Person:
Das, Maitreyi Bordia

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Demography, Social Protection, Social Development, Human Development, Social Inclusion, Safety Nets, Equity, Labor Markets, Urban Development
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Last updated: April 3, 2023
Biography
Maitreyi Bordia Das is the Director for Trust Funds and Partner Relations in the Development Finance Vice Presidency of the World Bank. Based in Washington DC, she leads the furtherance of the World Bank’s trust fund reform, implementation of the Bank’s policy framework for financial intermediary funds (FIFs) and supports the ongoing World Bank Group Evolution process. Maitreyi is a leading voice to sustainable development, equity and inclusion, with a career that spans government, academia, the UN system and the World Bank. At the Bank, Maitreyi has held several advisory and managerial positions and led numerous research, policy and programmatic initiatives across urban development, resilience, water security, health, social protection and social development. She was the World Bank’s first Global Lead for Social Inclusion, is a speaker at various public forums and has an extensive publications record. In her last position as Manager in the Global Practice on Urban, Resilience and Land, she oversaw and expanded a wide range of trust funded global programs and partnerships. Having started her career as a lecturer in St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, Maitreyi has also been a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies and an advisor to the United Nations Development Program in Guyana. She has a PhD in Sociology (Demography) from the University of Maryland. Before joining the World Bank, Maitreyi was in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    Scaling the Heights : Social Inclusion and Sustainable Development in Himachal Pradesh
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-01) Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Tas, Emcet Oktay; Zumbyte, Ieva
    Himachal Pradesh has the reputation of being stable, inclusive, cohesive and well-governed and it stands apart in many respects from its neighbors in northern India. It has additionally, achieved remarkable growth, especially in the last two decades, which has been accompanied by very good human development outcomes. Despite being a predominantly rural society, educational attainment in Himachal Pradesh for instance, is among the best in the country; poverty headcount is nearly one-third of the national average; life expectancy is 3.4 years longer than the number of years an average Indian expects to live; and, per capita income is the second highest among "special category" states in India. Underlying its strong economic and social development outcomes is Himachal Pradesh's commitment to expand access to public services to the remotest areas, across tough, hilly terrain and its strong institutional foundations. Inter-group disparities are low in a state where traditionally disadvantaged groups such as the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) make up a solid 30 percent of the population.
  • Publication
    Exclusion and Discrimination in the Labor Market
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Das, Maitreyi Bordia
    The frameworks developed in this paper are based on a review of the literature on processes of discrimination and the norms and attitudes that accompany them. Intended as a background paper to the World Development Report 2013 this paper will also feed into the Social Inclusion Flagship Report by the Social Development Department at the World Bank. It is divided into six sections. This section one is an introduction to the objectives and provides the context for this work. Section two is a brief discussion of the conceptual underpinnings and measurement of labor market discrimination from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Section three lays out a typology of processes of discrimination, while section four is a discussion of the mechanisms of discrimination and the ways in which candidates are screened. Section five addresses the question of how discriminated groups react to discrimination. The final section addresses some of the ways in which occupational and labor market mobility is possible for disadvantaged groups and what policy implications it could have.
  • Publication
    Social Inclusion in Macro-Level Diagnostics: Reflecting on the World Bank Group's Early Systematic Country Diagnostics
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06) Das, Maitreyi Bordia
    The idea of social inclusion has garnered considerable attention, especially in the context of two recent developments: the Sustainable Development Goals and the heightened attention to inequality. This paper reviews the manner and extent to which social inclusion is addressed in the first 17 Systematic Country Diagnostics (SCDs), which are ex ante, country-level assessments conducted by the World Bank Group, ahead of the preparation of its Country Partnership Frameworks. In addition to this primary purpose, the paper fulfils three other purposes. It allows for a broader reflection on the value of the social inclusion construct in macro-level diagnostics; it takes the opportunity to develop and refine a methodology to assess social inclusion and finally, it positions the narrative on social inclusion into the ongoing discourse on poverty, shared prosperity, inequality and the thinking around the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is therefore, a refined articulation of the idea of social inclusion in the context of global epistemological shifts
  • Publication
    Enterprises, Workers, and Skills in Urban Timor-Leste
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-03) O'Keefe, Philip; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
    Like many low-income countries, Timor-Leste faces challenges in providing employment for and increasing the skills of its labor force-challenges made more acute by high fertility rates, a very young population, and the capacity constraints of a new nation. However, there is limited information for policymakers to formulate appropriate policies. The paper presents findings of the first urban enterprise survey in independent Timor-Leste. It explores several aspects of the Timorese urban labor market, including the profile of formal and informal enterprises, their behavior in terms of employment and wage-setting practices, and constraints on firm growth. It also presents findings on the skills and training needs of urban employers, and constraints faced in overcoming skills shortages. It finds a highly informal urban enterprise scene, where even "formal" enterprises are largely micro-enterprises. While there has been considerable action in terms of new firm creation since independence, there is already surprisingly low job creation or destruction. This is driven by a number of constraints inside and outside the labor market. With respect to wages, the impacts of the informal minimum wage policy inherited from the interim international administration suggest the need for caution in future wage policy development. While employers identify many skills gaps, basic literacy, numeracy, and language skill needs dominate, and employers appear to value short courses and less formal modes of skills training to address their needs. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing the key constraints identified.
  • Publication
    A Closer Look at Child Mortality among Adivasis in India
    (2010-03-01) Kapoor, Soumya; Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Nikitin, Denis
    The authors use data from the National Family Health Survey 2005 to present age-specific patterns of child mortality among India's tribal (Adivasi) population. The analysis shows three clear findings. First, a disproportionately high number of child deaths are concentrated among Adivasis, especially in the 1-5 age group and in those states and districts where there is a high concentration of Adivasis. Any effort to reduce child morality in the aggregate will have to focus more squarely on lowering mortality among the Adivasis. Second, the gap in mortality between Adivasi children and the rest really appears after the age of one. In fact, before the age of one, tribal children face more or less similar odds of dying as other children. However, these odds significantly reverse later. This calls for a shift in attention from infant mortality or in general under-five mortality to factors that cause a wedge between tribal children and the rest between the ages of one and five. Third, the analysis goes contrary to the conventional narrative of poverty being the primary factor driving differences between mortality outcomes. Instead, the authors find that breaking down child mortality by age leads to a much more refined picture. Tribal status is significant even after controlling for wealth.
  • Publication
    Changing Norms about Gender Inequality in Education : Evidence from Bangladesh
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-11) Blunch, Niels-Hugo; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
    Using a recent household survey for two cohorts of married women, this paper examines norms about gender equality in education for children and adults. Among the main findings are that gender education gap norms have changed: younger generations of women are more positive about female vs. male education, both as pertaining to child and adult education outcomes. Perhaps the strongest result is that Bangladeshi women are more likely to espouse attitudes of gender equality in education for their children and less so about gender equality among spouses. It is also easier to explain norms regarding children's education and more difficult to explain norms about equality in marriages. The authors believe that question on relative education of boys and girls captures the value of education per se, while the question on educational equality in marriage captures the norms regarding marriage and the relative worth of husbands and wives. The effect of education in determining norms is significant though complex, and spans own and spousal education, as well as that of older females in the household. This indicates sharing of education norms effects or externalities arising from spousal education in the production of gender education gap norms within marriage as well as arising from the presence of older educated females in the household. Lastly, the authors also find associations between gender education gap norms and household poverty, information processing and religion, though the evidence here is more mixed.
  • Publication
    Minority Status and Labor Market Outcomes : Does India Have Minority Enclaves?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) Das, Maitreyi Bordia
    This paper uses data from the 61st Round of the National Sample Survey to understand the employment outcomes of Dalit and Muslim men in India. It uses a conceptual framework developed for the US labor market that states that ethnic minorities skirt discrimination in the primary labor market to build successful self-employed ventures in the form of ethnic enclaves or ethnic labor markets. The paper uses entry into self-employment for educated minority groups as a proxy for minority enclaves. Based on multinomial logistic regression, the analysis finds that the minority enclave hypothesis does not hold for Dalits but it does overwhelmingly for Muslims. The interaction of Dalit and Muslim status with post-primary education in urban areas demonstrates that post-primary education confers almost a disadvantage for minority men: it does not seem to affect their allocation either to salaried work or to non-farm self-employment but does increase their likelihood of opting out of the labor force - and if they cannot afford to drop out, they join the casual labor market. Due to the complexity of these results and the fact that there are no earnings data for self-employment, it is difficult to say whether self-employment is a choice or compulsion and whether builders of minority enclaves fare better than those in the primary market.