Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

697 items available

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

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Making Progress on Parental Benefits in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-24) Jain, Himanshi; Sharma, Ambika; Cherchi, Ludovica
The World Bank estimates that closing the gender gap in employment would increase long-run gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 20 percent (Pennings 2022). Realizing this achievement, however, depends not only on removing gender barriers to employment but also and most emphatically on improving the quality of women’s employment. Women’s labor force participation has been stagnant since 1990, at around 53 percent for women compared to 80 percent for men, with the largest gaps in lower-middle-income countries (World Bank 2023). Moreover, as noted by the World Bank’s most recent gender strategy, “Women in the labor force are half as likely as men to have a full-time wage job, their jobs tend to be more vulnerable, and they earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn” (World Bank 2023). This note compiles findings from a study undertaken in two countries—one low income (Nepal) and one middle income (Argentina)—to examine the take-up of existing parental benefits and how parental benefit policies (or the lack thereof) influenced women’s labor market choices, childcare responsibilities, and well-being.
Educated Workers and Managers in the EU-27
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-03) Amin, Mohammad
This Brief highlights issues related to the education and skill level of workers and top managers in firms in 27 European Union countries (the EU-27), using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES). The exercise is an important step toward understanding the use of skilled and adequately educated workers and top managers by a firm and its likely effects. The Brief identifies several factors at the NUTS2 region level and firm level that are correlated with the difficulty firms face in obtaining adequately educated workers as well as the skill level and education level of the workers and top managers. Somewhat surprisingly, income per inhabitant in the NUTS2 regions is not a strong predictor of the use of skilled and educated workers and top managers or firms’ reported difficulty in finding adequately educated workers. Several firm performance measures, such as labor productivity, employment growth, exporting, research and development (R&D), and management quality, are found to be correlated with the use of skilled and educated workers and top managers. Some of these correlations differ sharply between low and high levels of the outcome variables. There is evidence that training provided to workers by the firms is associated with less dispersion of labor productivity between firms, and greater use of skilled workers is associated with less dispersion of wage rates across firms. Overall, the Brief finds that starting at low-income levels in EU regions, policy focus needs to shift more toward ensuring the availability of adequately educated workers than on reducing other obstacles as the economy develops. This shifting of policy focus can stabilize after the economy is sufficiently developed.
Sierra Leone’s Reform Journey to Advancing Female Entrepreneurship and Financial Inclusion
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-03) Behr, Daniela M. ; Cheney, Alexis K.
Access to finance and equal economic opportunities are crucial for female entrepreneurs, fostering business growth and economic participation. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders involved in the legal reform processes, this Brief examines how Sierra Leone made strides in its reform journey to expand women’s economic rights, including through the Directives on Provision of Financial Services on a Non-Discriminatory Basis of 2021, the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act of 2022, the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2022–2026, and the Employment Act of 2023. The Brief identifies the key drivers of reform: gender champions in government and political will, economic data and technical assistance from the international community, multistakeholder coalitions, as well as grassroots activity amplifying women’s voices and bridging the gap between civil society and lawmakers. Through top-down and bottom-up initiatives working to create lasting change, Sierra Leone has enhanced women’s economic prospects and set a powerful example for other economies in the region seeking to enact similar laws and policies.
Philippines Monthly Economic Developments, January 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-13) World Bank
The economy expanded by 5.6 percent year-on-year in Q4 2023 as robust private consumption continued to fuel growth, while the recovery of tourism buoyed the expansion of services. The cumulative fiscal deficit declined in November 2023, while low external demand dampened goods exports, which weighed on manufacturing output growth. The unemployment rate fell to a 15-year low in November, supported by strong domestic demand during the holidays, yet job quality remains a concern.
Somalia: COVID-19 High Phone Survey Wave 2 Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Kotikula, Andy; Pournik, Milad; Yoshimura, Kazusa
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.
COVID-10 Impact Monitoring: Malawi, Round 12
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09) World Bank
In May 2020, the National Statistical Office (NSO), with support from the World Bank, launched the High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 (coronavirus), which tracks the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic on a monthly basis for a period of 12 months. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households that had been interviewed during the Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) 2019 round and that had a phone number for at least one household member or a reference individual. This report presents the findings from the twelfth round of the survey that was conducted during the period of June 14 - June 30, 2021.
Does Elderly Employment Reduce Job Opportunities for Youth?
(World Bank, Malaysia, 2021-08-09) Jasmin, Alyssa Farha; Abdur Rahman, Amanina
The aging of populations around the world and the associated fall in the working age population are expected to adversely affect countries’ GDP growth in coming decades. These demographic shifts will also place fiscal pressure on governments, given the need either to finance pension systems or to support the most vulnerable in retirement. Extending working lives is imperative but often politically challenging, due to the widespread belief that extending employment for older workers will limit employment opportunities for youth. Global empirical evidence summarized in this brief, as well as original analysis, does not support this belief, and in fact suggests that elderly employment has positive effects on youth employment, on the well-being of older workers, and on economies and societies. There is much to gain in creating a supportive regulatory environment to harness the economic potential of older workers by eliminating age-biased hiring practices, allowing for flexible working conditions, and providing equal opportunities for upskilling and reskilling.
How Did the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Different Types of Workers in the Developing World?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) Kugler, Maurice; Viollaz, Mariana; Duque, Daniel; Gaddis, Isis; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Weber, Michael
The COVID-19 pandemic is the worst global macroeconomic shock since the Great Depression. This brief reports which groups of workers have been hit hardest by the economic fallout of COVID-19 in developing countries. Larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working, with gender differences being particularly pronounced. Gender gaps in work stoppage stemmed mainly from differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns across sectors. Among those that remained employed, changes in sector of employment and employment type were similar for all groups except for age, where young workers saw a slightly larger decline in industrial employment. Employment increased between April and October, with larger gains for the groups with larger initial job losses, but for most groups these gains fell far short of pre pandemic employment levels. Finally, evidence from five countries suggests that phone surveys give a generally accurate picture of group disparities in employment rates following the onset of the crisis and are proving to be a valuable tool for monitoring differential impacts of the crisis on workers
The Evolving Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-22) Khamis, Melanie; Prinz, Daniel; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Pape, Utz; Weber, Michael
The early labor market impacts of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in widespread disruption to livelihoods. Previous analysis showed that between April and July 2020, across a sample of 39 countries, an average of 34 percent of workers stopped work, 20 percent of employees experienced partial or no payments for work performed, and 9 percent changed jobs during the early part of the pandemic. This brief discusses how labor markets have evolved since the initial phase of the crisis in the spring and early summer of 2020. It uses harmonized data from high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) conducted in 33 developing countries and provides information on the changing labor market impacts of the crisis in these countries from the initial phase of the pandemic in April 2020 through December 2020.
Impacts of COVID-19 on Firms in Malaysia: Results from the 3rd Round of COVID-19 Business Pulse Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) Kuriakose, Smita; Tran, Trang; Ting, Kok Onn; Hebous, Sarah
The COVID-19 Business Pulse Survey (BPS) is a rapid survey designed to measure the various channels of impact of COVID-19 on firms, firm adjustment strategies, and public policy responses. The World Bank, in collaboration with a private survey company, conducted the 3rd round of survey in July 2021, following the 1st round in October 2020 and 2nd round of the Malaysia BPS in Mid-January to February 2021. Firms were sampled randomly from an online business panel database, which consists of 100,000+ companies in all sectors and sizes, across Peninsular and East Malaysia. A minimum sample size was obtained for sectors that are important to Malaysia’s economy and are sensitive to the COVID-19 crisis (export-oriented activities: electronics, automotive, tourism related activities) while preserving the sectoral shares in the sampling frame. The survey was conducted online and yielded 1,500 responses from respondents in senior management positions at their company (i.e. owners, C-suite or Director level).