Publication: Malawi Urbanization Review: Leveraging Urbanization for National Growth and Development
Loading...
Published
2016-04-15
ISSN
Date
2016-06-02
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Malawi Urbanization Review aims to provide fresh perspectives on urbanization in Malawi, by analyzing the current and potential contribution of urbanization to long-term national development and the current institutional and financial capacity of local governments to manage the process. Analyses presented in this report are particularly timely as Malawi is planning for the coming half decade through the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) III (2016-2020). Malawi is urbanizing at a moderate rate and has a good chance of proactively managing the urbanization process. Opportunities may arise from a positive structural change that Malawi’s economy is undergoing, whereby the driver of growth and job creation moves from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors. Faster urbanization, with strong linkages with rural areas, can contribute further to deepening such structural change. To unlock the potential of urbanization as a catalyst for long-term economic development, it is necessary to strengthen the capacity of urban local governments to generate revenues and meet the key infrastructure and service needs in urban areas, which remain challenging even at the current rate of urbanization.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2016. Malawi Urbanization Review: Leveraging Urbanization for National Growth and Development. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24391 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication An Overview of the Urban Landscape in South Sudan(Washington, DC, 2011-11)This study responds to the need for information and analysis on the urban sector in South Sudan, to inform the Bank's policy dialogue with the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GoSS) on urban and local government issues, and to inform the design of future Bank assistance. The first phase of this analytical exercise, which is the focus of this report, develops an overview of the urban landscape. A second phase of this analytical work is planned, that will build on the findings emerging from this first phase. The report is structured as follows: section two describes the evolution of the spatial system in South Sudan and highlights key urbanization patterns and trends; section three provides an overview of the legal, institutional and financial composition of South Sudan's urban areas; and section four outlines the key policy issues and recommendations. The report also draws on an in-depth case study of Juba, which is included as an annex to the report.Publication Connecting Lagging and Leading Regions : The Role of Labor Mobility(2009-02-01)How can policies improve the welfare of people in economically lagging regions of countries? Should policies help jobs follow people? Or should they enable people to follow jobs? In most countries, market forces have encouraged the geographic concentration of people and economic activities - policies that try to offset these forces to encourage balanced economic growth have largely been unsuccessful. However, policies that help people get closer to economic density have improved individual welfare. In this paper, the authors examine the migration decisions of working-age Brazilians and find that the pull of higher wages in leading regions has a strong influence on the decision to migrate. However, many people are also "pushed" to migrate, starved of access to basic public services such as clean water and sanitation in their hometowns. Although migration is welfare-improving for these individuals, the economy may end up worse off as these migrants are more likely to add to congestion costs in cities than to contribute to agglomeration benefits. Encouraging human capital formation can stimulate labor mobility for economic gain; and improving access to and quality of basic services in lagging regions will directly improve welfare as well as reduce the type of migration motivated by the search for life-supporting basic services.Publication Migration in Vietnam(World Bank, Hanoi, 2015-11)The authors investigate determinants of individual migration decisions in Vietnam, a country with increasingly high levels of geographical labor mobility. Using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) of 2012, the authors find that probability of migration is strongly associated with individual, household and community-level characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for young people and those with post-secondary education. Migrants are more likely to be from households with better-educated household heads, female-headed households, and households with higher youth dependency ratios. Members of ethnic minority groups are much less likely to migrate, other things equal. Using multinomial logit methods, we distinguish migration by broad destination, and find that those moving to Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi have broadly similar characteristics and drivers of migration to those moving to other destinations. The authors also use VHLSS 2012 together with VHLSS 2010, which allows us to focus on a narrow cohort of recent migrants, those present in the household in 2010, but who have moved away by 2012. This yields much tighter results. For education below upper secondary school, the evidence on positive selection by education is much stronger. However, the ethnic minority ‘penalty’ on spatial labor mobility remains strong and significant, even after controlling for specific characteristics of households and communes. This lack of mobility is a leading candidate to explain the distinctive persistence of poverty among Vietnam’s ethnic minority populations, even as national poverty has sharply diminished.Publication Equity for Sustained Growth(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-06-04)Starting from the aggregate, this report first describes how Pernambuco has fared with respect to the rest of Brazil, both in terms of economic and social welfare performance, over the last decade (2001-2012). In a context of widespread economic growth, Pernambuco has done particularly well in recent years, similar to or above the national average. A key challenge concerns the longer-term, where – notwithstanding the positive performance of recent years-the same level of growth may not be as easily sustained. The solid economic performance has been reflected in an improvement of social indicators, also associated with the governments interiorizacao strategy, a policy developed explicitly to increase the coverage of public services in underserved areas, with a focus on the interior of the state. The decline in poverty rates displays a trajectory towards convergence with Brazil and recently, a faster than national decline of the Gini has brought Pernambucos income inequality below the national and Northeast level.Publication Characteristics and Determinants of Internal Labor Mobility in Ukraine(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-05)Over the past 20 years Ukraine experienced fundamental structural changes due to transition to a market economy and integration with the world. Transition reforms accompanied by the collapse of traditional trade and production links with the other republics of the former USSR and Comecon countries entailed asymmetric effects on regions, reflecting an uneven distribution of winners and losers from transition. Geographical mobility of labor is one of the major mechanisms (alongside with capital mobility, wage and price flexibility, and institutional mechanisms for redistributing income across regions) in facilitating regional adjustment to idiosyncratic shocks. The ability of workers to move freely from one geographical location to another inside the borders of their country, in pursuing the same occupation or changing occupations, is of particular importance for efficient matching of labor demand and supply and reducing structural unemployment. This paper seeks to fill gap in the literature on patterns of internal labor mobility in Ukraine, its main characteristics and potential for reducing persistent regional labor market disparities and imbalances in economic and human development. The next chapters of the paper are organized as follows: second chapter evaluates the magnitude of disparities in regional labor market and socio-economic indicators over time, with a special focus on its potential impact on decision of individuals to migrate to another settlement; third chapter provides an overview of the available data sources on internal labor mobility in Ukraine, quantifies internal migration based on aggregate administrative data, discusses its trends over time and compares it levels to those found in developed and transition economies. Fourth chapter provides multivariate statistical analysis of the determinants of inter-regional migration in 2002-2010 based on administrative region-level data. Fifth chapter summarizes the findings of empirical studies on determinants of the migration decision of Ukrainians. Sixth chapter examines short-term labor migration including everyday commuting in 2005-2010 and measures its covariates using individual-level Labor Force Survey (LFS) data. Seventh chapter summarizes the main findings and concludes.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Commodity Markets : Review and Price Forecast(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-09-01)A companion to Global Development Finance 2009. The slowing of global growth, which preceded the financial crisis by several months, prompted commodity prices to start falling in mid-2008. The eruption of the full-blown crisis and the rapid drop-off in economic activity since September of that year accelerated this process markedly. Demand for most commodities (notably, in high-income industries and in China) slowed or declined, particularly for oil and metals. By December 2008, crude oil prices had dropped to $41 a barrel, down more than 70 percent from the July peaks, while non-energy prices, including food,had declined by nearly 40 percent. Since December, prices have firmed, with crude oil prices up to $69 on average in June 2009, and prices for foods and metals up 22 and 13 percent, respectively.Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Direct and Indirect Impacts of Transport Mobility on Access to Jobs: Evidence from South Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-12)Access to jobs is essential for economic growth. In Africa, unemployment rates are notably high. This paper reexamines the relationship between transport mobility and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on the direct and indirect effects of transport connectivity. As predicted by theory, wages are influenced by the level of commuting deterrence. Generally, higher earnings are associated with longer commute times and/or higher commuting costs. Local accessibility is also important, especially for individuals with time constraints. Both direct and indirect impacts are found to be significant in South Africa, where job accessibility has been challenging since the end of apartheid. For the direct impact, the wage elasticity associated with commuting costs is significant. Returns on commute are particularly high for women. Local accessibility to socioeconomic facilities, such as shops and health services, is also found to have a significant impact, consistent with the concept of mobility of care. To enhance employment, therefore, it is crucial to connect people not only to job locations but also to various socioeconomic points of interest, such as markets and hospitals, in an integrated manner. This integration will enable individuals to spend more time working and commuting longer distances.Publication Kyrgyz Republic Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-03)This Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) on the Kyrgyz Republic aims to support the country’s development goals amid a changing climate. The CCDR considers two policy scenarios up to 2050: the business-as-usual (BAU) and high-growth scenarios. As it quantifies the likely impacts of climate change on the Kyrgyz economy between now and 2050, the report highlights key government actions to best prepare for and adapt to climate impacts (referred to as “with adaptation” measures), with a particular focus on the time horizon up to 2030. The CCDR also outlines a path to net zero emissions by 2050 (referred to as “with mitigation” measures, “decarbonization,” or, simply, “net zero 2050”), highlighting associated development co-benefits.