Other Poverty Study
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Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...
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Publication
The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty in The Gambia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01)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. -
Publication
Monitoring Social and Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Refugees in Uganda: Results from the High-Frequency Phone - Third Round
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-05-18)The High-Frequency Phone Survey for refugees in Uganda (URHFPS) tracked the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis on refugees throughout three rounds. The World Bank (WB) in collaboration with the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched and conducted the URHFPS. The URHFPS tracked the impacts of the pandemic between October 2020 and March 2021. Data collection for the first round of the URHFPS took place between October 22 – November 25, 2020, the second round took place between December 5-24, 2020, and the final and third round was conducted between February 8-March 14, 2021. This brief discusses the results from the third round. Where possible and appropriate, the results are compared across the three rounds and also benchmarked against Ugandans by using the national High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 (UHFPS). Detailed results for the first round are available in Atamanov et al. (2021a) and for the second round in Atamanov et al. (2021b) -
Publication
COVID-19 Impact Monitoring: Uganda, Round 4-5
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02)In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, with the support from the World Bank, has launched the High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 (coronavirus) 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 fourth and fifth rounds of the survey that were conducted respectively between October 27th and November 17th, 2020 and February 2nd and February 21st, 2021. -
Publication
COVID-19 Impact Monitoring: Nigeria, Round 4
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08)The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social effects on households have created an urgent need for timely data to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of Nigerian society. To monitor how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the economy and people of Nigeria and to inform policy interventions and responses, the National Bureau of Statistics with technical support from the World Bank implemented the Nigeria COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (COVID-19 NLPS). The fourth round of this survey was conducted between August 9 and 24, 2020. -
Publication
Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia, Report No. 2: Results from a High-Frequency Phone Survey of Firms
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05-15)The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its negative economic effects create an urgent need for timely data and evidence to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of the least well-off in Ethiopia's society. To monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on Ethiopia's economy and people and inform interventions and policy responses, the World Bank Ethiopia team, in collaboration with the government, designed and implemented two high-frequency phone surveys, one with firms and one with households. -
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
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
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
Does Fiscal Policy Benefit the Poor and Reduce Inequality in Namibia?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)Reducing poverty and inequality continues to be an important national priority in Namibia. Vision 2030 – the country’s guiding development strategy – has a subordinate vision that points to several goals: “Poverty is reduced to the minimum, the existing pattern of income-distribution is equitable and disparity is at the minimum.” Vision 2030 is being implemented via a series of five-year National Development Plans, with the current National Development Plan IV (NDP4) covering 2012 through to 2017. NDP4 sets specific numerical targets. One is reducing the incidence of extreme poverty to less than 10 percent of individuals by the end of FY2016/17, measured at the national lower bound poverty line of N$277.54 in 2009/10. This report demonstrates that Namibia’s progressive income tax and generous social spending programs substantially reduce poverty and inequality, but the analysis also underscores the limits of what redistributive fiscal measures alone can accomplish. The economy must ultimately create more jobs for the poorest members of society to change the underlying distribution of what might be called “pre-fiscal” income; i.e., the income before households pay taxes and receive benefits from social programs. This will require structural transformation through greater investment in activities that create employment for unskilled workers and offer the potential for continuous productivity increases. This report aims to measure the effectiveness of these efforts and draws comparisons to the experiences of other countries. It estimates how major taxes and social spending programs affect individual incomes. It then assesses who benefits from or bears the burden of each instrument and by how much. This way, the analysis estimates the contribution of each instrument to reducing the poverty headcount and the Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality. The analysis provides evidence that can shape public debates over government spending and the design of social programs.