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Bodewig, Christian

Europe and Central Asia
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Social Development, Education, Social Protection and Labor
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Europe and Central Asia
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Christian Bodewig is the Program Manager for Southern Europe at the World Bank, based in Brussels. He oversees the Bank’s operational, advisory and analytical programs in the region, with a special focus on Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Portugal. Prior to his current assignment, he served as program leader for inclusive growth in the European Union where he coordinated the World Bank’s lending and advisory projects in education, health, poverty and social protection and labor in EU Member States. Between 2009 and 2013 Mr. Bodewig worked in the East Asia and Pacific department where he oversaw the Bank’s human development program in Vietnam and led analytical and operational activities in education and social protection. Between 2003 and 2009 he worked on operational and analytical projects in education and social protection in South-Eastern Europe, based in Washington DC, Sarajevo and Sofia. Mr Bodewig is the co-author of the 2018 World Bank study "Growing United: Upgrading Europe's Convergence Machine" as well as the 2014 Vietnam Development Report and has published on education, skills, social protection and labor market issues in Europe and Asia. Prior to joining the World Bank, Mr. Bodewig was one of the founders of the German youth initiative “Schüler Helfen Leben” focused on promoting education opportunities of youth in South-Eastern Europe. Mr. Bodewig holds degrees in economics and political economy from University College London and the London School of Economics. He is fluent in English, German, and French.

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    Growing United: Upgrading Europe's Convergence Machine
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03-01) Ridao-Cano, Cristobal; Bodewig, Christian
    Since its foundation over sixty years ago, the European Union (EU) has become the modern world's greatest "convergence machine", propelling poorer, and newer, member states to become high-income economies, and delivering to its citizens some of the highest living standards and lowest levels of income inequality in the world. But today, Europeans are increasingly recognizing that convergence is not automatic. Inequality among people has been mounting in many parts of the EU since the 1990s, as low-income Europeans are falling behind in the labor market. And the productivity gap between Southern and Northern member states has been widening since the early 2000s. The EU is growing, but Europeans are not "growing united". Why? Growing United argues that technological change, by revolutionizing product and labor markets, is slowing down the old convergence machine: technology offers ever richer opportunities for well-skilled workers and frontier firms, while low-skilled workers and less productive firms risk falling behind. As a result, countries that provide less opportunities for people to build relevant skills and a less supportive environment for firms to thrive are losing ground. This calls for an upgrade to Europe's convergence machine, to seize the benefits of technological change for all Europeans. Growing United argues that the convergence machine, version 2.0, should focus on the convergence of opportunities for people and firms across the Union. It should support the capabilities of people (skills) and firms (innovation), and provide a level-playing field for people and firms through "flexicure" labor markets and an enabling business environment.
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    Skilling Up Vietnam : Preparing the Workforce for a Modern Market Economy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-06-17) Badiani-Magnusson, Reena; Bodewig, Christian; Macdonald, Kevin; Newhouse, David; Rutkowski, Jan
    Education has played an important role in making Vietnam a development success story over the last 20 years. In the 1990s and early 2000s Vietnam experienced rapid economic growth. The accelerated growth was driven predominantly by productivity increases that came in the wake of a rapid shift of employment from low-productivity agriculture to higher-productivity nonfarm jobs. Vietnam's economy began to industrialize and modernize. Poverty fell dramatically. And education played an enabling role. Vietnam's committed effort to promote access to primary education for all and to ensure its quality through centrally set minimum quality standards has contributed to the country's reputation for having a young, well-educated workforce. Results from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and new evidence from an adult skills survey presented in this book show that literacy and numeracy among Vietnam's youth and young urban adult workforce are strong and exceed those of even some wealthier countries. Despite its clear progress, Vietnam is facing new challenges. The pace of economic growth and the reallocation of jobs away from agriculture have slowed in recent years. Rather than productivity improvements, capital investments have become the main source of economic growth, but this model is not sustainable for ensuring continued rapid economic growth. The size of its workforce is still expanding, but its youth population is shrinking, which means that Vietnam cannot continue to rely on the size of its workforce for continued success. Instead, it needs to focus on making its workforce more productive and on alleviating skills barriers to labor mobility.
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    Skills, Not Just Diplomas : Managing Education for Results in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
    (World Bank, 2012) Murthi, Mamta; Sondergaard, Lars; Abu-Ghaida, Dina; Bodewig, Christian; Rutkowski, Jan
    The countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are currently emerging from the deepest recession suffered by any developing region. Post-crisis conditions are very different from those of preceding years. Financial resources are more limited and more expensive, and export growth is restrained by potentially slower growth in destination countries. Restoring and sustaining growth in this context require reforms that boost competitiveness and increase labor productivity. Such reforms are all the more important given the shrinking of the working-age population in many countries of the region. This book uses a range of different data sources to argue that the skills problem in the ECA region relates more to the quality and relevance of the education provided in ECA countries than to problems of access. A central argument of the book is that ministries of education are constrained in a number of ways from effectively managing their education and training sectors. The three most important and interrelated impediments to improving quality and relevance are the lack of systematic data on key skills-related performance issues (i.e., how much students are learning and whether they are finding jobs after they graduate), the legacy of central planning, and inefficient use of resources. Lack of data on student learning and employment outcomes makes it difficult for education ministries to address the legacy of central planning, which emphasizes centralized management based on inputs. Ministries of education in the region continue to micromanage the sector using detailed norms and regulations. This input-oriented style of management leads to the inefficient use of resources and results in a rigid education sector not the type of flexible sector needed by ECA to create modern, skilled workforces. This book highlights how these constraints manifest themselves and then presents ways of overcoming them, relying on the experience of ECA countries that have successfully addressed them, together with international experience. Recommendations are presented in separate chapters for pre-university, tertiary, and adult education.
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    Advancing Adult Learning in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-04) Hirshleifer, Sarojini; Bodewig, Christian
    This report presents available evidence on adult education and training in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), differentiating two separate types: continuing vocational education and training (CVET) for the employed, sought either by employers or individuals, and retraining and second chance education for the non?employed. This paper presents available evidence on the extent and patterns of lifelong learning in ECA. It argues that advancing adult education and training in ECA is important not only to meet the new skills demands but also to respond to a rapidly worsening demographic outlook across most of the region. While it is not equally important for all ECA countries, adult education and training should be high on the agenda of those ECA economies that are closest to the technological frontier and facing a demographic decline, such as the new European Union (EU) member States and Russia. The paper lays out a framework for government action to advance adult learning in ECA through a mix consisting of policy coordination between government and the enterprise sector, a sound regulatory regime and appropriate financial incentives.
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    Enhancing the Employment Chances of Roma
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-03) Kureková, Lucia; Bodewig, Christian
    Roma communities in central and southeastern Europe have a history of being excluded from the labor market and still face severe barriers to employment. Besides being marginalized socially, Roma were typically the first to lose their jobs at the outset of the post-communist transition. Many in their next generation grew up in unemployed households, with low educational attainments and limited job skills. The labor market exclusion of Roma persisted even through the years of buoyant economic growth and increasing employment levels prior to the economic slowdown triggered by the global financial crisis in 2008. Many governments in central and southeastern Europe are trying to address the unemployment problem of Roma and other disadvantaged groups by introducing measures to restrict or cut welfare benefit entitlements, so as to strengthen incentives to work. However, research by the World Bank and others shows that simply cutting benefits is unlikely to result in higher employment the labor market exclusion and social marginalization of Roma is a multifaceted issue, and their communities face multidimensional barriers to employment. A more effective way to promote employment among Roma (and other disadvantaged groups) is the employment activation approach increasingly being introduced across many countries in the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This approach balances the mutual obligations of jobseekers and state employment offices in order to secure the successful integration of the most disadvantaged workers.