Person:
Filmer, Deon
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Education,
Evidence-based public policy,
Inequality and shared prosperity,
Jobs and poverty,
Social protection and labor,
Social Protection and Growth
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Development Research Group
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
August 31, 2023
Biography
Deon Filmer is a Lead Economist in the Research Group at the World Bank and Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018 Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. He has also previously served as Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the World Bank. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes—with research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has published widely in refereed journals, including studies of the impact of demand-side programs on schooling and learning; the roles of poverty, gender, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and the determinants of effective service delivery. He has recently co-authored the following books: Making Schools Work: New Evidence from Accountability Reforms, Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and From Mines and Wells to Well-Built Minds: Turning Sub-Saharan Africa's Natural Resource Wealth into Human Capital. He was a core team member of the World Bank's World Development Reports in 1995 Workers in an Integrating World and 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People, and a contributor to 2007’s report Development and the Next Generation. He holds a PhD and MA from Brown University and a BA from Tufts University.
Publication Search Results
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Publication
Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Agence Française de Développement, 2014-01-27)Sub-Saharan Africa has just experienced one of the best decades of growth since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 4.5 percent a year on average, compared to around 2 percent in the prior 20 years (World Bank various years). In 2012, the region's GDP growth was estimated at 4.7 percent- 5.8 percent if South Africa is excluded (World Bank 2013). About one-quarter of countries in the region grew at 7 percent or better, and several African countries are among the fastest growing in the world. Medium-term growth prospects remain strong and should be supported by a rebounding global economy. The challenge of youth employment in Africa may appear daunting, yet Africa's vibrant youth represent an enormous opportunity, particularly now, when populations in much of the world are aging rapidly. Youth not only need jobs, but also create them. Africa's growing labor force can be an asset in the global marketplace. Realizing this brighter vision for Africa's future, however, will require a clearer understanding of how to benefit from this asset. Meeting the youth employment challenge in all its dimensions, demographic, economic, and social, and understanding the forces that created the challenge, can open potential pathways toward a better life for young people and better prospects for the countries where they live. The report examines obstacles faced by households and firms in meeting the youth employment challenge. It focuses primarily on productivity, in agriculture, in nonfarm household enterprises (HEs), and in the modern wage sector, because productivity is the key to higher earnings as well as to more stable, less vulnerable, livelihoods. To respond to the policy makers' dilemma, the report identifies specific areas where government intervention can reduce those obstacles to productivity for households and firms, leading to brighter employment prospects for youth, their parents, and their own children.