In honor of Labor Day here in the US, I want to talk about a recent nutrition paper by Emla Fitzsimons, Bansi Malde, Alice Mesnard and Marcos Vera-Hernandez. This paper, “Household Responses to Information on Child Nutrition,” is one with a twist – they look not only at nutrition outcomes, but they also try and figure out where these might be coming from – and hence also look at labor supply.
The 2012 World Development Report, Gender Equality and Development, argues that gender equality “contributes to economic efficiency and the achievement of other key development outcomes.” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the APEC Women and the Economy Summit that “the increase in employment of women in developed countries during the past decade has added more to global growth than China has, ” and argued that incorporating women into the formal workforce is critical for economic progress. Understanding how major policy changes affect women’s employment and the gender wage gap is therefore critical for implementing future policies that may affect women’s status and opportunities.
The state of India’s school education does not paint a very pretty picture. No doubt a whopping 97% of all children between the ages of 6-14 years in rural India are enrolled in school. However, national school attendance averaged just about 70%, dipping below 60% for populous states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. Performance was much worse. Amongst the standard 5 kids surveyed, over half could not read a standard 2 level text fluently and more than one-third could not do basic standard 2 level subtraction.
India’s problem is not so much about getting children into school anymore. We now face the far more complex issue of keeping them there and ensuring effective learning. Crumbling public infrastructure, poverty, corruption, lack of attractive compensation and training for primary school teachers and a lack of awareness among uneducated rural parents about their child’s progress at school are huge obstacles in the path to educational attainment.
This week (August 1-7) is World Breastfeeding Week, an occasion to remind ourselves of the important role that optimal infant and young child feeding plays in the healthy growth and development of individuals, communities, and nations. For more than 30 years, the World Bank has championed the importance of breastfeeding. This includes investing in advocacy and communications to policymakers, strengthened health systems, and effective community-based outreach to provide the knowledge and support needed by women and their families.
To mark World Breastfeeding Week, World Bank nutrition experts have updated this helpful Q/A on the topic:
What are the health benefits of breastfeeding?
Breastfeeding is one of the most powerful tools available to a mother to ensure the health and survival of her child from the moment he/she is born. Optimal breastfeeding practices, which include initiating breastfeeding within an hour of birth, feeding only breast milk until 6 months, and continuing to breastfeed up to 24 months, are key elements in the fight against malnutrition. Breast milk provides all the nutrients a child needs for healthy development in the first six months of life. And the antibodies that are transferred from a mother to her child during breastfeeding help protect infants against common childhood illnesses that can lead to death, such as diarrhea and pneumonia.
The Lancet’s 2008 series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition has estimated that the relative risk of death (all cause mortality) is 14 times higher for a child who is not breastfed versus one who is exclusively breastfed. When broken down by disease, the relative risk of death from diarrhea and pneumonia is 10.5 and 15 times higher, respectively, for children who are not breastfed versus those that are exclusively breastfed.
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How much is a jar of jam worth? A couple of pesos, at most. But for a group of women from a remote Guatemalan village, it’s worth its weight in gold. It has helped them develop as individuals and has made a significant contribution to their income and that of their community.
With a sweet voice that cracks with emotion, Blanca Estela, a single mother of four, tells us that making jam marked a turning point in her life. She is one of 30 women from Nueva Esperanza, a company that makes jams and sauces in San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. The company has helped the women become independent in a society that continues to be patriarchal. It has also promoted local economic growth.
When I visited the women to make this video, they told me that the Rural Economic Development Program supported by the World Bank enabled them to open new markets and increase their earnings. “This is the dream of a lifetime. We’ve been able to develop as individuals and as businesswomen,” says Esperanza. It has turned these rural homemakers into businesswomen. They now serve as an example for the rest of the women and men in the village.
In thinking about global advocacy and the journey of norms in development, a recent article in the July/August 2012 issue of Fast Company by Ellen McGirt caught my attention. The feature story is about a new kind of women’s movement entitled “The League of Extraordinary Women”. This loose network of 60 influential women, mostly Americans, includes artists, academics, business executives, government officials, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists, who are committed to changing the lives of girls and women around the world. The initiatives they have developed focus on specific issues, including education, HIV/AIDS, maternal health, microloans, women’s rights, and mentoring to develop future leaders and entrepreneurs. The list of 60 includes a few high-profile and famous women such as Hillary Clinton, Melinda Gates, and Oprah Winfrey.
I am a dual citizen of two countries, both of which legalized safe abortions when I was little or young, meaning that I grew up taking a woman’s right to a safe abortion as granted. Usually, when I hear family planning policy, I think of men and women planning the number, the timing, and the spacing of their children with the aid of modern contraceptives.
Every day, children over the world are molested, raped, abused, and killed. Who is responsible? We all are, as parents, teachers, prominent personalities, journalists, neighbors, politicians, religious figures, men and women of this world; we are all responsible, including and especially those of us who have decided to be silent observers of the horrible news we see in the media.
It is not OK to accept what we hear or see as part of a normal life. It is not OK to just talk about it and feel it is not your fault or even worse not your child. It is not OK to keep still.
With a data revolution upon us and as we strive to keep up in this new age of participation, what counts matters and is acted upon. If advertisers can mine our online behavior, how we use our phones and where we spend to influence our consumer choices, then surely we can design smart social programs based on gender-disaggregated data that will narrow the gaps between men and women in social and economic life, right? These and other questions were posed at an event today on “Evidence and Impact: Closing the Gender Data Gap."
What was inspiring was that two heavy-hitters – World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – spoke eloquently about the power of data to maximize results and shape policies, whether in terms of higher productivity on farms in Africa, better social safety net programs in Peru, or more effective peace and reconciliation initiatives in post conflict countries.
The phrase “gender gap” may be well known – but what about the gender gap for data? Today at an event at the Gallup Organization in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called for better data-gathering on girls and women as an essential way to boost women’s empowerment and economic growth.
“Gender equality is vital for growth and competitiveness,” said Dr. Kim at “Evidence and Impact: Closing the Gender Data Gap” in Washington, co-hosted by the State Department and the Gallup Organization.
But the lack of gender-disaggregated data hampers development efforts in many countries, Dr. Kim said.
“We need to find this missing data. We need to make women count.”
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| The soon to be completed women's meeting hall will house various activities to help women develop themselves. |
(Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog post)
While leaving leaving the LoLoMo eco-resort, the rain seemed to carefully time its return for our last leg of the trip. We were heading back towards Munda, and then turned to yet another island to visit the Buni Village Women’s Project. This was project was in its first year of implementation. A large hall, together with rooms for guests, toilets (not standard in the rural Solomons), benches and a large blackboard was almost complete. The local carpenter was busy there in the building, planing wood for tables and benches.
In a recent post, I described a randomized experiment in Jordan that I (along with Matt Groh, Nandini Krishnan and Tara Vishwanath) have been working on.
The previous post in this blog discussed the positive dynamic effects of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs in Mexico and Nicaragua – in particular on asset accumulation and the incidence of entrepreneurship by the rural poor.
Le 11 juillet, lors de la Journée mondiale de la population, des acteurs mondiaux de premier plan dans le domaine de la santé se réunissent à Londres pour tenter de mettre la priorité sur l’enjeu de la planification familiale. Cet enjeu est au cœur des travaux du personnel de la Banque mondiale chargé des questions de santé en Asie du Sud, qui s’emploie à trouver les moyens qui lui permettront d’aider plus efficacement les femmes et les familles à espacer les naissances et à éviter les grossesses non désirées.
Même si les pays d’Asie du Sud ont progressé dans l’élargissement de l’accès à la contraception moderne et dans le recul global de la natalité, la région accuse la deuxième plus forte mortalité maternelle du monde. Dans ces pays, les ménages pauvres, marginalisés et non instruits n’ont pas accès aux services de santé génésique dont ils ont besoin, et notamment à la planification familiale.
En Inde, au Népal et au Pakistan en particulier, les taux de fécondité et d’utilisation de contraceptifs diffèrent considérablement d’une catégorie socioéconomique à l’autre : en Inde, alors que le taux de fécondité n’est que de 1,8 chez les femmes les plus aisées, il se maintient à 3,9 parmi les plus démunies. Au Népal, les femmes instruites ont, en moyenne, 1,9 enfant, contre 3,7 pour les femmes non instruites. Au Pakistan, la prévalence de la contraception atteint aujourd’hui 32 % chez les couples riches et seulement 12 % chez les couples pauvres. En Inde, dans l’État du Meghalaya, 36 % des couples désireux de recourir à la planification familiale n’ont pas accès à une contraception efficace.
El 11 de julio, Día Mundial de la Población, mientras los líderes mundiales de la salud se reúnen en Londres para debatir sobre el otorgamiento de una mayor prioridad a la planificación familiar, el personal del Banco Mundial que trabaja en el sector de salud en Asia meridional estará pensando en cómo respaldar más eficazmente a las mujeres y las familias de esta región para espaciar los nacimientos y evitar los embarazos no deseados.
Aunque los países de Asia meridional lograron aumentar el acceso a la planificación familiar moderna y reducir los índices totales de fecundidad, la región sigue teniendo la segunda tasa más elevada de mortalidad materna. Los hogares pobres, marginados y sin educación no cuentan con los servicios de salud reproductiva que necesitan, incluida la planificación familiar.
En India, Nepal y Pakistán, en particular, las diferencias en la fertilidad y el uso de anticonceptivos entre los grupos socioeconómicos son sorprendentes: en India, la tasa de fecundidad en la parte más rica de la población es de 1,8, mientras que sigue siendo de 3,9 entre los más pobres; en Nepal, las mujeres con educación tienen en promedio 1,9 hijos, mientras que las menos educadas tienen un promedio de 3,7; en Pakistán, la prevalencia de anticonceptivos es del 32% en las parejas más ricas y de apenas el 12% entre las parejas pobres, y en el estado indio de Meghalaya, el 36% de las parejas que quiere practicar la planificación familiar carece de acceso a métodos anticonceptivos eficaces.
