This evaluation was prepared by an Independent Evaluation Group team led by Elena Bardasi, senior economist, and Gisela Garcia, evaluation officer, under the overall direction of Alison Evans, Director-General, Evaluation, and with the guidance and supervision of Galina Sotirova, manager, Corporate and Human Development, and Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez, director, Human Development and Economic Management.

Case studies were conducted by Anahit Anna Aghumian, Elena Bardasi, Gisela Garcia, Eduardo Fernandez Maldonado, Jin Feng, and Judy Twigg, with support from Natalia Aranco, Javier Bronfman, and Lusine Yeremyan. Appendix G on the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) was prepared by Judy Twigg. Breda Griffith was responsible for the structured document review of analytical work. Shiva Sharma was responsible for the structured document review of Systematic Country Diagnostics and Country Partnership Frameworks, with inputs from Wouter van Acker and Lusine Yeremyan. Structured literature reviews were conducted by Natalia Aranco, Mariana Orloff, and Mariacristina Rossi. Shenghui Feng conducted the portfolio review and managed the data set under the guidance of Eduardo Fernandez Maldonado. Gaby Loibl and Yezena Yimer provided administrative support.

External reviewers for this evaluation were Ms. Louise Fox, former World Bank lead economist and currently nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Institution, Global Economy and Development, Africa Growth Initiative; Mr. Hervé Boulhol, senior economist, Pensions and Population Ageing, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; Prof. David Canning, professor of economics and international health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; and Prof. Ronald Lee, professor of demography and Jordan Family Professor of Economics, and director, Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging, University of California, Berkeley.

The team is grateful to all the staff who generously shared documents, insights, and experiences and engaged with us throughout the evaluation—including in two meetings to discuss the preliminary findings. Thanks are due to the country offices of Chile, China, Jamaica, Romania, Ukraine, and Uruguay for their support during the field visits.