Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

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

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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.
Regional Poverty and Inequality Update Latin America and the Caribbean: October 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-20) World Bank
This brief summarizes the main trends related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest round of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC) created by the World Bank and the Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Social (CEDLAS). This brief was produced by the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank.
Regional Poverty and Inequality Update Spring 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-12) World Bank
This is the April 2024 issue of the bi-annual Regional Poverty and Inequality Update for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which summarizes the main facts related to poverty and inequality in LAC using the new wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank.
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.
Assessment of Trends in General Education Public Expenditure in Zambia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-07-01) World Bank
Over the past decade, Zambia’s gross domestic product (GDP) has been decreasing as a result of a devastating combination of external and domestic shocks. The country’s macroeconomic environment was weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the worsening fiscal outlook, the need for better investments in human capital has never been greater. Building human capital is made more challenging because quality services need to cover a large proportion of the population. The main objective of this policy brief is to assess the funding of pre-primary to tertiary education and how effectively resources are utilized. The 2016 to 2021 period is used for review.
COVID-19 in South Asia: An Unequal Shock, An Uncertain Recovery - Findings on Labor Market Impacts from Round 1 of the SAR COVID Phone Monitoring Surveys
(Washington, DC, 2022-04) World Bank
All countries across South Asia, faced with the rising risks of COVID-19 infection rates, implemented severe economic lockdowns in early 2020 with varying frequencies and time periods. While the exact nature and duration of these lockdowns varied across countries in the South Asia Region (SAR), almost all SAR countries imposed their first economic lockdown in late March 2020 in response to the growing health threat of COVID-19 infections. In India, for instance, the national lockdown was first introduced in late March 2020, which coincided with the imposition of similar lockdowns in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, followed by a national lockdown in Pakistan on April 1, 2020. By April 17, 2020, the population of all SAR countries was under severe lockdown with varying rules and conditions based on national or local directives. The introduction of these lockdowns led to a drastic, abrupt disruption in all forms of physical mobility and economic activities. Trends from the Google COVID-19 Community Mobility data reveal this sharp drop in day-to-day mobility related to four different types of economic activity across 6 out of 8 SAR countries for which this data was available. Figure 1 plots the daily change in the Google Mobility index, which is constructed by taking an equally weighted mean across the four dimensions of economic activity for the five weeks before March 2020. In the six SAR countries, the average mobility remained approximately, on average, 58 percent below their respective pre-COVID levels during the first week of the lockdown. For example, in Nepal, where the lockdown was first introduced on March 24, 2020, mobility (as measured by the Google Mobility index) was 66 percent below pre-COVID levels on the first day of the lockdown; and it remained, on average, 71.5 percent below per-COVID levels between March 24, 2020, and March 30, 2020. We observe a similar pattern of immediate and large disruptions in mobility in all SAR countries, except in Afghanistan (22.5 percent below pre-COVID levels), where restrictions were more localized. The Google Mobility index closely follows these changes in rules and conditions in SAR countries, which varied over time within each country as well as across countries. In countries like Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka, with an extended period of restrictions imposed through national or local directives at different points in time, mobility had not returned to pre-COVID levels even as late as April 2021. In Nepal and Sri Lanka, where the second lockdown was introduced in August and November 2020, respectively, we observe a sharp drop again in mobility after a gradual recovery following the easing of the first lockdown. In other SAR countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, mobility only returned to pre-COVID levels between September and October 2020. These results underscore the dramatic and prolonged impact that COVID-19 induced lockdowns have had on mobility and economic activity, which is perhaps unprecedented in the region, at least in recent history4. These lockdowns are likely to have important implications on various socio-economic dimensions of welfare, including labor market outcomes, both immediately and in the medium, to long-term. More importantly, the long-term impacts will also be determined by the nature and the pace of recovery observed in these countries in the months and years after the initial phase of lockdown. Moreover, the emergence of new mutants leaves open the possibility of future lockdowns as a policy response to mitigate the health effects of the virus, which could impact economic activity and reverse observed recoveries.
Brazil – COVID-19 in Latin America and Caribbean: 2021 High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results Phase Two, Wave One
(Washington, DC, 2022-04) World Bank
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.
Social Assistance Programs and Household Welfare in Eswatini: Study Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12-17) World Bank
This study brief on “Social Assistance Programs and Household Welfare in Eswatini” examines the performance of Eswatini’s main social assistance programs. These programs employ varying combinations of categorical and self-targeting to reach the poor and vulnerable.
COVID-19 Impact Monitoring: Malawi, Round 11
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) World Bank
The COVID-19 pandemic has socio-economic impacts on Malawians and there is need for timely data to monitor these impacts and support response efforts to the pandemic. In May 2020, the National Statistical Office (NSO), with support from the World Bank, launched the High Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19; a monthly survey of a nationally representative sample of households previously interviewed as part of the Malawi Integrated Household Panel Survey to monitor the economic impact of the pandemic and other shocks. This brief presents the findings from the tenth and eleventh rounds of the Malawi High-Frequency Phone Sur-vey on COVID-19 (HFPS COVID-19) conducted between the 29th of April and the 9th of June 2021.