Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication
Facilitating the School to Work Transition of Young Women
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)In Latin America and the Caribbean, the school-to-work transition is more challenging for girls than boys due to societal norms. Young women who drop out of school are more likely to be employed in less stable, lower-paid jobs in the informal sector. Work-study programs can help to address the gender gaps in the school-to-work transition. In Uruguay, a national work-study program offered by a lottery system significantly improved the school-to-work transition for young girls and boys. Key features of the program included providing high-quality jobs with a focus on human capital accumulation that is compatible with schooling. -
Publication
Brazil – COVID-19 in Latin America and Caribbean: 2021 High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results Phase Two, Wave One
(Washington, DC, 2022-04)Brazil has been one of the countries most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. In June 2021, it was the country with the second-highest rate of deaths per million and the fourth by the number of cases per million in Latin America and the Caribbean. The effects of the health crisis were broad and still evident a year and a half into the pandemic. In line with pre-existing vulnerability profiles, the pandemic affected the Brazilian population differently in the labor market. At the time of the survey, the proportion of people who lost their pre-pandemic job and were not working was 29.1 percent. This proportion was highest among the elderly (57.8 percent), those with primary education or less (42.7 percent), women (41.4 percent) and rural workers (38.7 percent). About 58 percent of those who lost their jobs became inactive, and most of the new inactive were women (68.9 percent). Simultaneously, 29.2 percent of the previously inactive entered the labor force during the pandemic, though one-quarter of them were unemployed in mid-2021. Women represented a majority among the new active (64.3 percent). Finally, the pandemic resulted in higher informality rates among those who remained employed. -
Publication
Improving Gender Wage Equality Reduces Intimate Partner Violence in Brazil: Policy Implications for Mothers
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-05)More wage equality for women reduces violence against women in urban Brazil. Evidence shows that violence has declined at various levels of severity. Wage equality may be improved through family-friendly policies such as preschool provision and maternity leave. Public safety and legal protections are also needed. -
Publication
COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Technical Note
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04)Latin American and the Caribbean is one of the regions in the world most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the welfare impacts for households have been severe. At the macroeconomic level, the World Bank estimates a contraction of 6.9 percent of the region’s GDP in 2020, due to pandemic-control measures and the deceleration of the global economy (World Bank, 2021). Regional export prices significantly dropped in the first semester of 2020 (5.2 percent) (Inter-American Development Bank, 2020), and although they began to recover in the second half of the year, the volume of goods-exports dropped by 8 points by the third quarter of 2020 (World Bank, 2021). -
Publication
The Impact of COVID-19 on Formal Firms in Honduras: Evidence from Monthly Tax Returns
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)We measure the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis and the resulting lockdown on formal firms in Honduras, using monthly value-added tax records for January 2018 to August 2020. Firms' revenue fell by 26 percent, or 342.6 billion lempiras (USD 14.3 billion), in real terms between March and August 2020 and the same period in 2019. Sectors subject to stricter containment measures experienced larger revenue losses. The service sector was the most severely affected, experiencing a 45 percent revenue loss. Larger firms experienced smaller revenue losses than smaller firms, even when accounting for the sectoral composition of firm-size groups. A non-negligible number of firms remained shut down until the end of available data in August 2020. -
Publication
COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results Second Wave
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07)Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to preoccupy the population in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), as do the pandemic’s economic ramifications. The willingness and or ability of people to follow the recommendation to stay at home began to noticeably tail off by the beginning of July. A gradual return to work is observed across all countries, although the situation remains less dynamic than before COVID. Among people re-engaged in the labor market, the majority are coming back to their pre-COVID jobs. Food insecurity has receded but continues to be a major issue for many families in the region. COVID has served to exacerbate existing disparities across the region with respect to medical care. Education continued in most cases thanks to distance learning. On most countries, over 90 percent of children were able to participate in distance learning activities during second wave. -
Publication
COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results First Wave
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)Unemployment is rising quickly and affected households are losing their main source of incomes. There is an obvious need for speeding up public intervention in the areas of virtual learning and access to medical attention and medicines across most vulnerable households. Reducing food consumption is the main mechanism to cope with the crisis for most households across the region. Despite a large rate of approval for governments’ interventions, lack of financial support to population, lack of enforcement or late response are the key area of public dissatisfaction. Unsurprisingly, there is a wide variation in abidance with lock-down measures mandated across countries. In countries like Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, and Peru over 90 percent of the population report to respect and follow the lockdown. -
Publication
Gender Differences in Poverty in Colombia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)This note presents the gender poverty profiles for Colombia using a lifecycle approach. In Colombia, as in the vast majority of countries around the world, girls and boys are consistently poorer than adults and seniors. Notwithstanding, the difference on poverty rates between women and men during their reproductive age in Colombia is around 6 p.p. while in the world is around 2 p.p. Another interesting finding is that the likelihood of being poor diminishes with formal education, for both women and men. Nevertheless, as the level of formal education increases, the share of women among the poor do so also. This note is organized as follows: section one presents the poverty rates for women and men, by education level, marital status, location, and employment type. Section two presents the results of the lifecycle approach. The authors present the gender poverty profile when variables as age, demographic, and economic composition are combined with gender, to define the profiles. And finally, section three presents some final remarks. -
Publication
Distributional Effects of Investments in Road Infrastructure: The Case of Colombia's 4th Generation Concession Program
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)Estimating ex-ante distributional impacts of road infrastructure is increasingly important to better understand the poverty effects of these investments. This note presents such analysis for the ongoing 4th generation (4G) road concessions program in Colombia, which involves the concession of 40 new roads and the transformation of 8,170 kilometers of road network. An ex-ante evaluation of the program suggests that 180,000 jobs will be created and that moderate and extreme poverty would decline by 0.5 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.