PEI In Practice
7 items available
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The In Practice publication series features insights, good practice, and emerging innovations on economic inclusion programs. In Practice is published by the Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI), a global partnership helping governments develop, implement, and scale economic inclusion programs to sustainably increase the income, assets, and economic resilience of extreme poor and vulnerable people.
Authors in this series are drawn from PEI’s partnership base, particularly technical partners, and include policymakers, development partners, non-governmental and research organizations, and World Bank staff.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Designing and Delivering Government-Led Graduation Programs for People in Extreme Poverty
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-02-17)While governments face significant obstacles in designing and delivering approaches for people living in extreme poverty, a substantial body of research shows that programs can achieve transformative impact by addressing the socioeconomic barriers that often exclude this population. An increasing number of governments are adopting and scaling economic inclusion programs, including Graduation programs, to address the multidimensional vulnerabilities of people living in extreme poverty. By integrating the Graduation approach into their poverty reduction initiatives, governments can increase the impact and scale of their initiatives by investing in the systems, processes, and capacities needed to reach those furthest behind and deliver multidimensional, timebound, and sequenced program interventions. This In Practice paper shares insights and learning from four non-governmental organizations on the potential to scale up government-led Graduation programs for people living in extreme poverty. It contributes to the growing policy space around economic inclusion and identifies good practices for designing and implementing government-led Graduation programs. It makes recommendations and identifies key considerations for governments on how to identify, reach, and deliver impactful programming to individuals and households facing socioeconomic exclusion and marginalization. -
Publication
A Standardized Approach to Estimating the Cost of Economic Inclusion Programs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11-16)Economic inclusion programs have become a key feature of national social protection systems globally and a large and growing body of evidence suggests that economic inclusion programming can increase the incomes and resilience of people living in extreme poverty. As a result, there is strong operational demand to better understand the cost drivers, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability of EI programs, including how these interventions interact with other services targeting the poor. The unique design and institutional characteristics of EI programs makes costing them both more challenging and more important than it is for traditional safety net programs. Cost analysis of these programs can provide valuable information for designing, planning, and evaluating programs. Without a robust understanding of the drivers of program costs, policymakers lack the information required to make decisions about which interventions to pursue, replicate, or scale up. Decision-makers tend to focus on the “sticker price” of a program—such as the average cost per participant—without recognizing the relevant aspects required to contextualize and interpret cost estimates. Sticker prices do not fully capture value for money, longer-term impacts, or sustainability. This note provides a standardized approach to costing EI programs using the Quick Costing Tool from the Partnership for Economic Inclusion. It offers guidance to programs teams on how to perform costing analysis, highlighting the operational relevance of cost data. It includes three case studies that describe how the tool has been applied to real-world EI programs and reviews the implications of this work for EI programming. -
Publication
Enhancing Links of Poor Farmers to Markets: A Practice Review for Economic Inclusion in Zambia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09-16)This report reviews the experiences of market linkage programs implemented globally, particularly those focused on poor smallholders, including women, as beneficiaries and farmers who participated in government social safety net schemes. The report highlights lessons learned by program implementers, governments, and other stakeholders related to efforts to link extremely poor households to productive markets. The research was commissioned to inform potential links between two World Bank projects that are currently supporting the economic inclusion of poor households in Zambia. The supporting women’s livelihood (SWL) program of the Girls’ Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods (GEWEL) Project provides a comprehensive package to promote economic inclusion among women from the poorest households. A second project, the Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project (ZATP), enhances access to markets by linking producer organizations and high-growth small and medium-size enterprises to buyers (commercial off-takers) by facilitating productive alliances (commercial agreements between a producer organization and a commercial off-taker) and providing matching grants and technical support. A diagnostic of the status of and constraints facing SWL beneficiaries with respect to market linkages highlights the lack of upstream value chain linkages for them. The World Bank will provide technical assistance to the government of Zambia, through relevant ministries, to operationalize a mechanism, at scale, for forging market linkages by SWL households by linking them to ZATP beneficiaries. This report reviews and highlights the experiences of similar market linkages programs implemented globally, in an attempt to answer key questions raised by the program. This report describes operational considerations that may be relevant to the ZATP-GEWEL project context. It provides recommendations to guide the next steps in developing the ZATP-GEWEL pilot. -
Publication
Working for Inclusion: Economic Inclusion in Contexts of Forced Displacement
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06-15)Since 2012, the number of forcibly displaced people has more than doubled, reaching 89.3 million by the end of 2021. Ongoing conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, will result in even larger numbers of forcibly displaced people. The economic and human development impacts of forcible displacement present challenges for the people who have been displaced, the communities that host them, and governments that receive them. Governments, humanitarian organizations, and others are using economic inclusion programs as one strategy to increase income and assets and build the resilience of displaced people and host populations living in poverty. An estimated 95 economic inclusion programs are underway in contexts of forced displacement in 45 countries, more than half led by governments. This note examines the experience of economic inclusion programs that serve forcibly displaced people, including internally displaced people, refugees, and their host communities. It also examines the emerging lessons learned in program design and delivery based on new data on the footprint of economic inclusion programs and a review of evidence on forced displacement and economic inclusion programming. -
Publication
Leveraging Behavioral Science to Increase the Impact of Economic Inclusion Programming
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-18)Behavioral science-the study of how humans make decisions and take actions—can provide insight into a host of issues that impact the effectiveness of programs that rely on people acting in certain ways. Behavioral science can be utilized to understand how living in poverty, with chronically scarce resources, affects people's decisions and actions. This can be particularly effective when combined with other program components in economic inclusion programs, which offer a bundle of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities in their efforts to increase their incomes and assets. By incorporating an understanding of behavioral science into economic inclusion programming, governments and nongovernment organizations seeking to bring millions out of poverty with limited resources can ensure that their programs are designed to account for human behavior. -
Publication
Operational Considerations for Urban Economic Inclusion Programming
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-14)This note is one of two designed to serve as a resource for policy makers and practitioners aiming to introduce or scale up economic inclusion programs in urban and peri-urban areas. The first note explores the potential of economic inclusion programs to promote the social and economic inclusion of the urban poor and vulnerable. It lays out a framework for such programming based on the current landscape and evidence and points to the central role economic inclusion programs can play in meeting the urban jobs challenge, facilitating a Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recovery, and building inclusive cities. This note addresses the question of how to operationalize these programs. It shows that a rethink is needed about the ways in which programs are designed and delivered to fit the needs and lifestyles of the urban poor. The emerging experience from a growing pipeline yields some important operational insights, but several questions remain to be answered in coming years, as programs continue to evolve and customize to the urban context. -
Publication
A Path to Jobs for the Urban Poor
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-17)A rapidly urbanizing world presents enormous economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable but also presents significant barriers to their economic inclusion. About two thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers by 2050, with nearly 90 percent of this increase in Asia and Africa. Section two is a summary of the urban context and challenges. Section three then describes a framework for fostering urban economic inclusion, and section four examines the current landscape of economic inclusion programs, starting with the policy impetus driving their emergence. Section 5 turns to the case for scaling up urban programs by synthesizing evidence on costs and impacts. Section 6 draws conclusions. This note draws heavily on the framework and analysis provided in The State of Economic Inclusion (SEI) Report 2021: the potential to scale (Andrews et al. 2021), especially the PEI 2020 Landscape and Costing Surveys, an updated World Bank portfolio (2021) review, and an updated review of impact evaluations of urban economic inclusion programs.