Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

616 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

goal-1

 

 

 

 

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 54
  • Publication
    Building Resilient Livelihoods: The Enduring Impacts of Afghanistan's Targeting the Ultra-Poor Program
    (Washington, DC, 2023-12-04) World Bank
    Between 2018 and 2021, the country was beset by multiple crises: severe droughts in 2018 and 2021, escalating violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic, fundamentally affected Afghans' livelihoods, creating an even more fragile context. In 2021, five years after households started receiving the program, and shortly prior to the regime change in August 2021, ultra-poor women in the treatment group continued to have significantly higher levels of consumption, assets, market work participation, financial inclusion, children’s school enrollment, and women’s psychological well-being and empowerment, relative to the control group. Households boost resilience by diversifying productive activities and the program improves equality by reducing the gaps between ultra-poor and non-ultra- poor households across multiple dimensions.
  • Publication
    September 2023 Update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP): What's New
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-11) World Bank
    The September 2023 update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. In particular, some welfare aggregates have been revised, and the CPI, national accounts, and population input data have been updated. This document explains these changes in detail and the reasoning behind them. Moreover, 63 new country-years have been added, bringing the total number of surveys to more than 2,200. Global poverty estimates are reported up to 2019 and earlier years have been revised. Regional poverty estimates in 2020 and 2021 are reported only for regions with sufficient survey data coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Publication
    Gender and Informal Work in Thailand
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-09-26) World Bank
    Thailand has made good progress in closing gender gaps in various dimensions, especially human capital development. However, the progress, though obvious, has not done much to get rid of the main deterrents discouraging Thai women from participating more actively in the labor market. Thailand’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) is 94 percent for men and 80.5 percent for women; both have been relatively stable since 2017. More than half of jobs in Thailand are considered informal, but though “informal worker” is in general use throughout the economy, what it refers to has no precise definition. The gender and informality study by the World Bank Bangkok team led to the recommendations covered in this report.
  • Publication
    Tajikistan - Enhancing Opportunities for Female Cross-border Traders
    (Washington, DC, 2023-08-23) World Bank
    Women entrepreneurs in Tajikistan confront disproportionate challenges in their businesses compared to their male counterparts, with cross-border traders being no exception. The World Bank initiated the Fourth Phase of the Central Asia Regional Links Program in 2020, aiming to boost Tajikistan’s regional transport connectivity and foster cross-border trade. Complementing this program, the Quality Infrastructure Investment (QII) Partnership provided a grant to address gender disparities in cross-border trade and augment the economic opportunities for female cross-border traders. The grant funded activities are set to incorporate gender-responsive practices within Tajikistan’s Customs Service and strengthen the capacity of women entrepreneurs involved in cross-border trade.
  • Publication
    Supporting Artisanal and Small-scale Mining Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-01) World Bank
    In 2020, the World Bank projected that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic could push more than hundred million people into extreme poverty. The estimated forty-five million people around the world working in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) were particularly vulnerable because of the informal, often precarious nature of their working conditions and lack of access to social safety nets. At the height of the initial lockdown, as mineral prices dropped and mining sites closed, artisanal and small-scale miners, their families, and their communities suffered large declines in income and rising food insecurity. Without intervention, they were at risk of sliding into poverty. At the same time, there was concern that gains made over several decades to formalize the sector would be eroded, particularly where community tensions were rising. To address these risks, the World Bank took early action. In May 2020, the extractives global programmatic support (EGPS) trust fund initiated a rapid global survey to identify miners’ needs and then used the results to mobilize an emergency response window that raised 6.6 million in support to ASM communities in 22 countries. This report describes the EGPS emergency response window for ASM Communities Impacted by COVID-19, what it achieved, and what the World Bank has identified as priority areas for action in ASM communities going forward.
  • Publication
    High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) - Phase 2: Sampling Design, Weighting, and Estimation
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12) World Bank; United Nations Development Programme
    After implementing Phase 1 of the High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) project in Latin America and The Caribbean (LAC) in 2020, the World Bank conducted Phase 2 in 2021 to continue to assess the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on households. This new phase, conducted in partnership with the UNDP LAC Chief Economist office, included two waves. Wave 1 covered 24 countries and Wave 2 covered 22 countries. Of these countries, 13 participated in Phase 1 and the rest joined in Phase 2. This document describes the sampling design, weighting and the right procedure to estimate indicators for the LAC HFPS Phase 2 surveys.
  • Publication
    Disruption of Health Care Services and COVID-19 Vaccination in Latin America and the Caribbean by Mid-2021
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank; United Nations Development Programme
    Vaccination has constituted the most effective response to save lives and reactivate economies and societies. By October 19th, 2022, almost 1,300 million Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine doses had been administered in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). However, lingering gaps in achieving target vaccination levels throughout the region are especially concerning as new SARS-CoV-2 variants continue to emerge. At the regional level, Chile and Cuba were ahead with almost 91 and 89 percent of the population having completed their initial vaccination protocol, respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, Jamaica and Haiti lagged the rest of the region, with only 26 percent and 2 percent of their populations vaccinated, respectively. The 2021 high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) provide insight into these issues by taking the pulse of household health care needs and barriers to access a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the information from the first wave of the 2021 HFPS, this note aims to present an overview of the disruption of health care services, the need for preventive and non-preventive health care services, and the status of COVID-19 vaccinations.
  • Publication
    LAC COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Surveys: Phase II 2021 - Technical Note
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank; United Nations Development Programme
    Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) were among the regions most affected by the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 - despite being home to only 8.5 percent of the world’s population, over 47 million people were infected by the virus by the end of November 2021, representing almost 18 percent of global cases, and the socioeconomic and human capital effects will be felt for many years to come. While in 2021 the region experimented an important economic recovery, with mobility almost fully restored to pre-pandemic levels and a remarkable progress in vaccination campaigns, positive spillovers on households’ welfare have proved elusive in some countries and for some segments of the population. In an effort to continue monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the livelihoods of households in the region, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) joined forces to implement a second phase of high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) in over 20 LAC countries in 2021. A first wave (wave 1) was collected between May and July, with a second (wave 2) following between October and December 2021 to January 2022 for Peru. The HFPS phase II adds 11 countries to those originally included in phase one. In wave 2, a representative sample of minorities was obtained in seven countries.
  • Publication
    Myanmar Fiscal Monitoring: Myanmar Budget Brief
    (Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank
    This budget brief presents a summary of developments in Myanmar’s public finances. This report includes two sections that cover the aggregate fiscal update and public finance developments in core service delivery ministries. The report relies on data obtained from published reports of the Ministry of Planning and Finance, and other publicly available information. Where news reports are referenced, additional efforts were made during the monitoring process to triangulate reports from several reputed news media sources to ensure the veracity of the information presented.
  • Publication
    Vietnam Macro Monitoring, October 2022
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-10) World Bank
    This brief focuses on the economic development in Vietnam as of October 2022. Vietnam’s economy registered a strong growth of 13.7 percent (y/y) in Q3-2022 and 8.9 percent (y/y), mostly reflecting a low base effect. Industrial production and retail sales posted another month of high growth rates (13.0 percent (y/y) and 36.1 percent (y/y)), which could be attributed both to strong economic activities and to the low-base effects. Both exports and imports growth moderated in September 2022 due to weakening demand from major export markets. FDI commitment fell in September affected by the heighted uncertainty about the global economic prospects while FDI disbursement continued to improve. While the economic recovery has remained strong, heightened uncertainties related to the slowing global economy, rising domestic inflation, and tightening global financial conditions warrant increased vigilance and policy agility. Given the economy has not fully recovered and growth in main export markets is expected to slow, continued active fiscal policy to support the economy should be closely aligned with economic outcomes and coordinated with monetary policy. At the same time, as CPI and Core CPI are reaching 4 percent, the policy rate set by the authorities, monetary authorities should be ready to considerfurther tightening of monetary policy to ensure inflation remains anchored. Given the end of forbearance and tightening financial conditions, the financial sector faces heightened risks and prompt SBV guidance would help stem materialization of such risks at the sector level, potentially affecting the real economy. The recent turmoil around the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) case highlights the need for increased transparency through timely publication of detailed information about the banking sector performance, an enhanced corporate governance, a strengthened risk-based supervision, including supervision of business groups and related party lending and early intervention, and an enhanced bank resolution framework.