The development objective of the Strengthening Systems for Social Protection Project for Nepal aims to improve the coverage and delivery of civil registration services and social security allowances by the Government of Nepal.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts includes : i) language barriers; ii) social barriers; iii) geographical isolation; iv) cultural barriers; v) disability; vi) limited access of the vulnerable communities to electronic payments system due to: a) limited/ no financial literacy among the vulnerable community; b) limited or lack of banking/financial institutions services in the remote geographical locations; c) limited capacity of banking and finance institutions to expand the e-banking services due to the limited infrastructure required for accessing the vulnerable communities; and d) vulnerable groups being less familiar with technology related to e-banking and other services. vii) limited access of vulnerable groups to the Social Security Allowances (SSA) grievance redress mechanism; GRM not responsive to the needs/issues raised by vulnerable groups; Some of the mitigation mesures are includes : i) develop information, education and communication (IEC) materials in major local languages; ii) develop awareness package targeting the vulnerable groups mentioned above for timely registration of all vital events, its linkages and benefits; iii) organize door to door population registration program and awareness program in remote settlement; iv) develop targeted awareness program for such communities on the importance of civil registration and benefits out of it; v) continue the home services targeting to those populations; vi) organize series of financial literacy programs; vii) utilize and support existing models of civic participation in both monitoring and grievance redress.
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The paper compares the distribution of energy and food subsidies across households and the impact of subsidy reforms on household welfare in the Middle East and North Africa region.
... See More + The analysis uses a unified model and harmonized household data. The results show that the distribution of subsidies and the welfare effects of subsidy reforms are quite diverse across countries and products. Energy subsidies tend to be pro-rich in terms of absolute amounts, but tend to be more important for the poor in terms of expenditure shares. Instead, food subsidies are larger for the poor in absolute and relative terms. These findings do not apply everywhere, and the scale of these phenomena are different across countries and products. The welfare effect of a 30 percent reduction in subsidies can be important, especially considering the cumulated effect across products, but the cost of compensating the loss in welfare for the poor is generally low compared with the budget benefits of decreasing subsidies.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7755 JUL 20, 2016
The lack of efficient social security systems, the presence of large informal sectors, and the pace at which the population is aging in some Sub-Saharan African countries are red flags warning of a potential long-term problem: that is, the inability of countries to provide old-age income security to all.
... See More + Many adults in the region have difficulties accessing health care and other essential services, increasing their vulnerability and their likelihood of becoming impoverished as they age. Since the coverage of contribution-based pension schemes has remained low for decades, direct cash grants (henceforth, universal social pensions) are increasingly proposed as a way to address the coverage gap and to fight poverty among the elderly. This paper explores the role of universal social pensions in 12 Sub-Saharan African countries, showing that they may be part of the answer to the coverage gap in pensions and may be important from a human rights lens. However, they have limited impact on poverty because a significant share of the elderly population is found not to fall into the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society. Universal social pensions can also be quite costly, difficult to sustain in low-income settings, and less cost-effective at fighting poverty compared to poverty-targeted cash transfer programs. Implementation errors are quite prevalent in universal social pension schemes, contradicting the apparent simplicity of identifying program beneficiaries. The report’s main findings are that a discussion of poverty targeted programs vis-à-vis universal programs is less relevant for policymakers than how to design and implement a policy or a mix of coordinated and harmonized policies under a robust system that allows governments to reach their main objectives of meeting the basic needs of their most vulnerable citizens.
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Government wage bills have been growing across the world, but are exceptionally high in the MENA region relative to countries’ state of development, whether measured as a share of GDP, or of government revenue and spending (World Bank, 2004).
... See More + Across the region government wage bills threaten fiscal sustainability. There are many drivers behind the large wage bills, whether of central government alone or of general government. Government employment numbers also seem to grow inexorably, in many areas faster than required to deliver services in line with population growth. Other factors have been weak staff control systems, the authorization of new recruitment outside budget frameworks, and laxly applied staff performance assessment systems, in addition to absenteeism, and the difficulty under public service rules of disciplining and ultimately terminating poorly performing staff. This paper takes a look at government wage bill growth, alongside current approaches to recruitment, staff performance assessments and promotions, with particular emphasis on Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. These country examples are complemented by a broader regional analysis to illustrate overarching trends in public sector employment.The objective is to identify the various forces at work, how they interact, and thereby document and understand better the dynamic of public sector wage bill expansion in the Middle East as well as potential linkages to public sector performance. The paper also looks at reform efforts, extracts lessons and identify potential reform options to better control wage bill growth and the unbalancing effects it has had on the efficiency and effectiveness of government spending generally. Furthermore, while the paper does not present a comprehensive overview of the nature of public employment in MENA, it aims to identify potential areas for further research in this domain.
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Global interest around humanitarian and social protection issues is remarkable. These feature prominently in some of today’s most complex development challenges, whether supporting poor people in times of crises or providing them with a steady hand while pursuing opportunity.
... See More + To some extent, there is a common thread of themes that underpin both humanitarian and social protection matters, and which, at its core, is about state formation and its strengthening. The objective of this note is to map out some key issues relevant to humanitarian and social protection work, that is, to basically explore their interface. Yet as this note argues, they tend to differ in some fundamental aspects. It then briefly reviews the rationale for public interventions, examines how the debate is panning out in different contexts, and identifies a set of strategic and practical questions for further work in the area.
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Ratings for the Bahia Socio Economic Development for Inclusive Growth Development Policy Loan (DPL) Project for Brazil were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, risk to development outcome was moderate, Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and Borrower performance was moderately satisfactory.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: the broad coverage of the DPL per se was not necessarily a shortcoming, and opened the opportunity for policy dialogue and reforms in multiple areas. Success requires the team not to overestimate the capacity at the lowest level of local government that deals with implementation. The most successful components were those that built on an established institutional base and had a history of execution and accumulated experience. Some parts of the program were affected by unexpected political developments and by the worsening fiscal space due to the deteriorating national macroeconomic conditions, which reduced the availability of resources for implementation. These risks were clearly foreseen, but it is not clear how these risks can be better mitigated.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR3701 APR 01, 2016
Every policy relies on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices. Those assumptions typically rest on an idealized model of how people think, rather than an understanding of how everyday thinking actually works.
... See More + This year's World Development Report argues that a more realistic account of decision-making and behavior will make development policy more effective. The report emphasizes what it calls 'the three marks of everyday thinking. In everyday thinking, people use intuition much more than careful analysis. They employ concepts and tools that prior experience in their cultural world has made familiar. And social emotions and social norms motivate much of what they do. These insights together explain the extraordinary persistence of some social practices, and rapid change in others. They also offer new targets for development policy. A richer understanding of why people save, use preventive health care, work hard, learn, and conserve energy provides a basis for innovative and inexpensive interventions. The insights reveal that poverty not only deprives people of resources but is an environment that shapes decision making, a fact that development projects across the board need to recognize. The insights show that the psychological foundations of decision making emerge at a young age and require social support. The report applies insights from modern behavioral and social sciences to development policies for addressing poverty, finance, productivity, health, children, and climate change. It demonstrates that new policy ideas based on a richer view of decision-making can yield high economic returns. These new policy targets include: 1) the choice architecture (for example, the default option; 2) the scope for social rewards; 3) frames that influence whether or not a norm is activated; 4) information in the form of rules of thumb; and 5) opportunities for experiences that change mental models or social norms. Finally, the report shows that small changes in context have large effects on behavior. As a result, discovering which interventions are most effective, and with which contexts and populations, inherently requires an experimental approach. Rigor is needed for testing the processes for delivering interventions, not just the products that are delivered.
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The European Union (EU) Regular Economic Report (RER), is a semiannual publication of the World Bank Group and covers economic developments, prospects, and economic policies in the European Union.
... See More + The report uses four sub-groups that share broadly similar development patterns EU : Central Europe comprises Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia; Northern Europe comprises Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden; Southern Europe comprises Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain; Western Europe comprises Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While the report covers the European Union, it provides additional information on European countries which had historically a stronger operational engagement with the World Bank Group, in particular, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland and Romania. The focus note of this RER covers “Welfare States and the Protection of the Poor in the European Union”.
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Co-residence is an important source of support for the elderly, especially in countries where pension systems do not cover most of the population.
... See More + This note provides new evidence regarding elderly co-residence patterns in more than 100 developing countries that represent over 90 percent of the developing world population. The authors find a wide range of co-residence rates across countries, ranging from 29 to nearly 100 percent, and a strong inverse relationship between the receipt of a pension and co-residence. The results show the importance of informal support, and have implications for the choice and design of policy instruments aimed at the elderly, including social insurance and assistance.
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