Publication: The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2024: Pathways to Scale
Loading...
Files
5,590 downloads
1,615 downloads
110 downloads
77 downloads
Date
2024-11-20
ISSN
Published
2024-11-20
Author(s)
Arévalo-Sánchez, Inés
Heisey, Janet
Chaudhary, Sarang
Clay, Timothy
Vasudeva Dutta, Puja
Andrews, Colin
Editor(s)
Abstract
The State of Economic Inclusion Report (SEI) 2024 explores efforts to scale up economic inclusion programs - bundles of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities to sustainably increase their incomes and assets - in the context of overlapping crisis. These programs transform the economic lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people, building their resilience and creating job opportunities.
The report features data from 405 programs across 88 countries, benefiting over 70 million individuals either directly or indirectly. This marks almost doubling in the number of programs and nearly a 50 percent increase in coverage since the SEI 2021 report. Governments continue to lead in scaling up these economic inclusion programs, covering nearly three-fourths of program participants. However, non-governmental programs have also significantly contributed to the increase in coverage in recent years, in addition to serving as both service providers and capacity building providers for governments.
The report offers five important contributions: 1) Positioning economic inclusion programs as crucial for building resilience and providing job opportunities for the poor and vulnerable in the face of overlapping crises. 2) Analyzing the global landscape over the past three years, highlighting the extent to which economic inclusion programs are being customized for diverse contexts and groups, including a cross-cutting focus on gender. 3) Reviewing progress and challenges in the design and implementation of government-led programs, including the interplay with communities, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. 4) Examining the emerging agenda of designing economic inclusion programs to enhance the long-term climate resilience of poor and vulnerable individuals and communities. 5) Featuring three spotlights that unpack emerging evidence from government-led programs, customization strategies targeting youth, and the increasing role of digital tools and technologies in program delivery.
Data from the report are available on the PEI Data Portal (www.peiglobal.org).
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Arévalo-Sánchez, Inés; Heisey, Janet; Chaudhary, Sarang; Clay, Timothy; Strokova, Victoria; Vasudeva Dutta, Puja; Andrews, Colin. 2024. The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2024: Pathways to Scale. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42408 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-01-19)The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 sheds light on one of the most intractable challenges faced by development policy makers and practitioners: transforming the economic lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Economic inclusion programs are a bundle of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities so they can raise their incomes and build their assets. Programs targeting the extreme poor and vulnerable groups are now under way in 75 countries. This report presents data and evidence from 219 of these programs, which are reaching over 90 million beneficiaries. Governments now lead the scale-up of economic inclusion interventions, often building on pre-existing national programs such as safety nets, livelihoods and jobs, and financial inclusion, and 93 percent of the total beneficiaries are covered by government programs. The report offers four important contributions: • A detailed analysis of the nature of these programs, the people living in extreme poverty and vulnerability who they support, and the organizational challenges and opportunities inherent in designing and leading them. • An evidence review of 80 quantitative and qualitative evaluations of economic inclusion programs in 37 countries. • The first multicountry costing study including both government-led and other economic inclusion programs, indicating that programs show potential for cost efficiencies when integrated into national systems. • Four detailed case studies featuring programs underway in Bangladesh, India, Peru, and the Sahel, which highlight the programmatic and institutional adaptations required to scale in quite diverse contexts. Data from the report are available on the PEI Data Portal (http://www.peiglobal.org) where users can explore and submit data to build on this baseline.Publication A Path to Jobs for the Urban Poor(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-17)A rapidly urbanizing world presents enormous economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable but also presents significant barriers to their economic inclusion. About two thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers by 2050, with nearly 90 percent of this increase in Asia and Africa. Section two is a summary of the urban context and challenges. Section three then describes a framework for fostering urban economic inclusion, and section four examines the current landscape of economic inclusion programs, starting with the policy impetus driving their emergence. Section 5 turns to the case for scaling up urban programs by synthesizing evidence on costs and impacts. Section 6 draws conclusions. This note draws heavily on the framework and analysis provided in The State of Economic Inclusion (SEI) Report 2021: the potential to scale (Andrews et al. 2021), especially the PEI 2020 Landscape and Costing Surveys, an updated World Bank portfolio (2021) review, and an updated review of impact evaluations of urban economic inclusion programs.Publication Assessing the Impact and Cost of Economic Inclusion Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02)This paper analyzes global evidence on the impact and costs of economic inclusion programs to transform the economic lives of households and communities living in extreme poverty. The analysis uses 107 quantitative and qualitative impact evaluations from 80 economic inclusion programs. Additionally, the paper presents analysis of costing data from 34 programs, surveyed using a newly developed PEI Quick Costing Tool 2020. The programs represent a range of sectors, geographies, contexts, and target populations; were both nongovernmental organization- and government-led; and represent programs implemented through social safety nets, livelihoods and jobs, and financial inclusion. Despite the challenges of the small number of studies available and limited comparability of impact and cost data, the findings indicate that a broad range of economic inclusion programs show promising and potentially sustained impact on a wide range of outcomes, with a bundled set of interventions showing larger impact on income, assets, and savings relative to stand-alone interventions. In many cases, the overall cost of economic inclusion programs is largely driven by a single component -- most frequently, business capital or consumption support. In its discussion, the paper explores drivers of impact and cost optimization strategies, preparing a preliminary understanding of cost-effectiveness of economic inclusion programs. The paper also identifies key areas for further research, including the need to shift the discussion on program impact from stand-alone, nonprofit-led programs to government-led programs; the opportunity to use a more systematic evidence base with comparable impact and cost outcomes and indicators; and prospects for using data, including disaggregated cost data, to inform policy and programming decisions more intentionally.Publication Operational Considerations for Urban Economic Inclusion Programming(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-14)This note is one of two designed to serve as a resource for policy makers and practitioners aiming to introduce or scale up economic inclusion programs in urban and peri-urban areas. The first note explores the potential of economic inclusion programs to promote the social and economic inclusion of the urban poor and vulnerable. It lays out a framework for such programming based on the current landscape and evidence and points to the central role economic inclusion programs can play in meeting the urban jobs challenge, facilitating a Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recovery, and building inclusive cities. This note addresses the question of how to operationalize these programs. It shows that a rethink is needed about the ways in which programs are designed and delivered to fit the needs and lifestyles of the urban poor. The emerging experience from a growing pipeline yields some important operational insights, but several questions remain to be answered in coming years, as programs continue to evolve and customize to the urban context.Publication Regional Study on Targeting Systems and Practices : Draft Policy Note(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06-28)This policy note aims to take stock of regional experiences in the area of targeting, both in the context of government systems and the World Bank's operational work, in South Asia. The main objectives are to review targeting systems and practices in the context of government programs; to critically review the role for and impact of targeting in the WB's operational work; and to extract lessons that can be used to deepen the relevance and impact of the WB's operational work in South Asia. The evidence presented in this note will serve as a resource for those interested in and/or planning some work on targeting related work in the region. In this sense, by presenting information on both country systems and performance of WB-led work, the note targets both practitioners and managers. The analysis focuses first on the architecture of targeting systems in South Asia, and on the determinants of targeting effectiveness, including the choice and design of the targeting tool, implementation and monitoring of the targeting tool, and the design, implementation and monitoring of the targeted program. The note concludes that international evidence a large fraction of the observed differences in targeting effectiveness across systems and programs, can be attributed to factors related to implementation and monitoring. This implies that investments aimed at correcting resource, capacity and logistic limitations in government systems could go a long way in improving targeting outcomes in the region.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Bank Annual Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This annual report, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, has been prepared by the Executive Directors of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)—collectively known as the World Bank—in accordance with the respective bylaws of the two institutions. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, has submitted this report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication The Impact of Climate Change on Education and What to Do about It(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-02)Education can be the key to ending poverty in a livable planet, but governments must act now to protect it. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. These extreme weather events are in turn disrupting schooling; precipitating learning losses, dropouts, and long-term impacts. Even if the most drastic climate mitigation strategies were implemented, extreme weather events will continue to have detrimental impacts on education outcomes.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.