Publication: World Bank Research Digest, Vol. 8(3-4)
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2014-04
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2014-04
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“World Bank. 2014. World Bank Research Digest, Vol. 8(3-4). © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20952 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-09)This paper reviews empirical findings from economic analyses of the role of gender equality and women's empowerment in reducing poverty and stimulating growth. Going beyond the large literature documenting the impact of female education on a range of development outcomes, the paper presents evidence on the impact of women's access to markets (labor, land, and credit) and women's decision-making power within households on poverty reduction and productivity at the individual and household level. The paper also summarizes evidence from studies examining the relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level. Although micro level effects of gender equality on individual productivity and human development outcomes have been well documented and have important ramifications for aggregate economic performance, establishing an empirical relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level has proven to be more challenging. The paper concludes by identifying priority areas for future research.Publication Malawi Poverty and Vulnerability Assessment : Investing in Our Future, Synthesis Report(Washington, DC, 2007-12)This study builds a profile of the status of poverty and vulnerability in Malawi. Malawi is a small land-locked country, with one of the highest population densities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the lowest per capita income levels in the world. Almost 90 percent of the population lives in rural areas, and is mostly engaged in smallholder, rain-fed agriculture. Most people are therefore highly vulnerable to annual rainfall volatility. The majority of households cultivate very small landholdings, largely for subsistence. As a result, poverty is pervasive and not merely the situation of the lowest economic groups. Therefore, while this report focuses on the least-well-off sections of the population, the analysis provides valuable information to accelerate wealth creation and economic growth for the whole of Malawi. This synthesis report presents the main findings and policy recommendations stemming from the analysis. Due to the length and detail of this study, the 'full report' presenting the detailed analysis and results underpinning these policy recommendations is available as a separate publication. This report highlights some of the key characteristics and causes of poverty in Malawi, and focuses on the main sources of risk affecting households, namely food insecurity and health shocks. Based on these findings, the report goes on to develop a set of policy recommendations for widely shared growth and poverty reduction, and for enabling the most vulnerable to make a living. Finally, the report also provides recommendations for strengthening the monitoring and evaluation systems of poverty reduction strategies, so that policy makers and Malawian society can better track the effectiveness of the policies pursued, and inform future policy choices.Publication Lao PDR - Mapping the Gender Dimensions of Trade : A Preliminary Exposition(Washington, DC, 2012-07)The Lao Government has also made important commitments to gender equality in both its national socio-economic development planning and in a number of international agreements. Through mapping the gender dimensions of trade in Lao PDR, this report aims to draw out key inter-linkages between a more open trade policy and gender. Recent export performance in Lao has been strong and mostly driven by hydro-electricity and minerals, which constituted more than half of all exports in 2010 and are predicted to grow even more in the next few years. To better understand the interaction between gender and trade policy, this paper presents a gender mapping exercise for export development in Lao PDR and in this regard presents simple recommendations on how to undertake this type of exercise. The paper is split in two parts: the first sketches out a simple methodological framework that can be used by researchers to do an initial mapping of the inter-relationships between export promotion/trade policy and gender. The second part of the paper is aimed primarily at policy makers. It uses the framework to provide a diagnostic which examines: 1) sectors in Lao with potential for export expansion that could benefit women; 2) gender-based constraints in these sectors which limit their expansion through trade; and 3) potential impacts for women, both positive and negative, from an increase in Lao's natural resource exports.Publication Potential Applications of Conditional Cash Transfers for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-07)A growing number of developing countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs that provide money to poor families with certain contingencies attached - such as requiring school attendance or regular immunization and health check-ups. As the popularity of conditional cash transfer programs has grown, experimentation with potential applications in other areas of health, such as sexual and reproductive health, and HIV prevention, in particular, has also increased. Evaluations of conditional cash transfer programs have focused almost exclusively on uptake of health and educational services, which make relatively low demands of participants compared with more complex interventions, which require the cessation of risky behaviors, such as smoking, obesity, and substance abuse. The literature on contingency management - based on the principle that behavioral change occurs when appropriate behaviors are reinforced and rewarded - provides a richer picture of the complexity of the use of conditionality to encourage healthy behavioral change. This paper examines developing countries' experiences with conditional cash transfer programs and the results of trials in clinical settings on the efficacy of contingency management, and addresses their relevance for designing conditional cash transfer programs to address risky sexual behavior and promote the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa.Publication Sexual Behavior Change Intentions and Actions in the Context of a Randomized Trial of a Conditional Cash Transfer for HIV Prevention in Tanzania(2012-03-01)Information, education, communication and interventions based on behavioral-change communication have had success in increasing the awareness of HIV. But these strategies alone have been less successful in changing risky sexual behavior. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the link between action and the intention to change behaviors. In Africa, uncertainty in the lives of those at risk for HIV may affect how intentions are formed. Characterize this uncertainty by understanding the reasons for discrepancies between intentions and actions may help improve the design of HIV-prevention interventions. Based on an incentives-based HIV prevention trial in Tanzania, the longitudinal dataset in this paper allows the exploration of intended strategies for changing sexual behaviors and their results. The authors find that gender, intervention groups and new positive diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections can significantly predict the link between intent and action. The paper examines potential mediators of these relationships.
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This evaluation offers three recommendations to scale up reform implementation and enhance portfolio and project performance: (i) Improve change management support for the reform’s implementation. (ii) Strategically strengthen country-level procurement capacity. (iii) Consistently manage the full spectrum of procurement risks to maximize project success.Publication Survey on the Implementation of the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01)Since its launch in January 2017 at the first UN World Data Forum in South Africa, and its formal adoption by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its forty-eighth session in March 2017, the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data (CTGAP) has provided a framework for planning and implementing the statistical capacity building activities needed to achieve the scope and intent of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and to mobilize funding for the modernization of national statistical systems across the world. However, when the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic hit the world in early 2020, national statistical authorities and the international statistical community inevitably shifted their attention to the immediate challenge of ensuring the continuity of the most basic statistical operations, and to addressing new, urgent data demands. As a consequence, significant resources were diverted away from longer-term initiatives aimed at achieving the shared goals crystallized in the commitment and vision of the CTGAP. This report presents the results of a survey conducted by the World Bank, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), and PARIS21, with the aim to inform actions by decision makers and international partners to implement, monitor, and finance the CTGAP. This last survey was launched with the purpose of seeing beyond the immediate crisis, and to ensure that the current constraints do not distract attention from the common goals enshrined in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the implementation of the CTGAP.Publication WBG COVID-19 Crisis Response Operational Update(Washington, DC, 2022-03-31)This note provides an update on the WBG’s COVID-19 Crisis Response, outlined in June 2020 to help developing countries address the impacts of the pandemic while maintaining a line of sight to long-term development goals. It comprises five short sections: (I) the impacts of COVID-19 and compounding crises on developing countries, (II) an update on the WBG’s operational crisis response and priorities moving forward, (III) the critical role of international coordination, (IV) WBG financing framework for GRID, and (V) concluding remarks.Publication Private Health Sector Assessment in Ghana(World Bank, 2011-04-26)Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa confront serious health challenges; however, Ghana has done beer than many of its neighbors. Ghana's life expectancy at birth is 60 years (versus 53 for all of Sub-Saharan Africa), the infant mortality rate is 73 per thousand (versus 79), and the maternal mortality ratio is 562 per 100,000 (versus 832) (World Bank 2009b). Ghana has worked hard to achieve the gains it has made, and it has benefited from substantial assistance from external development partners. Ghana has separated policy making the Ministry of Health, (MOH) from provision Ghana Health Service (GHS) in the public sector and decentralized health service management to the district level. In 2004, Ghana instituted its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to ease consumers' need to mobilize payment at the time of illness. The private health sector in Ghana is a large and important factor in the market for health-related goods and services. The size and configuration of private providers and their contribution to health sector outcomes. With beer information about the size, scope, distribution, and constraints of private actors, Ghana's public policy makers could engage more effectively with the private sector. Through dialogue and the use of regulatory mechanisms and other tools, public policy could influence the practices and development of the private role in health so that it beer serves national health goals and objectives. The research team employed a supply and demand approach to identify market, policy, and institutional failures or weaknesses that could be addressed through policy change and action. The specific analyses conducted included the following: secondary analysis of nationally representative household surveys in Ghana; mapping of the private health sector and short-form questionnaire with all formal health service providers public and private in Ghana; focus group discussions with a subset of private providers in the mapping sample; patient exit polls at a subset of facilities in the mapping sample; population focus groups with women and men in the mapped districts; and national-level key informant interviews.Publication The Role of Coherence in Strengthening Community Accountability for Remote Schools in Indonesia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04)Incoherence in accountability relationships, or the lack of alignment between the various components of a specific education system, can hamper the quality of education. Such incoherence can be a particular challenge in resource constrained, remote villages where teachers tend to have higher educational capital and social status than the parents and communities whom they serve. We analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from a randomized controlled trial of a social accountability mechanism (SAM) for primary schools in remote Indonesian villages. The intervention had three treatment groups, all of which included the SAM, that engaged village-level stakeholders in a consensus-building process that led to joint service agreements for supporting the learning process. Prior analyses have found that all three treatment groups significantly improved student learning, but the treatment group combining the SAM with teacher performance pay based on camera-monitored teacher attendance led to much larger gains than the SAM-only treatment group or the treatment group combining the SAM with teacher performance pay based on a community-evaluated scorecard. Drawing on a range of quantitative data sources across all treatment group schools (process monitoring, survey, and service agreement indicators) and qualitative data from nine case study schools (interviews and focus group discussions), we show first that the student learning gains across all three treatment groups were accompanied by increases in both the coherence of the accountability relationships between village-level stakeholders and the degree to which these relationships were oriented toward the purpose of cultivating learning. We further show that the treatment group combining the SAM with camera monitored teacher attendance led to greater improvements in the coherence of accountability relationships than the other treatment groups, because the cameras improved both the technical capacity and the social legitimacy of community members to hold teachers accountable. This coherence-focused, relational explanation for the relative effectiveness of the treatment groups has more explanatory power than alternative explanations that focus narrowly on information quality or incentive structure. Our analysis reinforces arguments for ensuring that accountability structures are coherent with the local context, including local social structures and power dynamics.