Books published externally
88 items available
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This collection includes books not published by the World Bank, but by allied organizations, often with content from WB authors.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 88
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Publication
The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery
(UNESCO, Paris, UNICEF, New York, and World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12-10)Even before Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hit, the world was already experiencing a learning crisis. 258 million primary- and secondary-school age children and youth were out of school. Many children who were in school were learning very little: 53 percent of all ten-year-old children in low- and middle-income countries were experiencing learning poverty, meaning that they were unable to read and understand a simple age-appropriate text at age 10. This report spotlights how COVID-19 has deepened the education crisis and charts a course for creating more resilient education systems for the future. Section one gives introduction. Section two documents COVID-19’s impacts on learning levels by presenting updated simulations and bringing together the latest documented evidence on learning loss from over 28 countries. Section three explores how the crisis has widened inequality and had greater impacts on already disadvantaged children and youth. Section four reviews evidence on learning recovery from past crises and highlights current policy responses that appear most likely to have succeeded in stemming learning losses, while recognizing that the evidence is still in a nascent stage. The final section discusses how to build on the investments made and the lessons learned during the pandemic to accelerate learning recovery and emerge from the crisis with increased education quality, resilience, and equity in the longer term. -
Publication
COVID-19 Learning Losses: Rebuilding Quality Learning for All in the Middle East and North Africa
(UNESCO, Paris, UNICEF, New York, and World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-30)Since the beginning of the pandemic, efforts have been made to monitor both school closures (and re-opening) and the measures put in place to ensure continuity of learning. These include the Survey of Ministries of Education on National Responses to COVID-19, jointly supported by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. However, to date, no systematic evidence has been available on how students’ learning is being affected by the disruptions caused by the pandemic or on the impact of education response measures initiated by governments. This report contributes to filling this evidence gap and includes a series of simulations of potential learning losses due to COVID-19 and exploration of their longer-term implications. The analysis is based on the Enabling learning for all framework, which outlines access, engagement and enabling environment as the three crucial enablers for learning, while the simulation assumptions are informed by the evidence on school closures and governments’ education-related responses, collected through the joint survey. -
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Natural Disasters, Poverty and Inequality: New Metrics for Fairer Policies
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-10-28)Conventional risk assessments underestimate the human and macroeconomic costs of disasters, leading to inefficient risk management strategies. This happens because conventional assessments focus on asset losses, neglecting important relationships between vulnerability and development. When affected by a hazard, poor households take longer to recover from disasters and are more likely to face long-term consequences. Forced to manage trade-offs between essential consumption and reconstruction, these households are more likely to face persistent health or education costs. This chapter proposes a review of existing research into the natural disaster-poverty-inequality nexus and the various metrics that can be used to measure disaster impacts, such as recovery times, economic (income or consumption) losses, poverty incidence, inequality, and welfare or well-being losses. Each of these metrics provides a different perspective on disaster costs and suggest different spatial and sectoral priorities for action. Focusing on the concepts of well-being losses and socioeconomic resilience, this chapter shows how more comprehensive accounting of disaster impacts can better inform disaster risk management and climate change adaptation strategies and support their integration into development and poverty-reduction policies. -
Publication
What's Next? Lessons on Education Recovery: Findings from a Survey of Ministries of Education amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
(UNESCO, Paris, UNICEF, New York, World Bank, Washington, DC, and OECD, Paris, 2021-06)United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have collaborated in the third round of the Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 (coronavirus) School Closures, administered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and OECD to Ministry of Education officials. The questions covered four levels of education: pre-primary, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary. While the first two rounds of the survey were implemented during the periods May-June and July-October 2020, respectively, the third round was implemented during the period February-June 2021. In total, 143 countries responded to the questionnaire. Thirty-one countries submitted responses to the OECD ("OECD survey") and 112 countries responded to the UIS ("UIS survey"). Seven countries responded to both surveys. In these instances, the more complete set responses were used in analysis. -
Publication
Urban Food Systems Governance: Current Context and Future Opportunities
(FAO and the World Bank, 2021)Ensuring adequate food for people is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of national governments. Historically, governments have invested considerable resources in increasing production of staple foodstuffs to meet national food demands with a focus on the rural farmer. However, the way we live today reveals how the food system affects nutrition and health, livelihoods and jobs and the sustainability of the planet. Changing diets, technology, urbanization, and climate change are shifting how national governments address the food system. Pandemics like Coronavirus (COVID-19) are forcing nations to face food system issues in all their dimensions. This report presents insights and emerging lessons on food systems governance from the experience of nine cities that have developed urban food interventions. -
Publication
Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020
(Paris: OECD Publishing, 2020-12-21)This report presents key indicators on health and health systems in 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries. This first Health at a Glance publication to cover the Latin America and the Caribbean region was prepared jointly by OECD and the World Bank. Analysis is based on the latest comparable data across almost 100 indicators including equity, health status, determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing, and quality of care. The editorial discusses the main challenges for the region brought by the COVID‑19 pandemic, such as managing the outbreak as well as mobilising adequate resources and using them efficiently to ensure an effective response to the epidemic. An initial chapter summarises the comparative performance of countries before the crisis, followed by a special chapter about addressing wasteful health spending that is either ineffective or does not lead to improvement in health outcomes so that to direct saved resources where they are urgently needed. -
Publication
What Have We Learnt?: Overview of Findings from a Survey of Ministries of Education on National Responses to COVID-19
(Paris, New York, Washington D.C.: UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, 2020-10)As part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank have conducted a Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. In this joint report, we analyze the results of the first two rounds of data collection administered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). They cover government responses to school closures from pre-primary to secondary education. The first round of the survey was completed by Ministry of Education officials of 118 countries between May and June 2020, and the second round from 149 countries between July and October 2020. The survey instrument was designed to capture de jure policy responses and perceptions from government officials on their effectiveness, providing a systematic understanding of deployed policies, practices, and intentions to date. -
Publication
How COVID-19 is Changing the World: A Statistical Perspective
(Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities, 2020-05)The United Nations and other partner organizations of the CCSA make a wealth of impartial data and statistics available free of charge with the spirit of promoting facts-based planning. This report presents a snapshot of some of the latest information available on how COVID-19 is affecting the world today. Although a wide range of topics are covered in this report, a consistency of message is clear – this is an unprecedented crisis, and no aspect of our lives is immune. The quantitative knowledge presented in this report covers different aspects of public and private life from economic and environmental fluctuations to changes that affect individuals in terms of income, education, employment and violence and changes affecting public services such as civil aviation and postal services. The report also puts a spotlight on the affects for some sub-population groups like women and children as well as geographical regions. -
Publication
Data Collection in Fragile States: Innovations from Africa and Beyond
(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)Fragile countries face a triple data challenge. Up-to-date information is needed to deal with rapidly changing circumstances and to design adequate responses. Yet, fragile countries are among the most data deprived, while collecting new information in such circumstances is very challenging. This open access book presents innovations in data collection developed with decision makers in fragile countries in mind. Looking at innovations in Africa from mobile phone surveys monitoring the Ebola crisis, to tracking displaced people in Mali, this collection highlights the challenges in data collection researchers face and how they can be overcome. -
Publication
The State of Economics, the State of the World
(Cambridge, Massachesetts, The MIT Press, 2019-11-25)We live in troubled times. Over the past decade, the world economy has been wracked by financial crises, sovereign debt problems, backlash from political conflict and migrant crises, and, recently, a rise in xenophobia and protectionism. These issues raise major questions about the state of the world and also about the ability of economics to take on such challenges. Are these many economic and political crises and flare-ups symptoms of some deeper, underlying issues? Is economics as a discipline failing us at this time of soul searching? These are the questions that many are asking and that prompted the conference at the World Bank on which this book is based. We decided to bring in some of the finest minds in the profession—economists who have shaped modern economics—to ponder the state of the field and the state of the world in a series of papers. The conference consisted of 2 days of deliberation: The papers were presented, a distinguished group of economists commented on the presentations, and a large audience engaged with them in conversation and debate. This book is the outcome of these 2 days of deliberation.