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Cojocaru, Alexandru

Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Poverty, Inequality, Subjective well-being

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Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Alexandru Cojocaru is a senior economist with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, where his work focuses on the analysis of poverty, inequality, and social exclusion. Alexandru has worked on a number of policy areas, including poverty mapping, targeting of social assistance, and the distributional analysis of energy sector reforms. His research interests also include the analysis of socio-economic mobility, inequality of opportunity, and subjective well-being. His work has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Comparative Economics, European Journal of Political Economy, Economics of Transition and Social Indicators Research. Alexandru holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and an M.S. from Georgetown University.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

Updating the Poverty Estimates in Serbia in the Absence of Micro Data : A Microsimulation Approach

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05) Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Olivieri, Sergio

The continued poverty impact of the financial crisis in Serbia is difficult to establish beyond 2010 because of the lack of survey data. This paper tackles this difficulty. It uses a micro-simulation approach that accounts for a key pathway of the financial crisis in Serbia, the labor market. The results suggest a further increase in poverty in 2011 on account of a continued deterioration of the labor market indicators and despite a recovering gross domestic product. In order to evaluate the forecast, the model is applied to generate forecasts for previous years (2009 and 2010), which are compared with realized poverty estimates. The micro-simulation model performs well in predicting poverty dynamics during 2009-10 and less so during 2008-09. The accuracy of the predictions improves when the response of the social protection system is accounted for.
Should Income Inequality Be Reduced and Who Should Benefit? Redistributive Preferences in Europe and Central Asia

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11) Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Diagne, Mame Fatou

This paper examines support for reducing inequality and for income redistribution to specific groups in Europe and Central Asia. The paper uses the Life in Transition Survey to analyze cross-country differences in redistributive preferences and the determinants of individual-level differences in such preferences. The analysis tests for various possible motivations, such as self-interest, beliefs about the fairness of the income-generating process, past social mobility experience, or expectations of future social mobility. Fewer people wanted to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in 2010 than in 2006 in transition countries. Support for redistribution toward specific groups is highest for the disabled and the elderly, but there is high heterogeneity across countries in support for various redistributive policies, as well as in the alignment between average beliefs and actual policies. The empirical analysis confirms the importance of beliefs about fairness in influencing redistributive preferences, together with self-interest and past and expected social mobility in European Union member states (Western European and new member states), but only to a limited extent in the non-European Union member state group of transition countries. Regarding redistribution to specific groups, self-interest appears to be an important motivation for support for the elderly and families with children, whereas values and beliefs are important drivers of support for the working poor and the unemployed. Although framing matters, the results are broadly robust to alternative measures of support for reducing inequality.
COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in 53 Developing Countries: Levels, Trends, and Reasons for Hesitancy

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09) Eberwein, Julia Dayton ; Edochie, Ifeanyi ; Newhouse, David ; Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Deudibe, Gildas ; Kakietek, Jakub ; Kim, Yeon Soo ; Montes, Jose

This paper presents new evidence on the levels and trends of vaccine hesitancy in developing countries based on harmonized high-frequency phone surveys from more than 120,000 respondents in 53 low- and middle-income countries. These countries represent a combined 30 percent of the population of low- and middle-income countries. On average across countries, one in five adults is hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine, with the most cited reasons for hesitancy being concerns about the safety of the vaccine, followed by concerns about its efficacy. Between late 2020 and the first half of 2021, there tended to be little change in levels of hesitancy except in Iraq, Malawi, and Uzbekistan, where hesitancy increased. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is higher among female, young, less educated, and rural respondents, after controlling for selected observable characteristics. Country estimates of vaccine hesitancy from the high-frequency phone surveys are correlated with but lower than those from earlier studies, which often relied on less representative survey samples. The results suggest that vaccine hesitancy in developing countries, while less prevalent than previously thought, will be an important and enduring obstacle to recovery from the pandemic.
Guidelines to Small Area Estimation for Poverty Mapping

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06-16) Corral, Paul ; Molina, Isabel ; Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Segovia, Sandra

The eradication of poverty, which was the first of the millennium development goals (MDG) established by the United Nations and followed by the sustainable development goals (SDG), requires knowing where the poor are located. Traditionally, household surveys are considered the best source of information on the living standards of a country’s population. Data from these surveys typically provide a sufficiently accurate direct estimate of household expenditures or income and thus estimates of poverty at the national level and larger international regions. However, when one starts to disaggregate data by local areas or population subgroups, the quality of these direct estimates diminishes. Consequently, national statistical offices (NSOs) cannot provide reliable wellbeing statistical figures at a local level. For example, the module of socioeconomic conditions of the Mexican national survey of household income and expenditure (ENIGH) is designed to produce estimates of poverty and inequality at the national level and for the 32 federate entities (31 states and Mexico City) with disaggregation by rural and urban zones, every two years, but there is a mandate to produce estimates by municipality every five years, and the ENIGH alone cannot provide estimates for all municipalities with adequate precision. This makes monitoring progress toward the sustainable development goals more difficult.
Kosovo Jobs Diagnostic

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06-01) Cojocaru, Alexandru

Kosovo's economy experienced strong growth over the past decade. Has growth translated into robust job creation? Do those in the bottom forty percent of the population have access to employment opportunities that can translate into sustainable shared prosperity? This report seeks to provide an integrated analysis of the demand-side and supply-side constraints to job creation and employment; and highlighting salient issues like informality and skill mismatches. Bringing together evidence from a number of data sources, including surveys of household budgets and labor force, as well as firm-level panel data and a specialized survey capturing the employers' assessments of demand and supply of skills in Kosovo, the report tries to provide evidence to argue that reforms aimed at adopting the right set of rules, and developing the right set of skills, to promote job creation, will be vital to reduce inactivity and youth disenfranchisement, and to productively employ the demographic dividend.
Poverty and Shared Prosperity in Belarus over the Past Decade: Trends, Drivers, and Challenges

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06-22) Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Matytsin, Mikhail

This paper has the goal of presenting the first comprehensive update of poverty, inequality and shared prosperity trends – and key drivers of these trends – since 2003 until 2015, that is starting with the end of the most recent poverty assessment published in 2004 and that covered the period 1997-2002. In addition to discussing the past trends, the paper also aims to present some emerging challenges to continued poverty reduction and inclusive growth in the near future. Relying on data from the Household Sample Survey, the paper focuses on the dynamics of the main sources of livelihood of households – labor income, pensions as well as direct transfers and indirect subsidies – as key contributors to the evolution of overall disposable incomes of households, in order to understand what lay behind the evolution of poverty and shared prosperity of the 2003-2015 period. The paper also complements the cross-sectional, but more detailed, look at the contribution of the Belarus fiscal system to poverty and inequality provided by the Commitment to Equity analysis (Bornukova, Shymanovich and Chubrik, 2017), by providing a temporal dimension. The evolution of poverty and shared prosperity in Belarus should be viewed in the context of rapid economic growth during 2000-2008, followed by a period of slower growth, and increased volatility, ending in recession.Growth in wages and pensions were the main drivers of shared prosperity in Belarus, particularly prior to the financial crisis, with an increasing importance of social transfers in the second half of the period.The recent deterioration of the external environment has shone a light on the degree of vulnerability of low income households and raises questions about the sustainability of past shared prosperity gains.While the economy faces multiple challenges, this paper highlights two challenges to inclusive growth, the prominence of which is being accentuated by the recent recession – the impact of population ageing, and the need to provide an adequate safety net in the context of ongoing reforms, notably in the utilities sector.Meanwhile, ongoing reforms in the utilities sector will diminish the support to households in the form of subsidized utilities prices, which, absent compensatory measures, can have a notable welfare impact.
Moldova Poverty and Shared Prosperity Update 2018

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09-05) Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Matytsin, Mikhail

This note provides an update of recent poverty and shared prosperity dynamics, and some of the underlying drivers, as well as introducing the new international poverty thresholds that are currently in use. The purpose of the update is to take advantage of the release of Household Budget Survey (HBS) data for the 2016 survey round. The previous poverty and shared prosperity update, release in 2017, updated poverty and shared prosperity trends up to 2015. The first section discusses the overall progress poverty reduction and shared prosperity up to 2016 – the latest available household budget survey data. Notably, the poverty dynamics are presented, for the first time, using PPP values based on the 2011 ICP exercise, and using the newly adopted Income Class poverty thresholds of $3.3/day and $5.5/day. For the purposes of this note, we focus on the $5.5/day threshold, but the section also presents a comparative analysis of poverty dynamics based on old and new thresholds. Because this is the first time when internationally-comparable poverty and shared prosperity statistics for Moldova are presented based on the ICP 2011 PPP conversion factors, and relying on newly defined income-group based thresholds, the introduction has a brief discussion of the reasons behind the change in the World Bank’s poverty methodology used for global poverty monitoring, and the implications of this change for poverty trends over time and for the absolute levels of poverty reported in Moldova. Section 2 discussed the major drivers of shared prosperity during the 2011-2016 period. Section 3 examines the profile of poor and vulnerable populations, their asset endowments, and changes in this profile in recent years.
Poverty, Vulnerability, and Household Coping Strategies during the 2015-16 Recession in Belarus

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09) Bornukova, Kateryna ; Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Matytsin, Mikhail ; Shymanovich, Gleb

This paper examines the impact of the recent recession in Belarus on poverty and broader measures of household welfare and compares the recent recession episode to previous economic crises in Belarus. The paper constructs a measure of vulnerability to poverty, based on an estimated probability of falling below the national poverty threshold not exceeding 10 percent, which is estimated for each year of the household survey data between 2014 and 2017. The analysis finds that the recession of 2014-16 was qualitatively different from earlier recent crisis episodes (2008-09 and 2010-11) in that it affected low-income households to a much greater extent, and the negative welfare effects lingered. The paper also documents that although the recession did not result in a substantial increase in absolute poverty by the official definition, it led to a considerable increase in the share of households that are vulnerable to poverty. The greater degree of vulnerability is also evident from the growing share of the population that faced a risk of poverty within a year (going in and out of poverty). Household types for which the impact of the recession was most pronounced are households with multiple children, single-parent households, residents of rural areas, as well as those who were not employed, partly employed, or low-skilled employees. Coping strategies that were employed by the population were largely related to reducing expenditures and, among vulnerable households, food expenditures in particular, as well as drawing down on their savings.
COVID-19 and Inequality: How Unequal Was the Recovery from the Initial Shock?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Agrawal, Sarthak ; Cojocaru, Alexandru ; Montalva, Veronica ; Narayan, Ambar ; Bundervoet, Tom ; Ten, Andrey

The restrictions on mobility and economic activity that were put in place to mitigate the health impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic have had an unequal impact both across and within countries, with vulnerable populations within developing countries being affected disproportionately. An important concern is that the recovery may be similarly inequitable. Across the 17 developing countries in our sample, where policies became more conducive to mobility and economic activity, we indeed observe a partial recovery of employment and incomes in most countries, as well as improvements in food security. Although job recovery and lower policy stringency were accompanied by an overall fall in the share of the food-insecure population from 13 percent to 9 percent, those living in rural areas witnessed slower declines in food insecurity. However, the recovery was not only incomplete, but also uneven within countries. In particular, the recovery in employment among those who suffered larger initial shocks - - women, non-college-educated, and urban workers - - was not sufficient to significantly reduce the initial disparities in losses. By August-September, female employment had only recovered 30 percent of what was lost between pre-pandemic and May-June (versus 49 percent for men). Finally, more recent data for a smaller number of countries up to January 2021 indicates that while food security continued improving in these countries, recovery in employment appears to have stalled, while the disparities by gender and education persisted.
Inequality of Access to Opportunities and Socioeconomic Mobility: Evidence from the Life in Transition Survey

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02) Cojocaru, Alexandru

Expectations of future socioeconomic mobility are an important determinant of cur- rent policy preferences. But how may these expectations be formed? Using Life in Transition survey data for a large set of transition economies and several Western European countries, this paper examines the link between beliefs about the importance of personal connections for getting access to opportunities, such as a good job or university education, and expectations of future socioeconomic mobility. The analysis of survey data finds evidence that: (i) lack of connections is associated with expectations of a lower position on the future social ladder; and (ii) when informal connections are unavailable, it matters for your aspirations whether you perceive connections to be vital or not. There is also some evidence that in the European Union, where formal institutions are stronger, individuals are less likely to resort to informal institutions such as personal connections, even when these are available. Perceptions of unequal access to opportunities are also linked with stronger redistributive preferences. Finally, there is some evidence that unequal access to opportunities is associated not only with lower intragenerational mobility, but also with lower intergenerational mobility.