Equity and Development

11 items available

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This series addresses the distributional consequences of macroeconomic policies and showcases techniques for systematically analyzing the distributional consequences of policy reform. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the Research Group in the World Bank's Development Economics Vice Presidency.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
  • Publication
    Fair Progress?: Economic Mobility Across Generations Around the World
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-05-09) Narayan, Ambar; Van der Weide, Roy; Cojocaru, Alexandru; Lakner, Christoph; Redaelli, Silvia; Mahler, Daniel Gerszon; Ramasubbaiah, Rakesh Gupta N.; Thewissen, Stefan
    Fair Progress? Economic Mobility Across Generations Around the World looks at an issue that has gotten much attention in the developed world, but with, for the first time, new data and analysis covering most of the world, including developing economies. The analysis examines whether those born in poverty or in prosperity are destined to remain in the same economic circumstances into which they were born, and looks back over a half a century at whether children’s lives are better or worse than their parents’ in different parts of the world. It suggests local, national, and global actions and policies that can help break the cycle of poverty, paving the way for the next generation to realize their potential and improve their lives.
  • Publication
    Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-07-15) Heller, Patrick; Rao, Vijayendra; Heller, Patrick; Rao, Vijayendra; Appadurai, Arjun; Baiocchi, Gianpaolo; Evans, Peter; Fung, Archon; Gauri, Varun; Russon Gilman, Hollie; Mackie, Gerry; Mansbridge, Jane; Sanyal, Paromita; Shkabatur, Jennifer; Singh, J.P.; Swidler, Ann; Cotts Watkins, Susan
    Deliberation is the process by which a group of people, each with equal voice, can - via a process of discussion and debate - reach an agreement. This book attempts to do two things. First, it rethinks the role of deliberation in development and shows that it has potential well beyond a narrow focus on participatory projects. Deliberation, if properly instituted, has the potential to have a transformative effect on many if not all aspects of development, and especially in addressing problems of collective action, coordination, and entrenched inequality. This has broad implications both at the global and local level. Second, the book demonstrates that taking deliberation seriously calls for a different approach to both research and policy design and requires a much greater emphasis on the processes by which decisions are made, rather than an exclusive focus on the outcomes. Deliberation and Development contributes to a broader literature to understand the role of communicative processes in development.
  • Publication
    Well Begun but Not Yet Done : Progress and Emerging Challenges for Poverty Reduction in Vietnam
    (World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09-09) Kozel, Valerie; Kozel, Valerie
    This book presents the key findings from a new poverty assessment for Vietnam, led jointly by the World Bank and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS). It takes a fresh look at the lives of poor men, women, and children, and explores the constraints and opportunities they face today in rising out of poverty. The book aims to do three things. First, it proposes revisions to Vietnam’s poverty monitoring system—via better data, updated welfare aggregates, and new poverty lines—to bring these more in line with economic and social conditions in present-day Vietnam. Second, it revisits the stylized facts about deprivation and poverty in Vietnam, and develops an updated profile and diagnostic of poverty using data from the most recent Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS 2010), complemented by new qualitative field studies. Third, it aims to forge a consensus around some of the key challenges for reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity over the next decade, including changing regional patterns of poverty and wealth, high and persistent poverty among ethnic minorities, substantial and increasing vulnerability, and rising inequality in outcomes and opportunities.
  • Publication
    Right to Work? Assessing India's Employment Guarantee Scheme in Bihar
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-02-26) Dutta, Puja; Murgai, Rinku; Ravallion, Martin; van de Walle, Dominique
    India’s 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act creates a justiciable 'right to work' by promising up to 100 days of wage employment per year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Work is provided in public works projects at the stipulated minimum wage. This study asks: Are the conditions stipulated by the Act met in practice? How much impact on poverty do the earnings from the scheme have? Why might that impact fall short of its potential? How can the scheme bridge that gap? The bulk of the study focuses on the scheme’s performance in one of India’s poorest states, Bihar, where one would hope that a scheme such as this would help reduce poverty. The study finds that the scheme is falling well short of its potential impact on poverty in Bihar. Analysis of the study’s survey data points to a number of reasons. Workers are not getting all the work they want, and they are not getting the full wages due. And participation in the scheme is far from costless to them. Many report that they had to give up some other income-earning activity when they took up work. The unmet demand for work is the single most important policy-relevant factor in accounting for the gap between actual performance and the scheme’s potential impact on poverty. The study finds that there is very low public awareness of what needs to be done to obtain work. The study uses a randomized control trial of an awareness intervention—a specially designed fictional movie—to show how knowledge of rights and processes can be enhanced, as a key step toward better performance. While the movie was effective in raising awareness, it had little discernible effect on actions such as seeking employment when needed. This suggests that supply-side constraints must also be addressed, in addition to raising public awareness. A number of specific supply-side constraints to work provision are identified, including poor implementation capacity, weak financial management and monitoring systems.
  • Publication
    Perspectives on Poverty in India : Stylized Facts from Survey Data
    (World Bank, 2011-04-13) World Bank
    This report's objective is to develop the evidence base for policy making in relation to poverty reduction. It produces a diagnosis of the broad nature of the poverty problem and its trends in India, focusing on both consumption poverty and human development outcomes. It also includes attention in greater depth to three pathways important to inclusive growth and poverty reduction harnessing the potential of urban growth to stimulate rural-based poverty reduction, rural diversification away from agriculture, and tackling social exclusion. This report shows that urban growth, which has increasingly outpaced growth in rural areas, has helped to reduce poverty for urban residents directly. In addition, evidence appears of a much stronger link from urban economic growth to rural poverty reduction. Stronger links with rural poverty are due to a more integrated economy. Urban areas are a demand hub for rural producers, as well as a source of employment for the rural labor force. They are aiding the transformation of the rural economy out of agriculture. In urban areas, it is small and medium-size towns, rather than large cities, that appear to demonstrate the strongest urban-rural growth links. Urban growth also stimulates rural-urban migration. But although some increase in such migration has occurred over time, migration levels in India remain relatively low compared to other countries.
  • Publication
    Poverty and Social Exclusion in India
    (Washington, DC, 2011-04-12) World Bank
    The report is organized around three chapters, in addition to this overview, each one dealing with an excluded group: Scheduled Tribe (ST), Scheduled Caste (SC), and women. The objective is to provide a diagnostic of how the three excluded groups under analysis have fared along various development indicators during a period of rapid economic growth in the national economy. In seeking this objective, the report also addresses correlates and the processes that explain how and why these groups have fared the way they have over a period of time. Chapter two in this report focuses on the Adivasis or STs. In most analyses, this topic is addressed after the Dalits, but the author has placed it first for analytical and organizational purposes. There are two reasons for this: tribal groups are not strictly within the caste system, and the bonds of rituals do not affect their relations with the world in general. Also the report shows that outcomes among Adivasis are among the worst, despite considerable variation across places of residence and tribal groupings. Finally, Chapter three focuses on Dalits, a term that has united the SCs in a process that is more empowering than the process of identification by individual names, which have been and continue to be associated with ritually impure occupations.
  • Publication
    No Growth without Equity? Inequality, Interests, and Competition in Mexico
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Levy, Santiago; Walton, Michael; Levy, Santiago; Walton, Michael
    In this introduction, the authors do three things. They first introduce the puzzle and relate it to existing interpretations from market reformists and their critics, arguing that both sets of views are inadequate. The authors then offer an alternative interpretation: that entrenched inequities sustained by a rent-sharing political equilibrium are a primary source of inefficiencies and weak growth. Moreover, this equilibrium has been resilient to democratization in ways that can be explained by the nature of the underlying forces. Finally, they draw some tentative implications for the future, suggesting how public action could potentially support a shift to more equitable and more efficient equilibrium. The volume's chapters are introduced within the structure of this argument.
  • Publication
    Gender Aspects of the Trade and Poverty Nexus : A Macro-Micro Approach
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Bussolo, Maurizio; Bussolo, Maurizio; De Hoyos, Rafael E.
    This report is on the findings of a major international research project examining the links between trade, gender, and poverty. Trade liberalization can create economic opportunities, but women and men cannot take advantage of these opportunities on an equal basis. Women and men differ in their endowments, control over resources, access to labor markets, and their roles within the household. It may seem obvious that gender differences play an important role in transmitting the effects of trade expansion to poverty, especially in less developed countries, where gender inequality is usually more pronounced. Although the literature includes numerous analyses on the links between trade and poverty and between gender inequality and poverty, it seems not to have combined these two sets of studies in a consistent empirical framework. The main objective for the research project documented in this book was to fill, at least in part, this gap in the literature. This report describes the simplest conceptual framework that can be used to analyze the linkages between trade and poverty through gender. It includes two parts. The first, based on standard international trade models, considers the linkages between trade and gender. The second, based mainly on the microeconomic models of household behavior, deals with the linkages between gender and poverty.
  • Publication
    The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution : Macro-Micro Evaluation Techniques and Tools
    (Washington, DC : World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2008-01-19) Bourguignon, François; Bussolo, Maurizio; Pereira da Silva, Luiz A.
    This book assembles methodologies and techniques to evaluate the poverty impact of macroeconomic policies. It takes as a departure point a companion volume, the impact of economic policies on poverty and income distribution: evaluation techniques and tools. This volume was primarily a review of microeconomic techniques aimed at assessing policies that are directly concerned with the welfare of poor households or individuals such as changing the level of cash transfers to the poorest households, increasing price subsidies for basic consumer goods, and the like. In addition, the second part of that earlier publication introduced basic techniques to deal with the poverty impact of macroeconomic policies that by definition are not targeted and affect the whole population. This volume presents a comprehensive array of macro-micro modeling frameworks. It begins by highlighting the limitation of macroeconomic models that use representative household groups to link macroeconomic policies and microeconomic data. It then moves to more complexes, top-down modeling frameworks, which combine (top) macro models and (down) micro simulation models that, in turn, can be simple micro accounting models or behavioral micro models. The book also explores integrated models, in which the macro and micro parts are either linked by iterative feedback loops or solved simultaneously as a single model. By providing clear access to these techniques, by documenting their analytical underpinnings, their data requirements, and their range of applicability, and even by highlighting some of their limitations, this book provides a unique compendium for practitioners, policy makers, and anyone interested in economic development.
  • Publication
    Land in Transition : Reform and Poverty in Rural Vietnam
    (Washington, DC : World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Ravallion, Martin
    The policy reforms called for in the transition from a socialist command economy to a developing market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving many rural households out of farming into more remunerative (urban and rural) non-farm activities. Reforms that shift the rural economy from the relatively rigid, control-based farming institutions found under socialist agriculture to a more flexible, market-based model in which production incentives are strong can thus play an important role in the process of economic growth. However, such reforms present a major challenge to policy makers, who are concerned that they will generate socially unacceptable inequalities in land and other dimensions relevant to people's living standards. This book studies how the changes in land institutions and land allocation required for Vietnam's agrarian transition affected people's living standards-notably that of the country's rural poor. Living standards means household command over commodities, as measured by consumption