The global health community is abuzz about the results of the latest Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD 2010) launched earlier this month. While experts will continue to debate the methodologies used to derive estimates of disease and mortality for 187 countries, and to assess 67 risk factors, the study’s conclusions still carry important messages for the World Bank’s work in health.
Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
Growing old is almost a universal dream. Over the past two centuries, life expectancy in Western Europe increased from 32 (in 1800) to over 80 years in 2011. This unprecedented leap in human history came as the combination of technological advances in medicine, improved living conditions, and better nutrition, among other factors. However, old age is also often accompanied with a general deterioration in physical capacities, proneness to disease and sickness, and the inability to engage in economic activity. This heightens the risk of poverty and insecurity thereby requiring societies to find mechanisms to support their elderly population.
Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
How much a worker earns for her or his labor is important for different reasons. First, it matters with regard to poverty since labor income counts usually for an important share of households' revenue. Secondly, it influences firms' competitiveness, especially for labor intensive activities such as manufacturing and agriculture. Thirdly, it is relevant for equity as anybody should expect a fair remuneration for his efforts. It is therefore not surprising that wages have attracted a lot of attention from economists and policy makers across the world over the years.
Our Top Ten Blog Posts by Readership in 2012
Originally published on April 3, 2012
Knowledge, or the lack of, is often associated with the success or failure of development initiatives. For decades, communication’s main role was to fill the knowledge gap between what audiences knew and what they needed to know, with the assumption that this would induce change. We now know that this is seldom the case. In the modernization paradigm, media were expected to provide needed knowledge through messages that could fill knowledge gaps, build modern attitudes, and eventually shape behaviours. After years of under-delivering on their promises, development managers and decision-makers are increasingly realizing that it is not enough to have sound technical solutions and disseminate information in order to have audiences adopt the innovations.
Sri Lanka's population is young now, but getting older quickly. What does this demographic transition mean to you and for Sri Lanka?
Join a live chat Jan. 7 on the World Bank Sri Lanka Facebook page with experts including Indralal De Silva, professor at the University of Colombo; Sundararajan Gopalan, senior health, nutrition, and population specialist with the World Bank; Shalika Subasinghe, social protection consuiltant with the World Bank; and Tehani Ariyaratne of the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA).
The discussion will focus on the dimensions of growing old in Sri Lanka and move on to the challenge Sri Lanka is facing in dealing with an aging population with limited resources.
Our Top Ten Blog Posts by Readership in 2012
Originally published on April 4, 2012
Cities are often associated with mixed emotions. They can sometimes make us feel insecure, disconnected and lonely, even in a crowd; while, in other moments, they provide the setting for the happiest events in our lives.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, urban spaces have a huge impact on how people participate in public life. Regular readers of this blog know that the original concept of the public sphere originates from the agora in ancient Greek city-states. The agora was a physical place where people gathered to deliberate and exchange their opinions – a true marketplace of ideas. The modern public sphere has now shifted more into the virtual realm, through various technologies and social media.
Well before sunrise in the small village of Msangani, Tanzania, Tunu ali Matekenya begins work at five, baking fresh bread. Formerly an agricultural laborer, Tunu’s life has improved thanks to entrepreneurship training she received in using advanced cookstoves.
“The oven I am using is very efficient, it is easy to use and consumes less charcoal, which reduces the cost of baking...all this means more profit” Tunu exclaims proudly.
In many areas of the developing world, women and children spend hours foraging for wood and other fuel sources then prepare meals around open fires or primitive cookstoves in poorly ventilated homes. Not only does this present an obvious fire hazard, but it also means they are inhaling toxic fumes from incomplete combustion of toxins that are responsible for nearly 500,000 premature and preventable deaths annually in Sub-Saharan Africa. The problem is particularly acute because 82 percent of the population depends on charcoal, dung, fuel wood, and forms of biomass for cooking purposes.
It’s the end of the year, which means there are all sorts of retrospectives on the big things that happened in 2012. Here’s a list of interesting articles that recap the year gone by.
• Andres Marroquin’s blog lists the top ten economic papers of 2012. Topping the list is a working paper from the Journal of Politics 201 titled ‘Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism’. See more papers here.
• Consider yourself an aficionado of the latest in global development issues? Then test your knowledge by taking a quiz put together by The Guardian.
Evidence-based policy has been the mantra for what seems like decades. Practitioners are aware of this, just as enlightened researchers are aware of the pressures acting on aid agency staff. But even with the best will in the world turning evidence into practice can be challenging. Let’s take the recent findings of ODI’s five year research program investigating the growth and development performance of patrimonial regimes in Africa.
The Prospects Daily will be on Winter recess and will resume on
Wednesday January 2nd, 2013.
Financial Markets…Global equities declined and US Treasuries gained after the Congress failed to agree on a plan to allow higher taxes on those earning more than $1 million as budget talks stalled. The MSCI All-Country World Index dropped 0.8% at 10:44 a.m. in New York and the Standard Poor’s 500 Index slumped 0.9%. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slid 0.4%, falling from a 19-month high. US Treasuries rose, with the yield on 10-year Treasuries decreasing five basis points to 1.75 percent.
The MSCI Emerging Market Index slid 1.1%, its biggest drop in more than five weeks. China’s stocks retreated from a four-month high on concern that the rally from the beginning of this month was excessive. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.7%. India’s Sensex slid 1.1%.
High-income Economies…US durable goods orders rose 0.7% (m/m) in November, following an upwardly revised 1.1% gain in October. Orders for capital goods excluding defense and aircraft – a proxy for future business investment – rose 2.7% (m/m) building on an upwardly revised 3.2% gain in October.
US consumer sentiment, however, slumped in December, with the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index falling sharply to 72.9 from 82.7 in November, reflecting consumers’ concerns about uncertainty over negotiations on tax hikes and spending cuts that are set to come into effect in the new year.
UK GDP growth for the third quarter was revised slightly down to 0.9% (q/q) (implying an annualized rate of 3.6% q/q) from the earlier reported 1.0%. Despite the downward revision, this was the UK economy's best performance since the second quarter of 2010.
Denmark’s GDP grew at an annualized 1.2% (q/q) in the third quarter, following a 2.8% annualized decline in the second quarter.
Canada’s consumer price fell to the lowest in three years in November, declining to 0.8% (y/y) compared with 1.2% in October. On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.2% due to declines in fuel costs and automobile prices. Inflation is now below the central bank’s 1%-3% target range.
Poland’s retail sales growth slowed to 2.4% (y/y) in November from 3.3% in October, falling 6.4% (m/m), pointing to a slowing consumer demand amid high unemployment. Poland's unemployment rate rose to 12.9% in November from 12.5% in October.
Developing Economies…Argentina's industrial production dropped 1.4% (y/y) in November and declined 2.1% (m/m) versus October, due to slowing down of Brazilian demand for Argentine automobiles as well as decline in investment and domestic demand.
Brazil's unemployment rate dropped to 4.9% in November from 5.3% in October. November figure was the lowest since December 2011, when the jobless rate was 4.7%.
Colombia’s GDP growth slowed to 2.1% (y/y) in the third quarter from 4.9% in the second quarter, to a large extent due to a 12.3% drop in construction. On a quarterly basis Colombian economy contracted 0.7% (q/q) in the third quarter. The Government of Colombia lowered economic growth forecast for full-year 2012 to 4-4.5%, due to weak expansion in the third quarter, from a previous targeted 4.8%.
Credit to firms can be classified in two categories: revolving credit lines and term loans. Revolving credit lines offer borrowers the option to draw funds up to a limit, repay and redraw them as they see fit. In term loans, borrowers usually make a single draw of funds and commit to pay a fixed amount periodically. Both types of credit have pros and cons. However, it is not clear what determines whether a firm obtains a revolving credit or a term loan. In particular, two interesting questions arise. First, what is the relationship between the type of credit to firms and the economic cycle? Second, are there any differences between those types of loans in terms of pricing? In a recently released paper, I explore these questions for Mexican firms, using credit level information from Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) for the period of 2001-2012.
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Mulheres e crianças primeiro! Este chamado parece familiar? A regra cavalheiresca que ficou famosa no naufrágio do Titanic parece ter se estendido, de nossas mentes, a todas as situações de emergência.
Apesar disso, parece que na América Latina e no Caribe (e) esta regra há muito tempo estabelecida não pode ser levada ao pé da letra. Como se sabe, em geral mulheres e crianças não ocupam o primeiro lugar nas iniciativas públicas destinadas às situações emergenciais e de crise.
Ennovent and WWF Switzerland announced the winners of their Tropical Forest Challenge this past Monday. The winners came from two categories: company and startup. Launched in May 2012, the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge is a global initiative managed by Ennovent on behalf of WWF Switzerland to discover the best for-profit enterprises from around the world that have a positive impact on the conservation of tropical forest biodiversity.
The winners are endorsed by WWF Switzerland as best solution providers and are awarded global visibility, networking and capacity building opportunities from the challenge partners such as, Good Company, Sustainatopia and Thomson Reuters Foundations’. These Challenge rewards are important as many early-stage entrepreneurs face resource gaps – such as networks and training – that inhibit their ability to scale high potential ventures.
In recent weeks, fiscal policy – once the domain of policy wonks – has become part of dinner-table conversations. As Washington attempts to put its fiscal house in order, catchy metaphors from "fiscal cliff" to "fiscal calamity" to "austerity bomb" (and even "hostage crisis") permeate the media. Amidst the media spin and misnomers however, there lies a crucial debate.
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a systematic effort to assess the global distribution and causes of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors, was launched last week in London.
And a special issue of The Lancet has published its results (http://www.thelancet.com/themed/global-burden-of-disease).
What are some of the main findings for Africa that can be drawn from the GBD 2010?
