Other Public Sector Study
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Publication
Barriers to the Inclusion of Women and Marginalized Groups in Nigeria’s ID System: Findings and Solutions from an In-Depth Qualitative Study
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021)An estimated one billion people around the world do not have an officially recognized means of identification (ID). The majority live in low-income countries (LICs), particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This study contributes to an overarching goal of building global knowledge about increasing women’s and marginalized groups’ access to and use of IDs to promote development. There is little systematic evidence about the causes of gender gaps or the exclusion of particular groups from possession of government-recognized IDs. The study aims to analyze gaps in access to the national ID issued by Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), and provide evidence-based advice to policy makers on how to lift the constraints that create high barriers for women and marginalized groups. -
Publication
The Welfare and Distributional Effects of Increasing Taxes on Tobacco in Vietnam
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)This paper assesses the welfare and distributional effects of raising taxes on tobaccoin Vietnam. Tobacco taxes are recognized as effective policy tools to reduce tobaccoconsumption and to improve health outcomes. However, policy makers often hesitateto use them because of claims of their potentially regressive effects. According to thoseclaims, poorer households are particularly hurt by tobacco tax policies, as cigarettepurchases represent a larger share of their budgets relative to higher-income smokers.The paper argues that the claims on the regressive effects of tobacco tax policies arebased on naive, shortsighted, and incorrect estimations. Tobacco-related illnessesdamage health outcomes and the quality of the lives of smokers and their families, whilethey also cost billions of dollars in medical expenditures and losses in human capital andproductivity every year. Tobacco consumption imposes heavy economic burdens onhouseholds and governments, in addition to its well-known negative health and socialimpacts. Raising taxes on cigarettes dissuades consumption, hence improving healthoutcomes, adverting premature deaths, and reducing direct and indirect economic costs.The analysis applies the Extended Cost Benefit Analysis (ECBA) methodology to simulateempirically the costs, as well as the benefits of increasing the prices on cigarettes onthe welfare of Vietnamese households. Following a well-established body of literature,the ECBA acknowledges that there may be short-term direct negative effects of raisingprices on tobacco, as smokers can struggle to continue to purchase tobacco with theirunchanged household budgets. However, the model also incorporates two of the mainbenefits of reducing tobacco consumption by increasing taxes: (a) the reduction insmoking-related medical expenses borne by households and (b) the additional incomesthat households can earn by preventing years of productive life lost due to smoking attributablepremature deaths. A critical contribution of the ECBA is to incorporate decile-specific price elasticities of demand for cigarettes, to quantify the behavioral responses or sensitivity of smokers in different income groups to changes in cigarette prices. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first available empirical exercise to estimate price elasticities by income decile in Vietnam. Consistent with the literature and with empirical findings in other countries, the price elasticities of demand for cigarettes are larger for lower-income households. Lower income smokers are likely to reduce their tobacco consumption more drastically, when faced with a price increase. The ultimate distributional effect on welfare of the increasein the price of cigarettes due to tax increases will then depend on assessing the potentialbenefits against the short-term costs. -
Publication
Achieving Universal Access to ID: Gender-based Legal Barriers Against Women and Good Practice Reforms
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)Proof of identity is vital in modern society. Individuals need identity documents to participate in many aspects of civil, political, and economic life. These include obtaining a job in the formal sector, opening a bank account, borrowing from a financial institution, and owning a property or a business in addition to traveling, voting, and gaining access to health and social welfare services. For women and girls, legal identity is a stepping stone to empowerment, agency, and freedom of movement. Hence, it is a vital enabler of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. However, many women and girls do not have access to legal identity. Globally, it is estimated that 1 billion people are unable to prove their identity, and millions more have forms of identification that cannot be reliably verified or authenticated (World Bank 2015). This paper explores how gender-based legal differences and nationality laws limit women’s ability to obtain identification for themselves, their children, and, in the case of nationality laws, their spouses too. It brings together data and analysis produced by agencies working on legal barriers that pertain to their mandates, for example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on birth registration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on statelessness, and the evidence produced by the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law and other legal sources. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the extent of gender-based legal barriers against women to ID and what is known about their impact on women, children, and excluded groups. -
Publication
The Distributional of Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-01)Despite the obvious positive health impacts of tobacco taxation, an argument raised against it is that poor households bear the burden of the increased prices because of their higher share of spending on tobacco. This report includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016/17. One contribution of this analysis is to quantify the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. This shows that an increase in the price of cigarettes in Bangladesh has small consumption impacts and does not significantly change the poverty rate or consumption inequality. These findings stem from relatively even cigarette consumption patterns between less and more welloff households. These results hold even if one considers some small substitution through the use of bidis, which are largely consumed by the poor. The short-term consumption impacts are also negligible compared with the estimated gains because of savings in medical costs and the greater number of productive years of life. -
Publication
Institutional Assessment of the Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-01)Afghanistan has achieved substantial development progress since 2001, but faces important upcoming challenges. Government efforts supported by aid inflows have fueled rapid economic growth, expanded the quality of and access to basic social services, and improved the capacity of public sector institutions. However, deterioration in the security situation following the security transition in 2014 combined with declining international assistance pose formidable challenges for Afghanistan to manage its economy and deliver public services. The availability of high quality, reliable economic, socio-economic, and demographic statistics is vital if appropriate policy responses to these challenges are to be identified and implemented. -
Publication
Mapping Indonesia’s Civil Service
(World Bank, Jakarta, 2018-05-21)Indonesia’s civil service has expanded by 25 percent in the last 12 years, which presents opportunities for the government of Indonesia (GoI) to work toward the goal of reducing poverty and enhancing social welfare. Yet civil servants must be skilled, knowledgeable, and effective at their jobs to maximize their contribution to society and the economy. This report examines an original data set constructed from GoI data on all the country’s active civil servants to examine personal characteristics including age, gender, education level (which proxies for skill), and promotions. It addresses two important questions: 1. Are highly skilled and knowledgeable workers currently being attracted, recruited, and promoted?; 2. Are civil servants from historically underrepresented groups, including women, being given equal opportunities for advancement and promotion? The study recommends government action in three policy areas: 1. Increase promotion opportunities for women and increase their overall representation in senior positions; 2. Distribute skilled civil servants more evenly throughout the country by improving the incentives for highly skilled service providers to rotate into poor and remote regions; 3. Plan for the upcoming wave of retirements within the civil service by recruiting more women from top universities and hiring medical and teaching staff only from licensed and accredited institutions. -
Publication
Peru - Selected Issues in Fiscal Policy: Taxation and Equity
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-11)This report takes an in-depth look, from a policy perspective, at the trade-offs between increasing tax collection and improving the equity of the fiscal system. As part of this effort, the report places the Peruvian tax system in an international context and considers the key challenges the government is facing in its drive to increase revenue. It also conducts qualitative and quantitative analyses of the impact of taxes and transfers on inequality and on the distribution of income. The report then makes several policy proposals that would increase tax collection without jeopardizing equity, and it then simulates the impacts of these changes on collection and equity. This advice spanned the 2012-2014 period, and included research on several tax policy-related issues, such as legal advice on double-taxation treaties and in-depth analyses of tax exemptions. To keep the focus tight, some of the work is not included in this report. Contributions were originally written in Spanish to provide the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) with timely advice on the subject and were discussed with the counterparts during and immediately after its preparation. As a result of prioritizing this process, two teams focused on different areas of research and were able to contribute to the analytical base behind the ongoing tax reform. The report summarizes the main elements of this process and resulting advice. It comes out at the same time as the finance ministry announces the first set of tax reforms that were informed by this work.