Investing in people is at the core of the World Bank's work. It has also increased its emphasis on education of girls, women's reproductive health, nutrition, early childhood development, and other urgent priorities. In addition to its lending, the Bank has expanded its other ways of helping-through policy advice, technical assistance, donor collaboration, poverty assessments, and more. Give special attention to early childhood development, including immunizations, preschool education programs, and the provision of vitamins and other nutritional supplements. Further increase operations designed to remove barriers to women's participation in economic development.
Experience shows that improvements in the quality of life require more than investments in people.
They also require economic reforms to provide stability and an enabling environment for growth. Successful countries have moved on both fronts, breaking the vicious circle of poverty and replacing it with a virtuous circle of human and economic development reinforcing each other. Investments in people, by themselves, will not be fully effective unless the overall economic policy framework for these investments is conducive and supportive. This implies macroeconomic stability, an open economy, access to world markets, the right structure of incentives, and the proper functioning of capital and labor markets. These economic policies are needed to make the investments in human capital more productive.