MONICA DAS GUPTA is a Senior Social Scientist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Trained in demography and social anthropology at the London School of Economics and IDS Sussex, she has researched and written extensively on population and health issues. She prepared the two chapters of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000/1 on Poverty, examining the interrelationships between poverty and the institutions of the state and civil society. She is currently working on issues related to the organization of public health services in India and Sri Lanka. Before joining the Bank, she worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, and at the Harvard University Center for Population and Development Studies.
The list below is of World Bank working papers and publications. You can also see (and in some cases download) other documents by this author.
The literature is reviewed on the relationships between population, poverty, and climate change. While developed countries are largely responsible for global warming, the brunt of the fallout will be borne by the developing world, in lower agricultural output, poorer health, and more frequent natural disasters.
... See More + Carbon emissions in the developed world have leveled off, but are projected to rise rapidly in the developing world due to their economic growth and population growth -- the latter most notably in the poorest countries. Lowering fertility has many benefits for the poorest countries. Studies indicate that, in high fertility settings, fertility decline facilitates economic growth and poverty reduction. It also reduces the pressure on livelihoods, and frees up resources to cope with climate change. And it helps avert some of the projected global warming, which will benefit these countries far more than those that lie at higher latitudes and/or have more resources to cope with climate change. Natural experiments indicate that family planning programs are effective in helping reduce fertility, and that they are highly pro-poor in their impact. While the rest of the world wrestles with the complexities of reducing emissions, the poorest countries will gain much from simple programs to lower fertility.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6631 OCT 01, 2013
This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Improving child nutrition outcomes in India : can the integrated child development services (ICDS) program be more effective?
... See More + , conducted in 1975 and continued through the time the paper was written in India. The study observed the impact of ICDS program on child nutrition status in villages on the individual level. Overall, the program had no significant impact on nutritional outcomes. It did have a positive impact on boys' stunting in 1992. For girls there was no significant impact. There was actually a significant negative impact in the poor Northern states. Program placement was very regressive across states; the states with the greatest need have the lowest program coverage. Program placement within states is more progressive. Funding for the study derived from the ICDS Fund.
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What can other developing countries learn from Sri Lanka on achieving good health at low cost? While its well-organized medical and maternal-child health services have been documented elsewhere, this paper fills a gap in documenting how it organizes services to reduce the population's exposure to disease -- a pure public good.
... See More + The key factors underlying the effectiveness of these services are (1) strong focal points in the central Health Ministry for supporting preventive services; (2) pro-active outreach by the health line agency to collaborate with other sectors / agents whose work influences public health outcomes; and (3) community-level delivery institutions with well-trained multivalent Public Health Inspectors -- all underpinned by (4) assured tax-based financing. This paper describes this system in some detail such that other countries can learn from Sri Lanka's successful approach to improving population health. It also makes some recommendations for strengthening the system in response to changing conditions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6558 AUG 01, 2013
Das Gupta, Monica; Dalpatadu, K. C. S.; Shanmugarajah, C. K.; Herath, H. M. S. S. D.
Violent conflict, a pervasive feature of the recent global landscape, has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral.
... See More + Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. To date, attention to the gender impacts of conflict has focused almost exclusively on sexual and gender-based violence. The authors show that a far wider set of gender issues must be considered to better document the human consequences of war and to design effective postconflict policies. The emerging empirical evidence is organized using a framework that identifies both the differential impacts of violent conflict on males and females (first-round impacts) and the role of gender inequality in framing adaptive responses to conflict (second-round impacts). War's mortality burden is disproportionately borne by males, whereas women and children constitute a majority of refugees and the displaced. Indirect war impacts on health are more equally distributed between the genders. Conflicts create households headed by widows who can be especially vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. Second-round impacts can provide opportunities for women in work and politics triggered by the absence of men. Households adapt to conflict with changes in marriage and fertility, migration, investments in children's health and schooling, and the distribution of labor between the genders. The impacts of conflict are heterogeneous and can either increase or decrease preexisting gender inequalities. Describing these gender differential effects is a first step toward developing evidence-based conflict prevention and postconflict policy.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6371 FEB 01, 2013
Buvinic, Mayra; Das Gupta, Monica; Casabonne, Ursula; Verwimp, Philip
There is a very large but scattered literature debating the economic implications of high fertility. This paper reviews the literature on three themes: (a) Does high fertility affect low-income countries' prospects for economic growth and poverty reduction?
... See More + (b) Does population growth exacerbate pressure on natural resources? and (c) Are family planning programs effective at lowering fertility, and should they be publicly funded? The literature shows broad consensus that while policy and institutional settings are key in shaping the prospects of economic growth and poverty reduction, the rate of population growth also matters. Recent studies find that low dependency ratios (as fertility declines) create an opportunity for increasing productivity, savings and investment in future growth. They find that lower fertility is associated with better child health and schooling, and better health and greater labor-force participation for women. They also indicate that rapid population growth can constrain economic growth, especially in low-income countries with poor policy environments. Population growth also exacerbates pressure on environmental common property resources. Studies highlight the deep challenges to aligning divergent interests for managing these resources. However, part of the pressure on these resources can be mitigated by reducing the rate of population growth. Although family planning programs are only one policy lever to help reduce fertility, studies find them effective. Such programs might help especially in the Sub-Saharan African region, where high fertility and institutional constraints on economic growth combine to slow rises in living standards.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5719 JUN 01, 2011
Fertility decline has fueled a sharp increase in the proportion of 'missing girls' in China, so an increasing share of males will fail to marry, and will face old age without the support normally provided by wives and children.
... See More + This paper shows that historically, China has had nearly-universal marriage for women and a very competitive market for men. Lower-educated men experience higher rates of bachelorhood while women favor men with better prospects, migrating if needed from poorer to wealthier areas. The authors examine the anticipated effects of this combination of bride shortage and hypergamy, for different regions of China. Their projections indicate that unmarried males will likely be concentrated in poorer provinces with low fiscal ability to provide social protection to their citizens. Such geographic concentration of unmarried males could be socially disruptive, and the papers findings suggest a need to expand the coverage of social protection programs financed substantially by the central government.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5351 JUN 01, 2010
Das Gupta, Monica; Ebenstein, Avraham; Sharygin, Ethan Jennings
Son preference is known to be found in certain types of cultures, that is patrilineal cultures. But what explains the fact that China, South Korea, and Northwest India manifest such extreme child sex ratios compared with other patrilineal societies?
... See More + This paper argues that what makes these societies unique is that their pre-modern political and administrative systems used patrilineages to organize and administer their citizens. The interplay of culture, state, and political processes generated uniquely rigid patriliny and son preference. The paper also argues that the advent of the modern state in these settings has unraveled the underpinnings of the rigid patrilineal rules, and unleashed a variety of forces that reduce son preference. Firstly, the modern state has powerful tools for incorporating and managing its citizenry, rendering patrilineages a threat rather than an asset for the state. Secondly, the modern state has brought in political, social, and legal reforms aimed to challenge traditional social hierarchies, including the age and gender hierarchies of the kinship system. Thirdly, industrialization and urbanization have ushered in new modes of social organization, which reduce the hold of clans and lineages. Studies of the impact of the media suggest that states can accelerate the resultant decline in son preference, through media efforts to help parents perceive that daughters can now be as valuable as sons.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5148 DEC 01, 2009
The central governments policies, though well-intentioned, have inadvertently de-emphasized environmental health and other preventive public health services in India since the 1950s, when it was decided to amalgamate the medical and public health services and to focus public health services largely on single-issue programs.
... See More + This paper discusses how successive policy decisions have diminished the Health Ministrys capacity for stewardship of the nations public health. These decisions have introduced policies and fiscal incentives that have inadvertently enabled states to prioritize medical services and single-issue programs over broader public health services, and diminished the capacity of the public health workforce to deliver public health services. Diseases resulting from poor environmental health conditions continue to impose high costs even among the more affluent, and hinder development. There are many approaches to strengthening the public health system, and the authors suggest one that may require relatively little modification of existing structures and systems. They suggest establishing a focal point in the Health Ministry for public health stewardship, and re-vitalizing the states public health managerial cadres as well as the grassroots public health workers. The central government could consider linking its fiscal support to states with phased progress in four areas: (1) the enactment of state Public Health Acts; (2) the establishment by states of separate public health directorates; (3) the re-vitalization of grassroots public health workers; and (4) health department engagement in ensuring municipal public health. The central focal point could provide the needed support, oversight, incentives, and sanctions to ensure that states build robust public health systems. These measures can do much to help governments use public funds more effectively for protecting peoples health.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5140 NOV 01, 2009
Das Gupta, Monica; Shukla, Rajendra; Somanathan, T.V.; Datta, K.K.
This issue includes the following: gender, poverty and demography: an overview, by Mayra Buvinic, Monica Das Gupta, and Ursula Casabonne; Development, modernization, and childbearing: the role of family sex composition, by Deon Filmer, Jed Friedman, and Norbert Schady; the consequences of the 'missing girls' of China, by Avraham Y.
... See More + Ebenstein and Ethan Jennings Sharygin; the gender and intergenerational consequences of the demographic dividend: an assessment of the micro and macro linkages between the demographic transition and economic development, by T. Paul Schultz; macroeconomic stability and the distribution of growth rates, by Vatcharin Sirimaneetham and Jonathan R.W. Temple; the effect of male migration on employment patterns of women in Nepal, by Michael Lokshin and Elena Glinskaya; and political accountability and regulatory performance in infrastructure industries: an empirical analysis, by Farid Gasmi, Paul Noumba Um, and Laura Recuero Virto.
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Publication 62999 NOV 01, 2009
Buvinic, Mayra; Das Gupta, Monica; Casabonne, Ursula; Filmer, Deon; Friedman, Jed; Schady, Norbert; Ebenstein, Avraham Y.; Sharygin, Ethan Jennings; Schultz, T. Paul; Sirimaneetham, Vatcharin; Temple, Jonathan R.W.; Lokshin, Michael; Glinskaya, Elena; Gasmi, Farid; Um, Paul Noumba; Virto, Laura Recuero
Much has been written on gender inequality and how it affects fertility and mortality outcomes as well as economic outcomes. What is not well understood is the role of gender inequality, embedded in the behavior of the family, the market, and society, in mediating the impact of demographic processes on economic outcomes.
... See More + This article reviews the empirical evidence on the possible economic impacts of gender inequalities that work by exacerbating demographic stresses associated with different demographic scenarios and reducing the prospects of gains when demographic conditions improve. It defines four demographic scenarios and discusses which public policies are more effective in each scenario in reducing the constraints that gender inequality imposes on poverty reduction. See Less -
Public health systems in India have weakened since the 1950s, after central decisions to amalgamate the medical and public health services, and to focus public health work largely on single-issue programs - instead of on strengthening public health systems broad capacity to reduce exposure to disease.
... See More + Over time, most state health departments de-prioritized their public health systems. This paper describes how the public health system works in Tamil Nadu, a rare example of a state that chose not to amalgamate its medical and public health services. It describes the key ingredients of the system, which are a separate Directorate of Public Health - staffed by a cadre of professional public health managers with deep firsthand experience of working in both rural and urban areas, and complemented with non-medical specialistswith its own budget, and with legislative underpinning. The authors illustrate how this helps Tamil Nadu to conduct long-term planning to avert outbreaks, manage endemic diseases, prevent disease resurgence, manage disasters and emergencies, and support local bodies to protect public health in rural and urban areas. They also discuss the systems shortfalls. Tamil Nadus public health system is replicable, offering lessons on better management of existing resources. It is also affordable: compared with the national averages, Tamil Nadu spends less per capita on health while achieving far better health outcomes. There is much that other states in India, and other developing countries, can learn from this to revitalize their public health systems and better protect their peoples health.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5073 OCT 01, 2009
Das Gupta, Monica; Desikachari, B.R.; Somanathan, T.V.; Padmanaban, P.
Aid to developing countries has largely neglected the population-wide health services that are core to communicable disease control in the developed world.
... See More + These mostly non-clinical services generate "pure public goods" by reducing everyone's exposure to disease through measures such as implementing health and sanitary regulations. They complement the clinical preventive and treatment services which are the donors' main focus. Their neglect is manifested, for example, in a lack of coherent public health regulations in countries where donors have long been active, facilitating the spread of diseases such as avian flu. These services can be inexpensive, and dramatically reduce health inequalities. Sri Lanka spends less than 0.2% of GDP on its well-designed population-wide services, which contribute to the country's high levels of health equity and life expectancy despite low GDP per head and civil war. Evidence abounds on the negative externalities of weak population-wide health services. Global public health security cannot be assured without building strong national population-wide health systems to reduce the potential for communicable diseases to spread within and beyond their borders. Donors need greater clarity about what constitutes a strong public health system, and how to build them. The paper discusses gaps in donors' approaches and first steps toward closing them.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS4907 APR 01, 2009
The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of "missing girls" in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention amongst researchers and policy-makers.
... See More + An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios were the highest in Asia but peaked in the mid-1990s and normalized thereafter. Using census data, we examine whether similar trends have begun to manifest themselves in the two large populous countries of this region, China and India. The data indicate that child sex ratios are peaking in these countries, and in many sub-national regions are beginning to trend towards less masculinization. This suggests that, with continuing vigorous efforts to reduce son preference, the "missing girls" phenomenon could be addressed in Asia.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS4846 FEB 01, 2009
Despite efforts to mandate and finance local governments' provision of environmental sanitation services, outcomes remain poor in the villages surveyed in the four South Indian states.
... See More + The analysis indicates some key issues that appear to hinder improvements in sanitation. Local politicians tend to capture sanitary infrastructure and cleaning services for themselves, while also keeping major village roads reasonably well-served. Their decisions suggest, however, that they neither understand the health benefits of sanitation, nor the negative externalities to their own health if surrounding areas are poorly served. Our findings suggest that improving sanitary outcomes requires disseminating information on the public goods nature of their health benefits, as well as on the local government's responsibilities. It also requires putting public health regulations in place, along with measures to enable accountability in service provision.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS4802 DEC 01, 2008
A recent study challenges the assumption that the large deficit of girls in East and South Asia reflects the preference for sons, suggesting that much of the deficit as much as 75 percent in China is attributable to hepatitis B (HBV).
... See More + The claim is inconsistent with the results of a study based on a large medical data set from Taiwan (China), which indicates that HBV infection raises a woman's probability of having a son by only 0.25 percent. In addition, demographic data from China show that the only groups of women who have elevated probabilities of bearing sons are those who have already borne daughters. This pattern makes it difficult to see how any biological factor can explain a large part of the imbalance in China's sex ratios at birth, unless it can be shown that it somehow selectively affects those who have borne girls or causes them to first bear girls and then boys. The Taiwanese example suggests that this is not the case with HBV, the impact of which is unaffected by the sex composition of previous births. The data thus support the cultural rather than the biological explanation for gender imbalance.
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China has a large deficit of females, and public policies have sought to reduce the son preference that is widely believed to cause this. Recently a study has suggested that up to 75 percent of this deficit is attributable to hepatitis B infection, indicating that immunization programs should form the first plank of policy interventions.
... See More + However, a large medical dataset from Taiwan (China) shows that hepatitis B infection raises women's probability of having a son by only 0.25 percent. And demographic data from China show that the only group of women who have elevated probabilities of bearing a son are those who have already borne daughters. This pattern makes it difficult to see how any biological factor can explain a large part of the imbalance in China's sex ratios at birth -- unless it can be shown that it somehow selectively affects those who have borne girls, or causes them to first bear girls and then boys. The Taiwanese data suggest that this is not the case with hepatitis B, since its impact is unaffected by the sex composition of previous births. The data support the cultural, rather than the biological, explanation for the "missing women."
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS4502 JAN 01, 2008
For years, South Korea presented the puzzling phenomenon of steeply rising sex ratios at birth despite rapid development, including in women's education and formal employment.
... See More + This paper shows that son preference decreased in response to development, but its manifestation continued until the mid-1990s due to improved sex-selection technology. The paper analyzes unusually rich survey data, and finds that the impact of development worked largely through triggering normative changes across the whole society - rather than just through changes in individuals as their socio-economic circumstances changed. The findings show that nearly three-quarters of the decline in son preference between 1991 and 2003 is attributable to normative change, and the rest to increases in the proportions of urban and educated people. South Korea is now the first Asian country to reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth. The paper discusses the cultural underpinnings of son preference in pre-industrial Korea, and how these were unraveled by industrialization and urbanization, while being buttressed by public policies upholding the patriarchal family system. Finally, the authors hypothesize that child sex ratios in China and India will decline well before they reach South Korean levels of development, since they have vigorous programs to accelerate normative change to reduce son preference.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS4373 OCT 01, 2007
The prevalence of child undernutrition in India is among the highest in the world; nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, with dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth.
... See More + Drawing on qualitative studies and quantitative evidence from large household surveys, this book explores the dimensions of child undernutrition in India and examines the effectiveness of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program, India's main early child development intervention, in addressing it. Although levels of undernutrition in India declined modestly during the 1990s, the reductions lagged behind those achieved by other countries with similar economic growth. Nutritional inequalities across different states and socioeconomic and demographic groups remain large. Although the ICDS program appears to be well-designed and well-placed to address the multi-dimensional causes of malnutrition in India, several problems exist that prevent it from reaching its potential. The book concludes with a discussion of a number of concrete actions that can be taken to bridge the gap between the policy intentions of ICDS and its actual implementation.
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Public health services, which reduce a population's exposure to disease through such measures as sanitation and vector control, are an essential part of a country's development infrastructure.
... See More + In the industrial world and East Asia, systematic public health efforts raised labor productivity and life expectancies well before modern curative technologies became widely available, and helped set the stage for rapid economic growth and poverty reduction. The enormous business and other costs of the breakdown of these services are illustrated by the current global epidemic of avian flu, emanating from poor poultry-keeping practices in a few Chinese villages. For various reasons, mostly of political economy, public funds for health services in India have been focused largely on medical services, and public health services have been neglected. This is reflected in a virtual absence of modern public health regulations and of systematic planning and delivery of public health services. Various organizational issues also militate against the rational deployment of personnel and funds for disease control. There is strong capacity for dealing with outbreaks when they occur, but not to prevent them from occurring. Impressive capacity also exists for conducting intensive campaigns, but not for sustaining these gains on a continuing basis after the campaign. This is illustrated by the near eradication of malaria through highly organized efforts in the 1950s, and its resurgence when attention shifted to other priorities such as family planning. This paper reviews the fundamental obstacles to effective disease control in India and indicates new policy thrusts that can help overcome these obstacles.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS3787 DEC 01, 2005
This paper explores the dimensions of child undernutrition in India, and examines the effectiveness of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in addressing it.
... See More + The paper finds that although levels of undernutrition in India declined modestly during the 1990s, the reductions lagged far behind that achieved by other countries with similar economic growth rates. Nutritional inequalities across different states, socioeconomic and demographic groups are large - and, in general, are increasing. The study also finds that the ICDS program appears to be well-designed and well-placed to address the multidimensional causes of malnutrition in India. However, there are several mismatches between the program's design and its actual implementation that prevent it from reaching its potential. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of concrete actions that can be taken to bridge the gap between the policy intentions of ICDS and its actual implementation.
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