03. Journals

2,932 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2210

These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 69

Measuring Human Capital in Middle Income Countries

(Elsevier, 2022-12) Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli ; Torre, Iván

This paper develops an indicator that measures the level of human capital to address the specific education and health challenges faced by middle income countries. We apply this indicator to countries in Europe and Central Asia, where productive employment requires skills that are more prevalent among higher education graduates, and where good health is associated to low levels of adult health risk factors. The Europe and Central Asia Human Capital Index (ECA-HCI) extends the World Bank's Human Capital Index by adding a measure of quality-adjusted years of higher education to the original education component, and it includes the prevalence of three adult health risk factors—obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking—as an additional proxy for latent health status. The results show that children born today in the average country in Europe and Central Asia will be almost half as productive as they would have had they reached the benchmark of complete education and full health. Countries with good basic education outcomes do not necessarily have good higher education outcomes, and high prevalence of adult health risk factors can offset good education indicators. This extension of the Human Capital Index could also be useful for assessing the state of human capital in middle-income countries in general.
Education Systems and Foreign Direct Investment: Does External Efficiency Matter?

(Taylor and Francis, 2020-09-29) Miningoua, Elise Wendlassida ; Tapsoba, Sampawende Jules

This paper examines the effect of the efficiency of the education system on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). First, it applies a frontier-based measure as a proxy of the ability of countries to optimally convert the average years of schooling into income for individuals. Second, it shows the relationship between the external efficiency of the education system and FDI inflows. The results show that the efficiency level varies across regions and countries and appears to be driven by higher education and secondary vocational education. Similarly to other studies in the literature, there is no significant relationship between the average years of schooling and FDI inflows. However, the external efficiency of the education system is important for FDI inflows. Improving the external efficiency of the education system can play a role in attracting FDI especially in non-resource rich countries, non-landlocked countries and countries in the low and medium human development groups.
Learning-adjusted years of schooling: Defining a new macro measure of education

(Elsevier, 2020-08-01) Filmer, Deon ; Rogers, Halsey ; Angrist, Noam ; Sabarwal, Shwetlena

The standard summary metric of education-based human capital used in macro analyses is a quantity-based one: The average number of years of schooling in a population. But as recent research shows, students in different countries who have completed the same number of years of school often have vastly different learning outcomes. We therefore propose a new summary measure, the Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS). This measure combines quantity and quality of schooling into a single easy-to-understand metric of progress, revealing considerably larger cross-country education gaps than the standard metric. We show that the comparisons produced by this measure are robust to different ways of adjusting for learning and that LAYS is consistent with other evidence, including other approaches to quality adjustment. Like other learning measures, LAYS reflects learning, and barriers to learning, both inside and outside of school; also, cross-country comparability of LAYS rests on assumptions related to learning trajectories and the validity, reliability, and comparability of test data. Acknowledging these limitations, we argue that LAYS nonetheless improves on the standard metric in key ways.
Human Capital and Macroeconomic Development: A Review of the Evidence

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-07) Rossi, Federico

The role of human capital in facilitating macroeconomic development is at the center of both academic and policy debates. Through the lens of a simple aggregate production function, human capital might increase output per capita by directly entering in the production process, incentivizing the accumulation of complementary inputs, and facilitating the adoption of new technologies. This paper discusses the advantages and limitations of three approaches that have been used to evaluate the empirical importance of these channels: cross-country regressions, development accounting, and quantitative models. The key findings in the literature are reviewed and some of them are replicated using updated data. The bulk of the evidence suggests that human capital is an important determinant of cross-country income gaps, especially when its measurement is broadened to go beyond simple proxies of educational attainment. The paper concludes by highlighting policy implications and promising avenues for future work.
The Spillovers of Employment Guarantee Programs on Child Labor and Education

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02) Li, Tianshu ; Sekhri, Sheetal

Many developing countries use employment guarantee programs to combat poverty. This study examines the consequences of such employment guarantee programs for the human capital accumulation of children. It exploits the phased roll-out of India’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) to study the effects on enrollment in schools and child labor. Introduction of MGNREGA results in lower relative school enrollment in treated districts. It also finds that the drop in enrollment is driven by primary school children. Children in higher grades are just as likely to attend school under MGNREGA, but their school performance deteriorates. Using nationally representative employment data, the study finds evidence indicating an increase in child labor highlighting the unintentional perverse effects of the employment guarantee schemes for human capital.
Measuring the Contribution of Faith-Based Schools to Human Capital Wealth: Estimates for the Catholic Church

(Taylor and Francis, 2019-11-25) Wodon, Quentin

This paper provides estimates of the contribution of faith-based schools to human capital wealth using recent World Bank data. Wealth is the assets base that enables nations to generate future income. Estimates suggest that human capital wealth accounts for two thirds of global wealth, a much larger proportion than natural capital and produced capital. This paper’s analysis relies on an assessment of the share of human capital wealth attributed to educational attainment, and the share of contribution of Catholic schools to educational attainment. The analysis suggests that Catholic schools contribute at least US$ 12 trillion to the changing wealth of nations.
The Contribution of Increased Equity to the Estimated Social Benefits from a Transfer Program: An Illustration from PROGRESA/Oportunidades

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10) Alderman, Harold ; Behrman, Jere R. ; Tasneem, Afia

Most impact evaluations of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) and Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCTs) focus on the returns to increased human capital investments that will be reaped largely or exclusively in the future (e.g., when current children have increased productivities as adults). But the objectives of these programs are not only to increase human capital investments with implications for future levels and distributions of income but also to alleviate current poverty and reduce current inequality. The current distributional gains from such programs depend on the degree of inequality aversion in the social welfare function. Simulations show that, for a range of inequality aversion parameters, the welfare gains from current redistribution for the Mexican PROGRESA CCT program can be as large, or possibly much larger, than the estimated present discounted value of future earnings from human capital investments in lower and upper secondary schooling. These, moreover, are underestimates of the gains from redistribution because, in addition to current gains, such gains will be augmented in the future through the distribution of the returns on the human capital investments induced by cash transfer programs. Therefore, to fully evaluate such programs, it is critical to incorporate the distributional gains, not only the impacts on human capital investments.
Beyond Poverty Escapes—Social Mobility in Developing Countries: A Review Article

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-08) Iversen, Vegard ; Krishna, Anirudh ; Sen, Kunal

While social mobility in advanced economies has received extensive scholarly attention, crucial knowledge gaps remain about the patterns and determinants of income, educational, and occupational mobility in developing countries. Focusing on intergenerational mobility, we find that estimates often differ greatly for the same country, depending on the concept and measure of mobility used, on variable constructions and on the data set utilized. There is also wide variation in mobility across regions and social groups. We discuss data and income and other variable measurement challenges when agriculture and the informal sector absorb most of the workforce, and illustrate why occupational classifications and widely used mobility measures may perform less well in such settings. Factors beyond those featuring in the literature on advanced economies are plausible determinants of social mobility, particularly of what we call moderate and large ascents (and descents), in developing country contexts. We highlight the lack of in-depth understanding of the multiple and often localized hurdles to such more pronounced progress. Similar knowledge gaps exist for large descents, which give rise to particularly profound concerns in low-income settings. We report and touch on the implications of suggestive findings of a disconnect between educational and occupational mobility. Innovative research requires critical engagement with theory and with methodology, identification, and data challenges that may overlap or deviate notably from those encountered in advanced economies.
The World Bank Human Capital Index: A Guide

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02) Kraay, Aart

This paper provides a guide to the new World Bank Human Capital Index (HCI), situating its methodology in the context of the development accounting literature. The HCI combines indicators of health and education into a measure of the human capital that a child born today can expect to achieve by her 18th birthday, given the risks of poor education and health that prevail in the country where she lives. The HCI is measured in units of productivity relative to a benchmark of complete education and full health, and ranges from 0 to 1. A value of x on the HCI indicates that a child born today can expect to be only x×100 percent as productive as a future worker as she would be if she enjoyed complete education and full health.
Inheritance Law Reform, Empowerment, and Human Capital Accumulation: Second-Generation Effects from India

(Taylor and Francis, 2019) Deininger, Klaus ; Jin, Songqing ; Nagarajan, Hari K. ; Xia, Fang

Although many studies point towards significant positive impacts of Hindu Succession Act (HSA) reforms on females’ empowerment and access to human and physical capital, the fact that this reform also led to increased female mortality raises questions about long-term sustainability of reform effects. We use evidence from three states, one of which amended the HSA in 1994, to assess first- and second-generation effects of this reform using a triple-difference strategy. First-generation effects include greater likelihood of completing primary education, more assets brought into marriage, improved access to bank accounts, a lower share of female births, and higher female survival rates. Second-generation effects on education, time use, and health are robust and point estimates of education are larger than first-generation ones even after mothers’ endowments are controlled for, pointing to a sizeable and sustained empowerment effect.