Beegle, Kathleen

Person:
Beegle, Kathleen

Development Research Group, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Development Economics, Poverty, Living Standards, Gender, Jobs and Development, Measuring Poverty

ORCID

0000-0002-7080-7411

External Links

RePEc

Departments

Development Research Group, The World Bank

Last updated: April 16, 2025

Biography

Kathleen Beegle is Research Manager and Lead Economist in the Human Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Her research experience includes the study of poverty, labor, economic shocks, and methodological studies on household survey data collection in developing countries. She has expertise in the design and implementation of household surveys and their use for poverty and policy analysis. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, World Bank Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, and Demography. She is co-author of numerous chapters in books and is co-lead of several World Bank reports including Realizing the Full Potential of Safety Nets in Africa, Poverty in A Rising Africa, Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, and the World Development Report 2013 on Jobs. She was previously in the Research Group from 2001-2013. In the interim, she was the Lead Economist with the Gender Group (2018-2021), the Human Development Program Leader for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, based in Accra, Ghana (2014-2018), and a Lead Economist in the Africa Chief Economist Office (2013-2014). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University and competed a post-doctoral fellowship at RAND.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 55

How Organized Is the Informal Sector?: The Role of Business Associations in Microenterprises in West Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-16) Joubert, Clément; Beegle, Kathleen
Although microenterprises are the most prevalent employer in Africa, boosting their productivity remains a development challenge. Theoretically, microenterprise business associations could foster technology, improve access to inputs, pool risk, ensure coordination, and facilitate credit for businesses. However, basic facts about their scope and roles are missing from the literature. This study establishes descriptive results to shed light on the nature of these networks in West Africa. First, fewer than 10 percent of informal business owners are members, although there is large industry variation. Second, members tend to be older and larger incumbent businesses with male owners, potentially stifling competition and entrenching gender gaps. Third, most associations are more aptly described as providers of excludable, industry-specific services than as vehicles for collective action and advocacy. Fourth, membership helps explain performance differences among observably similar businesses. Members are more productive, profitable, and financially included relative to similar non-members, although such premia only materialize in a few industries.
Women at Work: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Urban Djibouti
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-18) Devoto, Florencia; Galasso, Emanuela; Beegle, Kathleen; Brodmann, Stefanie
In some developing countries, women’s labor force participation remains persistently low. This gives rise to questions regarding what types of employment opportunities or interventions can draw women into work in such contexts. In this study in urban Djibouti, with restrictive gender norms and very low female employment rates, women were randomly offered the opportunity to be employed in a public works program designed specifically to facilitate their participation. Program take-up is very high, and most participants do not delegate their work opportunity to another adult. However, in the medium term after the program ends, women who receive the temporary employment offer revert back to non participation in the labor market. These results suggest that while social norms can be a deterrent to women’s work in settings with very low employment rates, women will participate in work opportunities when they are offered and suitable.
COVID-19 Increased Existing Gender Mortality Gaps in High-Income Countries More Than in Middle-Income Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-10) Beegle, Kathleen; Demombynes, Gabriel; De Walque, Damien; Gubbins, Paul; Veillard, ,Jeremy
Men die at higher rates in nearly all places and at all ages beyond age 45. Using World Health Organization excess mortality estimates by sex and age groups for 75 countries in 2020 and 62 countries in 2021, this paper analyzes how patterns of excess mortality varied by sex and age groups across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with country income level. In 2020, the pandemic amplified the gender mortality gap for the world, but with variation across countries and by country income level. In high-income countries, rates of excess mortality were much higher for men than women. In contrast, in middle-income countries, the sex ratio of excess mortality was similar to the sex ratio of expected all-cause mortality. The exacerbation of the sex ratio of excess mortality observed in 2020 in high-income countries declined in 2021, likely as a result of the faster rollout of vaccination against COVID-19.
Missing SDG Gender Indicators
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-15) Serajuddin, Umar; Beegle, Kathleen; Stacy, Brian; Wadhwa, Divyanshi
The Sustainable Development Goal agenda lays out an ambitious set of 231 indicators to track progress. Countries continue to fall short in terms of reporting on the indicators in general, and this is particularly the case for the subset of 50 gender-related indicators, where countries reported on average on 31 percent of these indicators in at least one year from 2016 to 2020. A closer look at this low coverage reveals four salient fundings. First, this is not just a problem of missing data; lack of reporting on existing data is detected to be a problem. For example, of the 32 gender-related indicators that are sex disaggregated, if countries that had a population estimate also had a sex-disaggregated estimate (which is almost always feasible), the Sustainable Development Goal gender coverage rate would be 43 percent instead of 31 percent. Second, better statistical systems are a major part of the solution, as statistical system strength is correlated with higher coverage. Third, poorer countries are doing no worse in reporting on gender-related Sustainable Development Goal indicators than high-income countries, despite weaker statistical systems. Lastly, sizable over (and under) performance in reporting, conditional on statistical strength, suggests that country-level advocacy and focus can yield wins in Sustainable Development Goal gender indicator coverage.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Torres, Jesica; Maduko, Franklin; Gaddis, Isis; Iacovone, Leonardo; Beegle, Kathleen
The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories.
The Equality Equation: Advancing the Participation of Women and Girls in STEM
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07-18) Hammond, Alicia; Rubiano Matulevich, Eliana; Beegle, Kathleen; Kumaraswamy, Sai Krishna
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are vital to the economic and social prosperity of countries. Yet, women and girls continue to be underrepresented in STEM careers, although there is wide variation among countries and across STEM fields. Beyond income disadvantages for women because they have less access to STEM careers, the gender gap in STEM is also a missed opportunity for economies and an inefficient allocation of labor and talent. This report explores the participation of women and girls relative to men and boys in STEM-related education and employment through a global, comprehensive review of the evidence. The report focuses on both the drivers and the solutions related to the participation of women and girls in STEM.
Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-10-09) Beegle, Kathleen; Christiaensen, Luc
Sub-Saharan Africa's turnaround over the past couple of decades has been dramatic. After many years in decline, the continent's economy picked up in the mid-1990s. Along with this macroeconomic growth, people became healthier, many more youngsters attended schools, and the rate of extreme poverty declined from 54 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2015. Political and social freedoms expanded, and gender equality advanced. Conflict in the region also subsided, although it still claims thousands of civilian lives in some countries and still drives pressing numbers of displaced persons. Despite Africa’s widespread economic and social welfare accomplishments, the region’s challenges remain daunting: Economic growth has slowed in recent years. Poverty rates in many countries are the highest in the world. And notably, the number of poor in Africa is rising because of population growth. From a global perspective, the biggest concentration of poverty has shifted from South Asia to Africa. Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa explores critical policy entry points to address the demographic, societal, and political drivers of poverty; improve income-earning opportunities both on and off the farm; and better mobilize resources for the poor. It looks beyond macroeconomic stability and growth—critical yet insufficient components of these objectives—to ask what more could be done and where policy makers should focus their attention to speed up poverty reduction. The pro-poor policy agenda advanced in this volume requires not only economic growth where the poor work and live, but also mitigation of the many risks to which African households are exposed. As such, this report takes a "jobs" lens to its task. It focuses squarely on the productivity and livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable—that is, what it will take to increase their earnings. Finally, it presents a road map for financing the poverty and development agenda.
Adapting Skills Training to Address Constraints to Women’s Participation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-04-29) Rubiano-Matulevich, Eliana; Beegle, Kathleen
This Jobs Solutions Note identifies practical solutions for development practitioners to design and implement skills training programs that improve outcomes for women. Based on curated knowledge and evidence for a specific topic and relevant to jobs, the Jobs Solutions Notes are not intended to be exhaustive; they provide key lessons, solutions and approaches synthesized from the experiences of the World Bank Group and partners. This Note draws on rigorous evidence stemming from impact evaluations, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and mixed-methods. The Note focuses on adaptations to address supply-side constraints, while acknowledging the importance of demand-side factors in influencing returns to skills training and labor market outcomes.
Financial Inclusion, Women, and Building Back Better
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Hess, Jake; Klapper, Leora; Beegle, Kathleen
Financial inclusion occurs when adults have access to appropriate, affordable, and well-regulated financial services to meet their needs effectively and improve their lives. Financial inclusion is a growing global phenomenon. Since 2011, more than one billion adults have opened an account at a financial institution, such as a bank or a mobile money provider. Despite the progress, however, women continue to lag behind men. In low- and middle-income economies, men are 9 percentage points more likely than women to have an account, a gender gap that has stubbornly persisted. And there is considerably variation among countries. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world are providing relief payments and financial support to citizens and businesses. If such transfers could be transacted digitally, this might help unbanked people, especially women, obtain accounts for the first time. Digital government payments are a proven way to boost women’s financial inclusion. Globally, roughly 140 million people, of which 80 million are women, opened their first accounts to receive digital government payments, such as safety net subsidies, public pension funds, or public sector wage payments, according to the Global Findex (Demirguc-Kunt and others 2018). Government COVID-19 relief and recovery payments create opportunities to rectify the gender gap in financial inclusion, mitigate the pandemic’s economic fallout and build resilience against future emergencies. In addition, the momentum brought on by the policy responses to the pandemic offers opportunities to tackle long-standing challenges to financial inclusion. This note outlines critical priority areas toward this goal.
A Global View of Poverty, Gender, and Household Composition
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02) Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria; Bhatt, Antra; Azcona, Ginette; Yoo, Jayne; Beegle, Kathleen
The share of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 a day has been cut by more than half since 2000. The pace of progress has slowed in recent years, however, and is likely to regress with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Advancements toward achieving the goal of reducing poverty can be informed by more in-depth examination of the prevailing poverty profile across countries. This paper uses data from 91 countries to profile the poor through a focus on the demographic composition of households. It contributes to a growing body of literature on the profile of the poor based on household demographics, utilizing harmonized cross-country data. Three key findings related to household demographics and the profile of the poor emerge. First, globally, the share of young girls who reside in poor households is almost 1 percentage point larger than the corresponding share of boys, principally driven by results from India. In most other countries, girls and boys (who generally reside with adults) are equally likely to reside in poor households. Second, along the life cycle, the next big difference in poverty rates by sex globally sits among household members ages 25-34, with South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa driving these results. Third, analysis demonstrates that differences in household composition between women and men, including women’s greater likelihood to be living in households with young children, are behind the observed gap in poverty rates by sex.