Stand alone books

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  • Publication
    Silver Opportunity: Building Integrated Services for Older Adults around Primary Health Care
    (Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023) Hou, Xiaohui (ed.); Sharma, Jigyasa (ed.); Zhao, Feng (ed.)
    We live in a rapidly aging world, in which people who are age 60 and older outnumber children under the age of five. This book reveals large and growing gaps in care for older adults in countries at all income levels and shows how to leverage reforms for improving health outcomes for older adults and create healthier, more prosperous communities. Aimed at policy makers and other health and development stakeholders who want to promote healthier aging, Silver Opportunity compiles the latest evidence on care needs and gaps for aging populations. It argues that primary health care should be the cornerstone of integrated service delivery for older people, but that primary health care systems must first build their capacity to respond to older people's health needs. It presents an original framework for policy action to advance primary health care–centered, integrated senior care; documents the experiences of pioneering countries in delivering community-based care to older people; and provides recommendations for decision-makers. The framework presents four policy levers with which to improve health care for seniors—financing, innovation, regulation, and evaluation and measurement—or FIRE. Finally, the book posits that by acting now, countries can leverage population aging to accelerate progress toward health equity and universal health coverage.
  • Publication
    Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do about It
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023) Schady, Norbert; Holla, Alaka; Sabarwal, Shwetlena; Silva, Joana; Yi Chang, Andres
    Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous shock to mortality, economies, and daily life. But what has received insufficient attention is the impact of the pandemic on the accumulation of human capital—the health, education, and skills—of young people. How large was the setback, and how far are we still from a recovery? Collapse and Recovery estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children, school-age children, and youth and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. It shows that there was a collapse of human capital and that, unless that collapse is remedied, it is a time bomb for countries. Specifically, the report documents alarming declines in cognitive and social-emotional development among young children, which could translate into a 25 percent reduction in their earnings as adults. It finds that 1 billion children in low- and middle-income countries missed at least one year of in-person schooling. And despite enormous efforts in remote learning, children did not learn during the unprecedentedly long school closures, which could reduce future lifetime earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. The report quantifies the dramatic drops in employment and skills among youth that resulted from the pandemic as well as the substantial increase in the number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. In all of these age groups, the impacts of the pandemic were consistently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. These losses call for immediate action. The good news is that evidence-based policies can recover these losses. Collapse and Recovery reviews governments’ responses to the pandemic, assessing why there was a collapse in human capital accumulation, what was missing in the policy architecture to protect human capital during the crisis, and how governments can better prepare to withstand future shocks. It offers concrete policy recommendations to recover losses in human capital—programs that will end up paying for themselves in the long term. To better prepare for future shocks such as climate change and wars, the report emphasizes the need for solutions that bring health, education, and social protection programs together in an integrated human development system. If countries fail to act, the losses in human capital documented in this report will become permanent and last for multiple generations. The time to act is now.
  • Publication
    The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa: Evidence from a Decade of Service Delivery Indicators Surveys
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-18) Gatti, Roberta; Andrews, Kathryn; Avitabile, Ciro; Sharma, Jigyasa; Yi Chang, Andres
    Have teachers mastered the subject matter they are teaching? Can doctors accurately diagnose and treat critical health conditions? Are schools and health facilities sufficiently stocked with needed equipment and supplies? Are they sufficiently supported and staffed to optimize learning and health care outcomes? For the past decade, the World Bank’s Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) surveys have collected nationally representative data in countries across Africa to answer these questions. The surveys aim to measure the quality of services where they meet citizens: in schools and health facilities. The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa: Evidence from a Decade of Service Delivery Indicators Surveys identifies areas of achievement and constraint in service delivery, shedding light on how service delivery may foster or stunt human capital accumulation. SDI surveys show that schools and health clinics across Africa are still falling short in some critical areas. The delivery of primary care services is very heterogenous between and within countries. Many health facilities lack the basic necessities to provide proper care, such as essential medicines, basic diagnostic equipment, and adequate water and sanitation. Moreover, health care providers’ ability to diagnose and treat common health conditions correctly is low and distributed unevenly. Health personnel’s absence from health facilities remains a concern across the surveyed countries. Learning is low, and, not unlike health care, levels of student learning vary significantly across countries: less than half of grade 4 students can recite a simple sentence or perform basic mathematical operations. This deficient learning is correlated with teachers’ low levels of content knowledge and sub-par pedagogy skills. Some schools are also missing crucial inputs, such as blackboards or private and gendered toilets, and struggle with high pupil-teacher ratios. Despite these challenges, success stories in both sectors illustrate the quality of service delivery that could be achieved and showcase the dedication of teachers and medical staff across Africa. By studying data from thousands of facilities, considering the local context, and drawing insights from the literature, this book offers important insights for how countries can strengthen health and education systems and build back better in the wake of the massive disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Publication
    The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-16) World Bank
    Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is a central driver of sustainable growth and poverty reduction. More human capital is associated with higher earnings for people, higher income for countries, and stronger cohesion in societies. Much of the hard-won human capital gains in many economies over the past decade is at risk of being eroded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Urgent action is needed to protect these advances, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. Designing the needed interventions, targeting them to achieve the highest effectiveness, and navigating difficult trade-offs make investing in better measurement of human capital now more important than ever. The Human Capital Index (HCI) is an international metric that benchmarks the key components of human capital across economies. It was launched in 2018 as part of the Human Capital Project, a global effort to accelerate progress toward a world where all children can achieve their full potential. Measuring the human capital that children born today can expect to attain by their 18th birthdays, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers and underscores the importance of government and societal investments in human capital. The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 presents the first update of the HCI, using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital. The new data—collected before the global onset of COVID-19—can act as a baseline to track its effects on health and education outcomes. The report highlights how better measurement is essential for policy makers to design effective interventions and target support. In the immediate term, investments in better measurement and data use can inform pandemic containment strategies and support for those who are most affected. In the medium term, better curation and use of administrative, survey, and identification data can guide policy choices in an environment of limited fiscal space and competing priorities. In the longer term, the hope is that economies will be able to do more than simply recover ground lost during the current crisis. Ambitious, evidencedriven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can pave the way for today’s children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them.
  • Publication
    Healthy China: Deepening Health Reform in China
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-03-28) World Bank; World Health Organization
    The report recommends that China maintain the goal and direction of its healthcare reform, and continue the shift from its current hospital-centric model that rewards volume and sales, to one that is centered on primary care, focused on improving the quality of basic health services, and delivers high-quality, cost-effective health services. With 20 commissioned background studies, more than 30 case studies, visits to 21 provinces in China, the report proposes practical, concrete steps toward a value-based integrated service model of healthcare financing and delivery, including: 1) Creating a new model of people-centered quality integrated health care that strengthens primary care as the core of the health system. This new care model is organized around the health needs of individuals and families and is integrated with higher level care and social services. 2) Continuously improve health care quality, establish an effective coordination mechanism, and actively engage all stakeholders and professional bodies to oversee improvements in quality and performance. 3) Empowering patients with knowledge and understanding of health services, so that there is more trust in the system and patients are actively engaged in their healthcare decisions. 4) Reforming public hospitals, so that they focus on complicated cases and delegate routine care to primary-care providers. 5) Changing incentives for providers, so they are rewarded for good patient health outcomes instead of the number of medical procedures used or drugs sold. 6) Boosting the status of the health workforce, especially primary-care providers, so they are better paid and supported to ensure a competent health workforce aligned with the new delivery system. 7) Allowing qualified private health providers to deliver cost-effective services and compete on a level playing field with the public sector, with the right regulatory oversight, and 8) Prioritizing public investments according to the burden of disease, where people live, and the kind of care people need on a daily basis.
  • Publication
    Strengthening Post-Ebola Health Systems: From Response to Resilience in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018) Govindaraj, Ramesh; Herbst, Christopher H.; Zine Eddine El Idrissi, Moulay Driss; Workie, Netsanet; Clark, John Paul; Govindaraj, Ramesh; Herbst, Christopher H.; Ajumobi, Oluwayemisi; Rockmore, Christophe; Zine Eddine El Idrissi, Moulay Driss; Workie, Netsanet; Clark, John Paul
    Strengthening Post-Ebola Health Systems addresses the challenge of enabling the development of viable, resilient, and fiscally sustainable health system in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Initiated while Ebola was still raging in all of the three most-affected countries in West Africa, it identifies the requirements for strengthening the health systems in these countries to go beyond just getting the number of Ebola cases to zero. The overall goal of this study is thus twofold: To assess the capacity of the health systems of the three most-affected countries in terms of their ability to deliver quality health services to their populations, perform core public health functions on a routine basis, and to respond to public health emergencies; and To identify the highest impact strategies to help these countries to strengthen their health systems to be more effective and resilient, drilling down into three key aspects of the health system--that is, fiscal space for universal health coverage (UHC), development and deployment of an effective health workforce, and continuous disease surveillance.
  • Publication
    The Africa Competitiveness Report 2017: Addressing Africa’s Demographic Dividend
    (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2017-05-01) World Economic Forum; World Bank; African Development Bank
    Without urgent action to address low levels of competitiveness, Africa’s economies will not create enough jobs for the young people entering the job market. If current policies remain unchanged, fewer than one-quarter of the 450 million new jobs needed in Africa in the next 20 years will be created. These are among the key findings of the Africa Competitiveness Report 2017, a biennial publication jointly produced by the World Economic Forum, the African Development Bank, and the World Bank Group. Priorities to meet the changing demographics include policy reform to improve the quality of institutions, infrastructure, skills and adoption of new technology. House construction and better urban planning present opportunities for short-term competitiveness gains. The report finds that the ability of Africa’s economies to generate enough jobs for its young and growing population rests on the successful implementation of urgent structural reforms to boost productivity. Competitiveness is defined as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity, and hence future prosperity, of a country. The report, which covers North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, comes at a time when growth in most of the region’s economies has been slowing after a decade of sustained growth. Further stagnation is likely in the absence of improvements in the core conditions for competitiveness. Compounding the challenge to Africa’s leaders is a rapidly expanding population.
  • Publication
    Deepening Health Reform in China: Building High-Quality and Value-Based Service Delivery
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-07-22) World Bank Group; World Health Organization; Ministry of Finance, P.R.C.; National Health and Family Planning Commission, P.R.C.; Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, P.R.C.
    At a meeting in July 2014 in Beijing, we committed to working together on a flagship report that would help set the direction for health sector reform in China. This report, Deepening Health Reform in China, is the result. Using the successful model offered by previous flagship reports like China 2030 and Urban China, this report primarily offers a blueprint for a new direction for China’s health sector. The report’s main theme is the need for China to transition its healthcare delivery system toward people-centered, quality, integrated care built on the foundation of a strong primary healthcare system.
  • Publication
    Going Universal: How 24 Developing Countries are Implementing Universal Health Coverage from the Bottom Up
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-09-24) Cotlear, Daniel; Nagpal, Somil; Cortez, Rafael
    This book is about 24 developing countries that have embarked on the journey towards universal health coverage (UHC) following a bottom-up approach, with a special focus on the poor and vulnerable, through a systematic data collection that provides practical insights to policymakers and practitioners. Each of the UHC programs analyzed in this book is seeking to overcome the legacy of inequality by tackling both a “financing gap” and a “provision gap”: the financing gap (or lower per capita spending on the poor) by spending additional resources in a pro-poor way; the provision gap (or underperformance of service delivery for the poor) by expanding supply and changing incentives in a variety of ways. The prevailing view seems to indicate that UHC require not just more money, but also a focus on changing the rules of the game for spending health system resources. The book does not attempt to identify best practices, but rather aims to help policy makers understand the options they face, and help develop a new operational research agenda. The main chapters are focused on providing a granular understanding of policy design, while the appendixes offer a systematic review of the literature attempting to evaluate UHC program impact on access to services, on financial protection, and on health outcomes.
  • Publication
    The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic : Short- and Medium-Term Estimates for West Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-11-20) World Bank Group
    Beyond the terrible toll in human lives and suffering, the Ebola epidemic currently afflicting West Africa is already having a measurable economic impact in terms of forgone output; higher fiscal deficits; rising prices; lower real household incomes and greater poverty. These economic impacts include the costs of healthcare and forgone productivity of those directly affected but, more importantly, they arise from choices by others to avoid exposure to the disease, called 'aversion behavior'. This report provides a systematic analysis of the channels of economic impact and the likely magnitude of that impact for Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, as well as West Africa as a whole. The short-term (2014) impact of Ebola on economic output is on the order of US$359 million in foregone output in 2013 prices. Two alternative scenarios are used to estimate the medium-term (2015) impact of the epidemic. A 'Low Ebola' scenario corresponds to rapid containment within the three most severely affected countries, while 'High Ebola' corresponds to slower containment in the core three countries, with some broader regional contagion. The estimates of the GDP lost as a result of the epidemic in the core three countries for 2015 alone sum to US$97 million under Low Ebola (implying some recovery from 2014), and US$809 million under High Ebola (in 2013 dollars). Over the medium term, however, both epidemiological and economic contagion in the broader sub-region of West Africa is likely. This report uses a multi-country general equilibrium model to estimate the medium-term impact on output for West Africa as a whole. Under Low Ebola, the loss in GDP for the sub-region is estimated to be US$2.2 billion in 2014 and US$1.6 billion in 2015. Under High Ebola, the estimates are US$7.4 billion in 2014, and US$25.2 billion in 2015. This analysis shows that the economic impacts are already very serious in the core three countries - particularly Liberia and Sierra Leone - and could become catastrophic under a slow-containment, High Ebola scenario. In broader regional terms, the economic impacts could be limited if immediate national and international responses succeed in containing the epidemic and mitigating aversion behavior. If, on the other hand, the epidemic spreads into neighboring countries, some of which have much larger economies, the cumulative two-year impact could reach US$32.6 billion by the end of 2015 - almost 2.5 times the combined 2013 GDP of the core three countries.