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Beyond Growth: Is investing in infrastructure good for people’s well-being?

Jordan Schwartz's picture

Beyond Growth: Is investing in infrastructure good for people’s well-being? / World Bank Photo Collection

In our last blog, we asked whether it is possible for an infrastructure investment in Latin America and the Caribbean to hit the triple win: spur growth, aid societal well-being, and help the environment.

One young woman, on the World Bank Facebook page, posted this plea: "We as citizens have to demand these types of investments from our governments: modern roads, clean energy, investments that create employment without contaminating." ("Nosotros como ciudadanos tenemos que exigir ese tipo de inversiones a nuestros gobiernos: vías modernas, energía limpia que dé trabajo y no contamine.")

I take this as a signal that we should move beyond growth, so...

Latin America’s growth prospects: Made in China?

Tatiana Didier's picture

Latin America's Growth prospects:Made in China?

Global turmoil. Growing prospects of another recession. Crisis in the Eurozone. China’s role as a global growth and recovery engine thrown into question.

The current situation looks worrying enough as it is for Latin America –and the rest of the world for that matter- but the region’s growth prospects should be looked at beyond the current juncture and on the merits of its long-term strengths.
 
Here’s why. The last ten years or so have been very good for many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. They have witnessed the consolidation of a stable and resilient
macro-financial framework, relatively high growth rates, and advances in the equity agenda.

This new economic face of the region was perhaps most clearly portrayed by a rather robust performance, especially of South American countries, in the context of the recent global crisis. In effect, compared to the middle-income country average, the region’s recession in 2009 was relatively short-lived and, with the notable exception of Mexico, remarkably mild, which helped to make its recovery in 2010-2011 stronger.

In Nigeria, One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Volker Treichel's picture

I blogged a few months ago about a paper Justin Lin and I were writing that focused on applying  the Growth Identification and Facilitation Framework in Nigeria.  The paper has just recently been completed and is now available online.

In the meantime, attacks on the UN house in Abuja have highlighted the extreme social tensions experienced by Nigeria. Many of these tensions may be related to the country’s persistent poverty. In fact, notwithstanding high and sustained growth over the past decade, Nigeria’s job creation has barely kept up with the relentless growth of its workforce, and youth unemployment has further risen.  Moreover, formal sector employment has fallen, as a result of privatization and civil service retrenchment, while employment in informal family agriculture has increased. 

Nigeria urgently needs to increase employment intensity and sustainability of its growth performance, and our paper can be a useful tool for developing a strategy to do so. 

How Many More Bangladeshis are Now Breaking out of Poverty?

Naomi Ahmad's picture

Bangladesh reduced poverty from 40 percent to 31.5 percent between 2005 and 2010, according the new Household Income & Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010. Progress can also be seen in other dimensions of development.

The HIES is a major source of socio-economic information at the household level in Bangladesh. It provides data on household expenditure, income, consumption, savings, housing conditions, education, employment, health, sanitation, water supply, electricity usage, etc.

Health System Innovation in India Part II: Aarogyasri

Adam Wagstaff's picture

More than health insurance for the poor

In our last post, we showed how illness in India causes financial hardship and leaves Indians—especially poor ones—with limited access to affordable good-quality health care that can actually make them better. In this post, we outline a novel government-sponsored health insurance program in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP)—a program that has the potential not just to reduce financial impoverishment but also raise quality standards in hospital care.

a) “Actors”, and their rights and responsibilities

Initiated by the then chief minister of AP, the medical doctor YSR Reddy, the Rajiv Aarogyasri scheme started in 2007 and is targeted at the below-poverty line (BPL) population. The scheme focuses on life-saving procedures that aren’t covered elsewhere in India’s patchwork of health programs, for which treatment protocols are available, and for which specialist doctors and equipment are required. Currently 938 tertiary care procedures are covered. The scheme revolves around five key “actors”, one unique to Aarogyasri and all with interesting rights and responsibilities.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

ICT for Peacebuilding
Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management: Online Dispute Resolution, Governance, Participation

"Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management: Online Dispute Resolution, Governance, Participation edited by Marta Poblet is now available online and soon in print.

Contributing authors are some of the best writers and thinkers on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), mobile technologies and dispute resolution and  in the world today, including Ethan Katsh, Daniel Rainey, Jeffrey Aresty, Colin Rule, Chittu Nagarajan, Michael Best and Ken Banks. All of them are close friends. Ethan and Colin, it can be said, created the theory and practice ODR and way back in 2004 in Melbourne, encouraged me to pursue what at the time was to many a mad idea – the use of mobiles for conflict transformation." READ MORE

Migration to cities can equalize household income in rural China

Xubei Luo's picture

With Nong Zhu

Migrant workers have been contributing to one-sixth of China’s GDP growth since the mid 1980s. The impact of rural migrants’ contribution is best seen in cities during the Chinese New Year, when they return to reunite with their families, leaving behind a massive urban labor shortage. This happens every year despite urban families and restaurant owners offering high bonuses.

There is a consensus that migration has contributed to increased rural income, but views differ on its impact on rural inequality. My view is that rural households with higher incomes are not more likely than poorer households to participate in migration or benefit disproportionately from it. Adding to my recent blog in People Move, I would like to discuss the reasons behind this.

Welfare, Assets, Data Availability and the Living Standards Measurement Study

Kinnon Scott's picture

One is always grateful to see attention paid to the quality and quantity of household data available to study poverty. It is a subject dear to my heart and to my colleagues in the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS ) in the World Bank. In sub-Saharan Africa, as a recent Global Dashboard post titled “What do we really know about poverty and inequality?” by Claire Melamed points out, there is still a dearth of data, even after years of government effort and international support. But there are data -- in some countries lots of data -- so it’s worth highlighting what is there. Today I wanted to add some nuance to the discussion of income and assets raised by Claire and, probably more importantly, steer people to some new data that will, we hope, excite the most blasé of you out there.

Love and secrets

Markus Goldstein's picture

OK, let’s put two blog posts in a pot and stir.   In a previous post on measuring consumption, Jed gave us some food for thought, while over on Aid Thoughts, Matt is talking about how a respondent is seeing the enumerator on the sly to conceal land that he doesn’t want his wife to know about.   Put it together, and what do you have?

Impacts of migration on rural poverty and inequality in China

Xubei Luo's picture

with Nong Zhu.

In China, rural-to-urban migration and development of the rural non-farm sector strongly modified rural household income structure since the economic reform. In the mid 2000s, almost half of total rural income in China was from non-farm activities. Whether the decline in poverty was principally due to farm income growth or due to non-farm income growth and whether the rising share of non-farm income in total rural household income was the leading cause of the sharp increase in rural inequality have been key issues of debate.

What Does Adam Smith’s Linen Shirt Have to do with Global Poverty?

Martin Ravallion's picture

In his Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith pointed to the social-inclusion role of a linen shirt in 18th century Europe:

“A linen shirt … is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. Adam Smith. Photo: Istockphoto.comThe Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”

This passage has often been used to justify the view that poverty is not absolute but relative—that certain socially-specific expenditures are essential for social inclusion, on top of basic needs for nutrition and physical survival.

The way this idea is implemented in practice is to set a “relative poverty line” that is a constant proportion of average income for the country and date in question. That is how poverty is measured in most of Western Europe. By contrast, poverty measures in developing countries have almost invariably used absolute lines, which aim to have a fixed real value over time. The World Bank’s international “$1 a day” poverty lines also aim to be absolute lines across countries, using purchasing power parities from the International Comparison Program.

The Food Price Threat to Poor Continues

Sarah Holmberg's picture

Otaviano Canuto writes about the Food Price Watch today on the the Growth and Crisis blog.

He writes:

“According to the World Bank’s Food Price Watch, a brief just released tracking food prices and poverty trends, global food prices are 36% above their levels a year ago and remain volatile, close to their 2008 peak.  Key staples going through the roof include maize (74%), wheat (69%), soybeans (36%) and sugar (21%)...For some of us, expensive food might mean we spend more money in the supermarket, but for millions of people around the world, it is a real threat. The poor spend most of their money on food. So think about Mexicans, whose daily diet includes a good amount of tortillas. Or a family in Mauritania trying to get enough bread amid the 40% wheat price increase of the last year.”

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Micro health insurance and the circle of poverty

Dilip Ratha's picture

Back home in the KBK districts of Orissa, the head of the household that for decades has worked with my family, fell ill recently. He is in his early 50s. His legs have stopped functioning normally. There have been similar cases before, and some got partially cured when they were taken to a doctor in Raipur, a city some 150 miles away. The family wants to take the patient to the same doctor. But that would cost a lot. They need cash. Urgently. They are considering approaching a local money lender in exchange for a mortgage on their meager ancestral land.


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