How the World Bank Should Help the Planet's Poorest: Pay Them
Direct payments are more efficient and less wasteful than large-scale government investments
Indian labourers work in the street outside a bank in Kolkata, India, on August 22, 2014.
Photographer: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Last weekend the World Bank issued a report on the dramatic rise in global access to financial services. From 2011 to 2014 alone, 700 million people worldwide opened a bank account or joined a mobile money service.
The World Bank hails this improvement in the lives of the world’s poorest. What the report doesn’t mention is the challenge it poses to the World Bank itself. Beyond opening the way for a massive reform of national poverty relief programs, from India to Kenya, the spread of financial services suggests there may be a far more effective way for donors to end global poverty than by funneling resources through World Bank projects.