This article examines the World Bank's recent World Development Report on youth and development (2007) as an empirical example to explore the links between the employment of "group identity" and the use of policy frameworks. Drawing on feminist theory to analyse the representations of young people put forward within the report, this article demonstrates how the report privileges economic indicators, elevates formal institutions, and obfuscates structural inequality and power. The article argues that the report's failure to indicate the partiality of its perspective on youth and development problematically narrows the policy options the World Bank is able to present. (Contains 2 notes and 1 figure.)