Nepal made remarkable progress in poverty reduction between 1995 and 2010, a period coinciding with a decade-long violent conflict followed by tumultuous post-conflict recovery.
... See More + Although improving agricultural productivity was long regarded as instrumental to lifting the living conditions of Nepal's impoverished rural areas, a bulk of the observed poverty reduction has come as a result of exogenous improvements in economic opportunities for poor Nepalis outside Nepal's borders. About 50 percent of the poverty reduction witnessed between 1995 and 2010 was associated with growth in labor incomes, particularly in nonagricultural activities. Private remittance receipts account for a little over a quarter of the total poverty reduction seen in Nepal. This is consistent with increased nonfarm diversification of rural households as well as the increase in nonfarm wages over the period. Household demographic changes, brought about by a sharp decline in fertility rates and the changing dependency structure as a result of migration, have also played an important role.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7830 SEP 21, 2016
This paper introduces a variety of concepts and methods to examine living standards improvements in Nepal in a dynamic perspective. Using data from three rounds of Nepal Living Standards Surveys conducted in the past two decades, together with data from a nationally representative survey that was implemented in 2014 specifically to collect information on social and economic mobility, the paper presents novel statistics on the extent of inter- and intra-generational mobility in Nepal.
... See More + The findings suggest that there has been appreciable upward mobility in education; that is, Nepalis today are increasingly more likely to be better educated than their parents. However, inter-generational mobility of occupations has been much more muted, with 47 percent of Nepal today remaining in the same occupation as their parents. Upward mobility is higher for younger cohorts and for individuals who move from their rural areas of birth to an urban area. There are also significant differences in mobility by social groups, with Dalits and Terai caste groups having lower upward mobility odds. Examining mobility within generations using synthetic panel techniques, the paper finds that: (a) for every two people who escape poverty, one slides back, suggesting significant churning around the poverty line; (b) a large fraction of those who have escaped poverty remain vulnerable to falling back, with an overall vulnerable population of 45 percent; and (c) the share of the middle class—defined as those with sufficiently low likelihood of falling back into poverty—has increased steadily over the past two decades, reaching 22 percent in 2010–11. However, triangulating subjective well-being data from Gallup, it appears that a majority of even those who constitute the middle class are fundamentally insecure about their economic futures. The prevalence of a large vulnerable population and a nascent, growing but struggling middle class represents a key challenge to consolidating recent gains in moving people out of poverty.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7824 SEP 15, 2016
The study uses a cluster-randomized trial among 1,578 children from 979 households in rural El Salvador to test the impacts of TOMS shoe donations on children's time allocation, school attendance, health, self-esteem, and aid dependency.
... See More + Results indicate high levels of usage and approval of the shoes by children in the treatment group, and time diaries show modest evidence that the donated shoes allocated children's time toward outdoor activities. Difference-in-difference and ANCOVA estimates find generally insignificant impacts on overall health, foot health, and self-esteem but small positive impacts on school attendance for boys. Children receiving the shoes were significantly more likely to state that outsiders should provide for the needs of their family. Thus, in a context where most children already own at least one pair of shoes, the overall impact of the shoe donation program appears to be negligible, illustrating the importance of more careful targeting of in-kind donation programs.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7822 SEP 14, 2016
On June 20, 2016, the Inspection Panel (“the Panel”) received a Request for Inspection (“the Request”) relating to the flooding of the Kalagala Offset Area in Uganda.
... See More + Three projects are related to this complaint: the Private Power Generation (Bujagali) Project (P089659); the Water Management and Development Project (P123204); and, the Energy for Rural Transformation Phase III Project (P133312). The Request claims that the residents in the Kalagala Offset Area are likely to suffer environmental and social harm as a result of the filling of the reservoir of the Isimba dam. Although the Isimba dam itself is not financed by the World Bank, the Request claims its reservoir will undermine the management of protected natural resources in the area, required by an Indemnity Agreement signed between the Government of Uganda and the International Development Association (“IDA”) for the Private Power Generation (Bujagali) Project. Subsequently, the Panel received letters from additional Requesters who elaborated on the livelihood related impacts they and other members of the community are expected to suffer as a result of the flooding of the Kalagala Offset Area. The Requesters asked for confidentiality.
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Inspection Panel Notice of Registration 108255 SEP 06, 2016
Empowering women to engage in productive employment is not only critical to achieving gender equality but also critical for economic growth and poverty reduction.
... See More + This paper studies the pattern of female activity and gender segmentation in the Indian manufacturing and services sectors. Although the share of women entrepreneurs and employees is larger in manufacturing than in services, segmentation based on gender is pervasive in both sectors. Theory, dating back to Gary Becker, suggests that competitive reforms should reduce the extent of this segregation. In spite of competition-inducing reforms such as investment in Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highways, trade liberalization and domestic reforms that India undertook since the turn of the century, this pattern of gender based segmentation has not subsided over the years. Specifically, investments in GQ upgrades are found to have 0 effects on female activity and gender segmentation. Although there is some evidence of a negative correlation between segmentation among male employees and industry level trade liberalization reforms, overall it had a very limited impact on female participation in labor force and in reducing segmentation among female employees. Finally, domestic reforms that dismantled product reservations for small-scale industries induced greater participation among women in economic activity and are correlated with a modest decline in segmentation among male employees. Segregation among female employees is positively associated with these reforms.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7814 SEP 06, 2016
The FIRST Lessons Learned Series is a collection of FIRST's technical and functional insights gained from FIRST funded engagements. This knowledge note shares useful lessons from FIRST-funded pension projects led by the Finance and Markets Global Practice at the World Bank Group, which supported many countries in their efforts to improve the coverage of good-quality pensions and in increasing the supply of pension assets that can safely and sustainably fund long-term investment.
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Changing population age structures are shaping the trajectories of development in many countries, bringing opportunities and challenges. While aging has been a matter of concern for upper-middle and high-income economies, rapid population growth is set to continue in the poorest countries over the coming decades.
... See More + At the same time, these countries will see sustained increases in the working-age shares of their population, and these shifts have the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty. This paper describes the main mechanisms through which demographic change may affect economic outcomes, and estimates the association between changes in the share of working-age population with per capita growth, savings, and poverty rate. An increase of one percentage point in the working-age population share is found to be associated with an increase in gross domestic product per capita growth by more than one percentage point, with similarly positive effects on savings and poverty reduction.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7805 AUG 29, 2016
Ahmed, S. Amer; Vargas Da Cruz,Marcio JoseDisclosed
Ratings for the Second Northern Uganda Social Action Fund Project for Uganda were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was moderate, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was satisfactory.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: Project design ensured that government machinery was engaged in the project at all levels, from national to local government levels. Community-driven Development (CDD) needed to be integrated well into local government structures to avoid duplication with their regular infrastructure work and to ensure ownership and maintenance budget once the projects are complete. In the Second Northern Uganda Social Action Fund Project (NUSAF2), the GoU mainstreamed CDD operations into the decentralized service delivery mechanisms. Low level of benefit for the PWP affected delivery of the initial intention of the project to reduce vulnerability and provide alternative employment to vulnerable people with labor. strengthening institutional capacity is to assist communities to realize their development needs, efforts such as training and technical backstopping of communities need to be sustained. Anti corruption measures in the project can become models for broader social accountability. Project implementation at the local level use of participatory approaches to identify beneficiaries and community priorities empowered the local people to articulate and share their own opinions, needs, problems, and abilities. Capacity enhancement and consolidation of capacities over time has shown positive outcomes. The participation of community facilitators proved vital in facilitating sub project generation. The mainstreaming of the project within local government, through engagement with district officers and the identification of NUSAF2 desk officers, strengthened the delivery of the project at the local level and provided space for communities and local authorities to work jointly in the delivery of the project at the community level. Delivery of social protection programs in contexts of post conflict and fragility.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR3805 AUG 23, 2016
Trees on farms are often overlooked in agricultural and natural resource research and policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper addresses this gap using data from the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture in five countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.
... See More + Trees on farms are widespread. On average, one third of rural smallholders grow trees. They account for an average of 17 percent of total annual gross income for tree-growing households and 6 percent for all rural households. Gender, land and labor endowments, and especially forest proximity and national context are key determinants of on-farm tree adoption and management. These new, national-scale insights on the prevalence, economic contribution and determinants of trees on farms in Africa lay the basis for exploring the interaction of agriculture, on-farm tree cultivation, and forestry. This will improve our understanding of rural livelihood dynamics.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7802 AUG 23, 2016
This paper assesses the extent to which social assistance programs in Turkey impact the labor market behavior of those who receive benefits. Theoretically, the possible channels through which the receipt of social assistance may disincentivize work are quite clear, even if the substantial literature analyzing these dynamics is somewhat inconclusive.
... See More + The analysis confirms that even when controlling for the relevant factors, social assistance beneficiaries are significantly more likely than non-beneficiaries to be unemployed or informally employed, and therefore less likely to be formally employed. Furthermore, among the unemployed, the probability of moving into informal employment is found to be significantly larger for beneficiaries than for non-beneficiaries. The paper concludes that there are potential disincentive effects at play in the decision to work, but particularly in whether to work formally or informally. Finally, an interesting and perhaps counterintuitive finding is that beneficiaries who are inactive are less likely to stay inactive in comparison with non-beneficiaries, which suggests that social assistance may be playing an activation role rather than leading to increased dependency. This, coupled with the previous findings, would indicate that disincentives to work, based on current design parameters, may not be the primary concern. Rather, disincentives to formality may be the prevailing channel through which social assistance affects labor market outcomes. More attention to designing programs that are incentive-compatible with formal employment would be a useful next step for public policy in this area.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7801 AUG 22, 2016
This paper examines the extent to which the three key underlying determinants of nutrition -- food security; adequate caregiving resources at the maternal, household, and community levels; and access to health services and a safe and hygienic environment -- on their own and interactively are correlated with nutrition outcomes, such as height-for-age z-scores.
... See More + Based on data from different years in eight countries in four regions where malnutrition is high, an indicator is constructed for each component of the three underlying drivers of nutrition. In spite of the limitations inherent in the available data, the analysis (i) reveals that progress toward improved access to adequate food security and adequate environment and health has been quite limited; and (ii) provides evidence of significant synergies among adequate food, child care, and environment and health.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7794 AUG 15, 2016
The performance of the Simple Poverty Scorecard is compared against the performance of established regression-based estimators. All estimates are benchmarked against observed poverty status based on household expenditure (or income) data from household socioeconomic surveys that span nearly a decade and are representative of subnational populations.
... See More + When the models all adopt the same "one-size-fits-all" training approach, there is no meaningful difference in performance and the Simple Poverty Scorecard is as good as any of the regression-based estimators. The findings change, however, when the regression-based estimators are "trained" on "training sets" that more closely resemble potential subpopulation test sets. In this case, regression-based models outperform the nationally calculated Simple Poverty Scorecard in terms of bias and variance. These findings highlight the fundamental trade-off between simplicity of use and accuracy.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7793 AUG 15, 2016