Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication
Key Ingredients to Women’s Legal Rights in Kenya
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-03-24)Legislative reforms to increase gender equality before the law are often long and complex processes. This brief focuses on a series of reforms in Kenya, specifically, the adoption of the Sexual Offenses Act of 2006, the Employment Act of 2007, and the Protection Against Domestic Violence Act of 2015. Strong evidence, broad coalitions, and incorporating the highest standards based on international best practice in early legal drafts are singled out as the key elements that led to the successful adoption of these landmark laws promoting women’s rights in Kenya. The lessons in this brief can provide important insights for policy makers, advocacy groups and international organizations involved in the pursuit of legal gender equality in Kenya and other countries. -
Publication
Somalia: COVID-19 High Phone Survey Wave 2 Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11)In January 2021, the second wave of the Somalia high frequency phone survey has been administered, calling 2,811 households to see the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on people’s behavior and livelihood. The first wave has been conducted in June 2020, and compared to that, the adoption of preventive measures such as washing hands and wearing mask was less widespread in the second wave, while over 90 percent of people expressed interest in getting tested and vaccinated. The overall employment rate seems to have improved from the first wave, but still the majority of households (79 percent) reported the further income reduction. Food insecurity has clearly worsened compared to the first wave while government and non-government assistance appears to have reduced greatly since 2020, which strongly suggests the need of further support to the Somalis, especially the most vulnerable groups including internally displaced populations (IDPs) and nomadic households. -
Publication
One Year in the Pandemic: Results from the High-Frequency Phone Surveys for Refugees in Uganda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-28)The URHFPS tracks the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on refugees. The World Bank (WB) in collaboration with the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched and conducted the URHFPS. The URHFPS tracked the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic between October 2020 and March 2021. This brief discusses key selected results while providing policy options. Where possible and appropriate, findings are compared to Ugandans by using the national High-Frequency Phone Survey (UHFPS) conducted by UBOS with the support from the World Bank since June 2020. -
Publication
Disaggregated Survey Data on Taxation to Improve Policy Design: A Perspective from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (2018/19)
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)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. -
Publication
Gender Implications of Rural Land Use Fee and Agricultural Income Tax in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)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. -
Publication
Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 in Kenya
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a strong impact on the livelihoods of Kenyan households, even though employment and income levels are recovering. The second lockdown resulted in another surge in food insecurity. While access to education worsened again due to renewed school closures, health services remained widely accessible to the population. Kenyans are well informed about the preventive measures to avoid COVID-19 infections, and compliance with hygiene measures against the virus increased again during the second lockdown. The majority of Kenyans will be willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine, but many are concerned about potential side effects. One-half of the Kenyan population is anxious due to the fear of contracting COVID-19 and potential employment losses. This brief summarizes the key results of the Kenya COVID-19 rapid response phone survey (RRPS) tracking the socioeconomic impacts of the crisis from May 2020 to June 2021. -
Publication
The Short-Run Economic Impact of Summer 2020 Protests in Addis Ababa: A Brief Look at the Evidence from a High-Frequency Phone Survey of Firms
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12-21)It is long recognized that instability is inimical to economic growth. Instability produces uncertainty, amplifies risks, undercuts high-return investment, and diverts public policy towards short-term and quick-fix policies. Instability, accompanied by violent protest and riots, not only impacts current productive assets but also thwarts physical and human capital accumulation, weakening future growth. In the last two years, non-state conflict, civil unrest, and violent protest was rife in Ethiopia. While such conflicts are known to be barriers to a peaceful political and economic transition, little is known about how they have impacted the private sector. In this brief, we examine the economic impact of one specific event that led to the outburst of violent protests on firms in Ethiopia. This paper also shows that the internet shutdown affected a large share of SML firms than own-account firms. Not surprisingly perhaps, young and large firms are more likely to run businesses that depend on an online presence. Authors also see sector differences in the impact of internet shutdown on businesses. About 12 percent of firms in the industry sector and 6 percent of firms in the service sector report to have experienced disruptions to the business due to the internet shutdown. There is, however, little variation in the impact of internet shutdown on male, and female-owned firms. -
Publication
Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia, Report No. 9: Firm Closure Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic - A Brief Look at the Evidence from HFPS-F
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10-15)For the current study, six rounds of the HFPS-F survey are used, mainly focusing on the business closure module from round six. The six rounds are roughly three weeks apart and were implemented between April 15 and September 8, 2020 in Addis Ababa. The sampling strategy is explained in detail in a companion technical note. Six survey briefs highlighting the impact of the pandemic on firms’ operations and labor dynamics are already produced along with two special topic briefs focusing on the gendered difference of the pandemic and how firms were affected by the State of Emergency. The current brief examines firm closure in relation to firms direct or indirect exposure to the social and economic impacts of the pandemic. The good news is that most of the firms that are closed have stopped production or services temporarily with less than 2 percent of firm closures reported to be permanent in R6 (roughly August). The following analysis thus focuses on temporary closures and mostly rely on data from 436 firms, of which 108 were temporarily closed and 328 were open at the time of the R6 survey. -
Publication
Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Households in Ethiopia, Report No. 5: Gendered Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ethiopia - Results from a High-Frequency Phone Survey of Households
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10-12)The analysis is based on a sample of 3,058 households in both urban and rural areas in all regions of Ethiopia. The 15-minute interview covers a diverse set of topics such as access to basic services, child educational activities during school closures, employment dynamics, household income and livelihood, income loss and coping strategies, food security and assistance received. In this brief, we focus on topics where gendered differences were striking. -
Publication
The Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Four African Countries (April to October 2020): Evidence from LSMS-Supported High‑Frequency Phone Surveys on COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10)As part of a global effort led by the World Bank to track the socio-economic impacts of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the living standards measurement study (LSMS) team supports high-frequency phone surveys in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda (among other countries). This brief focuses on the early impacts of COVID-19 on the labor market and their evolution from April to October 2020 using phone surveys in four African countries.