An evaluative look behind the curtain: World Bank Group staff's early experience with the shared prosperity goal

In 2013, the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank Group endorsed two ambitious goals: eliminating extreme poverty in the world by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity. The latter is defined as fostering the growth in the income of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country. In 2016–17, the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group conducted an evaluation on how well the World Bank Group has been pursuing the shared prosperity goal in its strategies, projects, and key knowledge products, and what lessons can be learned from the early implementation experience with the new goal of shared prosperity. To inform that evaluation, a comprehensive survey among World Bank Group staff graded F and above was set up to elicit staff views and understanding of the goal and gauge how World Bank Group staff have operationalized the objective in their day-to-day work. The survey builds on good practice design in the literature as well as actions to strengthen the response rate. This paper reports on the design, methodology (including issues of sampling, questionnaire testing, data collection, and response rate), implementation, and results from that web-based survey. The results imply potential institutional actions to strengthen the World Bank Group’s effectiveness in implementing the goal in the future.