Person:
Genoni, Maria Eugenia
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Poverty,
Development economics,
Applied microeconomics
Degrees
Departments
Global Practice on Poverty, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
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.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 12
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Publication
Gone with the Storm : Rainfall Shocks and Household Well-Being in Guatemala
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-01)This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) -- the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept -- on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita consumption fell by 12.6 percent, raising poverty by 5.5 percentage points (an increase of 18 percent). The negative effects of the shock span other areas of human welfare. Households cut back on food consumption (10 percent or 43 to 108 fewer calories per person per day) and reduced expenditures on basic durables. These effects are related to a drop in income per capita (10 percent), mostly among salaried workers. Adults coped with the shock by increasing their labor supply (on the intensive margin) and simultaneously relying on the labor supply of their children and withdrawing them from school. Impact heterogeneity is associated with the intensity of the shock, food price inflation, and the timing of Agatha with respect to the harvest cycle of the main crops. The results are robust to placebo treatments, household migration, issues of measurement error, and different samples. The negative effects of the storm partly explain the increase in poverty seen in urban Guatemala between 2006 and 2011, which national authorities and analysts previously attributed solely to the collateral effects of the global financial crisis. -
Publication
Shared Prosperity and Poverty Eradication in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04)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. -
Publication
You Are What (and Where) You Eat: Capturing Food Away from Home in Welfare Measures
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05)Consumption of food away from home is rapidly growing across the developing world. Surprisingly, the majority of household surveys around the world haven not kept up with its pace and still collect limited information on it. The implications for poverty and inequality measurement are far from clear, and the direction of the impact cannot be established a priori, since consumption of food away from home affects both food consumption and the poverty line. This paper exploits rich data on food away from home collected as part of the National Household Survey in Peru, shedding light to the extent to which welfare measures differ depending on whether they properly account for food away from home. Peru is a relevant context, with the average Peruvian household spending 28 percent of their food budget on food away from home by 2010. The analysis indicates that failure to account for the consumption of food away from home has important implications for poverty and inequality measures as well as the understanding of who the poor are. First, accounting for food away from home results in extreme poverty rates that are 18 percent higher and moderate poverty rates that are 16 percent lower. These results are also consistent, in fact more pronounced, with poverty gap and severity measures. Second, consumption inequality measured by the Gini coefficient decreases by 1.3 points when food away from home is included, a significant reduction. Finally, inclusion of food away from home results in a reclassification of households from poor to non-poor status and vice versa: 20 percent of the poor are different when the analysis includes consumption of food away from home. This effect is large enough that a standard poverty profile analysis results in significant differences between the poverty classification based on whether food away from home is included or not. The differences cover many dimensions, including demographics, education, and labor market characteristics. Taken together, the results indicate that a serious rethinking of how to deal with the consumption of food away from home in measuring well-being is urgently needed to properly estimate and understand poverty around the world. -
Publication
The Distributional of Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-01)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. -
Publication
Gone with the Storm: Rainfall Shocks and Household Wellbeing in Guatemala
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-09-14)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. -
Publication
Bangladesh Education Sector Public Expenditure Review
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)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. -
Publication
The Distributional Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09)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. -
Publication
Losing Livelihoods: The Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-15)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. -
Publication
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)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. -
Publication
Bangladesh Rural Income Diagnostic: Enabling Faster and More Equal Income Growth in Rural Bangladesh
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-30)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.