C. Journal articles published externally
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
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Publication
The effects of booster classes in protracted crisis settings: Evidence from Kenyan refugee camps (Published online: 13 Jul 2023)
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-10-12)Students in protracted crisis settings often face a range of challenges which combine to yield low education outcomes. This paper presents the results from a randomised controlled trial of weekend and holiday booster classes for 7th and 8th grade girls in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, that aimed to improve girls’ education outcomes and increase transition rates from primary to secondary school. While qualitative results suggested numerous advantages of the booster classes, including more freedom to ask questions, smaller class sizes, and kinder teachers, the program did not yield statistically significant effects on learning outcomes, school attendance or noncognitive skills. Mixed-methods research suggests that the limited impacts may stem from implementation challenges including irregular booster class attendance and a lack of appropriate teaching materials. More broadly, the results show the importance of accounting for implementation challenges in the reporting of impact evaluation results. -
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Scaling Education Innovations in Complex Emergencies: A Meta-Evaluation of Five Process and Three Impact Evaluations (Published online: 30 Sep 2022)
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-10-12)The papers in this special issue describe evaluations of the scaling journey of five different education programmes operating in humanitarian crises. This introduction first presents the research context for these evaluations followed by a synthesis of the overarching barriers and facilitators to scaling across three domains: (1) context, (2) business model, and (3) advocacy and ownership based on a qualitative synthesis. The synthesis showed that implementers often started multiple pilot projects in different contexts rather than scaling-up in one context. We also present a summary of impacts on learning outcomes from impact evaluations of three of the five education programmes. -
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Transactional Sex as a Response to Risk in Western Kenya
( 2011)Though formal and informal sex work has long been identified as crucial for the spread of HIV/AIDS, the nature of the sex-for-money market remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported diaries, we find that women who engage in transactional sex substantially increase their supply of risky, better compensated sex to cope with unexpected health shocks, particularly the illness of another household member. These behavioral responses entail significant health risks for these women and their partners, and suggest that these women are unable to cope with risk through other consumption smoothing mechanisms. -
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The Effects of a Large Discrete Maize Price Increase on the Distribution of Household Welfare and Poverty in Rural Kenya
( 2011)This study estimates the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the welfare of a sample of rural Kenyan households. The usual first-order welfare approximation formula is extended to a second-order formula that allows for supply and demand responses to the price change. Results show that many rural households are not affected greatly by the price change, and there are about as many gainers as losers. However, these full sample results mask important differences across regions. Welfare gains generally take place in major production areas while losses are in areas where most households are net buyers of maize. Semiparametric methods are used to investigate the relationship between income and the size of the welfare effect, and poverty dominance techniques are applied to study the impacts of the maize price increase on rural poverty. -
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Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions
( 2011)Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements. -
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Inside Informality : The Links between Poverty, Microenterprises, and Living Conditions in Nairobi's Slums
( 2010)Using households rather than enterprises as the analytical unit, this study of 1,755 households in Nairobi's slums reveals that informal household microenterprises are indeed helping offset poverty. Microenterprises are helping households that are, a priori, more likely to be poor. Better microenterprise performance is associated with certain "business-related" factors, such as sales area, time in, and sector of operation. But "living conditions"--residential tenure and infrastructure access--also strongly influence both creation and success of microenterprises. Interventions that improve infrastructure and reduce tenure insecurity and rent-induced pressures to move may be crucial for incubating microenterprises and reinforcing their contribution to poverty alleviation in Nairobi's slums. -
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The Living Conditions Diamond: An Analytical and Theoretical Framework for Understanding Slums
( 2010)What constitutes a 'slum' is much debated in the urban poverty and affordable housing literature. We argue that a focus on living conditions can help clarify this and present a framework, the living conditions diamond, for detailing living conditions and determining how the settlements we deem 'slums' compare with each other and with nonslum settlements. The diamond distills living conditions into four dimensions: (i) tenure, (ii) infrastructure, (iii) unit quality, and (iv) neighbourhood and location. This framework depicts conditions in graphic terms enabling comparison of conditions within and across cities. The diamond moves us beyond the notion that slums are homogeneously poor in quality, and facilitates analyses that can reveal why they differ. Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya and Dakar, Senegal are compared. -
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Mobility, Poverty, and Gender: Travel 'Choices' of Slum Residents in Nairobi, Kenya
( 2010)A survey of 4375 slum residents in Nairobi, Kenya, reveals that the majority cannot afford any of the motorized transport options in the city. They cope by limiting their travel outside their settlement and, if they do travel, by often 'choosing' to walk. As compared to the non-poor, poor households are systematically worse off. But the burden of reduced mobility is borne disproportionately by women and children. Using joint-choice modelling to empirically explore the travel 'choices' of Nairobi's slum residents, we show that women, men, and children in this population face distinct barriers to access. We conclude that policy aiming to improve mobility and transport access for the poor needs to grapple not only with the crucial issue of affordability but also with specific constraints faced by women and children. -
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No Association between HIV and Intimate Partner Violence among Women in 10 Developing Countries
( 2010)Background: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has been reported to be a determinant of women's risk for HIV. We examined the relationship between women's self-reported experiences of IPV in their most recent relationship and their laboratory-confirmed HIV serostatus in ten low-to middle-income countries. Methodology/Principal Findings: Data for the study came from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in Dominican Republic, Haiti, India, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Each survey population was a cross-sectional sample of women aged 15-49 years. Information on IPV was obtained by a face-to-face interview with the mother with an 81.1% response rate; information on HIV serostatus was obtained from blood samples with an 85.3% response rate. Demographic and socioeconomic variables were considered as potentially confounding covariates. Logistic regression models accounting for multi-stage survey design were estimated individually for each country and as a pooled total with country fixed effects (n = 60,114). Country-specific adjusted odds ratios (OR) for physical or sexual IPV compared to neither ranged from 0.45 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.23-0.90] in Haiti to 1.35 [95% CI: 0.95-1.90] in India; the pooled association was 1.03 [95% CI: 0.94-1.13]. Country-specific adjusted ORs for physical and sexual IPV compared to no sexual IPV ranged from 0.41 [95% CI: 0.12-1.36] in Haiti to 1.41 [95% CI: 0.26-7.77] in Mali; the pooled association was 1.05 [95% CI: 0.90-1.22]. Conclusions: IPV and HIV were not found to be consistently associated amongst ever-married women in national population samples in these lower income countries, suggesting that IPV is not consistently associated with HIV prevalence worldwide. More research is needed to understand the circumstances in which IPV and HIV are and are not associated with one another. -
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Three Kinds of Psychological Determinants for Hand-Washing Behaviour in Kenya
( 2010)Washing hands with soap at the right times - primarily after contact with faeces, but also before handling food or feeding an infant - can significantly reduce the incidence of childhood infectious disease. Here, we present empirical results which substantiate a recent claim that washing hands can be the consequence of different kinds of psychological causes. Such causes can be divided into three kinds of control over behaviour: automatic or habitual responses, motivated or goal-driven behaviour to satisfy needs, and cognitive causes which reflect conscious concerns. Empirical results are based on 3-h-long structured observations of hand-washing behaviour in 802 nationally representative Kenyan households with children under five, and structured interviews with the primary female caretaker in these households, collected in March 2007. Factor analysis of questionnaire responses identified three psychological factors which are also significant predictors of observed hand-washing behaviour: having the habit of hand-washing at particular junctures during the day, the motivated need for personal or household cleanliness, and a lack of cognitive concern about the cost of soap use. These factors each represent a different kind of psychological cause. A perceived link between clean hands and sexual attractiveness also appeared in the factor analysis, but was not a determinant of actual behaviour. We also report evidence that those who express concern about the cost of soap use are those with relatively few economic resources. We suggest that those developing hygiene promotion programmes should consider the possible existence of multiple types of strategies for increasing hand-washing behaviour. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.