Person:
Vakis, Renos
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Measuring Poverty,
Gender,
Social Protection and Labor
Degrees
Departments
Poverty and Equity Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Renos Vakis is a Lead Economist with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice where he co-leads the Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD). The unit integrates behavioral science in the design of anti-poverty policies in a wide range of issues such as financial inclusion, early childhood development, social protection, health and education. As a member of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team in the Development Data Group of the World Bank, he also conducts experiments to improve household survey measures of behavioral dimensions of well-being. He has written extensively on issues related to poverty dynamics and mobility, risk management, social protection, market failures and rural development, especially in Latin America and South Asia and has led the design of impact evaluation of anti-poverty interventions in various settings. Most recently, he has completed a book on Chronic Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. Renos has also taught economics at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 27
-
Publication
Demand versus Returns? Pro-Poor Targeting of Business Grants and Vocational Skills Training
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03)Interventions aimed at increasing the income generating capacity of the poor, such as vocational training, micro-finance or business grants, are widespread in the developing world. How to target such interventions is an open question. Many programs are self-targeted, but if perceived returns differ from actual returns, those self-selecting to participate may not be those for whom the program is the most effective. The authors analyze an unusual experiment with very high take-up of business grants and vocational skills training, randomly assigned among nearly all households in selected poor rural communities in Nicaragua. On average, the interventions resulted in increased participation in non-agricultural employment and higher income from related activities. The paper investigates whether targeting could have resulted in higher returns by analyzing heterogeneity in impacts by stated baseline demand, prior participation in non-agricultural activities, and a wide range of complementary asset endowments. The results reveal little heterogeneity along observed baseline characteristics. However, the poorest households are more likely to enter and have higher profits in non-agricultural self-employment, while less poor households assigned to the training have higher non-agricultural wages. This heterogeneity appears related to unobserved characteristics that are not revealed by stated baseline demand, and more difficult to target. In this context, self-targeting may reduce the poverty-reduction potential of income generating interventions, possibly because low aspirations limit the poor's ex-ante demand for productive interventions while the interventions have the potential to increase those aspirations. Overall, targeting productive interventions to poor households would not have come at the cost of reducing their effectiveness. By contrast, self-targeting would have limited poverty reduction by excluding the poorest. -
Publication
Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Rural Peru
(Taylor and Francis, 2012-11-02)We estimate the effects of mobile phone coverage on different measures of economic development. We exploit the timing of mobile coverage at the village level merging it with a village-level panel dataset for rural Peru. The main findings suggest that mobile phone expansion has increased household real consumption by 11 per cent, reduced poverty incidence by 8 percentage points and decreased extreme poverty by 5.4 percentage points. Moreover, those benefits appear to be shared by all covered households regardless of mobile ownership. -
Publication
Improving Gender and Development Outcomes through Agency : Policy Lessons from Three Peruvian Experiences
(Lima: World Bank, 2013-07)Peruvian public policy is currently focused on economic growth with social inclusion. The Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS)-created in October 2011-leads the sector and promotes evidence-based public policy using three strategic guidelines: 1) matching criteria and mechanisms for the selection of areas and target population, 2) generation of instruments for inter-sectorial and inter-governmental result-based coordination, and 3) activation of monitoring and evaluation procedures to measure interventions' progress and results. This study is about the incredible and frequently underestimated role of agency-the ability to make choices to achieve desired outcomes-in economic development. The authors share the view that agency has inherent value for development: it is an attribute and manifestation of development, or using Sen's words, it is constituent to development. This study however, focuses on the instrumental role of agency for more tangible manifestations of development, such as, poverty reduction and economic growth. It attempts to show that expanding individual agency is a powerful catalyst for improving welfare, as measured by these concrete and widely used metrics of policy success. Moreover, it argues that in many cases, improving development outcomes through agency is highly cost-effective. This study centers on several policy initiatives in Peru, which as will be subsequently shown, have improved the agency of their beneficiaries. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims at bridging this information gap, providing a review of evidence that shows how the psychological components of agency, such as aspirations and self-esteem, can effectively contribute to more traditional development objectives-ranging from higher investments in human capital to increased income. Second, the study reviews and synthesizes research on several policy interventions in Peru, which have empowered their beneficiaries. In this way, the study aims to derive practical recommendations on how to incorporate psychological elements of agency into policy interventions in order to achieve better development outcomes. The study is structured as follows: the next section discusses the concept of agency, providing examples of its broad role in achieving development objectives. The following section reviews the quantitative and qualitative research that served as the basis for this study and elaborates on the methodologies used to derive the conclusions presented in the ensuing section. The last section synthesizes the conclusions of the review of different interventions in Peru into six practical 'policy lessons'. -
Publication
Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02)Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and noncognitive abilities appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, the paper uses the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. It finds important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where panel data to follow children over time exists, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. These results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on the measure of cognitive development. -
Publication
Cash Transfers, Behavioral Changes, and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood : Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
(American Economic Association, 2012-07)Cash transfer programs have become extremely popular in the developing world. A large literature analyzes their effects on schooling, health and nutrition, but relatively little is known about possible impacts on child development. This paper analyzes the impact of a cash transfer program on early childhood cognitive development. Children in households randomly assigned to receive benefits had significantly higher levels of development nine months after the program began. There is no fade-out of program effects two years after the program ended. Additional random variation shows that these impacts are unlikely to result from the cash component of the program alone. -
Publication
Cash Transfers, Behavioral Changes, and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood : Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-10)A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer program on cognitive development in early childhood in rural Nicaragua. It shows that the program had significant effects on cognitive outcomes, especially language. Impacts are larger for older pre-school age children, who are also more likely to be delayed. The program increased intake of nutrient-rich foods, early stimulation, and use of preventive health care-all of which have been identified as risk factors for development in early childhood. Households increased expenditures on these inputs more than can be accounted for by the increases in cash income only, suggesting that the program changed parents' behavior. The findings suggest that gains in early childhood development outcomes should be taken into account when assessing the benefits of cash transfer programs in developing countries. More broadly, the paper illustrates that gains in early childhood development can result from interventions that facilitate investments made by parents to reduce risk factors for cognitive development. -
Publication
Spatial Specialization and Farm-Nonfarm Linkages
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04)Using individual level employment data from Bangladesh, this paper presents empirical evidence on the relative importance of farm and urban linkages for rural nonfarm employment. The econometric results indicate that high return wage work and self-employment in nonfarm activities cluster around major urban centers. The negative effects of isolation on high return wage work and on self-employment are magnified in locations with higher agricultural potential. The low return nonfarm activities respond primarily to local demand displaying no significant spatial variation. The empirical results highlight the need for improved connectivity of regions with higher agricultural potential to urban centers for nonfarm development in Bangladesh. -
Publication
Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013)After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people who appear to make ends meet well enough, but do not enjoy the economic security that would be required for membership of the middle class. We call this group the 'vulnerable'. In an almost mechanical sense, these transformations in Latin America reflect both economic growth and declining inequality in over the period. We adopt a measure of mobility that decomposes the 'gainers' and 'losers' in society by social class of each household. The continent has experienced a large amount of churning over the last 15 years, at least 43% of all Latin Americans changed social classes between the mid 1990s and the end of the 2000s. Despite the upward mobility trend, intergenerational mobility, a better proxy for inequality of opportunity, remains stagnant. Educational achievement and attainment remain to be strongly dependent upon parental education levels. Despite the recent growth in pro-poor programs, the middle class has benefited disproportionally from social security transfers and are increasingly opting out from government services. Central to the region's prospects of continued progress will be its ability to harness the new middle class into a new, more inclusive social contract, where the better-off pay their fair share of taxes, and demand improved public services. -
Publication
Innovations in Poverty Measurement : Seven Design Lessons on the Use of Advisory Committees to Improve Official Poverty Estimates in Peru
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-04)Between 2004 and 2007, no annual official statistics on poverty existed in Peru. This was due to serious problems with the household survey used to estimate poverty and implemented by the National Statistical Institute (INEI). Many of the technical issues arose from changes in the survey instrument, data collection practices and delays in updating poverty measurement methodologies. This put on hold poverty analyses for more than three years, time during which little was known about changes in poverty, inequality and the effectiveness of policies to reduce poverty. Instead of providing direct technical assistance to INEI, the World Bank team proposed the creation of an external Advisory Committee (AC) whose role would be to: 1) discuss, advice and reach a consensus on the best methodology that could be used to improve and produce comparable poverty estimates in Peru; and 2) oversee the work of an inter-institutional technical team who would implement the AC's recommendations. This inter-institutional approach was aimed at helping INEI to create an environment of openness and transparency necessary to improve its credibility and relationship with its clients and the public. -
No Thumbnail AvailablePublication
Seasonal Migration and Early Childhood Development
( 2010)This paper provides unique evidence of the positive consequences of seasonal migration for investments in early childhood development. We analyze migration in a poor shock-prone border region in rural Nicaragua where it offers one of the main household income diversification and risk-coping strategies. IV estimates show, somewhat surprisingly, that shock-driven migration by mothers has a positive effect on early cognitive development. We attribute these findings to changes in income and to the intra-household empowerment gains resulting from mother's migration, which offset potential negative early childhood development effects from temporary lack of parenting.