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.
Jobs and Livelihoods in the Blue Economy
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-17) World Bank
The World Bank Group supports climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience by promoting Blue Economy job growth in Africa and worldwide. From climate-smart and resilient urban development to improving economic participation and decision-making for marginalized groups, the World Bank Group works with a broad toolkit of financing solutions to support governments with on-the-ground development and institutional strengthening. The challenge is how to combine growing the Blue Economy with providing jobs for Africa’s working-age population, which is expected to grow to 450 million people by 2035. Critical governance and policy reforms for Africa’s Blue Economy include building public-sector capacity, aligning economic interests with long-term sustainability, and promoting conditions that encourage business growth in a sustainable seafood sector. Measuring the success of reforms on jobs and livelihoods can be challenging. Still, cutting-edge blue economy thinking reveals itself when the restoration of mangroves, seagrass beds, and dune vegetation, for example, is combined with successful climate-smart job and livelihood support in Africa.
Mapping Impact in Burkina Faso: Country-Level Impact of Adaptive Social Protection Programs in the Sahel
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-05) World Bank
In the Sahel, Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) is a set of social protection policies, systems, and programs that promote human capital, productivity, and resilience of the poorest and strengthen their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. Through the delivery of regular social safety nets, productive inclusion interventions, and shock-responsive programs, ASP has demonstrated strong positive impacts on various dimensions in the Sahel. For the poorest and most vulnerable, it has resulted in improvements in household welfare and food security, productivity, and resilience. More broadly, it has shown significant positive impacts on the economy, society, and future generations.
Mapping Impact in Senegal: Country-Level Impact of Adaptive Social Protection Programs in the Sahel
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-03) World Bank
In the Sahel, Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) is a set of social protection policies, instruments and programs that promote human capital, productivity, and resilience of the poorest and strengthen their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. Through the delivery of regular social safety nets, economic inclusion interventions, and shock-responsive programs, ASP has demonstrated strong positive impacts on various dimensions in the Sahel. For the poorest and most vulnerable, it has resulted in improvements in household welfare and food security, productivity, and resilience. More broadly, it has shown positive impacts on the economy, society, and future generations.
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.
Understanding Women’s Lower Participation than Men as Workers, Top Managers, and Owners in Private Firms in the EU-27 Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-27) Amin, Mohammad
This Brief examines issues related to women’s participation as workers, top managers, and owners of private firms in 27 European Union countries (EU-27), using the rich database of the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The analysis focuses on EU regions varying between about 800,000 and 3 million inhabitants (NUTS2-level groupings). Overall, women’s participation as workers, top managers, and firm owners is statistically significantly less than that of men. Surprisingly, richer NUTS2 regions experience a larger gender gap favoring men in employment, top manager positions, and firm ownership. Another worrying feature is that relative to men, women workers tend to be concentrated in firms that are less productive and pay low wages. Thus, closing gender gaps in income requires not just more jobs but also better quality of jobs for women. Having a woman as the top manager of the firm is associated with a higher share of women workers in the firm, but this effect is much stronger when the firm initially has a relatively high share of women workers. A gender gap also exists in labor productivity, which is lower for women-run firms than men-run firms, and for firms with higher women’s ownership. These gaps in labor productivity are much larger at lower quantiles of labor productivity, implying the presence of sticky floors but not necessarily glass ceilings in the EU-27 countries. The Brief identifies some of the factors that are correlated with the average gender labor productivity gap and estimates their contribution to the gap. There is no systematic difference in the level of constraints, including access to finance, faced by men-run versus women-run firms and/or by firms at different levels of women’s ownership.
Establishment Size Distribution in the European Union
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-27) Tamkoç, M. Nazim
This Brief studies the establishment size distribution in the European Union countries. A well-established literature has established that an abundance of small establishments among lower-income countries is evidence of the misallocation of inputs. To investigate this phenomenon, this Brief analyzes both the mean size (in terms of employment) and the employment share of the top 10 percent of establishments within an economy, across European Union countries and regions at the NUTS1 and NUT2 levels. Results show that higher-income countries have larger establishments on average and a higher concentration of employment in the top 10 percent of establishments than lower-income countries. These findings hold when looking at both the NUTS1 and NUTS2 regional levels. Moreover, establishment size increases with the age of the establishment and the level of foreign ownership and exports. Finally, a comparison of overall establishment size distribution reveals that lower-income countries have a higher prevalence of smaller establishments and fewer larger establishments than higher-income countries, which confirms the predictions of the misallocation literature.
Mapping Impact in Niger: Country-Level Impact of Adaptive Safety Nets in the Sahel
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-26) World Bank
In the Sahel, Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) is a set of social protection policies, systems, and programs that promote human capital, productivity, and resilience of the poorest and strengthen their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. Through the delivery of regular social safety nets, economic inclusion interventions, and shock-responsive programs, ASP has demonstrated strong positive impacts on various dimensions of welfare in the Sahel. For the poorest and most vulnerable, it has resulted in improvements in household welfare and food security, productivity, and resilience. More broadly, it has shown significant positive impacts on the economy, society, and future generations.
Overcoming Intertwined Challenges to Reach Upper Middle Income Status in Bhutan by 2029
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-26) World Bank
The document collection focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing a nation striving to achieve upper-middle-income status. Despite recent economic growth and poverty reduction, the country faces structural obstacles, including a small domestic market, high trade costs, and limited private sector job opportunities. This has led to a reliance on the public sector and state-owned enterprises, with limited economic diversification and productivity improvements. The document highlights the need for a coalition of stakeholders, including citizens, civil society, the private sector, and development partners, to implement critical reforms and actions. These reforms aim to promote economic progress, invest in people, and contribute to a more livable planet. The document emphasizes the importance of strengthening the private sector, improving infrastructure, investing in education and healthcare, and promoting sustainable development through renewable natural resources.
Mapping Impact in Mali: Country-Level Impact of Adaptive Safety Nets in the Sahel
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-17) World Bank
In the Sahel, adaptive social protection (ASP) is a set of social protection policies, systems, and programs that promote human capital, productivity, and resilience of the poorest and strengthen their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. Through the delivery of regular social safety nets, economic inclusion interventions, and shock-responsive programs, ASP has demonstrated strong positive impacts on various dimensions in the Sahel. For the poorest and most vulnerable, it has resulted in improvements in household welfare and food security, productivity, and resilience. More broadly, it has shown significant positive impacts on the economy, society, and future generations.