A history of the social development network in The World Bank, 1973 - 2003

The paper is intended to provide an orientation to the past and present work of the Social Development network and a contribution to its future strategy. It presents a brief overview of the history of the Social Development network or family; it illustrates both continuity and change in the way it does its work; and it provides examples of what the network has done. It does so with the assumption that knowing what we have done, and done well, will help us define our comparative advantage and make better choices about future directions. Over the past fifty years a great deal has been done to understand what makes development technically, economically and environmentally sustainable. In the end, the sustainability and success of development depends on people. Making this point, demonstrating that it matters, and operationalizing its implications, will be at the core of the Bank's future work on poverty reduction, social integration and sustainable development. Finally, recent critiques of social development initiatives are not covered in this report, as they are currently being drawn together in other reports.