Other Poverty Study
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Publication
Analysis of Spatial Patterns of Settlement, Internal Migration, and Welfare Inequality in Zimbabwe
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04-18)This report aims to assess the spatial dimensions of settlement, internal migration, and welfare inequality in Zimbabwe, explore their relationship and implications, and identify policy options for addressing spatial disparities in social outcomes. It is exploratory in nature and identifies areas for further research to continue to unravel the drivers of the pattern that is observed. The study looks at where people are today (chapter 2), unpacks urbanization trends, and reviews population density and connectivity (chapter 3). Chapter 4 assesses the reasons behind the spatial settlement patterns and looks at Zimbabwe’s historical land allocation, land reform, and economic crisis in the 2000s. Chapter 5 discusses the consequences of this spatial distribution of the population in terms of poverty, nonfarm employment, and service delivery outcomes. Chapter 6 discusses policy implications. -
Publication
Slovakia Catching-Up Regions: Prešov Region - Key Development Dynamics
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01-01)Though the European Union (EU) is a development conversion machine for national economies, it is less so for subnational regions. EU accession countries have been catching up to regional averages in terms of economic development since they joined the union. The economic success of the accession countries reduced disparities in national GDP per capita, but since 2005 both EU-wide and in most individual countries the gap between most- and least-developed subnational regions has been widening. This suggests that in accession countries growth, and its benefits are concentrated in a few regions, mostly large cities and national capitals, while many areas fall further behind. Slovakia illustrates the difference between national convergence and subnational divergence. While Slovakia is considered one of the EU’s economic stars, it also has some of the union’s highest regional disparities. Slovakia’s impressive economic gains over the last two decades were led by Bratislava region, which in 2016 became the sixth richest region in the EU by GDP per capita. On the other hand, Eastern Slovakia, which includes Prešov, is among the poorest regions in the EU. This report on the Prešov region of Slovakia, reviews patterns of regional development in Slovakia, discusses opportunities and challenges of the Prešov region, and recommends policy actions for the region. -
Publication
Fiscal Incidence Analysis for Kenya: Using the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey 2015-16
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-29)Kenya has made satisfactory progress in reducing poverty and inequality in recent years. Economic growth in Kenya between 2005-06 and 2015-16 averaged around 5.3 percent, exceeding the average growth of 4.9 percent observed for Sub-Saharan Africa. This robust economic growth resulted in a reduction in poverty, whether measured by the national or international poverty line. The proportion of the population living beneath the national poverty line fell from 46.8 percent in 2005-06 to 36.1 percent in 2015-16, showing a modest improvement in the living standards of the Kenyan population. Similarly, poverty under the international poverty line of US$ 1.90 a day declined from 43.6 percent in 2005-06 to 35.6 percent in 2015-16. At this level, poverty in Kenya is below the average in sub-Saharan Africa and is amongst the lowest in the East African Community (World Bank, 2018b). However, the proportion of the population living in poverty remains comparatively high in Kenya and the rate at which growth translated into poverty reduction was lower than elsewhere. At twice the average, Kenya’s poverty rate is still high for a lower-middle income country, a group that Kenya joined only in 2015. In addition, the Kenya’s growth elasticity of poverty reduction, the percentage reduction in the poverty rate associated with a one-percent increase in mean per capita income is only 0.57, lower than in Tanzania, Ghana, or Uganda (World Bank, 2018b). This leads to the obvious question of what can be done to make economic growth more pro-poor in Kenya. This study assesses the distributional consequences of Kenya’s system of taxes and transfers, covering 60 percent of revenue and between 25 and 30 percent of government spending. The analysis of fiscal incidence and distributional consequences of Kenya’s tax and transfer system is an important input for designing pro-poor policies and potentially for influencing the rate at which economic growth translates into poverty reduction. In this study, direct taxes and transfers, indirect taxes (VAT and excise duties), as well as public health and education spending are assessed in terms of their distributional impacts. Overall, these taxes and transfers account for about 60 percent of revenue and between 25 and 30 percent of government spending. -
Publication
Rethinking Lagging Regions: Using Cohesion Policy to Deliver on the Potential of Europe's Regions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018)As the World Bank’s 2012 Golden Growth report emphasized, the European Union, since its founding, has been a ‘convergence machine,’ generating wealth and a higher quality of life for the poorest in the 28 EU member states. More recently, the Growing United report highlighted that while the convergence machine still works, it is not working for everyone. And among the fault lines emerging in the convergence machine, regional inequality represents a potent threat to Europe’s economic well-being, and to its social and political cohesion. In this context, Rethinking Lagging Regions highlights the nature and implications of regional inequalities in Europe and recommends how cohesion policy can be leveraged to maximize its impact on lagging regions, and on the businesses and people in these regions. The report has several key messages: regional inequalities are high and likely to rise; Europe’s lagging regions are going in opposite directions, but face common challenges; cohesion policy can maximize its impact on lagging regions by explicitly targeting regional potential and equality of opportunity rather than convergence; cohesion policy priorities can be rebalanced to help deliver on regional potential; and delivery of regional policy needs to engage ever more deeply at the ground level. This report aims to contribute to the debate on the future of cohesion policy, with a specific focus on lagging regions. It calls for a further shift in the objectives of cohesion policy towards an increasingly ‘region-centered’ approach that aims to maximize potential in all regions, while seeking convergence of opportunities for individuals, no matter where they live. -
Publication
Indonesia’s Global Workers: Juggling Opportunities and Risks
(World Bank, Jakarta, 2017-11)International labor migration is an important sector of the Indonesian economy in its own right, requiring commensurate efforts to improve its professionalism as a sector and instill modernization across its various components to maximize its potential for the benefit of all stakeholders.This report aims to point towards the best policy mix for Indonesia’s various international migrant worker groups who face widely differing risks and gain diverse economic benefits from migration. Following introduction, Section 2 of the report looks at the major profiles of Indonesian migrant workers and their reasons for migrating. Section 3 focuses on the discussion about female domestic workers. Section 4 delves into the issue of undocumented migration, including the government’s efforts to encourage documented migration. Section 5 then looks as how best to sustain the benefits of migration, with particular reference to a third profile of migrant workers, namely those who work in the more developed countries of East Asia and who generally earn the highest wages. Finally, Section 6 rounds off the report with broad policy recommendations -
Publication
Do Labor Markets Limit the Inclusiveness of Growth in the Dominican Republic?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08-01)The strong economic growth enjoyed by the Dominican Republic following its 2003 domestic crisis was not matched by similarly substantial progress in poverty reduction. While labor productivity grew by an estimated 39 percent between 2000 and 2013, real wages fell with the crisis in 2003/04, and, in 2013, remained below their pre-crisis level. This report presents an assessment of factors related to the functioning of the labor markets that constrained more inclusive growth in the Dominican Republic. It explores several hypotheses related to labor supply factors, job creation, and global trends in returns to labor, as well as issues with statistical measurements that contribute to explain the weak relationship observed between growth and poverty reduction. The analysis finds that growth appears to have been driven by productivity increases rather than by increases in labor inputs. At the same time, low-skilled workers became increasingly concentrated in low-quality jobs and in sectors that saw low productivity growth, a trend enhanced by the loss of manufacturing jobs since 2000. Low rates of labor force participation, particularly among the poor, further limited the ability of households to benefit from growth. -
Publication
The Geography of Welfare in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08)This report aims to assess the spatial disparities in economic development along four important dimensions: (i) It provides stylized facts of the underlying forces behind within-country inequality, namely natural endowment, agglomeration economies, and market access. These are the three building blocks of the economic geography literature; (ii) It examines spatial disparities in welfare and poverty. As the agricultural sector is a cornerstone of the economy in this sub-region, the report explores geographical differences in agricultural activity; (iii) It quantifies the roles of natural endowment, agglomeration economies, and market access in determining the spatial distribution of welfare and agricultural productivity; (iv) It suggests a number of policy guidelines that may help improve shared prosperity across space. -
Publication
Welfare and Poverty Impacts of Cocoa Price Policy Reform in Cote d'Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07-17)Cote d'Ivoire is the world’s leading cocoa producer, supplying nearly 40 percent of world cocoa production. Developments in the cocoa sector can have significant implications for poverty reduction and shared prosperity given that the sector is a source of livelihood for about one-fifth of the population, as well as an important source of export and government revenues. Cocoa pricing has always been a major focus of public policy in the country, and in 2011 the government initiated a new round of cocoa sector reforms seeking to stimulate cocoa production and to secure the livelihoods of cocoa farmers through guaranteed minimum farm-gate prices. Policymakers will certainly like to know the likely impacts of this price policy reform on household welfare and poverty. This paper uses a nonparametric approach to policy incidence analysis to estimate the first-order effects of this policy reform. To assess the pro-poorness of the reform in cocoa pricing, variations in poverty induced by the policy are compared to a benchmark case. While increasing the cocoa farm-gate price has a potential to reduce poverty among cocoa farmers, it turns out that the increase in 2015-2016 translates into a relatively small drop in overall poverty. This variation is assessed to be weakly pro-poor. It is likely that this poverty impact can be amplified by additional policy interventions designed to address the key constraints facing the rural economy such as productivity constraints stemming from factors such as lack of relevant research and development, weak extension services, poor transportation and storage infrastructure, and generally poor provision of relevant public goods. Addressing these issues require a coherent policy framework that can be effectively implemented by accountable institutions to increase the role of agriculture as an engine of inclusive growth in Cote d'Ivoire. -
Publication
Kosovo Jobs Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06-01)Kosovo's economy experienced strong growth over the past decade. Has growth translated into robust job creation? Do those in the bottom forty percent of the population have access to employment opportunities that can translate into sustainable shared prosperity? This report seeks to provide an integrated analysis of the demand-side and supply-side constraints to job creation and employment; and highlighting salient issues like informality and skill mismatches. Bringing together evidence from a number of data sources, including surveys of household budgets and labor force, as well as firm-level panel data and a specialized survey capturing the employers' assessments of demand and supply of skills in Kosovo, the report tries to provide evidence to argue that reforms aimed at adopting the right set of rules, and developing the right set of skills, to promote job creation, will be vital to reduce inactivity and youth disenfranchisement, and to productively employ the demographic dividend. -
Publication
Convergence without Equity: A Closer Look at Spatial Disparities in Russia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)Addressing regional disparities is key to unlocking Russia’s potential to achieve stronger gains in growth and equity outcomes as well as to improve its institutional environment. While spatial disparities have been an important policy concern in Russia for a long time, inequalities across its vast territory remain stark. This report explores the current state of regional disparities at the macro and micro-level, updating existing literature to reflect recent trends and providing new insights into household-level drivers of welfare. The report stresses that addressing spatial disparities does not necessary imply “balancing” growth across a geographic territory – but rather focusing on creating opportunities for all people, regardless of where they live.