Person:
Santos, Indhira

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice
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Labor economics, Development economics
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Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice
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Last updated: August 28, 2024
Biography
Indhira Santos is the Global Lead for Labor & Skills in the Social Protection & Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. She was a primary author of the 2019 World Development Report “The Changing Nature of Work” and the 2016 World Development Report “Digital Dividends”. She has worked on the Africa, Europe and Central Asia and South Asia Regions at the World Bank since joining as a Young Professional in 2009. Prior to joining the World Bank, she was a Research Fellow at Bruegel, a European policy think tank in Brussels, between 2007 and 2009. She has also worked for the Economic Research Center of the PUCMM University and the Ministry of Finance (Dominican Republic). She was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University, where she obtained her PhD in Public Policy and a Masters in Public Administration in International Development.

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
  • Publication
    Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention, and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Paris: Agence française de développement, 2021-12-22) Watts, Michael; Cloutier, Mathieu; Harborne, Bernard; Isser, Deborah; Santos, Indhira
    Sub-Saharan Africa has achieved significant gains in reducing the levels of extreme poverty in recent decades, yet the region continues to experience challenges across the development indicators, including energy access, literacy, delivery of services and goods, and jobs skills, as well as low levels of foreign direct investment. Exacerbating the difficulties faced by many countries are the sequelae of conflict, such as internal displacement and refugee migration. Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention, and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa builds on recent World Bank attention to the real-life social and political economy factors that underlie the power dynamic and determine the selection and implementation of policies. Applying a social contract approach to development policy, the authors provide a framework and proposals on how to measure such a framework to strengthen policy and operational engagements in the region. The key message is that Africa’s progress toward shared prosperity requires looking beyond technical policies to understand how the power dynamics and citizen-state relations shape the menu of implementable reforms. A social contract lens can help diagnose constraints, explain outbreaks of unrest, and identify opportunities for improving outcomes. Social contract assessments can leverage the research on the nexus of politics, power relations, and development outcomes, while bringing into focus the instruments that underpin state-society relations and foster citizen voice. Social contracts also speak directly to many contemporary development trends, such as the policy-implementation gap, the diagnostic of binding constraints to development, fragility and conflict, taxation and service delivery, and social protection. The authors argue that policies that reflect the demands and expectations of the people lead to more stable and equitable outcomes than those that do not. Their focus is on how social contracts are forged in the region, how they change and why, and how a better understanding of social contracts can inform reform efforts. The analysis includes the additional impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on government-citizen relationships.
  • Publication
    Managing the Employment Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis: Policy Options for Relief and Restructuring
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Carranza, Eliana; Farole, Thomas; Gentilini, Ugo; Morgandi, Matteo; Packard, Truman; Santos, Indhira; Weber, Michael
    This note discusses policy options for managing the employment impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis aimed at relief and restructuring. The note pays attention to the labor market and institutional context of most low and middle-income countries where informality is large and where existing institutions often lack mechanisms to effectively reach businesses and workers in the informal economy. The note covers complementary policies aimed, in the relief phase, at: 1) Helping businesses survive and retain workers; 2) providing protection for those who do lose their jobs and see their livelihoods significantly affected; and 3) facilitating alternative employment and employability support for those who are out of work (collectively known as active labor market programs, ALMP). The note further differentiates between these relief responses and the restructuring response when countries start to reopen for businesses and policies need to aim to support firms' and workers' transition to a "new normal", hopefully a "better normal" that supports a resilient recovery.
  • Publication
    The Skills Balancing Act in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investing in Skills for Productivity, Inclusivity, and Adaptability
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Agence française de développement, 2019-06-10) Arias, Omar; Evans, David K.; Santos, Indhira
    Sub-Saharan Africa has the youngest population of any region of the world, and that growing working-age population represents a major opportunity to reduce poverty and increase shared prosperity. But the region’s workforce is the least skilled in the world, constraining economic prospects. Despite economic growth, declining poverty, and investments in skills-building, too many students in too many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are not acquiring the foundational skills they need to thrive and prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy. This report examines the balancing act that individuals and countries face in making productive investments in both a wide range of skills – cognitive, socio-emotional, and technical – and a wide range of groups – young children through working adults – so that Sub-Saharan Africa will thrive.
  • Publication
    More and Better Jobs in South Asia
    (World Bank, 2012) Nayar, Reema; Gottret, Pablo; Mitra, Pradeep; Betcherman, Gordon; Lee, Yue Man; Santos, Indhira; Dahal, Mahesh; Shrestha, Maheshwor
    This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is an overview. Chapter two reviews South Asia's recent track record with regard to the quantity and quality of job creation. It traces the relationship of such job creation mostly to overall economic growth and attempts to answer what needs to be done to meet South Asia's employment challenge. Chapter three discusses the key features of labor markets in South Asia, including where the better jobs are, who holds them, and the implications for the employment challenge ahead. Chapter four reviews the business environment constraints affecting, in particular, those firms that have expanded employment and discusses policy options for overcoming the most binding business constraints in South Asia. Chapter five analyzes the dimensions of the education and a skill challenge in the region and discusses policy priorities for improving the quality and skills of graduates of education and training systems. Chapter six reviews the role of labor market policies and institutions in encouraging job creation and protecting workers in the formal and informal economy and discusses possible directions for labor market policies, including options to increase the access of informal sector workers to programs that help them manage labor market shocks and improve their future earnings potential. Finally, chapter seven reviews the key constraints to job creation and the policy priorities for creating more and better jobs in conflict-affected areas.
  • Publication
    Can Grit Be Taught? Lessons from a Nationwide Field Experiment with Middle-School Students
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Santos, Indhira; Carneiro, Pedro; Eskreis-Winkler, Lauren; Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria; Berniell, Ines; Krekel, Christian; Arias, Omar; Duckworth, Angela
    This paper studies whether a particular socio-emotional skill —grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest toward long-term goals)—can be cultivated and how this affects student learning. The paper implements, as a randomized controlled trial, a nationwide low-cost intervention designed to foster grit and self-regulation among sixth and seventh grade students in primary schools in North Macedonia (about 33,000 students across 350 schools). Students exposed to the intervention report improvements in self-regulation, in particular the perseverance-of-effort facet of grit, relative to students in a control condition. The impacts on students are larger when both students and teachers are exposed to the curriculum than when only students are treated. Among disadvantaged students, the study also finds positive impacts on grade point averages, with gains of up to 28 percent of a standard deviation one year post-treatment. However, the findings also point toward a potential downside: although the intervention made students more perseverant and industrious, there is some evidence that it may have reduced consistency in their interests over time.
  • Publication
    Employment Recovery in Europe and Central Asia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06) Oral, Isil; Koettl, Johannes; Santos, Indhira
    Despite high unemployment in most Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) countries, people have not withdrawn from the labor market but continue to actively look for jobs. Unemployment increased significantly in ECA countries during the crisis, particularly among youth. However, young people are also the ones benefiting most from the recovery. Labor market recovery remained sluggish up to the third quarter of 2010. Many countries have seen only a slight recovery in unemployment rates, although output is recovering everywhere. Up to the third quarter of 2010, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) upturn in most ECA countries appeared to be driven by increases in productivity and hours worked; however, these are still below pre-crisis levels. This suggests that there is room in most countries for further increases in productivity and hours worked, which could delay the recovery in employment.
  • Publication
    Protecting All: Risk Sharing for a Diverse and Diversifying World of Work
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-09-09) Packard, Truman; Gentilini, Ugo; Grosh, Margaret; O’Keefe, Philip; Palacios, Robert; Robalino, David; Santos, Indhira
    This white paper focusses on the policy interventions made to help people manage risk, uncertainty and the losses from events whose impacts are channeled primarily through the labor market. The objectives of the white paper are: to scrutinize the relevance and effects of prevailing risk-sharing policies in low- and middle-income countries; take account of how global drivers of disruption shape and diversify how people work; in light of this diversity, propose alternative risk-sharing policies, or ways to augment and improve current policies to be more relevant and responsive to peoples’ needs; and map a reasonable transition path from the current to an alternative policy approach that substantially extends protection to a greater portion of working people and their families. This white paper is a contribution to the broader, global discussion of the changing nature of work and how policy can shape its implications for the wellbeing of people. We use the term risk-sharing policies broadly in reference to the set of institutions, regulations and interventions that societies put in place to help households manage shocks to their livelihoods. These policies include formal rules and structures that regulate market interactions (worker protections and other labor market institutions) that help people pool risks (social assistance and social insurance), to save and insure affordably and effectively (mandatory and incentivized individual savings and other financial instruments) and to recover from losses in the wake of livelihood shocks (“active” reemployment measures). Effective risk-sharing policies are foundational to building equity, resilience and opportunity, the strategic objectives of the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. Given failures of factor markets and the market for risk in particular the rationale for policy intervention to augment the options that people have to manage shocks to their livelihoods is well-understood and accepted. By helping to prevent vulnerable people from falling into poverty -and people in the poorest households from falling deeper into poverty- effective risk-sharing interventions dramatically reduce poverty. Households and communities with access to effective risk-sharing instruments can better maintain and continue to invest in these vital assets, first and foremost, their human capital, and in doing so can reduce the likelihood that poverty and vulnerability will be transmitted from one generation to the next. Risk-sharing policies foster enterprise and development by ensuring that people can take appropriate risks required to grasp opportunities and secure their stake in a growing economy.
  • Publication
    Investing in Skills to Accelerate Job Transitions
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-28) Honorati, Maddalena; Santos, Indhira; Santos, Indhira
    The paper reviews the dynamics of human capital – mostly skills – accumulation and utilization during successful and static episodes of structural transformation in a sample of more than 90 countries over the last thirty years to identify cases when improvements in human capital are not met by skills demand - signaling an unbalance between investment in skills and other factors of production. A framework is proposed to differentiate inefficient skills investments by cases of over- and under-investment relative to skills demand, cases of skills underutilization, even at the right level of investment, and cases of skills mismatches due human capital’s misallocation across geographical areas and field of study. Based on country case studies, the paper examines the different forms of inefficient human capital accumulation and utilization and the potential market and policy failures that lead to such inefficiencies across individuals, firms, and governments. The framework is used to differentiate policy priorities depending on the constraints to efficient human capital accumulation and utilization and the stage of the structural transformation.
  • Publication
    Employment Recovery Stalls in Europe and Central Asia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Mata, Elizabeth; Koettl, Johannes; Saiovici, Gady; Santos, Indhira
    Employment recovery stalls in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues to recover in most ECA countries, but the recovery remains fragile. Growth prospects remain poor in a number of countries where GDP continues to decline. This slowdown in the economic recovery is also evident at the sub-regional level. Unemployment has stabilized, with an average unemployment rate of 12 percent across the ECA region. Since the start of the crisis, men have been disproportionally hit by unemployment. The recent pace of job creation has not been sufficient to absorb the large pool of unemployed, resulting in growing long-term unemployment. Despite the rise in long-term unemployment, activity rates have increased or remained constant in most countries since 2008. ECA labor markets adjusted to the crisis not only through higher unemployment, but also through fewer work hours. Given the already low levels of employment in the region and a bleak demographic outlook, avoiding labor market detachment among the long-term unemployed, the inactive, and youth is the main challenge for policy makers in the near term.
  • Publication
    Productive Longevity: What Can Work in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-19) Johansson de Silva, Sara; Santos, Indhira
    The world’s population is aging at dramatic speed. By 2050, most of the world’s seniors (aged 65+) will be living in what are currently low- and middle-income countries. Aging will require low- and middle-income countries to develop comprehensive policy solutions to sustain welfare levels and ensure that welfare is equitably distributed across generations and socioeconomic groups. Given higher informality and lower human capital levels in low- and middle-income countries than more advanced economies, the balance and composition of the policy package in these contexts may differ, but there will be a common need for labor market policies to increase “productive longevity”—that is, to foster higher labor force participation and productivity among mature workers. This paper presents a framework identifying market, institutional, and behavioral failures that create constraints to productive longevity, and policies that may overcome these constraints. Drawing, to the extent possible, on the experience of low- and middle-income countries, the paper reviews evidence on supply-side and demand-side interventions to improve incentives, remove barriers to work, and invest in skills, as well as policies to improve matching of mature workers in labor markets. The paper ends with a discussion of meta-lessons for low- and middle-income countries.