Remittances are an important source of income for households in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as a crucial source of foreign exchange for countries in the region.
... See More + Despite the relatively large inflows of remittances to SADC, the cost of sending money to and within the region is significantly higher than other regions in the world. To address the high cost of remittances globally, the World Bank has been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency and safety of the market for remittances. At the regional level, the SADC Committee of Central Bank Governors (CCBG) has led several initiatives aimed at enhancing the regional payment system infrastructure, also with a focus on reducing the cost of remittances within the region.
See Less -
Ratings for the Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA) Project for Bangladesh were as follows: outcomes were moderately unsatisfactory, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: the success of a project depends a great deal on its leadership capacity and empowerment. Contrary to the expectation, the Project turned out to be politically sensitive. Project management as well as its steering committee were often constrained in making decisions based on available technical advice. In hindsight, the design for the implementation arrangements could have considered more robust mitigating measures for likely political interference in the implementation of the Project. The Project recruited a professional communications firm to implement strategic communication programs which was effective in the promotion of NID authentication services. It has also collected feedback from the citizens and users of NID services about their experience. There is continuing high demand for NID services by the citizens as well as different agencies, and it would be important for NIDW to further strengthen its communication strategy after closing of the Project. Significant investment is required to update and maintain a database for over 103 million registrants. The NID system has many busy users to conduct their essential Customer Due Diligence. The NIDW will need to further collect revenues to run the system on its own and be economically viable. Therefore, an effective business model would be important to diversify NID services. The private sector will be willing to pay for the value-added services of the NID system.
See Less -
Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR4570 AUG 24, 2018
Using a rich data set of primary school students, this paper estimates the effects of immigrant concentration in the classroom on the academic achievement of natives.
... See More + In contrast with previous contributions, it exploits rare information on age-at-migration to estimate separate spillover effects by duration of stay of immigrant classmates. To identify treatment effects, it uses cohort-by-cohort deviations in immigrant concentration within schools combined with attractive features of the Dutch school system. Overall, the paper finds no effect of the concentration of immigrant students on natives’ test scores. However, although immigrant students who have been in the country for some time have virtually no effect on natives, the analysis finds a small negative effect of recent immigrants in the classroom on natives’ test scores. The effect is significant only for language test scores, but insignificant for mathematics test scores. When significant, effect sizes are quite small compared to other educational interventions and classroom peer effects estimated in other contexts.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8492 JUN 25, 2018
This Policy Research Report (PRR), Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets, is an attempt to address this tension between the academic research and the public discourse by focusing on the economic evidence.
... See More + The authors suggested a labor market–oriented, economically motivated rationale to the political opposition to migration. Global migration patterns lead to high concentrations of immigrants in certain places, industries, and occupations. For example, the top 10 destination countries account for 60 percent of global immigration. Four states host half of all immigrants in the United States, and 10 counties host half of the immigrants in these four states. Immigrants are further concentrated in a narrow set of industries and occupations in specific geographic regions. The same pattern repeats itself in almost every major destination country. It is these geographic and labor market concentrations of immigrants that lead to increased anxiety, insecurity, and potentially significant short-term disruptions among native-born workers. Furthermore, the positive effects and benefits in the destination labor markets tend to be more diffuse whereas the costs are more concentrated and easily attributable to immigration. This PRR aims to inform and stimulate debate, contribute to better policies, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge and data gaps. It presents key facts and findings, research methods and data sources on economic migration and refugees, the determinants of their decisions, and their impact on labor markets in both source and destination countries. The labor market focus of the PRR is motivated not only by the fact that important development and poverty implications of migration— the World Bank’s operational and analytical focus—work through these labor market channels. This focus also reflects space and time constraints, and the absence of rigorous research in certain other areas, which simply do not allow an all-encompassing report that covers every dimension of migration. We believe many of the social, cultural, and politicaldimensions are highly important; and we are certain future analytical work within and outside the World Bank will address these shortcomings.
See Less -
Southern Africa has a long history of human mobility centered around the migration of labor to farms and mines in the region. Patterns of migration and displacement have since been transformed by the end of Apartheid, changing economic systems, and conflict and political instability, both in the region and elsewhere.
... See More + Today mobility in the region is motivated by a combination of diverse social, political and economic reasons; shaped by long-standing historical movements and re-shaped by newer patterns of urbanization and displacement; organized through various legal and extra-legal means and governed by fragmented and contradictory legal frameworks. These complex patterns of migration and displacement, state responses to them, and the implications of mobility for job outcomes in South Africa - as the major destination country in the region - are the subject matter of this study. Our quantitative analysis on the impact of immigration on local jobs in South Africa finds that one immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for South Africans during the period analyzed (1996 and 2011). These results and the substantiations provided in this publication are significant for policy makers and development actors in South Africa and the wider region, and as such, their implications should be seriously considered.
See Less -
Southern Africa has a long history of human mobility centered around the migration of labor to farms and mines in the region. Patterns of migration and displacement have since been transformed by the end of Apartheid, changing economic systems, and conflict and political instability, both in the region and elsewhere.
... See More + Today mobility in the region is motivated by a combination of diverse social, political and economic reasons; shaped by long-standing historical movements and re-shaped by newer patterns of urbanization and displacement; organized through various legal and extra-legal means and governed by fragmented and contradictory legal frameworks. These complex patterns of migration and displacement, state responses to them, and the implications of mobility for job outcomes in South Africa - as the major destination country in the region - are the subject matter of this study. Our quantitative analysis on the impact of immigration on local jobs in South Africa finds that one immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for South Africans during the period analyzed (1996 and 2011). These results and the substantiations provided in this publication are significant for policy makers and development actors in South Africa and the wider region, and as such, their implications should be seriously considered.
See Less -
This issue of Indonesia Daily Economic Update for May 30, 2018 contains economic highlights, including: Bank Indonesia (BI) Board of Governors has decided to raise its 7-Day Reverse Repo Rate by 25 basis points to 4.75 percent, while also raised the deposit and lending facility rates by the same amount to 4.0 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, effective on 31 May 2018.
... See More +See Less -
The movement of people in Southeast Asia is an issue of increasing importance. Workers move throughout Southeast Asia in search of economic opportunities.
... See More + This book highlights how mobility affects the well-being of workers, the constraints workers face when migrating for better opportunities, and the solutions to ease these constraints. The diversity of economic development in Southeast Asia means that there are ample opportunities for workers to seek out better jobs that pay higher wages. The book documents why workers are not always able to take advantage of these opportunities, what is lost when they are not able to take advantage of them, and potential policies that will expand their access to them. The report is structured as follows: part one gives migration and regional integration in Southeast Asia; and part two presents migration policy in Southeast Asia.
See Less -
This Migration and Development Brief reports global trends in migration and remittance flows, major policy developments, and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for reducing remittance costs and recruitment costs.
... See More + The Brief reports new data on recruitment costs, a potential indicator for the SDG of promoting safe and regular migration. The special focus of the Brief is return migration, currently a challenging issue globally following the increase in asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.
See Less -
Most Europe and Central Asia (ECA) economies are showing more rapid growth than previously expected, reflecting a strengthening of growth in industrial production and exports in recent months.
... See More + Export growth in the region continues to exceed that in the rest of the world. With the robust cyclical performance, countries are shifting their focus toward structural challenges that are part of the new normal after the financial crisis and the fall in commodity prices.Technological advancement, the globalization of production and work, and the challenges caused by lower commodity prices have contributed to a rise in public anxiety. It came to the surface as the number of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in the region rose, leading to concerns about immigration in general. Often lost in the current debate is the fact that the number of refugees in ECA is not unprecedented, that surges tend to be temporary, that refugees represent just a small share of the total number of migrants and that migration has long been vital to the region, with ECA economies reaping substantial benefits from cross-border labor mobility. Migration patterns are likely to change with technological progress and further cross border connectivity, and competition for high-quality jobs will become more intense. Reforms should help both migrants and non migrants cope with the inevitable increase in flexibility in labor markets—by, for example, ensuring the portability of benefits, increasing income security for workers, and better integrating migrants in host countries.
See Less -
