Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

664 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/9388

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

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Challenging Entrenched Marital Power in South Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04-29) Arekapudi, Nisha; Mazoni Silva Martins, Natália
This brief examines more than thirty years of legal reform aimed at removing husbands’ marital power at the expense of their wives from South African legislation. For decades, marital power relegated wives to a position akin to minors, with devastating effects on women’s economic empowerment. Removing the many components of this form of discrimination from national law has required not only a conducive political environment, but also sustained momentum from the women’s rights movement and selective, strategic litigation that challenges the varied effects. Such reforms have directly and positively affected women’s economic inclusion. While efforts to improve gender equality in South Africa are ongoing, the analysis offers important insights on optimal contexts for change, the role women play in advocacy efforts, and the benefits of reform for economic growth.
Gender Implications of Rural Land Use Fee and Agricultural Income Tax in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Komatsu, Hitomi; Ambel, Alemayehu A.; Koolwal, Gayatri; Yonis, Manex Bule
Land use fees and agricultural income tax in Ethiopia are levied on rural landholders according to the size of agricultural landholdings. Summarizing the evidence presented in the authors paper based on new, nationally-representative data on taxation of households and individual landholdings and rights in the Fourth Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey, this brief discusses how area-based land taxes are regressive and the tax burdens for female-only households are larger than for dual-adult households. Social norms limiting women’s roles in agriculture and a gender agricultural productivity gap are likely to be a source of this gender bias. Lower tax rates for smallholders can reduce women’s tax burdens, but area-based land taxation would continue to be regressive.
Disaggregated Survey Data on Taxation to Improve Policy Design: A Perspective from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (2018/19)
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Ambel, Alemayehu A.; Komatsu, Hitomi; Koolwal, Gayatri; Tsegay, Asmelash H.; Yonis, Manex B.
A disaggregated analysis of the tax burdens and economic needs of the most economically vulnerable - such as poor women and men, informal workers, and owners of micro- and small enterprises - is crucial for designing equitable and well-targeted tax and public spending policies. This is particularly important in low-income countries, where formal and informal tax systems often exist in parallel, and administrative data is sparse. Availability of data on tax payments by households and non-farm enterprises, individual-level employment and asset ownership, and contributions to community institutions and infrastructure programs can reveal important distributional implications for tax policy design going forward. This survey brief summarizes findings from the tax module of the nationally representative 2018-19 Ethiopia socioeconomic survey (ESS). The tax module covers different types of formal and informal taxes that households, businesses, and individuals pay, as well as informal contributions towards services and infrastructural improvements in the community. Findings from the multi-topic survey also reveal different tax burdens by socioeconomic and demographic groups, as well as across rural and urban areas, that are important for national tax policy design and targeting.
Five Facts about Shocks in the Sahel
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12) Brunelin, Stephanie; Ouedraogo, Aissatou; Tandon, Sharad
The high level of exposure to shocks, in particular climate-related and conflict induced shocks, across the Sahel region exacerbates the vulnerability of the population. It also increases the risk of non-poor falling into poverty. In 2018-2019 a new set of harmonized household surveys were conducted by each of the countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and in Chad. The surveys included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Senegal (Mauritania was not included). These surveys help identify the distributional impact of shocks in much greater detail for the region than before. This note presents the key findings of the surveys summarized in five facts. These findings can help inform the development of adaptive social protection systems across the Sahel.
Collecting Robust Real-Time High Frequency Price Data in Fragile Settings
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) Pape, Utz J.; Nunez Chaim, Gonzalo I.
To embark on a sustainable pathway toward development, effective policy responses must be implemented quickly and based on evidence. This requires reliable, timely data, which is often unavailable especially in fragile settings. An innovative High Frequency Survey (HFS) infrastructure offers a modern data collection system to fill critical data gaps. It can provide quantitative data to inform programs and policies, often linked to resilience in fragile settings. Using the cases of Somalia and South Sudan, this note describes the design and setup of such a HFS infrastructure and illustrates how high frequency price data can effectively support decision-making even in the event of an economic or humanitarian crisis.