Ghorpade, Yashodhan

Person:
Ghorpade, Yashodhan

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice

Fields of Specialization

Social protection, Poverty, Conflict

Departments

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice

Last updated: March 21, 2025

Biography

Yashodhan Ghorpade is an economist in the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice of the World Bank. He joined the World Bank as a Young Professional in the Education – South Asia Team in 2016. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex UK, where his research focused on the microeconomic effects of conflict and natural disasters on households in Pakistan. His research interests include the microeconomic analysis of conflict, household behavior and policy interventions in response to shocks, and child labor. He has previously worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Institute of Development Studies (UK), the ILO Child Labour Program, Oxford Policy Management Ltd., and the India and Myanmar country offices of the World Bank

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

From Conflict to Compromise: Experimental Evidence on Occupational Downgrading in Migration from Myanmar
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-26) Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Imtiaz, Muhammad Saad
This paper examines the relationship between violent conflict and the willingness of potential migrants to accept lower skilled work (occupational downgrading). The paper develops a theoretical model of migration decisions and tests it using an innovative survey module administered to high-skilled youth in Myanmar. Consistent with the predictions of the model, the findings show that insecurity induced by conflict reduces the additional wage premium that individuals would typically demand for taking on lower skilled work, indicating greater amenability to occupational downgrading. These effects are particularly pronounced for disadvantaged groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, and those with weaker labor market networks or English language skills. The results are driven by respondents from areas under territorial contestation, and those interviewed after the sudden activation of a conscription law during the survey. This further confirms how security considerations may override the preference for skill-appropriate job matching, suggesting that conflict may worsen labor market outcomes and reduce potential gains from migration, especially for disadvantaged groups.
Social Insurance for Gig Workers: Insights from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Malaysia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-14) Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Jasmin, Alyssa
The rise of “gig” or digital platform work globally has led to both enthusiasm for its potential to create lucrative employment for large numbers of people, as well as concern about its implications for worker protection that is often provided in more standard employment. While gig work platforms may not be akin to employers in standard work relationships, arrangements that do not obligate them to provide worker protection and social insurance contributions may leave several platform workers unprotected against a range of risks. Is the observed lack of protection among digital platform workers explained by an unwillingness on part of the workers themselves to make necessary contributions for social insurance coverage? This paper analyzes this question in the context of Malaysia, a rapidly growing upper-middle-income East Asian economy that has witnessed a rise in gig work in recent years. The paper deploys a novel vignette-based experiment to ascertain gig workers’ willingness to pay for social insurance coverage. The analysis finds overall a large unmet need for social insurance among gig workers, as well as a high level of willingness to pay for (especially) unemployment insurance, retirement savings, and accidental and injury insurance. This implies that the policy challenge is to channel such willingness into regular contributions for social insurance coverage through relevant and flexible options for contributions. More than subsidies, this segment of the workforce could perhaps benefit from better tailored, more flexible, and more easily accessible instruments for social insurance. The analysis also finds evidence of substitution between distinct insurance instruments. For instance, those who have access to retirement savings appear to be less willing to pay for unemployment insurance, and those with private medical insurance are less likely to contribute to the state-run injury insurance scheme. This underlines the need to approach risk insurance for digital platform workers more holistically and to consider a wider range of insurance instruments, including those offered by the private sector.
The Impact of Social Safety Nets on Economic, Social, and Political Outcomes in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent Contexts: A Review of Evidence
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-13) Fuselli, Silvia; Saidi, Mira; Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Agostini, Sara; Laville, Camille
Global peace has significantly declined over the past 15 years, with the 2023 Global Peace Index highlighting a notable erosion of peace since 2008, affecting 95 out of 163 countries. The impacts of conflict disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable groups, threatening to roll back progress in economic and human development efforts. Social safety nets (SSNs) have emerged as a primary policy instrument in Fragile, Conflict, and Violence (FCV). Safety nets encompass a variety of non-contributory programs, primarily cash and in-kind transfers, accompanying measures, labor-intensive public works (LIPWs), and economic inclusion interventions aimed to provide regular, targeted, and predictable support to the poorest and most vulnerable households. SSNs can be designed and implemented as adaptive and flexible tools to respond to shocks and crises, expanding to reach more individuals or increasing support for current beneficiaries. In conflict settings, often marked by emergencies and limited government response capacity, safety nets can play a critical role in addressing urgent needs and preserving human capital and productive assets in the long term. Despite their increased use in fragile and conflict countries, the impacts of SSNs in such contexts are still not fully understood. This study, part of a broader analytical and research agenda supported by the World Bank's Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program, reviews and synthesizes available literature to better understand the impacts of SSNs on economic, social, and political outcomes in FCV settings. It explores the effects of SSN programs on household well-being, social cohesion and conflict or shaping attitudes toward state institutions, among others. The findings aim to inform the operational design and implementation of SSNs to promote positive outcomes and avoid exacerbating conflict risks.
Population Mobility in the Sahel: Implications for Social Protection Programs and Systems
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-08) Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Coudouel, Aline
Population mobility in the Sahel is a multifaceted phenomenon. Economic factors play an important role, with many seeking better livelihoods, higher wages, and improved living standards in response to widespread poverty, unemployment, and limited job opportunities. The large scale of internal mobility reflects opportunities and challenges for migrants and their families. Internal mobility can reduce household risks by diversifying income to mitigate against climate- and conflict-related shocks. Social protection programs must be designed and implemented to support mobility dynamics. The design and implementation of safety net systems and programs might need to be adjusted to ensure that people on the move can participate in and benefit from them to the greatest extent possible. This note provides an overview of mobility patterns in the Sahel, discusses their implications on migrants’ vulnerabilities, and presents considerations for social protection systems and programs. It draws, among others, on a background paper on understanding trends and patterns of internal mobility in the Sahel and a review of global best practices in including internal migrants in ASP programs supported by the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP).
High-Skilled Migration from Myanmar: Responses to Signals of Political and Economic Stabilization
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-21) Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Imtiaz, Muhammad Saad; Han, Theingie
In recent years, Myanmar has witnessed considerable economic and political instability, leading many young people, particularly the higher-skilled, to consider migrating abroad for improved prospects. This paper employs an innovative method to quantify migration intentions among high-skilled youth by analyzing the take-up of migration at different wage premia. A randomized survey experiment then evaluates how hypothetical political and economic stabilization scenarios impact these intentions. The findings show that 35 percent of the respondents would be willing to take a similar job abroad for pay equal to their current income. Randomization within the survey indicates that political stabilization would potentially reduce high-skilled workers’ desire to migrate by about 15 percent, especially among men, those living in high-conflict areas, and persons with lower absolute income but higher perceived relative income. In contrast, prospects of economic stabilization do not have a significant effect on migration intentions. In the absence of political stability and a reduction in conflict, economic stabilization is unlikely to reduce talent outflows among the young.
Soft Skills, Competition, and Hiring Discrimination
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-18) Valencia, Christian; Janzen, Sarah; Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Abdur Rahman, Amanina
This paper conducts a correspondence study to assess demand for soft skills in the context of hiring discrimination in Malaysia. No evidence of gender-based discrimination is found, including in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations. However, in line with previous studies in the same context, there is evidence of ethnic discrimination. The paper then test the relevance of two soft skills: leadership and teamwork. These tests find some evidence that the labor market rewards simple signals of teamwork for the average applicant. Teamwork also plays an important role in the context of labor market discrimination, reducing the discrimination gap by 40 percent. In contrast, signaling leadership skills has no effect. Last, the paper considers the role of labor market competition. Companies facing competition in the labor market, measured by the number of competitors advertising similar positions, are 56 to 66 percent less likely to discriminate. On the supply side, discrimination increases with the relative quality of the pool of applicants. The results provide novel evidence that soft skills and labor market competition both play important roles in understanding hiring discrimination. This underlines potential pathways to overcome labor market discrimination and improve job matching.
The Valuation of Flexible Work Arrangements: Insights from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Malaysia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-14) Ghorpade, Yashodhan; Jasmin, Alyssa; Abdur Rahman, Amanina
The changing nature of work, accelerated by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in several fundamental shifts in the terms and conditions of work. Along with the clear trend of increased nonstandard employment, including through the gig economy and platform work, this poses critical questions for policies and practices of the organization of work arrangements, and about who may bear the costs of emerging arrangements. This paper explores whether workers in freelancing and standard work arrangements in Malaysia view a trade-off between flexibility and income and are willing to forgo a share of earnings for greater flexibility. The paper deploys a novel discrete choice experiment in which respondents are asked to choose their preferred job from two hypothetical job descriptions with randomly assigned attributes, namely, flexibility and associated earnings. The findings show substantial but not overwhelming preference for greater flexibility, especially among freelancers, and a clear trade-off between measures of flexibility and income. The findings also show considerable variation in the preference for flexibility, much of which is not explained by worker demographics and other observable characteristics but is consistent with other measures of the importance attached to flexibility and earning income. The analysis outlines pathways through which offering even a modicum of flexibility can enhance workers’ utility without necessarily increasing costs for employers, provides evidence of considerable preference heterogeneity, and warns against imposing uniform approaches to (in)flexible work arrangements.
Changes in Household Dynamics in South Yemen
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-29) Ishak, Phoebe W.; Aghajanian, Alia; Ghorpade, Yashodhan
This paper contributes to an important agenda by studying how female participation in household decision making has been affected by the ongoing civil conflict in the Republic of Yemen in areas under the control of the Internationally Recognized Government. The preliminary results find an increase in women’s participation in decision making since the start of the conflict. Using a difference-in-difference approach that controls for individual and household characteristics, the analysis finds that this result is driven by households living in districts with medium intensity conflict as compared to low intensity conflict. This result holds up to a series of robustness checks and is explained by changes in household composition, whereby men are more likely to leave the household in conflict affected districts, leaving women in charge of household decisions.
Forewarned, but not Forearmed?: Lessons for the Recent Floods in Pakistan from 2010
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09) Ghorpade, Yashodhan
As climate change results in recurrent and more frequent natural disasters, each calamity proves instructional for the future. The author summarizes the lessons learned from the social protection and wider disaster response in the 2010 floods in Pakistan and discuss how they can benefit ongoing efforts to recover from the floods in the country in 2022, and other settings.
Social Protection at the Humanitarian-Development Nexus: Insights from Yemen
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Ammar, Ali; Ghorpade, Yashodhan
In its seventh year of conflict, facing successive shocks and a heightened risk of famine, Yemen has been termed the world’s ‘worst humanitarian crisis.’ Against this backdrop, there has been a drastic transformation of Yemen’s social protection landscape, with the disruption of several governmental SP programs, the continued functioning of some national institutions and a massive increase in humanitarian assistance programs. In this paper, authors first review conceptual differences between humanitarian and development assistance along several features, also noting the blurring of sharp distinctions. The authors then assess the institutional landscape of social assistance in Yemen, using a unique dataset authors collated using administrative data from a range of humanitarian and development agencies. The authors compare programs in terms of scale, geographical coverage, average benefit levels, and targeting. The authors find that while there are important differences between humanitarian and development approaches, there are also many areas of convergence. While the total number of people covered by all humanitarian and development assistance programs exceeds the national population, authors also find evidence of likely exclusion of many poor households, suggesting that there is significant scope to reduce exclusion through improved coordination. The paper concludes with a discussion of areas and specific proposals for enhanced humanitarian-development coordination in the social assistance space at the strategic, program, and delivery-systems levels.