Afghans represent the world’s largest protracted refugee population, and one of the largest populations to be repatriated to their country of origin in this century.
... See More + Between 2002 and 2016, over six million refugees returned to Afghanistan from neighboring countries. In 2016 alone, returnees numbered more than a million. In an already difficult context, large-scale internal displacement and return from outside have strained the delivery of public services in Afghanistan and increased competition for scarce economic opportunities, not only for the displaced, but for the population at large. This note aims at contributing to our understanding of displacement in Afghanistan by comparing the socioeconomic profiles of three populations: (i) former refugees who returned to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014 (“pre-2015 returnees”); (ii) internally displaced persons (“IDPs”); and (iii) non-displaced persons (“hosts”). The note captures and compares these groups’ situations at a specific time-point, using data from the 2013-14 Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS). Importantly, the results document socioeconomic conditions just prior to the transfer of security responsibilities from international troops to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in 2014, which was associated with a subsequent decline in aid, both security and civilian, and a sharp drop in economic activity. The results presented here cover the largest return of Afghans to the county following the fall of the Taliban in 2002, but precede the more recent large-scale return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan in 2016-17. Future publications will extend the findings summarized here with analysis of new and existing data covering this recent influx. This research is part of an ongoing effort to document population displacement challenges and solutions in Afghanistan over time. Data from ALCS 2013-14 establish baseline socio-economic profiles for returned refugees, IDPs, and non-displaced hosts. Further research and analysis now in progress will document how these conditions have changed since 2013-14, and will distill evidence for policy to improve socio-economic outcomes among Afghanistan’s displaced and non-displaced people.
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In early 2017, as Afghanistan witnessed the largest influx of refugee returns in recent years, little was known about the location patterns and needs of the more than 2 million Afghan returnees who had come back since 2015.
... See More + Separate agencies managed registration databases for different groups, and the lack of access to SIM cards (due to the lack of necessary documentation) severely limited the broad applicability of findings from phone monitoring surveys. At the same time, existing data sources had not been fully exploited to characterize different groups of displaced populations, nor had attempts been made to link them to data collected by humanitarian agencies. The main purpose of collecting information on returnees was to assist the design and targeting of development programs for recent and future returnees. The note will start by discussing the details of how survey participants were identified using a combination of Random Digit Dialing (RDD) and Interactive voice response (IVR) and respondent driven sampling (RDS). Section 3 will present the survey design, implementation and response rates. Section 4 discusses the implications of the sampling methods and section 5 analyzes the representativeness of the collected data. Section Error! Reference source not found. discusses the use of sampling weights to adjust for sampling bias and finally, section 7 summarizes up the lessons learned.
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The official poverty line for Afghanistan was set in 2007-08, using information available from the national risk and vulnerability assessment (NRVA) survey.
... See More + Adhering to international best practice, the poverty line was set following the cost of basic needs (CBN) approach. The CBN method represents the level of per-capita consumption at which the members of a household can be expected to meet their basic needs in terms of both food and non-food consumption. The measurement of poverty based on the ALCS 2016-17 is obtained by updating the poverty line set using the NRVA 2007-08. More specifically, the CBN approach defines a consumption bundle deemed to be adequate for meeting basic consumption needs and estimates the cost of acquiring this bundle. The consumption bundle includes goods that a person consumes (i) to be adequately nourished, and (ii) to fully participate in the society he and she lives in. The food component of the poverty line is anchored to a caloric requirement for maintaining body weight and sustaining activity levels, consistent with local food tastes and consumption patterns. In addition, a non-food component is added, consistent with the spending patterns of the poor. Together they provide an estimate for an absolute poverty line-explicitly fixed at a specific level of welfare—allowing for poverty comparisons across individuals. Updating the original poverty line, as opposed to setting a new one, preserves the comparability of poverty estimates over time, thereby allowing an analysis of changes in poverty. In particular, to allow for comparisons between the three survey years for which data on welfare are available (NRVA 2007-08, NRVA 2011-12, and ALCS 2016-171), the measure of welfare used to rank households (that is, the consumption aggregate) should be constructed following the same methodology used for the baseline year. This ensures that the updated poverty line captures the same level of wellbeing identified by the original poverty line but is evaluated at the prices obtained from the current survey.
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Afghanistan’s security environment is continuing to deteriorate. The increased conflict appears to be holding back business and consumer confidence from recovering fully from the impact of the security transition in 2014.
... See More + Economic growth has increased moderately from 2014-15, when the lowest growth rate was recorded since 2003. Proxy data for the first half of 2017 indicates that economic activity is continuing to languish, while business sentiment, gauged from the quarterly business perception surveys, appears to have improved slightly between the first and second quarters of 2017, though it remains lower than in the second quarter of 2016. The annual economic growth rate is projected to reach 2.6 percent in 2017, increasing very slightly from the figure of 2.2 percent recorded in 2016. Growth is projected to edge up to 3.2 percent in 2018, assuming no further deterioration in the security environment. While this constitutes a moderate improvement compared to 2014 and 2015, it is still significantly below the 9.6 percent average annual rate recorded in the period from 2003 to 2012.
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Over the past 30 years, Maldives has successfully built on its extraordinary natural assets to promote growth and socio-economic development. Maldives shares many of the Small Island Developing States development challenges, such as: a small domestic market; a narrow and fragile resource base; a shortage of skilled manpower; difficult inter-island transport and communication; high cost of social and economic infrastructure provision; and heavy dependence on external trade and vulnerability to external shocks and natural disasters.
... See More + However, in the case of Maldives, these challenges are compounded by its high geographic dispersion of 199 inhabited islands grouped in 26 atolls with a local population of 344,0003, spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers. Maldives’ unique archipelagic coral island provides the country with an extremely rich and diverse marine ecological system. With more territorial sea than land, marine resources have played a vital role shaping the contours of economic development, with nature-based tourism being the key driver of economic growth (tourism accounts for about a third of the country’s GDP) and fisheries an important sector of employment for the local population (World Bank, 2015). The Maldivian labor market encounters important challenges in productively employing a better educated young labor force. Even though Maldives has sustained high levels of growth and labor market conditions have improved slightly over time, with an increase in labor market participation and employment, important challenges for the Maldivian labor market remain. These challenges are: (i) a stronger labor market inclusion and productive employment for youth; and (ii) important sectors for growth and employment generation are reliant on foreign labor and do not provide opportunities for women. This note attempts to unpack the challenges young Maldivians face in the labor market and to investigate constraints and opportunities for job creation in the tourism and fisheries sectors.
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A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
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A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
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The Afghanistan Development Update, which is published twice a year, provides a comprehensive report of the state of the Afghan economy. It covers recent economic developments and outlines the medium-term outlook for Afghanistan.
... See More + Afghanistan. Each edition includes a section that provides in-depth analysis on one or more specific focus topics. The lack of high-frequency data in Afghanistan makes it difficult to track economic activities on a monthly or quarterly basis. Thus, proxy indicators are utilized when their quality is deemed satisfactory. Efforts are made to ensure that key analysis and forecasts are based primarily on reliable sets of data. The Afghanistan Development Update is intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, the donor community, the private sector, the community of analysts and professionals engaged in monitoring the economy and Afghanistan’s citizens at large. In this issue of the Update, the Focus Section discusses how economic stimulus can be provided in Afghanistan’s resource-constrained environment. In the context of the economic slowdown, Afghanistan faces the difficult dilemma of balancing measures to stimulate the economy while at the same time avoiding a further weakening of its fiscal position. The fiscal space is already extremely limited, with no room to increase public expenditure or to lower taxes. Thus, the Government must implement initiatives to maximize the growth impact of fiscal expenditure. First, policies to encourage government spending on non-tradable goods from local suppliers will ensure that demand taps domestic production, rather than imports. Second, policies to improve absorptive capacity will increase the quality, speed of execution and value for money of public investments. Third, policies to promote contestable markets in banking and construction will stimulate the entry of small and medium-sized firms in both sectors. Fourth, polices to increase fiscal space should include measures to improve revenue mobilization and to use existing resources more effectively, which will release additional resources.
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The Afghanistan Development Update, which is published twice a year, provides a comprehensive report of the state of the Afghan economy. It covers recent economic developments and outlines the medium-term outlook for Afghanistan.
... See More + Afghanistan. Each edition includes a section that provides in-depth analysis on one or more specific focus topics. The lack of high-frequency data in Afghanistan makes it difficult to track economic activities on a monthly or quarterly basis. Thus, proxy indicators are utilized when their quality is deemed satisfactory. Efforts are made to ensure that key analysis and forecasts are based primarily on reliable sets of data. The Afghanistan Development Update is intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, the donor community, the private sector, the community of analysts and professionals engaged in monitoring the economy and Afghanistan’s citizens at large. In this issue of the Update, the Focus Section discusses how economic stimulus can be provided in Afghanistan’s resource-constrained environment. In the context of the economic slowdown, Afghanistan faces the difficult dilemma of balancing measures to stimulate the economy while at the same time avoiding a further weakening of its fiscal position. The fiscal space is already extremely limited, with no room to increase public expenditure or to lower taxes. Thus, the Government must implement initiatives to maximize the growth impact of fiscal expenditure. First, policies to encourage government spending on non-tradable goods from local suppliers will ensure that demand taps domestic production, rather than imports. Second, policies to improve absorptive capacity will increase the quality, speed of execution and value for money of public investments. Third, policies to promote contestable markets in banking and construction will stimulate the entry of small and medium-sized firms in both sectors. Fourth, polices to increase fiscal space should include measures to improve revenue mobilization and to use existing resources more effectively, which will release additional resources.
See Less -
The Afghanistan Development Update, which is published twice a year, provides a comprehensive report of the state of the Afghan economy. It covers recent economic developments and outlines the medium-term outlook for Afghanistan.
... See More + Afghanistan. Each edition includes a section that provides in-depth analysis on one or more specific focus topics. The lack of high-frequency data in Afghanistan makes it difficult to track economic activities on a monthly or quarterly basis. Thus, proxy indicators are utilized when their quality is deemed satisfactory. Efforts are made to ensure that key analysis and forecasts are based primarily on reliable sets of data. The Afghanistan Development Update is intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, the donor community, the private sector, the community of analysts and professionals engaged in monitoring the economy and Afghanistan’s citizens at large. In this issue of the Update, the Focus Section discusses how economic stimulus can be provided in Afghanistan’s resource-constrained environment. In the context of the economic slowdown, Afghanistan faces the difficult dilemma of balancing measures to stimulate the economy while at the same time avoiding a further weakening of its fiscal position. The fiscal space is already extremely limited, with no room to increase public expenditure or to lower taxes. Thus, the Government must implement initiatives to maximize the growth impact of fiscal expenditure. First, policies to encourage government spending on non-tradable goods from local suppliers will ensure that demand taps domestic production, rather than imports. Second, policies to improve absorptive capacity will increase the quality, speed of execution and value for money of public investments. Third, policies to promote contestable markets in banking and construction will stimulate the entry of small and medium-sized firms in both sectors. Fourth, polices to increase fiscal space should include measures to improve revenue mobilization and to use existing resources more effectively, which will release additional resources.
See Less -
A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
See Less -
A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
See Less -
A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
See Less -
A severe slow-down in Afghanistan's economic growth characterized the period between 2012 and 2014, the so called Transition period leading to the 2014 election and handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
... See More + Afghanistan's economic malaise during this time can be attributed to the combined effects of the drawdown of international military forces and a sharp fall in associated international spending, reduction of aid, and increasing conflict and political instability. While aid fueled strong growth during the pre-transition period between 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, worrisome socio-economic dynamics already present intensified during the transition. Notably, the transition crisis magnified once again the many inequalities-between regions, cities and rural areas, rich and poor Afghans, and between men and women and girls and boys-that fracture Afghan society. The poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population benefited least from pre-transition growth, and the same groups suffered the most once the economy and the security condition deteriorated. This new edition of the Poverty Status Update series documents the evolution of poverty and socio-economic inclusion during the transition. It examines determinants of poverty and, with an eye beyond 2014, suggests policies to reduce vulnerability and inequalities.
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This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world.
... See More + The tests that are conducted include grouped versus microdata, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7611 MAR 18, 2016
This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world.
... See More + The tests that are conducted include grouped versus micro data, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 125516 MAR 01, 2016
The ongoing crisis in Syria has taken a toll on millions of lives, with its effects reverberating around the globe. Thousands have died, and nearly half of the country’s population has been displaced, either internally or to neighboring countries and beyond.
... See More + The World Bank Group and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have joined forces to share and analyze available data on Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon, in order not only to better understand the welfare of refugees, but also to help create a more sustainable system to address their needs throughout their time in exile. This book shows that Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon have experienced shock after shock, pushing them into destitution. (1) chapter one focuses on Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon and uses UNHCR registration and household survey data to determine the refugees’ socioeconomic profile; (2) chapter two provides a poverty profile of refugees from the Syrian Arab Republic living in Jordan and an analysis of the main predictors of welfare and poverty; (3) chapter three measure monetary vulnerability for refugees in Jordan, see how monetary vulnerability overlaps with poverty, and how monetary vulnerability is related to nonmonetary vulnerability; (4) chapter four describes policies; (5) chapter five compares results on welfare and poverty across these different countries and data sets. This book concludes by making the most of available data on Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon to derive lessons on poverty and the predictors of poverty and welfare.
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As June 20th marked World Refugee Day, the global count of registered refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) has reached the highest level since Second World War, with a combined figure of over 50 million people (13 million refugees and 38 million IDPs).
... See More + In addition to their humanitarian dimensions, refugee and IDP crises reflect development failures that are not easily remedied. The average time that a person spends as a refugee is 17 years. Unless given the opportunity to lead a ‘normal’ life, generations of refugees in prolonged exile experience frustration and impoverishment. This marginalization generates loss of skills, lowers self-confidence, and hampers the capacity of a population to rebound from shocks. This report builds on the work carried out in Jordan and Lebanon in 2013 and 2014 and expands it to produce a comprehensive welfare, poverty, and vulnerability assessment of refugees in the context of the Syrian crisis. This is the first collaboration of its kind for both the World Bank and the UNHCR and it was made possible by an unprecedented data-sharing agreement between the two institutions as well as by the close collaboration between the two institutions at headquarters and field level. This assessment can inform policy design to improve the well-being of refugees and mitigate the crisis’ impact on hosting communities. It can also inform the development of new strategies to assist refugees, bridging the historical divide between humanitarian and developmental assistance.
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The Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of extreme poverty from its 1990 level will be achieved in 2015, and the international development community is now moving to a new goal of “ending extreme poverty.”
... See More + However, the data needed to monitor progress remain severely limited. During the 10 year period between 2002 and 2011, as many as 57 countries have zero or only one poverty estimate. This paper refers to such lack of poverty data as “data deprivation,” because the poor are often socially marginalized and voiceless, and the collection of objective and quantitative data is crucial in locating them and formulating policy to help them exit extreme deprivation. This paper studies the extent of data deprivation and proposes targets for ending data deprivation by 2030—the year by when the international community aims to end extreme poverty. According to the analysis in this paper, this target is ambitious but possible, and achieving it is necessary to be able to declare the end of extreme poverty with confidence.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7252 APR 28, 2015
The Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of extreme poverty from its 1990 level will be achieved in 2015, and the international development community is now moving to a new goal of ending extreme poverty.
... See More + However, the data needed to monitor progress remain severely limited. During the 10 year period between 2002 and 2011, as many as 57 countries have zero or only one poverty estimate. This paper refers to such lack of poverty data as “data deprivation,” because the poor are often socially marginalized and voiceless, and the collection of objective and quantitative data is crucial in locating them and formulating policy to help them exit extreme deprivation. This paper studies the extent of data deprivation and proposes targets for ending data deprivation by 2030 the year by when the international community aims to end extreme poverty. According to the analysis in this paper, this target is ambitious but possible, and achieving it is necessary to be able to declare the end of extreme poverty with confidence.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 125597 APR 01, 2015
