Person:
Raju, Dhushyanth

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Education, Health, Nutrition, Labor, Poverty, Risk

ORCID

0000-0001-8726-3986

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Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, World Bank

Last updated: September 15, 2023

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 35

Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-15) Raju, Dhushyanth; Dadzie, Christabel E.
Ghana administers multiple social protection programs. One of these, pensions provided by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has a long history, but others—the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Labor-Intensive Public Works program, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program, and National Health Insurance Scheme—have been introduced and expanded only over the past two decades. Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana assesses the performance of the government of Ghana’s main social assistance and social insurance programs. The study discusses the programs’ main design and implementation parameters; summarizes existing evaluative and operational research; and examines the patterns and trends in program benefit spending, using government administrative data, and the programs’ coverage rates, incidence, and effectiveness for reducing poverty and inequality, using recent national household sample survey data. Furthermore, the study examines the relationship between household participation in social assistance programs and exposure to adverse covariate shocks—specifically, possible weather-related shocks—on the basis of high-resolution climate risk maps for the country.
Sectoral Productivity Shock, Regional Differences in Intersectoral Linkages, and Structural Transformation in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-17) Paul, Sumik; Raju, Dhushyanth
This paper studies the effect of a local sectoral productivity shock on subnational structural transformation. The analysis is based on regional input-output tables constructed for 2004 and 2013 and available censuses of firms in 2003 and 2013 for Ghana. Based on the data, the analysis confirms the occurrence of a mining productivity shock. Between 2004 and 2013, mining grew dramatically as a share of gross domestic product. The mining shock occurred primarily in the south of Ghana with much larger increases in mining’s share in regional output, the number of mining firms, and mining employment than in the north of the country. The findings show that the mining productivity shock led to growing regional (north-south) differences in intersectoral linkages, with greater intermediate use of mining output and a larger sectoral total factor productivity ratio between mining and manufacturing in the south than in the north. Informed by international evidence of strong intersectoral linkages between mining and heavy manufacturing industries, the paper examines the performance of heavy manufacturing in response to the mining productivity shock. The elasticity of heavy manufacturing to mining employment growth is 50 percent larger in the south than in the north, generated by an increase in both average firm employment and the entry of new firms. These north-south differences are interpreted as possibly due to weak interregional production linkages.
Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-01) Raju, Dhushyanth; Dadzie, Christabel
Ghana administers multiple social protection programs. One, pensions provided by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has a long history, but the rest of the programs have been introduced and expanded over the past two decades. This study assesses the performance of the government of Ghana’s main social assistance and social insurance programs. It discusses the main design and implementation parameters of the programs and summarizes existing evaluative and operational research. The study also examines patterns and trends in program benefit spending, based on government administrative data, and the coverage rates of the programs, their incidence, and their effectiveness in reducing poverty and inequality, based on recent national household sample survey data. Further, the study examines the relationship between household participation in social assistance programs and exposure to adverse covariate shocks, specifically, possible weather-related shocks, based on high-resolution climate risk maps for the country
Government Social Protection Programme Spending and Household Welfare in Lesotho
(John Wiley and Sons, 2023-03-16) Boko, Joachim; Raju, Dhushyanth; Younger, Stephen D
Lesotho has notably high levels of poverty and inequality despite a high level of government spending on social protection programmes. We assess the performance of this spending in reducing consumption poverty and inequality, applying benefit incidence and microsimulation methods to 2017/2018 household survey data. We investigate the distributional effects of actual spending as well as those of a hypothetical alternative in which the spending is targeted through a proxy means test (PMT) formula used by the government for some programmes. We find that government spending on social protection programmes in Lesotho substantially reduces poverty and inequality. For most programmes, the hypothetical alternative of targeting spending to poorer households through the government's PMT formula would have no better distributional effects than current programme spending. The exception is postsecondary education bursaries, which are costly and regressive. Retaining bursaries only for poorer students, and reallocating the outlay this saves to a transfer targeted to poorer households through the government's PMT formula, could reduce poverty and inequality significantly.
The Financial Risk Reduction Provided by Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06) Raju, Dhushyanth
This paper estimates the monetary value of financial risk reduction associated with membership in Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme, based on recent national household survey data. The paper compares the risk premiums for distributions of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures with and without insurance and find that the difference is small. This does not mean that the National Health Insurance Scheme has no value to members. Indeed, the findings show that the insured pay significantly less for healthcare than the uninsured on average. But that average reduction does not translate into a reduced spread of consumption net of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures. Thus, the benefit of the National Health Insurance Scheme is entirely a transfer benefit, not a reduction in financial risk.
Africa's Pulse, No. 25, April 2022
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-13) Calderon, Cesar; Zeufack, Albert G.; Kabundi, Alain; Kubota, Megumi; Korman, Vijdan; Raju, Dhushyanth; Abreha, Kaleb Girma; Kassa, Woubet; Owusu, Solomon
Sub-Saharan Africa's recovery from the pandemic is expected to decelerate in 2022 amid a slowdown in global economic activity, continued supply constraints, outbreaks of new coronavirus variants, climatic shocks, high inflation, and rising financial risks due to high and increasingly vulnerable debt levels. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated the already existing tensions and vulnerabilities affecting the continent. Given the sources of growth in the region and the nature of the economic linkages with Russia and Ukraine, the war in Ukraine might have a marginal impact on economic growth and on overall poverty—as this shock affects mostly the urban poor and vulnerable people living just above the poverty line. However, its largest impact is on the increasing likelihood of civil strife as a result of food- and energy-fueled inflation amid an environment of heightened political instability. The looming threats of stagflation require a two-pronged strategy that combines short-term measures to contain inflationary pressures and medium-to-long-term policies that accelerate the structural transformation and create more and better jobs. In response to supply shocks, monetary policy in the region may prove ineffective to bring down inflation and other short-run options may be restricted by the lack of fiscal space. Concessional financing might be key to helping countries alleviate the impact of food and fuel inflation. Over the medium term, avoiding stagflation may require a combination of actionable measures that improve the resilience of the economy by shoring up productivity and job creation. Lastly, ongoing actions to enhance social protection—including dynamic delivery systems for rapid scalability and shock-sensitive financing—could be strengthened further to improve economic resilience against shocks and foster investments in productive assets.
Benefits and Costs of Public Schooling in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Raju, Dhushyanth
This paper examines the monetary benefits and costs of the quantity of public schooling (that is, years of schooling completed) in Ghana. The paper also examines the monetary benefits and costs of some aspects of the quality of public schooling, measured by the gains in achievement produced by selected interventions in public schools. The analysis uses estimates of (i) labor-earnings returns to schooling and private spending on public schooling, based on the latest national household sample survey data; (ii) government spending on public schooling, based on administrative information; (iii) impacts on test scores, and costs, of education interventions in public schools, drawn from experimental studies; and (iv) conversions of impacts on test scores produced by education interventions to (future) labor earnings, all for Ghana. The results are a set of benefit-cost ratios in the style of the Copenhagen Consensus.
Shocks and Social Safety Net Program Participation in Ghana - Descriptive Evidence from Linking Climate Risk Maps to Programs Beneficiary Rolls
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-01-27) Nxumalo, Mpumelelo; Raju, Dhushyanth
This study discusses the association between household exposure to negative shocks and social safety net program participation in Ghana. To examine this issue, we link data from high-resolution geospatial maps of drought and flood risks to government administrative data on safety net program beneficiaries at the district level. We find that drought risk is positively associated with household participation in selected, main public social safety net programs. (The corresponding evidence for flood risk is weaker.) We interpret the finding to be a result of pre-shock program coverage of drought-prone areas, in part achieved indirectly through the intentional targeting of poor areas by the programs.
Barriers to Growth-Enhancing Structural Transformation: The Role of Subnational Differences in Intersectoral Productivity Gaps
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Paul, Saumik; Raju, Dhushyanth
The movement of workers from the farm sector to a more productive nonfarm sector has failed to generate significant gains in labor productivity in recent decades in many developing countries. This paper offers a new perspective on the barriers to growth-enhancing structural transformation, combining structural modeling with enterprise census data from Ghana. The paper argues that subnational differences in the intersectoral productivity gap between the nonfarm informal and formal sectors constrain the productivity gain from structural transformation. In Ghana, intersectoral productivity gaps among the richer regions are on average three times larger than among the poorer regions. The disparity in regional intersectoral productivity gaps is modeled as reflecting the disparity in the regional misallocation of labor between the informal and formal sectors. Misallocation is identified as the output wedge between the informal and formal sectors. Simulations suggest that a more productive nonfarm informal sector reduces the disparity in regional intersectoral productivity gaps and, in turn, increases national productivity and the contribution of structural transformation to national productivity. For example, a 90-percent reduction in the disparity in regional intersectoral productivity gaps raises Ghana’s national aggregate productivity by 11.9 percent and the contribution of structural transformation to productivity by 19.7 percent.
Social Assistance Programs and Household Welfare in Eswatini
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Raju, Dhushyanth
Eswatini has notably high levels of poverty and inequality. Recurrent, negative shocks are an important contributing factor. This study assesses the performance of the largest social assistance programs in Eswatini, based on 2016/17 national household survey data. It examines the coverage rates of these programs, and their incidence and effectiveness in reducing poverty and inequality. The study also examines the association between program participation and negative shocks reported by households, in particular, drought and food price shocks associated with the 2015-2016 El Niño event. Across programs, benefits are concentrated among poor households. However, the performance of programs in reducing poverty and inequality tends to be limited because of low intended or actual benefit levels and shortfalls in intended or actual coverage of the poor. Households that receive program benefits are more likely to report a drought shock. Except in the case of emergency food aid, which is provided ex post, we interpret this pattern to indicate that programs tend to provide ex-ante coverage to those vulnerable to this shock. At a minimum, enhancing the performance of programs in addressing poverty, inequality, and the adverse effects of shocks would require that actual benefit levels equal intended levels (for example, by procuring sufficient food commodities to meet the needs of the school feeding program) and that intended benefit levels are fully aligned with program aims (for example, by providing grant amounts to schools that are large enough to allow for tuition-free government secondary education for orphaned and vulnerable children). Absent greater budgetary allocations to programs, addressing these benefit-related disconnects may require improving the targeting of select program benefits to poorer households such as by using a proxy means test. We simulate the effects of programs on poverty and inequality reduction from such hypothetical reforms.