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Regional Poverty and Inequality Update Latin America and the Caribbean: October 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-20) World Bank
This brief summarizes the main trends related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest round of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC) created by the World Bank and the Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Social (CEDLAS). This brief was produced by the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank.
Unleashing Adaptive Potential for Social Protection: Good Adaptive Social Protection Practices in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-08) Tisei, Francesco; Ed, Malin
The report is structured around four chapters and begins by offering a comprehensive overview of the region's climate and disaster risk profile in Chapter 1. This is followed by chapter 2 which provides a snapshot of the status of social protection systems in the region. Chapter 3 conducts a detailed analysis of the World Bank's stress test assessments in the LAC region, showcasing good practices and overarching weaknesses categorized according to the building blocks of the Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) framework. Building on the assessment findings, chapter 3 also provides a set of transnational emerging recommendations geared towards the advancement of the ASP agenda in LAC. Chapter 4 takes a forward-looking approach, exploring the World Bank's role in contributing to making social protection systems in the region more adaptive. This chapter also touches upon crucial issues within the region, including migration and the high levels of informality, thereby providing a broader perspective on the challenges and opportunities surrounding the advancement of this crucial agenda in the LAC countries.
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.
Guiding Questions for Choosing the Right Tools to Measure Early Childhood Outcomes: Why, What, Who, and How
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-18) Pushparatnam, Adelle; Seiden, Jonathan Michael; Luna Bazaldua, Diego Armando
A growing understanding of the importance of children’s earliest years has led to an increasing desire to measure early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. There are now nearly 150 tools for measuring ECD outcomes internationally, which can make it challenging to choose an appropriate measurement tool for a given measurement effort. This document guides the user through the why, who, what, and how questions that must be considered prior to selecting tools for measuring ECD outcomes. Users should document their responses at each step to collate the information needed to identify and select an appropriate ECD measurement tool.
The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-09-29) Ferreyra, María Marta; Dinarte, Lelys; Urzúa, Sergio; Bassi, Marina
Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has expanded dramatically in the new millennium, yet enrollment in short-cycle programs (SCPs) is still relatively low. Shorter and more practical than bachelor’s programs, SCPs can form skilled human capital fast. The economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated underlying trends, such as automation, the use of electronic platforms, and the need for lifelong learning. Addressing these demands requires the urgent upskilling and reskilling of the population—a task for which SCPs are uniquely suited. The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean explores the labor market outcomes and returns of SCPs, examines their providers, and identifies the practices adopted by the best programs. Relying on unique data that includes a novel survey of SCP directors in five LAC countries, it finds that while SCPs generate, on average, good labor market outcomes, they vary greatly in quality. SCP providers respond quickly and flexibly to local economy needs; and specific practices related to faculty, job search assistance, and interaction with prospective employers are distinctive of the best programs. Drawing on these findings, The Fast Track to New Skills discusses how to create an environment where good programs are offered and students have the interest and means to attend them. It draws attention to a higher education sector that has been typically overlooked, both in research and policy. The Fast Track to New Skills will be of interest to policy makers, researchers, and the public at large.
Renewing with Growth
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-29) World Bank
Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the largest death toll from Covid‐19 across developing regions and the sharpest decline in economic activity. With fewer school days and lower employment rates, with higher public debt and more firms under stress, the effects could be long‐lasting. The crisis also triggered large‐scale economic restructuring, with productivity higher in the expanding than in the contracting sectors. Accelerated digitization could instill dynamism in finance, trade and labor markets, but it may amplify inequality within and across the countries in the region. Technology could transform the energy sector as well. Latin America and the Caribbean has the cleanest and potentially cheapest electricity generation matrix of all developing regions. But its electricity is the most expensive, due mainly to inefficiencies. Distributed generation within countries and electricity trade across countries, could make energy greener and cheaper, provided that the pricing is right.
Determinants of Labor Demand Growth and Private Sector Productivity
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02) Vijil, Mariana
Si bien ocho de cada diez asalariados trabajan en el sector privado, el sector público constituyó la principal fuente de creación neta de empleo en Ecuador durante la última década. Las presiones fiscales hoy en día invitan al sector privado a jugar un rol más destacado. En una economía dolarizada, la competitividad del sector privado depende de ganancias en productividad; y la evidencia para Ecuador demuestra que dichas ganancias pueden ir de la mano con un aumento del empleo agregado en el país. Sin embargo, el crecimiento de la productividad en Ecuador sigue estancado. Las empresas jóvenes, que constituyen el motor de la creación neta de empleo del sector privado, enfrentan obstáculos para crecer. Impedimentos proprios a la empresa o a la finca, así como medidas del clima de negocios que afectan la asignación eficiente del capital, constituyen los principales obstáculos. Reforzar la resiliencia de las empres jóvenes, eliminar los obstáculos al acceso a crédito para capital de trabajo, atraer inversión extranjera directa y fomentar participación en cadenas internacionales de valor, así como mejorar la competitividad de la agricultura constituyen prioridades para reforzar la capacidad del sector privado a impulsar la demanda laboral a largo plazo.
The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021: The Potential to Scale
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-01-19) Andrews, Colin; de Montesquiou, Aude; Arevalo Sanchez, Ines; Dutta, Puja Vasudeva; Paul, Boban Varghese; Samaranayake, Sadna; Heisey, Janet; Clay, Timothy; Chaudhary, Sarang; Archibald, Edward; Bossuroy, Thomas; Premand, Patrick; Samaranayake, Sadna; Singh, Paramveer; Ranjan, Ajit; Guha, Kshovan; Patel, Gautam; Whisson, Isabel; Haque, Rozina; Kedroske, Julie; Sulaiman, Munshi; Matin, Imran; Das, Narayan; Hashemi, Syed; Asensio, Raul
The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 sheds light on one of the most intractable challenges faced by development policy makers and practitioners: transforming the economic lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Economic inclusion programs are a bundle of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities so they can raise their incomes and build their assets. Programs targeting the extreme poor and vulnerable groups are now under way in 75 countries. This report presents data and evidence from 219 of these programs, which are reaching over 90 million beneficiaries. Governments now lead the scale-up of economic inclusion interventions, often building on pre-existing national programs such as safety nets, livelihoods and jobs, and financial inclusion, and 93 percent of the total beneficiaries are covered by government programs. The report offers four important contributions: • A detailed analysis of the nature of these programs, the people living in extreme poverty and vulnerability who they support, and the organizational challenges and opportunities inherent in designing and leading them. • An evidence review of 80 quantitative and qualitative evaluations of economic inclusion programs in 37 countries. • The first multicountry costing study including both government-led and other economic inclusion programs, indicating that programs show potential for cost efficiencies when integrated into national systems. • Four detailed case studies featuring programs underway in Bangladesh, India, Peru, and the Sahel, which highlight the programmatic and institutional adaptations required to scale in quite diverse contexts. Data from the report are available on the PEI Data Portal (http://www.peiglobal.org) where users can explore and submit data to build on this baseline.
The Cost of Staying Healthy
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-10-09) World Bank
Latin America and the Caribbean was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, which arrived on the back of years of disappointing economic growth and limited social progress, and after a wave of social unrest. This report reviews the impacts of the crisis as well as the policy responses by countries, which often involved sizeable social transfers. It also presents growth forecasts, and quarterly growth estimates based on satellite imagery. With countries experiencing a diverse mix of health costs and economic costs, the report analyzes how the effectiveness of containment policies, and their impact on economic activity, differ between richer and poorer countries. It also assesses the cost of staying healthy in normal times, showing how it is affected by the structure of the domestic pharmaceutical sector and by the effectiveness of public procurement of medicines. As the region may have to live with the virus for a while, four policy directions are proposed for discussion.
When We're Sixty-Four: Opportunities and Challenges for Public Policies in a Population-Aging Context in Latin America
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-10-02) Rofman, Rafael; Apella, Ignacio
Latin American countries are in the midst of a demographic transition and, as a consequence, a population-aging process. Over the next few decades, the number of children will decline relative to the number of older adults. Population aging is the result of a slow but sustained reduction in mortality rates, given increases in life expectancy and fertility. These trends reflect welcome long-term improvements in welfare and in economic and social development. But this process also entails policy challenges: many public institutions—including education, health, and pension systems and labor market regulations—are designed for a different demographic context and will need to be adapted. When We’re Sixty-Four discusses public policies aimed at overcoming the two main challenges facing Latin American countries concerning the changing demographics. On one hand, older populations demand more fiscal resources for social services, such as health, long-term care, and pensions. On the other, population aging produces shifts in the proportion of the population that is working age, which may affect long-term economic growth. Aging societies risk losing dynamism, being exposed to higher dependency rates, and experiencing lower savings rates. Nonetheless, in the interim, Latin American countries have a demographic opportunity: a temporary decline in dependency rates creates a period in which the share of the working-age population, with its associated saving capacity, is at its highest levels. This constitutes a great opportunity in the short term because the higher savings may result in increases in capital endowment per worker and productivity. For that to happen, it is necessary to generate institutional, financial, and fiscal conditions that promote larger savings and investment, accelerating per capita economic growth in a sustainable way.