Public works programmes can reduce poverty and improve wellbeing by creating jobs and generating wider economic spillovers, such as higher wages and better infrastructure. Their effects, however, vary widely by place and design, as they are not a one-size-fits-all solution to poverty or unemployment.

What have we learned about the causes, consequences, and policy responses to intimate partner violence in low- and middle-income countries?

Extreme heat damages crops and increases the number of strongly undernourished households in terms of calories, iron, and other nutrients. While some households cope by buying food grown elsewhere, the poorest remain highly vulnerable.

What role can policy play in reducing bias among healthcare providers?

Poverty, low social capital and low government administrative capacity hinder sanitation improvements, even when the health benefits are clear.

The introduction of MNREGA increased economic activity as measured by night-time lights and banking deposits, but mostly in richer districts

Despite evidence of increasing household wages, anti-poverty schemes in India can have an adverse effect by lowering human capital investment

Criminalising sex work in Indonesia led to large increases in sexually transmitted infections among sex workers and likely across the whole population

Lessons on gender parity and staying healthy reduced intimate partner violence and led goal-minded girls to choose age-appropriate and ‘better’ boys