Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two factors separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying special attention to their covariation, which indicates whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing household-based inequalities. The paper develops a new variance decomposition framework and applies it to data on more than one million children in three low-income East African countries. The empirical results show that although household factors account for a significant share of total test score variation, variation in school quality and positive sorting between households and schools are, together, no less important. The analysis also finds evidence of substantial geographical heterogeneity in schooling quality. The paper concludes that promoting equity in education in East Africa requires policies that go beyond raising average school quality and should attend to the distribution of school quality as well as assortative matching between households and schools. (World)
The development objective of the Second Rural Economic Development Initiative Project for Jamaica is to enhance access to markets and to climate resilient approaches for targeted beneficiaries. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) unnecessary removal of vegetation cover; (ii) creation of soil slippage and soil erosion conditions from excavation and inappropriate placing of excavated matter on slopes; (iii) blockage of drains from construction waste and excavatedmaterials; (iv) ground and surface water pollution; (v) pesticide pollution of soil, ground and surface water; (vi) exposure of workers/farmers to pesticides; (vii) eutrophication of surface water from sewage discharge; (viii) excessive run-off where drainage on roads and off buildingsis inadequate; (ix) inappropriate disposal of solid waste; (x) interruption of vehicular and pedestrian traffic flow or access to amenities; (xi) loss of indigenous or native species; (xii) exposure of workers to occupational health and safety risks; (xiii) discrimination against vulnerable groups including women, children of working age and people with disability; (xiv) forced labour and child labour; Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) re-vegetate cleared area immediately after construction; (ii) excavate impact soil until no trace of petroleum is observed; (iii) all waste must be disposed in an approved landfill or disposal site, in consultation with the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA); (iv) stored waste should be covered with plastic sheeting or other suitable material to minimize dust dispersion; (v) communities must be given prior notice of intended road closures and designated detours; (vi) remote worksites must be equipped with portable chemical toilets, which must be supplied and serviced by an approved contractor; (vii) material delivery must be confined to early mornings/lateevenings (outside of peak periods); (viii) use clean equipment to excavate pit especially there isa risk of coming in contact with groundwater; (ix) trees should be removed only when present a health and safety risk or risk of damage to infrastructure; (x) contractor will be required topreserve trees and other wildlife habitats, which have been identified as natural habitat or well preserved vegetation zones; (xi) store materials and waste to avoid hindrance to traffic and pedestrian movement; (xii) contractor must provide workers with the appropriate safety equipment including hardhats, safety boots, security vest, dust mask, and gloves and ensure that they are worn properly; (xiii) dispose of contaminated and unsuitable material in safe areas and cart away for off-site disposal at approved landfill site; (xiv) contractor must notify the public of any alternative to their normal routes during the construction activities (Jamaica)
The development objective of Enhancing Natural Forest and Agroforest Landscapes Project is to improve forest and tree management practices by cocoa farmers, CREMA communities and forest reserve managers to reduce forest loss and degradation in selected landscapes in Ghana. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) lack of access to protective clothing and spray equipment in repair; (ii) no proper labeling of pesticide products;; (iii) reuse of pesticide containers; (iv) pre-harvest interval violations; (v) unsafe storage, transport and handling; (vi) application by women and children; (vii) potential for using pesticides more than necessary; (viii) use of higher-toxicity products; (ix) pesticide spraying near homes; (x) potential for pesticide poisoning; and (xi) poor disposal of used pesticide containers. Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) avoid crops (varieties) that create reliance on pesticides; (ii) spray equipment must be regularly checked and serviced by qualified spray equipment mechanic who should undertake routine equipment maintenance on a clearly defined work program; (iii) continue to engage farmers and train them on the safe storage and use of the chemicals; (iv) prevent reuse of pesticide containers; (v) all spray operators should also be trained in the proper handling of pesticides; (vi) the EPA should be involved in the training of women in the application of pesticides to avoid the incidence; (vii) chemical pesticides must only be as a last resort, in the case of unexpected pest invasion by migratory pests such as armyworms and grasshoppers or grain eating birds; (viii) the surroundings of homes should always be avoided when spraying pesticides, except in vector control programs when it is necessary to undertake indoor spraying with pesticides on walls of homes, and under very strict supervision and monitoring by officials from the ministry of health; and (ix) every precaution must be taken to minimize spraying near standing water bodies or streams or pouring pesticides on the ground around homes, near wells and playing grounds. (Ghana)
Countries around the world have committed to implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Implementation of UHC is a key element of goal number 3 “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, at all ages.” GHG is helping the Government of Georgia move toward achieving SDG 3 with a strategy that promotes greater access to healthcare, while providing financial protections to the most vulnerable populations. GHG is addressing the medical skills gap, and it is offering essential services including maternal, newborn, child health, infectious, and non-communicable diseases treatments in communities where Georgians live and work. As GHG expands the availability of quality primary care at outpatient polyclinics, it can help control costs and reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention. As countries are embracing UHC principles, all are struggling with affordability. Georgia’s model of cooperation proves that UHC can be delivered to a wide range of citizens very quickly and efficiently by leveraging the scalethat the private sector can deliver. (Georgia)
Liberia is a low-income country with a GNI per capita (Atlas method) of 380 US dollars in 2017. After a period of conflict and instability, Liberia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 6.2 percent during 2003-2013. The ebola virus disease (EVD) crisis of 2014-2016 and a drop in global commodity prices resulted in slower average annual GDP growth of 2.1 percent with per capita annual GDP growth at -0.4 percent during 2013-2017. As a post conflict country aiming to achieve sustained broad-based growth, Liberia faces several development challenges: large infrastructure gaps, poor education and health indicators, a large youth cohort, lack of economic diversification, and weak public institutions. The World Bank Group’s country partnership strategy had three pillars: (i) economic transformation; (ii) human development; and (iii) governance and public sector institutions. In addition, the CPS had two cross-cutting themes of capacity development and gender equality. The CPS focus areas and objectives were well aligned with the government’s agenda for transformation with a strong focus on infrastructure. The CLR provided a succinct assessment of the achievement of program objectives. It identified the increases in IDA lending attributable to the EVD outbreak. The CLR review agrees with the CLR lessons: (i) ensure government’s strong commitment to the CPF program through close alignment with the country’s development plans; (ii) adapt and apply a sound post-conflict and fragile country lens in the design of CPF programs for post conflict countries; (iii) keep an eye on medium-term goals even in the face of a crisis such as EVD; (iv) being selective about cross-cutting themes and including outcomes associated with these themes helps maintain the Government’s and Country Team’s focus on them throughout implementation. IEG provides the following additional lessons: (i) flexibility of the CPS program enabled the WBG to respond to the EVD crisis in a timely manner; and (ii) trust fund activities need to have a well-articulated strategic focus and explicit selectivity filters to ensure that they contribute to the achievement of CPS objectives; (Liberia)
Despite progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many African countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. Girls dropping out of school are more likely to marry or have children early, before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. This may affect their own health. It may also affect that of their children since children of mothers younger than 18 face higher risks of dying by age five and being malnourished. They may also do poorly in school. Other risks for girls and women associated with a lack of education as well as child marriage include intimate partner violence and a lack of decision-making ability in the household. Through lower expected earnings in adulthood and higher fertility over their lifetime, a lack of education for girls as well as child marriage lead to higher rates of poverty for households. This is due to both losses in incomes and higher basic needs from larger household sizes. Low educational attainment for girls may also weaken solidarity in communities and reduce women’s participation in society. Lack of education is associated with a lower proclivity to altruistic behaviors, and it curtails women’s voice and agency in the household, at work and in institutions. This report documents the negative impacts of low educational attainment for girls, child marriage, and early childbearing for girls in Africa and some of their associated economic costs. The message is clear: educating girls is not only the right thing to do. It also makes economic and strategic sense for countries to fulfill their development potential. (World)
Despite progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many African countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. Girls dropping out of school are more likely to marry or have children early, before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. This may affect their own health. It may also affect that of their children since children of mothers younger than 18 face higher risks of dying by age five and being malnourished. They may also do poorly in school. Other risks for girls and women associated with a lack of education as well as child marriage include intimate partner violence and a lack of decision-making ability in the household. Through lower expected earnings in adulthood and higher fertility over their lifetime, a lack of education for girls as well as child marriage lead to higher rates of poverty for households. This is due to both losses in incomes and higher basic needs from larger household sizes. Low educational attainment for girls may also weaken solidarity in communities and reduce women’s participation in society. Lack of education is associated with a lower proclivity to altruistic behaviors, and it curtails women’s voice and agency in the household, at work and in institutions. This report documents the negative impacts of low educational attainment for girls, child marriage, and early childbearing for girls in Africa and some of their associated economic costs. The message is clear: educating girls is not only the right thing to do. It also makes economic and strategic sense for countries to fulfill their development potential. (World)
Public financing of privately provided child care can allow for access to these services in places where public provision and capacity are low. However, the mechanisms of subsidy delivery will affect who benefits, and the overall cost-effectiveness of such subsidies. This paper sets out an ex-ante simulation model for estimating the benefit incidence of expanded capacity and enrollments resulting from different child care subsidy mechanisms. It combines a supply-side provider level and a demand-side household model in one simulation. The paper considers investment vs. operational monthly grants to child care providers, combinations of investment and operational grants, and demand-side vouchers to households. The model is applied to empirical data from child care centers and households in Turkey. The results reveal that the choice of the subsidy delivery model has a strong bearing on the benefit incidence and cost-effectiveness of the subsidy. In the case of Turkey, where significant supply-side constraints exist in the market, a demand-side voucher system is shown to be the least cost-effective subsidy delivery model. A targeted demand-side voucher does not necessarily deliver the most “pro-poor results,” and combinations show different benefits and costs. The proposed simulation model can be applied in other country contexts, with the only data requirements being microdata on the costs and pricing structure of child care providers, as well as household data with variables on household welfare and child care utilization. (Turkiye)
The objective of this report is to address the knowledge gaps for the first and second priority challenges and thereby contribute to the evidence-based policymaking on the labor supply and gender equality agendas. Specifically, the report explores the key labor market gender challenges such as occupational segregation (looking at segregation of current occupations and educational specializations) and the parenthood penalty (looking at differences in labor force participation, employment, and earnings for women and men with no children, 1 child, 2 or more children), using the nationally-representative individual-level Labor Force Survey (LFS) data in 2006-2016. The novelty of this study is that an LFS-based analysis that applies a conventional methodology of occupational segregation indicators and earnings regressions and decompositions in chapters two through four is complemented by an original analysis of job seeker profiles in chapter five, scraped from the largest online job portal in Moldova in June 2018, to examine the role of gender in labor market aspirations and expectations of young job seekers. Even though the third priority challenge (entrepreneurship) is also linked to the labor market and there are substantial disparities in the success rate of setting up a business as well as in the size and nature of businesses that Moldovan women and men lead (World Bank, 2014a), this report does not address the issue of entrepreneurship in detail due to LFS data containing only a very small sample of non-agricultural employers (either women or men) and very few relevant variables on this topic. Another limitation of this report is that it does not study the impact of international labor migration and remittances on labor market outcomes of remaining household members and other social and economic indicators in Moldova. Besedina and Levin (2016) and Stratan et al. (2013) find that migration and remittances are associated with lower labor force participation rates of remaining household members (who are more likely to be female, compared to households without migrants)and higher incidence of part-time employment as remittance recipients rationally reduce their labor effort. To answer the question whether migration and remittances contribute to gender inequalities in the Moldovan labor market, including gender gaps in labor force participation, employment and earnings, other data and further research are needed. Finally, the report contributes to the literature about the supply side of the Moldovan labor market whereas it draws on the findings of other studies on the labor demand developments. According to World Bank (2016b, c), rapid economic growth in recent years in Moldova was not accompanied by job creation, net job losses have taken place in most sectors and across regions, and only some categories of workers (predominantly skilled older male workers in urban areas) were able to benefit from access to higher-paying jobs in productivity increasing firms. The report is intended for technically-inclined readers from government agencies, think tanks and researchers active in gender and labor market domains. The Executive summary summarizes the findings of the analysis in non-technical language for the general public and policy makers. Annex one provides technical details on which methodology and data are used for the analysis. (Moldova)
The development objective of Protection of Essential Health Services Project is to increase the utilization and quality of an essential package of health services in South Sudan, with a particular focus on the former states of Upper Nile and Jonglei. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; (ii) poor hygiene, water and sanitation in health facilities negatively impacts safe delivery of health care services; (iii) Implementing partners (IPs) are not prepared nor equipped to respond to emergencies, including disease outbreaks; (iv) ghost workers and ghost health facilities included in the project fraudulently consuming budgetary resources through inflated staffing and facility costs; (v) expired and damaged drugs negatively affecting communities in the areas where the project is implemented; (vi) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; and (vii) shortage of suitably qualified staff or presence of lowly skilled medical staff. Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) mapping of functional health facilities and selection of those to be supported, considering, local administrative boundaries, government and non-government (IO) controlled areas, population size, cultural characteristics of the population, and conflict dynamics; (ii) develop waste management plans for each health facility; (iii) train IPs in emergency preparedness and response, including infectious disease surveillance and response (IDSR); (iv) physical verification and mapping of health facilities by community mobilizers as well as an auditing firm; (v) conduct a diagnostic assessment to assess how the supply chain can be improved to ensure adequate delivery to health facilities located in Sudanese People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) areas as well as other hard-to-reach areas; (vi) strengthen community engagement and dialogue to reduce targeting of health institutions when conflict occurs; and (vii) United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will continue to work closely with United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to utilize their channels for lobbying for access in conflict areas to allow programmatic assessments and interventions, monitoring and vital distribution of life saving drugs by UNICEF and its partner’ access. (South Sudan)
