential impacts of COVID-19 school closures on learning poverty in low- and middle-income countries.

Learning for All: Beyond an Average Score

Learning losses due to the pandemic will likely be large. We are only starting to grasp how learning inequalities may play out. Looking at historical data, can we find patterns that can help us better plan our actions in the near future?

Learning losses due to COVID19 could add up to $10 trillion

COVID-related school closures are forcing countries even further off-track to achieving their learning goals. The students currently in school stand to lose $10 trillion in labor earnings over their work life.

Learning losses due to COVID-19 could add up to $10 trillion

Early global estimates of the economic costs of COVID-19 school closures and the potential scale of learning losses.

New release of WBOPENDATA Stata module

The wbopendata Stata module has been updated to Version 16.2.1. The module can now be installed or updated directly from Stata's Statistical Software Components (SSC) repository.

We should avoid flattening the curve in education – Possible scenarios for learning loss during the school lockdowns

Social distancing is a necessary strategy to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). With 1.5 billion children out of school in 175 countries (as of April 10), there are more and more concerns about the longer-term effects that scho...

Going municipal: Targeting deprivation with new evidence in Croatia

Prioritizing public schooling over social transfers in Brazil

Argument for protecting opportunity for the young in Brazil by reforming pensions and improving learning outcomes in public schools.

Did the EU’s economic recession lead to a rise in populism?

Analysis of whether the post-2008 shift toward less inclusive growth in the EU helps explain rising support for populist parties.

April 2018 global poverty update from the World Bank

In April, PovcalNet revised the World Bank’s global and regional poverty estimates from 1981 to 2013. The next major update of global and regional poverty estimates is scheduled for October 2018, when the global poverty estimates for the reference...

Feeding the craving for precision on global poverty

Online pundits, hurried journalists and policymakers love precision. They crave numbers. Preferably exact numbers; ranges suggest uncertainty and make them anxious. As a result,  they will love the World Poverty Clock (WPC), a new website that cla...

How equitable is access to finance in Turkey? Evidence from the latest Global FINDEX

Access to finance is an important tool against poverty since it allows for the smoothing of consumption. The equality of access amongst different groups in the society is also crucial in terms of correctly allocating the positive benefits of impro...

How persistent is poverty in the short run?

Poverty is often measured using repeated cross-sectional surveys that provide a snapshot of the poverty status of a given household at a particular point in time. Such designs call for interviewing different respondents in each round, and because ...

Is Poverty Seasonal?

Many countries measure poverty using annualized survey data generated on the basis of a one-time “snapshot” of household consumption. Such designs gather information for a single period of reference of 30, 15 or 7 days, collected using either a co...

Inequality at the very very very top: What does the Forbes Billionaires database tell us?

Thinking about inequality is back in fashion! In its November 2013 outlook, the World Economic Forum called rising inequality the second biggest risk for 2014-15. The 2014 English translation of French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21...

Wbopendata Stata Module Upgrade

The wbopendata Stata module has been updated to Version 13. The module can now be installed or updated directly from Stata's Statistical Software Components (SSC) repository. To install or update your current wbopendata Stata module, please type t...

New Stata module released

A new Stata module wbopendata has been released. The module can be installed or updated directly from within Stata using Statistical Software Components (SSC) repository.The new features of this release include:Updated list of indicator, with over...

Latin American women driving region’s prosperity

Women are increasingly becoming Latin America's critical development partners. Moms, students, working professionals, women from all walks of life, are a driving force behind a gender revolution that has made huge contributions to our region's pro...