Other Poverty Study

350 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2119

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Connecting the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica: Urbanization Review of the South Corridor

(World Bank, 2023-05-11) World Bank

This urbanization review “Connecting the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica” focuses on the South Corridor, a lagging (sub)region within Costa Rica’s Greater Metropolitan Area (Gran Area Metropolitana, GAM), and the challenges facing the subregion as a result of rapid and unplanned urbanization, including housing, mobility, planning and municipal finance. The aim is to provide a framework for thinking about possible solutions to these challenges, with a view to improving the living conditions of its residents, connecting them to opportunities in the capital city, and addressing barriers to achieving sustainable development. As the analysis focuses on the different dimensions that constitute processes of rapid urbanization and how to manage them, the findings may be relevant for other urban centers and municipalities that may face a similar set of challenges as the South Corridor does.
Food Safety in Africa: Past Endeavors and Future Directions

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-27) World Bank

Current donor investment in food safety in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) largely reflects the concerns of previous decades and as a result is substantially focused on access to regional and overseas export markets, with emphasis on national control systems. Relatively little is being done to reduce foodborne illness among consumers in SSA. More investment in food safety (by African governments, donors, and the private sector) is needed to help ensure that Africans have safe food. New understanding of foodborne disease burden and management, along with rapid and broad change within societies and agri-food systems in SSA, has led to food safety emerging as an important public health and development issue. There is need to reconsider donor and national government investment strategies and the role of the private sector. This report is a call for action on food safety. It provides up-to-date information on key food safety actors, presents the first-ever analysis of food safety investments in SSA, captures insights from a wide-ranging expert consultation and makes suggestions for attaining food safety, based on evidence but also consensus principles, successful elsewhere but not yet applied widely in mass domestic markets in SSA.
Middle East and North Africa - Macro Poverty Outlook Country-by-Country Analysis and Projections for the Developing World: April 2022

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-27) World Bank

This edition of the Macro Poverty Outlooks periodical contains country-by-country forecasts and overviews for GDP, fiscal, debt and poverty indicators for the developing countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. Macroeconomic indicators such as population, gross domestic product and gross domestic product per capita - and where available – other indicators such as primary school enrollment, life expectancy at birth, total greenhouse gas emissions and inflation, among others, are included for each country. In addition to the World Bank’s most recent forecasts, key conditions and challenges, recent developments and outlook are briefly described for each country in the region.
Capacity Building in Fiscal Incidence Analysis: Lessons and Reflections from the Field

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-28) World Bank

Fiscal Incidence Analysis (FIA) is the study of how fiscal policies benefit (or burden, in the case of taxes) people and households at different parts of the income distribution. The objective of this note is to highlight lessons learned in capacity building and skill transfer for FIA, including Commitment to Equity (CEQ) assessment. The goal is to uncover effective strategies for transferring the skills and capacities to government officials and other fiscal experts in countries around the world to enable them to carry out this type of analysis themselves. The note is based on interviews with experts, both within and outside of the World Bank who have been conducting FIA assessments and building and using microsimulation tools, often in close collaboration with officials from the government. The rest of this note: (i) describes the common engagement models and capacity building approaches that have been taken; (ii) assesses the extent to which these have been successful and distils lessons learned from some of these efforts, and (iii) identifies a few concrete ways in which similar efforts in the future could be made more effective.
Solomon Islands High Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19: Results from Round Two - Data Collection: December 2020 – January 2021, and April 2021

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-01) World Bank ; UNICEF

This report presents the findings of the second of five planned rounds of mobilephone surveys, as well as the results of a companion survey funded by UNICEF. Thefirst World Bank High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) in Solomon Islands on thesocioeconomic implications of the coronavirus pandemic found wide rangingimpacts that deserve to be monitored as long as the pandemic continues
A Better Future for All Nigerians: Nigeria Poverty Assessment 2022

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

This poverty assessment lays out the broad development challenges that Nigeria faces, which constrain the country’s poverty reduction. The discussion provides the backdrop for the detailed analysis presented in later parts of the report. First, the introductory section links Nigeria’s macroeconomic performance with its prospects for poverty reduction, emphasizing that the country may be struggling to stimulate inclusive growth: that is, growth that would benefit Nigerians across the welfare distribution. Second, the section examines the proliferating climate and conflict shocks that Nigeria faces, which further complicate poverty reduction. Third, the section describes how the “double shock” of COVID-19 has affected Nigeria, through both health and economic impacts and discusses the recent acceleration in inflation. Finally, this introduction considers Nigeria’s data landscape, explaining how new microdata offer vital insights into the country’s pathways out of poverty.
The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty in The Gambia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01) Carrasco Nunez, Haydeeliz ; Jawara, Hamidou ; Meyer, Moritz

The overall objective of this study is to assess the impact of the fiscal system on poverty and inequality in The Gambia as of 2015. The study presents the first empirical evidence on the distributional impacts of taxes and social spending on households in The Gambia. Furthermore, it also evaluated the distributional effects of recent fiscal policy reforms in The Gambia. The assessment was based on the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Methodology with data from the Integrated Household Survey of 2015 and fiscal administrative data from various government ministries, departments, and agencies. The analyses show that while the fiscal system in The Gambia reduces inequality by 1.2 Gini points, it increases the national poverty headcount by 5.3 percentage points as all households (including the poor) are net payers into the fiscal system. Most of the inequality reduction is due to primary education benefits, with a marginal contribution of 0.44 Gini points, and most of the poverty increase is due to custom duties and VAT with marginal contributions of -2.63 percentage points and -2.07 percentage points, respectively. Simulating the effect of changes in the structure of personal income tax (PIT) and the government’s ongoing absorption of the School Feeding Program indicate that these changes reduce inequality but do not offset the impoverishing effect of the fiscal system. Hence, more cashable transfer programs targeted to the poor are needed to offset the impoverishing effect of indirect taxes and make the fiscal system more pro-poor.
Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is the most unequal region in the world. While there has been some progress in recent years, inequality has remained almost stagnant in the most unequal countries. Using an innovative framework, this report provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of inequality in the region. The main conclusions are as follows: first, inherited circumstances over which an individual has little or no control (i.e., inequality of opportunity) drive overall inequality, and their contribution has increased in recent years. This is an important concern particularly because this type of inequality is not the result of people’s efforts. Second, lack of access to jobs and means of production (education, skills, land, among others) by disadvantaged populations slows progress towards a more equitable income distribution. In a context where jobs are scarce, having post-secondary or tertiary education is key to both accessing jobs, and obtaining better wages once employed. Third, fiscal policy helps reduce inequality through the use of targeted transfers, social spending, and progressive taxation, but results are below expectation given the level of spending. Fourth, vulnerability to climate risks and economic shocks makes any gains towards a more equal society fragile. Looking ahead, accelerating inequality reduction will require concerted action in three policy areas: (a) expanding coverage and quality of education, health, and basic services across subregions and disadvantaged populations to reduce inequality of opportunity; (b) strengthening access to and availability of private sector jobs. It is important to accompany structural reforms with measures that facilitate entrepreneurship and skills acquisition of disadvantaged populations, and to improve land distribution and productivity in rural areas; and (c) investing in adaptive social protection systems to increase resilience to climate risks and economic vulnerability, while enhancing targeting of safety net programs for more efficient use of fiscal resources.
Macro Poverty Outlook, Spring Meetings 2022: Country-by-country Analysis and Projections for the Developing World

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

This edition of the Macro Poverty Outlooks periodical contains 203 country-by-country forecasts and overviews for GDP, fiscal, debt and poverty indicators for developing countries. Macroeconomic indicators such as population, gross domestic product and gross domestic product per capita - and where available – other indicators such as primary school enrollment, life expectancy at birth, total greenhouse gas emissions and inflation, among others, are included for each country. In addition to the World Bank’s most recent forecasts, key conditions and challenges, recent developments and outlook are briefly described for each country.
Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Households in Uganda: Findings from the Seventh Round of the High-Frequency Phone Survey

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-01) World Bank

In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, with the support from the World Bank, has launched the high-frequency phone survey on Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to track the 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 Uganda national panel survey 2019-20 round and that had phone numbers for at least one household member or a reference individual. This report presents the findings from the seventh round of the survey that was conducted between October 15th and November 15th, 2021.