Genoni, Maria Eugenia

Person:
Genoni, Maria Eugenia

Global Practice on Poverty, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Poverty, Development economics, Applied microeconomics

Departments

Global Practice on Poverty, The World Bank

Last updated: May 16, 2023

Biography

Maria Eugenia Genoni is an Economist in the Poverty Global Practice at the World Bank, working in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region. Currently, she leads the poverty and equity program in Peru and co-leads the program in Bolivia. She also has contributed to the Bank’s poverty and equity agenda in Central America and to the Regional Gender Impact Evaluation Initiative. Her research has focused on development economics and applied microeconomics, particularly on survey design, poverty and inequality, migration, and risk management. She received his PhD in Economics from Duke University.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 12

The Role of Cash Transfers in Smoothing the Income Shock of COVID-19 in the Arab Republic of Egypt
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-16) Gansey, Romeo; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Helmy, Imane
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Arab Republic of Egypt’s economy and its people in many ways. By combining micro-simulations and imputation techniques, this paper models early impacts of the pandemic on household income and the role of cash transfers from the Government of Egypt in supporting households and workers. As expected, and consistent with other evidence, the estimates show that the pandemic shock decreased labor incomes and increased income poverty in Egypt. It was estimated that in fiscal year 2020, average household income per capita contracted by about 1.7 percent, and income poverty was about 2.2 percentage points higher, compared to a non-COVID-19 scenario for the same year, using the international poverty line of $3.65 a day (2017 purchasing power parity). Labor income losses were widespread across the country, disproportionately affecting informal workers. The results also suggest that expanded social protection cash transfers and targeted cash assistance to Egypt’s informal and tourism sectors played a substantial role in smoothing the initial labor income shock. In the absence of compensatory cash transfers, income poverty would have been 1.1 percentage points higher. The compensatory measures, in particular the cash transfer programs Takaful and Karama, preferentially protected rural households due to the programs’ targeting rules. Thus, households in urban areas were significantly more likely to become income poor, compared to those in rural settings.
Implications of Using Nonstandard Poverty Lines: An Illustration Using the Case of the Arab Republic of Egypt
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-05-15) Decerf, Benoit; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Helmy, Imane; Sanz, Federico
Many developing countries’ official poverty methodologies rely on nonstandard poverty lines, which complicate poverty comparisons across space or time. The paper considers the case of the Arab Republic of Egypt, whose official poverty lines have two important nonstandard features. First, the line is neither absolute nor relative, but rather hybrid or “weakly relative.” Second, the poverty line’s implicit equivalence scales are not fixed, but are rather endogenous. This paper provides a conceptual and quantitative understanding of these two nonstandard features. The results reveal that the equivalence scale implicit in the official methodology is quantitatively very similar to the (simpler) per capita equivalence scale. Switching to a per capita equivalence scale would help address an implicit gender bias that the paper identifies in Egypt’s official poverty lines. The analysis shows that the official distribution of poverty across regions is very similar to that associated with a purely absolute line. In addition, the change in official poverty rates over the period analyzed (2015 to 2017/18) lies halfway between the larger increase captured by a purely absolute line (10 percentage points) and that captured by a purely relative measure (1 percentage point). However, the results show that these more standard poverty lines do not systematically perform better than the official methodology with respect to the identification of disadvantaged households.
Losing Livelihoods: The Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-15) Khan, Afsana Iffat; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Palaniswamy, Nethra; Krishnan, Nandini; Raza, Wameq
This paper provides early insights into the labor market impacts of the ongoing Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) crisis in Bangladesh, with a special focus on three especially vulnerable areas: poor areas in Dhaka and Chittagong City Corporations and Cox’s Bazar district. The authors build on household surveys collected before the crisis and phone monitoring surveys collected after the start of the crisis to shed light on the implications of COVID-19 for employment and earnings. The findings presented indicate substantial labor market impacts both at the extensive and intensive margin, with important variation across areas and gender, largely due to the nature of occupations affected by the crisis. The findings also point to substantial uncertainty about job prospects.
Data Triangulation Strategies to Design a Representative Household Survey of Hosts and Rohingya Displaced in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-11) Endara, Joaquin; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Khan, Afsana Iffat; Kosmidou-Bradley, Walker Turnbull; Munoz, Juan Eduardo; Palaniswamy, Nethra; Vishwanath, Tara
Obtaining representative information on hosts and displaced populations in a single survey is not straightforward. This paper demonstrates the value of combining traditional and nontraditional sampling frames, geospatial information, and listing exercises to design a representative survey of hosts and Rohingya displaced populations in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The paper applies innovative segmentation techniques using geospatial data to delimit enumeration areas in the absence of updated cartography. The paper also highlights the importance of listing exercises to inform stratification decisions and update population counts.
Bangladesh Rural Income Diagnostic: Enabling Faster and More Equal Income Growth in Rural Bangladesh
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-30) Ahmed, Md Mansur; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Tillan, Pablo Antonio; Gautam, Madhur
This Rural Income Diagnostic (RID) aims to answer the question: “What are the main opportunities and constraints to faster, sustained income growth for poor and vulnerable households in rural Bangladesh” This analysis is motivated by recent evidence highlighting the centrality of rural areas for poverty reduction in Bangladesh and the need to update our understanding of rural income dynamics to better inform policy solutions. The objective of the analysis is to inform the World Bank Systematic Country Diagnostic and governmentplanning. The analysis focuses on areas where progress can be made in the next five years, consistent with the country’s long-term development path. The focus on short-term priorities to accelerate rural income growth needs to be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and does not distract from, long-run goals and investments that will have very high future returns, especially for the poor. These include investments in child nutrition, health, and education.
Bangladesh Education Sector Public Expenditure Review
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01) Bhatta, Saurav Dev; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Sharma, Uttam; Khaltarkhuu, Buyant Erdene; Maratou-Kolias, Laura; Asaduzzaman, T.M.
Adequate investment in human capital development is critical for enabling Bangladesh to reach its goal of becoming an upper middle-income country. Bangladesh, currently a lower-middle country with an annual per capita gross national income (GNI) of USD 1,470 (WDI 2019), aims to attain upper-middle income status by 2021 and eliminate poverty by 2030. Recognizing the importance of investing in education for building its human capital base, the government of Bangladesh (GoB) has been allocating a large portion of the national budget to the education sector each year during the past two decades. Effective utilization and equitable distribution of allocated public spending is important for ensuring adequate progress in education outcomes. This report analyzes major spending and outcomes trends in the overall education sector in recent years, with a focus on primary and secondary education. Responding to the recommendation of the 2015 Bangladesh Public Expenditure Review Update for more analytical work on public spending in different sectors, including education, the current study analyzes the trends in major education expenditures, access to education, quality of education, and disparities in education outcomes in the past two decades. It also looks at the composition of education expenditure, consistency between budget allocations and actual expenditures, equity in education spending, and potential links between spending and key educational outcomes. Because of data limitations, this report focuses mainly on primary and secondary education. It is expected that this analysis will add to the literature on investments in the Bangladesh education sector and inform discussions on identifying policy priorities and making resource allocation decisions in the sector.
Shared Prosperity and Poverty Eradication in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04) Cord, Louise; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos; Cord, Louise; Genoni, Maria Eugenia; Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos
Over the last decade Latin America and the Caribbean region has achieved important progress towards the World Bank Group's goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting income growth of the bottom 40 percent, propelled by remarkable economic growth and falling income inequality. Despite this impressive performance, social progress has not been uniform over this period, and certain countries, subregions and even socioeconomic groups participated less in the growth process. As of today, more than 75 million people still live in extreme poverty in the region (using $2.50/day/capita), half of them in Brazil and Mexico, and extreme poverty rates top 40 percent in Guatemala and reach nearly 60 percent in Haiti. This means that extreme poverty is still an important issue in both low- and middle-income countries in the region. As growth wanes and progress in reducing the still high levels of inequality in the region slows, it will be more important than ever for governments to focus policies on inclusive growth. The book includes an overview that highlights progress towards the goals of poverty eradication and shared prosperity between 2003 and 2012, unpacks recent gains at the household level using an income-based asset model, and examines some of the policy levers used to affect social outcomes in the region. It draws on 13 country studies, eight of which are featured in this volume: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The other case studies include: Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Honduras, which will be included in the web version of the book.
The Distributional Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09) Del Carmen, Giselle; Fuchs, Alan; Genoni, Maria Eugenia
Despite the obvious positive health impacts of tobacco taxation, an argument raised against it is that poor households bear the burden of the increased prices because of their higher share of spending on tobacco. This note includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016/17. One contribution of this analysis is to quantify the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. This shows that an increase in the price of cigarettes in Bangladesh has small consumption impacts and does not significantly change the poverty rate or consumption inequality. These findings stem from relatively even cigarette consumption patterns between less and more well-off households. These results hold even considering some small substitution through the use of bidis, which are largely consumed by the poor. The short-term consumption impacts are also negligible compared with the estimated gains because of savings in medical costs and the greater number of productive years of life.
The Distributional of Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-01) Del Carmen, Giselle; Fuchs, Alan; Genoni, Maria Eugenia
Despite the obvious positive health impacts of tobacco taxation, an argument raised against it is that poor households bear the burden of the increased prices because of their higher share of spending on tobacco. This report includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016/17. One contribution of this analysis is to quantify the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. This shows that an increase in the price of cigarettes in Bangladesh has small consumption impacts and does not significantly change the poverty rate or consumption inequality. These findings stem from relatively even cigarette consumption patterns between less and more welloff households. These results hold even if one considers some small substitution through the use of bidis, which are largely consumed by the poor. The short-term consumption impacts are also negligible compared with the estimated gains because of savings in medical costs and the greater number of productive years of life.
Gone with the Storm: Rainfall Shocks and Household Wellbeing in Guatemala
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-09-14) Baez, Javier E.; Lucchetti, Leonardo; Genoni, Maria E.; Salazar, Mateo
This paper identifies the negative consequences of the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala on household welfare. Per capita consumption fell in urban areas, raising poverty substantially. Households cut back on food consumption and basic durables, and attempted to cope by increasing their adult and child labour supply. The mechanisms at play include the intensity of the shock, food prices and the timing of Agatha with respect to local harvest cycles. The results are robust to placebo treatments, migration and measurement error, and partly explain the increase in poverty in the country previously attributed solely to the collateral effects of the global financial crisis.