WASHINGTON--The World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today launched a new effort to better understand how the world’s poor save, borrow and make payments. Through an $11 million, 10-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank’s Development Research Group will, for the first time, build a global database that allows researchers to measure and compare how individuals use bank accounts and other financial products – if they are available at all. The Gates Foundation provided the funds to cover three rounds of data collections, and the World Bank has already signed a contract for next year with Gallup, Inc., to interview at least 1,000 people per country in 150 countries about their finances through the Gallup World Poll.
