03. Journals
3,134 items available
Permanent URI for this community
These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
Sub-collections of this Collection
269 results
Items in this collection
Publication Exploring Behavioral Competencies for Effective Medical Practice in Nigeria(Sage Publications, 2020-12-01) Obi, Uche; Chukwuma, Adanna; Agu, Ifunanya; Mbachu, ChinyereClinical performance varies due to academic, clinical, and behavioral factors. However, in many countries, selection of medical professionals tends to focus on exclusively academic ability and clinical acumen. Appropriate selection processes for medical professionals should consider behavioral factors, which may vary across contexts. This study was conducted to identify behavioral competencies considered relevant for effective medical practice in Nigeria, by medical students and doctors, and compared with other contexts. This study is one of the few to examine the perspectives of medical students and physicians on behavioral competencies for effective medical practice in an African country. We found differences in the perspectives of medical physicians and students, and in the prioritized competencies across countries. Our study illustrates the need for careful consideration in identifying subject matter experts and in generalizing competencies across contexts. Future research in this field in Nigeria should examine effective ways of testing for key behavioral competencies among medical students and for residency programs. Also, investigating the perspectives of medical faculty and administrators on important competencies, and exploring the generalizability of these competencies across cultures in Nigeria should be considered.Publication Rural Roads, Poverty, and Resilience: Evidence from Ethiopia(Taylor and Francis, 2020-10) Nakamura, Shohei; Bundervoet, Tom; Nuru, MohammedThis study analyses the linkage between the recent rural road development and household welfare, resilience, and economic conditions in Ethiopia. The empirical approach relies on a difference-in-differences matching method, taking advantage of a nationally representative household survey and an original road database, both of which are panel data spanning the period 2012–2016. The results of the econometric analysis suggest that Ethiopia’s rural road development was associated with a significant increase in household welfare or significant smaller losses in household consumption during the severe droughts. In addition, rural roads in very remote areas were associated with farmers’ sales of a larger share of their harvests and higher chance of fertiliser use. Rural road development was also associated with a higher likelihood of earning income from wage employment, particularly for women and youth. Taken together, the results suggest that, by connecting remote communities to markets and the main road network, rural roads have substantially supported the welfare and resilience of rural households in shock-prone Ethiopia.Publication Death Registration in Nigeria: A Systematic Literature Review of its Performance and Challenges(Taylor and Francis, 2020-09-07) Makinde, Olusesan Ayodeji; Odimegwu, Clifford Obby; Udoh, Mojisola O.; Adedini, Sunday A.; Akinyemi, Joshua O.; Atobatele, Akinyemi; Fadeyibi, Opeyemi; Abdulaziz-Sule, Fatima; Babalola, Stella; Orobaton, NosakhareDeath registration provides an opportunity for the legal documentation of death of persons. Documentation of deaths has several implications including its use in the recovery of inheritance and insurance benefits. It is also an important input for construction of life tables which are crucial for national planning. However, the registration of deaths is poor in several countries including Nigeria. This paper describes the performance of death registration in Nigeria and factors that may affect its performance. We conducted a systematic literature review of death registration completeness in Nigeria to identify, characterize issues as well as challenges associated with realizing completeness in death registration. Only 13.5% of deaths in Nigeria were registered in 2007 which regressed to 10% in 2017. There was no data reported for Nigeria in the World Health Organization database between 2008 and 2017. The country scored less than 0.1 (out of a maximum of 1) on the Vital Statistics Performance Index. There are multiple institutions with parallel constitutional and legal responsibilities for death registration in Nigeria including the National Population Commission, National Identity Management Commission and Local Government Authorities, which may be contributing to its overall poor performance.Publication Opportunities for Improved HIV Prevention and Treatment through Budget Optimization in Eswatini(PLoS, 2020-07-23) Minnery, Mark; Mathabela, Nokwazi; Shubber, Zara; Mabuza, Khanya; Gorgens, Marelize; Cheikh, Nejma; Wilson, David P.; Kelly, Sherrie L.Eswatini achieved a 44% decrease in new HIV infections from 2014 to 2019 through substantial scale-up of testing and treatment. However, it still has one of the highest rates of HIV incidence in the world, with 14 infections per 1,000 adults 15–49 years estimated for 2017. The Government of Eswatini has called for an 85% reduction in new infections by 2023 over 2017 levels. To make further progress towards this target and to achieve maximum health gains, this study aims to model optimized investments of available HIV resources.Publication External Validity and Policy Adaptation: From Impact Evaluation to Policy Design(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-07) Williams, Martin J.With the growing number of impact evaluations worldwide, the question of how to apply this evidence in policy making processes has arguably become the main challenge for evidence-based policy making. How can policy makers predict whether a policy will have the same impact in their context as it did elsewhere, and how should this influence the policy’s design and implementation? This paper suggests that failures of external validity (both in transporting and scaling up policy) can be understood as arising from an interaction between a policy’s theory of change and a dimension of the context in which it is being implemented. The paper surveys existing approaches to analyzing external validity, and suggests that there has been more focus on the generalizability of impact evaluation results than on the applicability of evidence to specific contexts. To help fill this gap, the study develops a method of “mechanism mapping” that maps a policy’s theory of change against salient contextual assumptions to identify external validity problems and suggest appropriate policy adaptations. In deciding whether and how to adapt a policy, there is a fundamental informational trade-off between the strength of evidence on the policy from other contexts and the policy maker’s information about the local context.Publication Are New Secondary Schools Built Where They Are Needed Most in Uganda? Comparing Catholic with Public and Other Private Schools(Taylor and Francis, 2020-06-16) Wodon, QuentinLow income countries in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with a major challenge in terms of expanding access to secondary education. This is also the case in Uganda. This article considers two questions. First, where should new secondary schools be built if the aim is to reduce geographic disparities in access? Second, have new schools, and in particular faith-based schools, been built in the areas that need schools the most? The analysis considers Catholic as well as public and other private schools. Results suggest that new schools are often not located in the areas that need them the most.Publication Quality of Clinical Assessment and Child Mortality: A Three-Country Cross-Sectional Study(Oxford University Press, 2020-06) Perales, Nicole A.; Wei, Dorothy; Khadka, Aayush; Leslie, Hannah H.; Hamadou, Saidou; Chamberlin Yama, Gervais; Robyn, Paul Jacob; Shapira, Gil; Kruk, Margaret E.; Fink, GuntherThis analysis describes specific gaps in the quality of health care in Central Africa and assesses the association between quality of clinical care and mortality at age 2–59 months. Regionally representative facility and household surveys for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Central African Republic were collected between 2012 and 2016. These data are novel in linking facilities with households in their catchment area. Compliance with diagnostic and danger sign protocols during sick-child visits was observed by trained assessors. We computed facility- and district-level compliance indicators for patients aged 2–59 months and used multivariate multi-level logistic regression models to estimate the association between clinical assessment quality and mortality at age 2–59 months in the catchment areas of the observed facilities. A total of 13 618 live births were analysed and 1818 sick-child visits were directly observed and used to rate 643 facilities. Eight percent of observed visits complied with 80% of basic diagnostic protocols, and 13% of visits fully adhered to select general danger sign protocols. A 10% greater compliance with diagnostic protocols was associated with a 14.1% (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 95% CI: 0.025–0.244) reduction in the odds of mortality at age 2–59 months; a 10% greater compliance with select general danger sign protocols was associated with a 15.3% (aOR 95% CI: 0.058–0.237) reduction in the same odds. The results of this article suggest that compliance with recommended clinical protocols remains poor in many settings and improvements in mortality at age 2–59 months could be possible if compliance were improved.Publication Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Bakker, Jan David; Parsons, Christopher; Rauch, FerdinandAlthough Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, little is known about the process of urbanization across the continent. This paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous population shocks affect the spatial distribution of economic activity. Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location, and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given a migration cost in distance, a town nearer to the homelands will receive a larger inflow of people than a more distant town following the removal of mobility restrictions. Drawing upon this exogenous variation, this study examines the effect of migration on urbanization in South Africa. While it is found that on average there is no endogenous adjustment of population location to a positive population shock, there is heterogeneity in the results. Cities that start off larger do grow endogenously in the wake of a migration shock, while rural areas that start off small do not respond in the same way. This heterogeneity indicates that population shocks lead to an increase in urban relative to rural populations. Overall, the evidence suggests that exogenous migration shocks can foster urbanization in the medium run.Publication Games as Boundary Objects: Charting Trade-offs in Sustainable Livestock Transformation(Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-27) Morris, Joanne; Ensor, Jonathan E.; Pfeifer, Catherine; Marchant, Robert; Mulatu, Dawit W.; Soka, Geofrey; Ouedraogo-Kone, Salifou; Wakeyo, Mekonnen B.; Topi, CorradoAttempts to structurally transform segments of the agri-food system inevitably involve trade-offs between the priorities of actors with different incentives, perspectives and values. Trade-offs are context-specific, reflecting different socio-economic and political realities. We investigate the potential of structured boundary objects to facilitate exposing and reconciling these trade-offs within the context of multi-stakeholder social learning processes with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Building on boundary objects as items flexible enough to be understood by all without having one common definition, structured boundary objects visualize actors’ input in a comparable format to facilitate knowledge sharing. Stakeholders in each country used a simulation tool and board game to explore the implications of changing livestock stocking and management practices for the environment and for actors’ future socio-economic priorities. Using structured boundary objects elicited trade-offs between household food and animal feed, and between livestock for income, labor, and/ or cultural functions, reflecting the context-specific and subjective evaluations actors make when attempting to plan livelihood changes. Our findings suggest to policy and decision-makers that sustainable transition plans can be developed when stakeholders in local agri-food systems employ approaches that allow shared understandings of trade-offs inherent to sustainable agriculture to emerge.Publication The Political Economy of Multidimensional Child Poverty Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Mexico and Uganda(Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-11) Cuesta, Jose; Biggeri, Mario; Hernandez-Licona, Gonzalo; Aparicio, Ricardo; Guillen-Fernandez, YedithAs part of the 2030 Agenda, much effort has been exerted in comparing multidimensional child poverty measures both technically and conceptually. Yet, few countries have adopted and used any of these measures in policymaking. This paper explores the reasons for this absence from a political economy perspective. It develops an innovative political economy framework for poverty measurement and a hypothesis whereby a country will only produce and use reliable and sustainable multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) measures if and only if three conditions coalesce: consensus, capacity and polity. We explore this framework with two relevant case studies, Mexico and Uganda. Both countries satisfy the capacity condition required to measure MDCP but only Mexico satisfies the other two conditions. Our proposed political economy framework is normatively relevant because it identifies the conditions that need to change across multiple contexts before the effective adoption and use of an MDCP measure becomes more likely.