Publication: Bailing Out the World's Poorest
Abstract
The current financial crisis is global in nature, but it will have differing impacts within the developing world. Some people and some countries are more vulnerable than others. The author believes that it also threatens to have lasting impacts for some of those affected, notably through the nutrition and schooling of children in poor families. The author believes mistakes were made in past crises and identifies key design features for safety net programs that can help compensate for the likely welfare losses in the short-term while also promoting longer-term recovery.
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Publication Bailing Out the World's Poorest(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008-10)While the 2008 financial crisis is global in nature, it is likely to have heterogeneous welfare impacts within the developing world, with some countries, and some people, more vulnerable than others. It also threatens to have lasting impacts for some of those affected, notably through the nutrition and schooling of children in poor families. These features point to the need for a differentiated social policy response, aiming to provide rapid income support to those in most need, while preserving the key physical and human assets of poor people and their communities. The paper points out some mistakes in past crisis responses and identifies key design features for safety net programs that can help compensate for the likely welfare losses in the short-term while also promoting longer-term recovery.Publication Are There Lessons for Africa from China's Success against Poverty?(2009)At the outset of China's reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, two lessons for Africa stand out. The first is the initial importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture, which will require both market-based incentives and public support. The second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government.Publication Miss-targeted or Miss-measured?(2008)A method is proposed for testing the robustness of the assessed targeting performance of an anti-poverty program to the fact that program administrators have a broader concept of "poverty" than the economist/evaluator. An application is given to China's main urban anti-poverty program.Publication Are There Lessons for Africa from China's Success Against Poverty?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-01)At the outset of China's reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that context matters, two lessons stand out. The first is the importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture, which will require both market-based incentives and public support. The second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government.Publication A Micro-Decomposition Analysis of the Macroeconomic Determinants of Human Development(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-09)This paper shows how differences in aggregate human development outcomes over time and space can be additively decomposed into a pure economic-growth component, a component attributed to differences in the distribution of income, and components attributed to "non-income" factors and differences in the model linking outcomes to income or non-income characteristics. The income effect at the micro level is modeled non-parametrically, so as to flexibly reflect distributional changes. The paper illustrates the decomposition using data for Morocco and Vietnam, and the results offer some surprising insights into the observed aggregate gains in schooling attainments. A user friendly STATA program is available to implement the method in other settings.
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