Person:
Raju, Dhushyanth
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Education,
Health,
Nutrition,
Labor,
Poverty,
Risk
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
September 15, 2023
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 15
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Publication
Social Assistance Programs and Household Welfare in Eswatini
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)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. -
Publication
Covariate Shocks and Child Undernutrition: A Review of Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)Unexpected adverse events that affect areas or populations widely (covariate shocks) can have major consequences for the welfare of a society. Although the negative effects on households, especially among the poor, are well established in the economics literature, fewer studies have focused on how natural, economic, and social covariate shocks affect individual welfare and particularly child nutrition status. This paper reviews the evidence on the effect of covariate shocks on child nutrition status in low- and middle-income countries, the pathways through which the effect operates, and the relationship between the timing of a child's exposure to a covariate shock and the effect on child nutrition status. The paper also examines whether public interventions can help to mitigate any negative effect and whether the effect of covariate shocks can persist in the long term. Based on findings from the synthesis of evidence, the paper presents considerations and options for public policy and future research. -
Publication
Africa's Pulse, No. 25, April 2022
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-13)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. -
Publication
The Financial Risk Reduction Provided by Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06)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. -
Publication
Structural Transformation and Labor Market Performance in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11-24)Structural transformation can spur economic growth and development if it increases overall productivity growth. A labor market environment that enables workers and enterprises to transition smoothly across sectors and into more productive economic pursuits can enhance the effect of structural transformation on economic growth. This study examines Ghana’s recent record of structural transformation and labor market performance. Based on the findings, the study proposes ways to further transform the country’s economy, in a way that stimulates stronger, sustained growth and produces gainful, productive, and inclusive private employment. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and associated global economic crisis have posed a substantial setback to Ghana’s economic progress and plans, but these challenges also underscore the need for structural transformation that can both strengthen economic performance and improve labor conditions and outcomes. -
Publication
Pathways to Better Nutrition in South Asia: Evidence on the Effects of Food and Agricultural Interventions
(Elsevier, 2021-03)In South Asia, nearly half a billion people are malnourished. This paper examines the links of food and agriculture with nutrition in South Asia, with the goal of informing policy to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the region. We investigate pathways including public food transfer programs, agricultural diversification, and different methods of food fortification. We find that public food transfer programs, used to make food available and affordable to poor households, are often unable to significantly protect or promote nutrition. But several supply-side food and agricultural interventions show promise in improving nutrition, although their effects have yet to be well identified. These include the cultivation of home gardens, animal agriculture, and use of biofortification and post-harvest fortification. All these efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition will be futile, however, without parallel efforts to mitigate rising challenges in the region, including those posed by climate change, urbanization, food loss and food waste, and food safety hazards. -
Publication
Delivering Education to the Underserved through a Public-Private Partnership Program in Pakistan
(MIT Press, 2020-12-20)We evaluate a program that recruited local entrepreneurs to open and operate new schools in 200 underserved villages in Sindh, Pakistan. School operators received a per-student subsidy to provide tuition-free primary education, and in half the villages received a higher subsidy for females. The program increased enrollment by 32 percentage points, and test scores by 0.63 standard deviations, with no difference across the two subsidy schemes. Estimating a structural model of the demand and supply for school inputs, we find that program schools selected inputs similar to those of a social planner who internalizes all the education benefits to society. -
Publication
Welfare, Shocks, and Government Spending on Social Protection Programs in Lesotho
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)This paper assesses the performance of government spending on social protection programs in reducing poverty and inequality in Lesotho, applying benefit incidence and microsimulation methods to 2017-2018 household survey data. The paper investigates the distributional effects of actual spending on social protection programs 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 programs. In addition, the paper explores the responsiveness of social protection programs to adverse shocks commonly reported by households in Lesotho, where recent natural shocks have had substantial economic effects. -
Publication
Benefits and Costs of Public Schooling in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04)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. -
Publication
Sectoral Productivity Shock, Regional Differences in Intersectoral Linkages, and Structural Transformation in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-17)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.