Publication: How Pro-poor and Progressive is
Social Spending in Zambia?
Loading...
Date
2012-04
ISSN
Published
2012-04
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper analyzes the distributional effect of public spending in Zambia using the most recent data from the 2010 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey. The analysis focuses on both the "traditional" social sectors, such as education and public healthcare, as well as other spending areas less thoroughly studied, such as agricultural support programs. Ultimately, this benefit incidence analysis addresses the extent to which spending is pro-poor and progressive; that is, it primarily benefits the poor and does so at an increasing rate as welfare levels decrease. The results indicate that overall public education spending in Zambia is neither pro-poor nor progressive, but while this is true for the system as a whole it is not true for all of its parts. The net unitary benefits of primary and secondary education are clearly both pro-poor and progressive. However, their progressivity is ultimately outweighed by the extreme concentration of tertiary education benefits among the wealthiest members of Zambian society. Health spending is also regressive and not pro-poor. Although unitary net benefits are slightly progressive, unequal access remains the key constraint. In contrast, the benefits of agricultural-input subsidy programs follow a somewhat progressive pattern (for each beneficiary in the top quintile there are almost two beneficiaries in the poorest quintile) but clearly suffer from targeting problems. Consequently, without better-designed and more conscientiously implemented targeting mechanisms, public spending on health, education, and fertilizers will not be able to further the government's larger objectives for pro-poor and progressive development policy.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Cuesta, Jose; Kabaso, Pamela; Suarez-Becerra, Pablo. 2012. How Pro-poor and Progressive is
Social Spending in Zambia?. Policy Research Working Paper ; No. 6052. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6054 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication From Tailwinds to Headwinds(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-10)The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been transformative for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). These economies now account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from about 25 percent in 2000, a trend driven by robust collective growth in the three largest EMDEs—China, India, and Brazil (the EM3). Collectively, EMDEs have contributed about 60 percent of annual global growth since 2000, on average, double the share during the 1990s. Their ascendance was powered by swift global trade and financial integration, especially during the first decade of the century. Interdependence among these economies has also increased markedly. Today, nearly half of goods exports from EMDEs go to other EMDEs, compared to one-quarter in 2000. As cross-border linkages have strengthened, business cycles among EMDEs and between EMDEs and advanced economies have become more synchronized, and a distinct EMDE business cycle has emerged. Cross-border business cycle spillovers from the EM3 to other EMDEs are sizable, at about half of the magnitude of spillovers from the largest advanced economies (the United States, the euro area, and Japan). Yet EMDEs confront a host of headwinds at the turn of the second quarter of the century. Progress implementing structural reforms in many of these economies has stalled. Globally, protectionist measures and geopolitical fragmentation have risen sharply. High debt burdens, demographic shifts, and the rising costs of climate change weigh on economic prospects. A successful policy approach to accelerate growth and development should focus on boosting investment and productivity, navigating a difficult external environment, and enhancing macroeconomic stability.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Nicaragua : Poverty Assessment, Volume 1. Main Report(Washington, DC, 2008-05)Nicaragua is a small, open economy that is vulnerable to external and natural shocks. With an estimated Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of US$1000 in 2006, and a total population of 5.2 million, it is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Forty six percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2005 (while 15 percent lived in extreme poverty), and the incidence of poverty is more than twice as high in rural areas (68 percent) than in urban areas (29 percent). Nicaragua's social indicators also rank among the lowest in the region, commensurate with its relatively low per capita income level. Nicaragua's long-term development vision is set out in its National Development Plan (NDP), 2005-2009, which gives greater importance to economic growth than the strategy document that preceded it. This also serves as its second Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). The goals of the PRS incorporate the MDGs, and establish medium (2006-2010) to long term targets (2015). By 2005, the country had made satisfactory progress on meeting the PRS/MDG targets for reducing extreme poverty, increasing net primary enrollment, and reducing infant and child mortality. This National Development Plan is being revised by the new government that took office on January 2007, which has expressed interest in maintaining policy continuity in those areas that have shown progress and tackling pending development challenges. These include efforts to improve the country's growth performance while reducing poverty, macroeconomic stability as a necessary, although not sufficient, condition to stimulate growth, and reduce poverty, a special focus on social issues that impact the poorest, including the MDGs, and environmental sustainability. Programmatic priorities for the new administration include a renewed focus on poverty reduction using a multi-sector approach, implementing pragmatic solutions to the energy crisis for the short to medium term; expanding water and sanitation services with environmentally sustainable solutions; sharing economic growth more broadly to tackle hunger, malnutrition and poverty; placing greater emphasis on preventive health and continuing social protection programs; extending illiteracy programs and improving education services, and pursuing municipal decentralization, state modernization, and good governance.Publication Republic of Congo : Enhancing Efficiency in Education and Health Public Spending for Improved Quality Service Delivery for All(Washington, DC, 2014-06)The development of a wealthier, literate, and healthy society is a fundamental goal of Congo's national development plan (NDP) 2012-16 and poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) 2012-16. Appropriate funding allocations and efficient use of funds in education and health are fundamental for the development of the sectors. This public expenditure review (PER) of the Congolese education and health sectors aims at providing inputs to improve efficiency and equity in spending in these sectors. It takes into account the following findings of the macro PER: (i) spending on the social sectors is still low although it has increased over time; (ii) the fiscal space generated by the increased oil revenues has largely boosted investment expenditure; and (iii) budget execution is low which contributes to lower the real level of public spending. The PER is divided in two main parts. Part I, constitutes an overview of the two sector reports. Thus, it presents a brief analysis of the context of the country, a summary of findings of the education and health PER, a discussion on cross-cutting themes on spending in the two sectors, and a summary of recommendations. Part II includes the education and health PER.Publication Social Spending, Distribution, and Equality of Opportunities : Opportunity Incidence Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)Existing evidence forms a body of "conventional wisdom" on the redistributive impact of fiscal policies that has been recently questioned by more disaggregated analyses. This paper proposes an additional extension to the traditional benefit incidence analysis to explore further the extent to which the conventional wisdom holds, as well as to provide effective guidance in fiscal decision making. The benefit incidence analysis extension includes linking fiscal policies with the concept of equality of opportunities. The paper describes this approach and showcases the application of the proposed "opportunity incidence analysis" to six pilot countries: Liberia, Cote d Ivoire, Zambia, Tajikistan, Thailand, and Paraguay. Three main contributions stand out: first, opportunity incidence analysis complements traditional benefit incidence analysis by applying its mechanics to a more forward looking concept of equal opportunity. Second, opportunities can be used to target public spending with higher precision. Third, micro-simulations can be used to understand the cost-effectiveness of alternative spending interventions that seek to improve equality of opportunities. All of these results complement the diagnosis produced by traditional incidence analysis and provide useful information to guide specific policy decisions.Publication Armenia : Poverty Assessment, Volume 2. Main Report(Washington, DC, 2003-11)This report reviews poverty in Armenia in 2001, and examines the most recent trends covering the 1998/99 to 2001 period. It looks at the determinants of poverty, and analyzes linkages between economic growth, sector policies and poverty. The findings are based on two rounds of the Armenia Integrated Living Conditions Survey (ILCS), one carried out in 1998/99, and the other in 2001. The report has contributed to the development of Armenia's national strategy for growth and poverty reduction. Poverty is high in Armenia, with an estimated 48 percent of the population below the poverty line in 2001. Despite some 20 percent still living in extreme poverty, there has been nonetheless, a significant decline in poverty, as poverty incidence dropped by 12 percent, and extreme poverty incidence by 25 percent from their respective levels in 1998/99. There is a strong correlation between poverty and low educational attainment, while the unemployed and non-participants in the labor market, face the highest poverty risk, depth and severity of poverty. In rural areas, poverty is positively correlated with the size of landholdings. The drop in poverty reflects a decline in urban poverty since 1998/99. Rural poverty has increased slightly. Yerevan, the capital and largest urban area in Armenia, registered the most significant reduction in poverty, as poverty incidence there dropped by 23 percent and extreme poverty by over a third, to 45 percent and 20 percent, respectively. While poverty in other urban areas also decreased, their poverty incidence still remains above the national rate, at 52 percent. Poverty incidence is now roughly the same in urban and rural areas, 48.5 percent and 47.9 percent, respectively. Government policies aimed at macroeconomic stability and diversification of the economy should be pursued, and, recommendations further include increasing the level and quality of education, and ensuring better health for all, critical to reduce poverty. Concerning social protection, consideration should be given to expanding it to cover most of the extremely poor, as well as refining targeting mechanisms.Publication Integrating the Poor into Universal Health Coverage in Vietnam(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)This case study is aimed at providing a descriptive assessment of the key features of Vietnam's Social Health Insurance (SHI), focusing on the impediments to integrating the poor into universal coverage. The trajectory of SHI in Vietnam is similar to that of many other countries in the East Asia and Pacific region. The poor were covered under a separate Health Care Fund for the Poor to begin with. The 2009 Law on Health Insurance merged all of the different programs into one. Health insurance premiums for the poor were fully subsidized by the government and enrolment became mandatory, resulting in almost complete enrollment of the poor by 2011. Vietnam has combined elements of contributory social health insurance with substantial levels of tax financing to provide coverage for the poor and informal sector. The case study is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the institutional structure and system characteristics of Vietnam's SHI. Section 3 addresses the main topic of the case study - the impediments to integrating the poor. Section 4 concludes by addressing the pending agenda.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.Publication Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.Publication Design Thinking for Social Innovation(2010-07)Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.