Person:
Inchauste, Gabriela

Global Practice on Poverty and Equity, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Fiscal incidence analysis, Poverty and social impact, Economic and social mobility, Informality, Distributional analysis, Public finance, Inequality, Development economics

External Links

Blog
RePEc

Departments

Global Practice on Poverty and Equity, The World Bank

Last updated: December 2, 2024

Biography

Gabriela Inchauste is a Lead Economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. She currently leads work on Fiscal and Social Policies for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Her research interests revolve around the distributional impact of fiscal policy, ex-ante analysis of the distributional impacts of policy reforms, and understanding the channels through which economic growth improves labor market opportunities for poverty reduction. Prior to joining the Bank, she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank where she contributed to operational and analytical activities in a number of countries covering topics such as macroeconomic forecasting, public expenditure policy, poverty and social impact analysis, fiscal and debt sustainability analysis, post-disaster needs assessments, and subsidy reform.She has published articles in academic volumes and journals on fiscal policy in low-income countries, decentralization, the distributional impacts of taxes and social spending, macroeconomic shocks and the poor, the informal sector, and the role of remittances in developing countries. A Bolivian national, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 22

Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-02) Sinha, Nistha; Inchauste, Gabriela; Narayan, Ambar; eds.
Structural sources of Africa’s inequality are rooted in laws, institutions, and practices that create advantages for a few but disadvantages for many. They include differences in living standards that come from inherited or unalterable characteristics, such as where people are born and their parents’ education, ethnicity, religion, and gender. They also arise from market and institutional distortions that privilege some firms, farms, and workers to access markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority and limiting earning opportunities. "Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa" argues that policies to address high levels of structural inequality in Africa are also at the heart of what is needed to accelerate progress in reducing extreme poverty. There is nothing inevitable about structural inequality. Economies that put up barriers to opportunities can also remove and replace them with policies that create a level playing field. Indeed, across the world, countries where opportunities are distributed more fairly grow faster and have lower poverty incidence. Broadening access to opportunities represents one of Africa’s key prospects for raising productivity and earnings and accelerating poverty reduction. Leveraging the most recent data available for the region, "Leveling the Playing Field" provides recommendations aimed at improving the productive capacity of the poor, the ability of poor individuals to use their capacities for well-paying job opportunities, and the design of fair fiscal policies.
A Customizable Microsimulation Tool to Analyze Distributional Effects of Country Fiscal Policies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12) Gao, Jia; Inchauste, Gabriela
Microsimulation modelling has become a powerful tool to analyze the effects of fiscal policy changes. The World Bank’s Equity Policy Lab (EPL) has developed a customizable microsimulation tool to assess the distributional effects of tax, benefits, and other fiscal reforms. This Note explains why and how countries use the microsimulation tools, using examples from Ecuador and Armenia—2 of the more than 20 countries that have developed and used the tool over the past 2 years—to demonstrate its effectiveness in engaging government officials and informing policy making.
The Distributional Impact of Taxes and Transfers: Evidence From Eight Developing Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-08-24) Inchauste, Gabriela; Lustig, Nora; Inchauste, Gabriela; Lustig, Nora
The World Bank has partnered with the Commitment to Equity Institute at Tulane University to implement their diagnostic tool—the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Assessment—designed to assess how taxation and public expenditures affect income inequality, poverty, and different economic groups. The approach relies on comprehensive fiscal incidence analysis, which measures the contribution of each individual intervention to poverty and inequality reduction as well as the combined impact of taxes and social spending. The CEQ Assessment provide an evidence base upon which alternative reform options can be analyzed. The use of a common methodology makes the results comparable across countries. This volume presents eight country studies that examine the distributional effects of individual programs and policy measures—and the net effect of each country’s mix of policies and programs. These case studies were produced in the context of Bank policy dialogue and have since been used to propose alternative reform options.
Intimate Partner Violence against Women: Prevalence, Formal Reporting, and Risk Factors in Chile
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Saavedra, Trinidad; Contreras-Urbina, Manuel; Inchauste, Gabriela
Intimate partner violence is among the most common forms of violence against women. In Chile, one in four women who have been in a partner relationship report having experienced some type of partner violence in the past 12 months, whether psychological, physical, sexual, or economic. However, only 22 percent of female victims of intimate partner violence file a formal complaint. This study analyzes the factors that determine the likelihood that a woman will be subject to violence perpetrated by her partner or ex-partner and the factors that determine the probability of reporting the abuse. Individual factors that increase women’s risk of experiencing intimate partner violence include being young, having fewer years of education, having a disability, and having been a victim of sexual abuse in childhood. Other factors include characteristics of partners or ex-partners associated with aggressive behavior in public spaces, having been a victim of intrafamily violence in childhood, and frequent alcohol consumption. The household dynamics that prevent women from participating in economic decision-making and the widespread acceptance of inequitable gender norms also significantly increase the risk that a woman will experience intimate partner violence. The likelihood that a woman will formally report intimate partner violence is mainly determined by the frequency of the episodes, characteristics of the partners or ex-partners, economic empowerment, and whether she has support networks.
The Political Economy of Energy Subsidy Reform
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-03-07) Inchauste, Gabriela; Victor, David G.; Inchauste, Gabriela; Victor, David G.; Addo, Sheila; Bazilian, Morgan; Beaton, Christopher; Gallina, Andrea; Mansur, Yusuf; Oguah, Sanuel; Sánchez, Miguel Eduardo; Serajuddin, Umar; Wai-Poi, Matthew
This book proposes a simple framework for understanding the political economy of subsidy reform and applies it to four in-depth country studies covering more than 30 distinct episodes of reform. Five key lessons emerge. First, energy subsidies often follow a life cycle, beginning as a way to stabilize prices and reduce exposure to price volatility for low-income consumers. However, as they grow in size and political power, they become entrenched. Second, subsidy reform strategies vary because the underlying political economy problems vary. When benefits are concentrated, satisfying or isolating) interest groups with alternative policies is an important condition for effective reform. When benefits are diffuse, it can be much harder to identify and manage the political coalition needed for reform. Third, governments vary in their administrative and political capacities to implement difficult energy subsidy reforms. Fourth, improvements in social protection systems are often critical to the success of reforms because they make it possible to target assistance to those most in need. Finally, the most interesting cases involve governments that take a strategic approach to the challenges of political economy. In these settings, fixing energy subsidies is central to the governments’ missions of retaining political power and reorganizing how the government delivers benefits to the population. These cases are examples of “reform engineering,” where governments actively seek to create the capacity to implement alternative policies, depoliticize tariffs, and build credibility around alternative policies. The most successful reforms involve active efforts by policy leaders to identify the political forces supporting energy subsidies and redirect or inoculate them.
Jobs and Transitions Out of Poverty : A Literature Review
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Inchauste, Gabriela
This paper summarizes the existing literature on the links between labor and poverty reduction. The vast majority of studies find that more and better paid work is critical in lifting people out of poverty. Studies analyzing poverty dynamics and economic mobility find that improved returns to endowments, particularly the returns to human and physical capital, are critical for exiting poverty. Although non-labor incomes and demographic changes can help to lift the poor out of poverty, there is no substitute for providing an enabling environment that fosters better work and pay for the poor.
Decomposing the Recent Inequality Decline in Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12) Sanfelice, Viviane; Azevedo, Joao Pedro; Inchauste, Gabriela
Over the past decade, 12 of 14 Latin American countries have experienced a reduction in inequality. Based on a series of counterfactual simulations, the observed changes in inequality are decomposed in order to identify the main determinants of inequality. In contrast to methods that focus on aggregate summary statistics, the method adopted in this paper generates counterfactual distributions, so that the analysis can account for changes related to demographics, occupation, labor earnings and transfers, pensions, and other nonlabor income sources. The results show that for the majority of countries in the sample, the most important contributor to the observed decline in inequality has been the relatively strong growth in labor earnings at the bottom of the income distribution. In particular, most of the reduction in inequality can be attributed to an increase in earnings per hour for the bottom of the income distribution. The paper also contributes to the literature on inequality in Latin America by providing the Shapley-Shorrocks value of this decomposition.
Understanding Changes in Poverty
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-08-12) Van Nguyen, Trang; Inchauste, Gabriela; Azevedo, João Pedro; Essama-Nssah, B.; Olivieri, Sergio; Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime; Winkler, Hernan
Understanding Changes in Poverty brings together different methods to decompose the contributions to poverty reduction. A simple approach quantifies the contribution of changes in demographics, employment, earnings, public transfers, and remittances to poverty reduction. A more complex approach quantifies the contributions to poverty reduction from changes in individual and household characteristics, including changes in the sectoral, occupational, and educational structure of the workforce, as well as changes in the returns to individual and household characteristics. Understanding Changes in Poverty implements these approaches and finds that labor income growth that is, growth in income per worker rather than an increase in the number of employed workers was the largest contributor to moderate poverty reduction in 21 countries experiencing substantial reductions in poverty over the past decade. Changes in demographics, public transfers, and remittances helped, but made relatively smaller contributions to poverty reduction. Further decompositions in three countries find that labor income grew mainly because of higher returns to human capital endowments, signaling increases in productivity, higher relative price of labor, or both. Understanding Changes in Poverty will be of particular relevance to development practitioners interested in better understanding distributional changes over time. The methods and tools presented in this book can also be applied to better understand changes in inequality or any other distributional change.
Energy Subsidy Reform Assessment Framework: Assessing the Political Economy of Energy Subsidies to Support Policy Reform Operations
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-30) Schiffer, Eva; Inchauste, Gabriela; Victor, David G.
This note comes in three sections. First, the information required for political economy analysis of energy subsidy reforms is presented. Second, a summary is given of the information that can usually be obtained through desk research to provide the context for subsequent interviews and another field research. Third, information that probably requires interviews and field data collection is provided. The ultimate audience of the proposed types of analysis lies with policy reformers themselves and with external development and policy institutions that are seeking to help governments adopt more sustainable reforms. However, the direct audience for this note are those commissioning political economy analysis of energy subsidies, and technocrats, researchers, and advisers to policy makers carrying out the analysis. Often, a team made up of sector experts and political economy experts will provide a greater depth of analysis. Significant attention is devoted here to the origins and operation of existing subsidies since that history conditions what is possible for the adoption and sustainability of future reforms. The main interest and audience for this note is forward-looking, people and institutions who need to understand what is politically possible and how to realign political forces around successful reform. The authors are mindful that this role is perhaps different from other more technocratic roles of agencies and institutions focused on technical analysis and thus they also devote some attention to the processes needed to obtain and manage sensitive information and political insights since mismanagement in that realm can, itself, affect the political prospects for reform and harm the standing of reform agents in the process. In contrast to desk research or analysis of existing datasets, field research on political economy will always be an intervention in the local system, which needs to be managed well to increase and not decrease the space for reform and coalition building.
Is Labor Income Responsible for Poverty Reduction? A Decomposition Approach
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Azevedo, Joao Pedro; Inchauste, Gabriela; Olivieri, Sergio; Saavedra, Jaime; Winkler, Hernan
Demographics, labor income, public transfers, or remittances: Which factor contributes the most to observed reductions in poverty? Using counterfactual simulations, this paper accounts for the contribution labor income has made to the observed changes in poverty over the past decade for a set of 16 countries that have experienced substantial declines in poverty. In contrast to methods that focus on aggregate summary statistics, the analysis generates entire counterfactual distributions that allow assessing the contributions of different factors to observed distributional changes. Decompositions across all possible paths are calculated so the estimates are not subject to path-dependence. The analysis shows that for most countries in the sample, labor income is the most important contributor to changes in poverty. In ten of the countries, labor income explains more than half of the change in moderate poverty; in another four, it accounts for more than 40 percent of the reduction in poverty. Although public and private transfers were relatively more important in explaining the reduction in extreme poverty, more and better-paying jobs were the key factors behind poverty reduction over the past decade.