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Labor and Social Protection

More Jobs for Mothers, Better Health for Daughters: Guest Post by Kaveh Majlesi

Across developing countries, there is considerable under-investment in children's human capital; it is reflected in low immunization rates, child malnutrition, high drop-out rates, etc. Because of the (both individual and aggregate) long-term effects of human capital investment during childhood, governments across the globe have designed and implemented policies to encourage parents to invest more in the health and education of their children (numerous conditional cash transfer programs across countries are some examples).

Taking the Bus to Opportunity: Guest post by David Phillips

In the 1960s, black and white individuals in the United States had radically different labor market outcomes. In 1962, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 13 percent while it was only 6 percent for whites. Fifty years have passed, enough time for Martin Luther King to go from movement leader to monument, but as of 2010, the unemployment rate in the U.S.

From Bangladesh to the World: How Knowledge Sharing has Changed Resettlement Training

Fabio Pittaluga's picture

I admit when I started the whole idea of setting up a course on resettlement at a local Bangladeshi university I thought it was going to be a long shot in the dark. I had a gigantic portfolio to look after in terms of safeguards support, and that left little time to do anything else. I also it would be difficult to show results quickly and make a convincing argument that this was worth the effort. But stubbornness at times is a key ingredient to achievement, i.e. persistence and resilience.

The course (now known as MLARR – Management of Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation) started out as an effort to train of a cadre of professionals to better manage the social risks associated with land acquisition and resettlement in Bangladesh. Given the population density and land scarcity, resettlement in Bangladesh continues to be a huge challenge for its development, as virtually all infrastructure requires moving people. Supported by AusAID and DFID, The first course was designed and delivered in 2009. That was the beginning, and what I’d like to focus is how far we’ve come from that first shot in the dark:

Small Is Beautiful in Job Creation

Otaviano Canuto's picture

Investing more on roads, bridges and schools is an essential part of President Obama's American Jobs Act. If this is important in the current U.S. context, the role of both infrastructure and education in job creation is even more fundamental in developing countries, where there's much more to be done than in the U.S. and other advanced economies.

Conditions work! But are they a good thing? (Part II)

Berk Ozler's picture

Yesterday, in Part I of this post, we argued the extant empirical evidence suggests that the conditions cause a substantial amount of the desired behavior change intended by CCT programs. In other words: the “substitution effect” due to the condition may well be larger than the “income effect” of the transfers. For example, in the case of the Malawi experiment, the income effect was responsible for less than half of the total impact on school enrollment.

Conditions work! But are they a good thing? (Part I)

Berk Ozler's picture

One of the questions discussed at the recent World Bank workshop on the "Second Generation of CCT Evaluations" (website, complete with at least some of the presentations, here) was the role of the first C in the performance of the CCT: how important is the condition in accounting for the outcomes of conditional cash transfer programs?

Cash Transfers: What have we learned so far? What are the implications for policy? What more do we need to know?

Berk Ozler's picture

Tomorrow and on Tuesday (October 24-25), there is a workshop at the World Bank titled “CCTs: The Second Generation of Evaluations.” If you are at the World Bank or in the DC area, you may want to make your way to this event, as it promises to be a good one – focusing on research conducted on the topic in the past three years or so.

Jante Chai: Learning Through Interacting with Street Children in Bangladesh

Afra Rahman Chowdhury's picture

"Jante Chai," which means 'want to know' in Bengali -- is a project that connects university students with underprivileged street children with the goal of mutually enriching their lives.

Read Kaori's and Afra's blog entry for more information.

How Can Equity & ICT Improve Maternal Health in Pakistan?

Maha Rehman's picture

"Several mothers’ life is in danger due to placenta previa at child birth however either the village is too far flung to receive medical assistance or the family refuses to let the mother seek a specialist’s help,” the lady health worker said in response to my query regarding the past month’s performance in-field.

Maternal Health Care remains a low priority concern not only amongst the rural and urban poor households in Punjab, Pakistan, but amidst the policy circles as well. In Pakistan, for every 100,000 babies born, some 260 women die during childbirth. The country is one of 11 countries that comprised 65% of global maternal deaths in 2008. Yet most maternal deaths could be prevented if a skilled practitioner attended the birth.

The solution to this problem is multi-pronged. The issue must be tackled individually at the following thresholds:

a) Quality of the Maternal Health Care Program
b) Receptivity by the public
c) Data, Research and Execution

It is evident the solution requires institutional, cultural and political changes, however is it possible to evade the long term institutional changes and usher in economic and social independence, thereby pardtially addressing the solution in the short run?

Kenya’s undisputed wheat basket

The sight of farmers around Narok drying wheat on the ground with agents haggling over price and quality is a reminder of how Kenya’s farmers take advantage of the plentiful sunshine to cut post-harvest costs. Makeshift canvas driers line both sides of the Maai Mahiu-Narok-Bomet highway, a section of the Northern Corridor transport system that creates a shorter link to western Kenya.

Narok is Kenya’s undisputed wheat basket, producing half of the national wheat output in any given year. Its lush wheat and maize (corn) farms, as well as livestock ranches dotted with thousands of cattle, sheep and goats, tell you why the over 2,000 farmers in this fertile region of the Rift Valley are so powerful. Moreover, it is gateway to the world famous Masai Mara game reserve, where wildlife riches and revenue, especially bountiful during this period of the famous wildebeest migration, are shared by the Narok and Trans-Mara county councils.

Women Power in Sri Lanka

Sandya Salgado's picture

‘Equal to whom?’ seems to be my burning question when I see women in post conflict Sri Lanka battling it out all alone due to their present circumstances.

A three decade old war that ravaged north – east of Sri Lanka is now in the throes of reaping its peace dividends, slowly…

The war changed not just the landscape of the north-east Sri Lanka, but also the demographic profile, leaving many widows and women headed families destitute. While the official head count of this group is yet to be released by the government, it is apparent that the male to female ratio that was almost 50 -50 has now changed significantly in this part of the country.

“I am the mother, father and the entrepreneur of my family” sums up the plight of 26 year old Sutharshini. A widow who has lost her husband and brother to the war that forever changed the lives of many Sri Lankan Tamils. Sutharshini and her two children represent the typical Sri Lankan Tamil woman who has just been resettled after being an internally displaced person (IDP) in a refugee camp for almost a year.

Guest Post by Alan de Brauw: Regression Discontinuity Impacts with an Implicit Index: Evaluating El Salvador’s CCT program

I am writing to follow up on Berk’s post about using regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impacts of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. It happens that some colleagues and I at the International Food Policy Research Institute recently completed two papers using a unique regression discontinuity design (RDD) to evaluate the impacts of El Salvador’s Comunidades Solidarias Rurales (CSR) program. T

Join Us for Two Exciting Events This Week!

Joe Qian's picture

2011 Flagship: More and Better Jobs in South Asia
Thursday, September 22, 2011 from 2:30PM to 4:30PM


 

African countries are among the fastest growing economies in the world

Punam Chuhan-Pole's picture

Despite a slowdown in the global economic recovery and an increasingly difficult global environment, Sub-Saharan African countries are continuing to post solid growth. 

Following a 4.6 percent expansion in 2010, the region’s output is expected to grow by 4.8 percent this year (5.8 percent excluding South Africa) and by more than 5 percent in 2012 and 2013. 

Indeed, African countries are amongst the fastest growing countries in the world: Ghana is projected to grow by well over 10 percent this year; and nearly 40 percent of the countries in the region are likely to see 6 percent or higher growth rates.  Growth in Africa remains closely linked to the evolution of international commodity prices—oil, metals, and non-food agricultural commodities—which have remained generally buoyant. 

Not surprisingly, a sharp deterioration in global conditions would weigh down on the region's prospects.  Moreover, this time around African countries will be more constrained in their policy options: because they have less fiscal space than they had in the wake of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. Read the full analysis on Africa's Pulse.


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