What can be done to create more and better jobs in Europe and Central Asia? And should there be specific policies to help workers access those jobs? The authors of this book examine these questions through the lens of two contextual factors: the legacy of centralized planned economies and the mounting demographic pressures associated with rapid aging in some countries and soaring numbers of youth entering the workforce in others. The authors find the following: Market reforms pay off, albeit with a lag, in terms of jobs and productivity. A small fraction of superstar high-growth firms accounts for most of the new jobs created in the region. Skills gaps hinder employment prospects, especially of youth and older workers, because of the inadequate response by the education and training systems to changes in the demand for skills. Employment is hindered by high implicit taxes on formal work and barriers that affect especially women, minorities, youth, and older workers. Low internal labor mobility prevents labor relocation to places with greater job creation potential. Back to Work: Growing with Jobs in Europe and Central Asia asserts that to get more people back to work and to grow with jobs, countries, especially late reformers, need to regain the momentum for economic and institutional reforms that existed before the economic crisis. They should lay the fundamentals to create jobs for all workers, by pushing reforms to create the enabling environment for existing firms to grow, become more productive, or exit the market and let new firms emerge and succeed (or fail fast and cheap). They should also implement policies to support workers so that those workers are prepared to take on the new jobs being created, by having the right skills and incentives, unhindered access to work, and being ready to relocate.
Malgré la forte croissance économique que l’Afrique subsaharienne a connue ces vingt dernières années, les niveaux de transformation économique, de réduction de la pauvreté et de développement des compétences dans cette partie du monde sont bien inférieurs à ceux des autres régions. Des investissements judicieux dans le développement des compétences, en accord avec les objectifs politiques de croissance de la productivité, d’inclusion et d’adaptabilité, peuvent aider à accélérer la transformation économique de la région subsaharienne au XXIe siècle. L’augmentation de la population en âge de travailler en Afrique subsaharienne constitue une réelle chance d’accroître la prospérité collective. Les pays de la région ont investi massivement dans le développement des compétences†‰; les dépenses publiques consacrées à l’éducation ont été multipliées par sept au cours des 30 dernières années, et le nombre d’enfants scolarisés est aujourd’hui plus élevé que jamais. Pourtant, les systèmes d’éducation de cette population n’ont pas donné les résultats escomptés, et ces insuffisances entravent considérablement les perspectives économiques. Dans la moitié des pays, moins de deux enfants sur trois terminent l’école primaire, et encore moins atteignent des niveaux supérieurs d’enseignement et obtiennent un diplôme. Les acquis d’apprentissage demeurent faibles, ce qui entraîne des lacunes dans les compétences cognitives de base telles que la lecture, l’écriture et le calcul, aussi bien chez les enfants, les jeunes que les adultes. Le taux d’alphabétisation de la population adulte est inférieur à 50 % dans de nombreux pays†‰; la part des adultes sachant lire, écrire et compter de manière fonctionnelle est encore plus faible. Une réforme du système est nécessaire pour réaliser des progrès significatifs. De multiples agences aux niveaux national et local sont impliquées dans les stratégies de développement des compétences, faisant des compétences «†‰le problème de tous, mais la responsabilité de personne†‰». Les politiques et les réformes doivent permettre de renforcer les capacités des politiques qui ont fait leurs preuves et d’instaurer des mesures incitatives visant à faire converger le comportement de tous les acteurs dans la poursuite des objectifs de développement des compétences au niveau national. Le développement des compétences en Afrique subsaharienne, un exercice d’équilibre. Investir dans les compétences pour la productivité, l’inclusion et l’adaptabilité présente des données qui éclaireront les choix stratégiques des pays en matière d’investissements dans les compétences. Chaque chapitre aborde un ensemble de questions spécifiques, en s’appuyant sur une analyse originale et sur une synthèse des travaux existants pour explorer les domaines principaux : • comment les compétences appropriées à chaque étape du cycle de vie sont-elles acquises et quelles défaillances du marché et des institutions affectent le développement des compétences†‰; • quels systèmes sont nécessaires pour que les individus aient accès à ces compétences, notamment les investissements consentis par les familles, les institutions du secteur privé, les écoles et autres programmes publics†‰; • comment ces systèmes peuvent-ils être renforcés†‰; • comment les personnes les plus vulnérables, à savoir celles qui ne font pas partie des systèmes standards et qui n’ont pas réussi à acquérir des compétences essentielles, peuvent-elles être soutenues. Les pays de la région seront souvent confrontés à des arbitrages difficiles qui auront des effets distributifs et influeront sur leur trajectoire de développement. Des dirigeants engagés, des efforts conjoints de réforme et des politiques bien coordonnées sont essentiels pour aborder le délicat exercice d’équilibre que représente le développement des compétences en Afrique subsaharienne.
Sub-Saharan Africa has achieved significant gains in reducing the levels of extreme poverty in recent decades, yet the region continues to experience challenges across the development indicators, including energy access, literacy, delivery of services and goods, and jobs skills, as well as low levels of foreign direct investment. Exacerbating the difficulties faced by many countries are the sequelae of conflict, such as internal displacement and refugee migration. Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention, and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa builds on recent World Bank attention to the real-life social and political economy factors that underlie the power dynamic and determine the selection and implementation of policies. Applying a social contract approach to development policy, the authors provide a framework and proposals on how to measure such a framework to strengthen policy and operational engagements in the region. The key message is that Africa’s progress toward shared prosperity requires looking beyond technical policies to understand how the power dynamics and citizen-state relations shape the menu of implementable reforms. A social contract lens can help diagnose constraints, explain outbreaks of unrest, and identify opportunities for improving outcomes. Social contract assessments can leverage the research on the nexus of politics, power relations, and development outcomes, while bringing into focus the instruments that underpin state-society relations and foster citizen voice. Social contracts also speak directly to many contemporary development trends, such as the policy-implementation gap, the diagnostic of binding constraints to development, fragility and conflict, taxation and service delivery, and social protection. The authors argue that policies that reflect the demands and expectations of the people lead to more stable and equitable outcomes than those that do not. Their focus is on how social contracts are forged in the region, how they change and why, and how a better understanding of social contracts can inform reform efforts. The analysis includes the additional impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on government-citizen relationships.
Socially inclusive growth is the talk of the town in developing countries. But to go from talk to walk these countries face a critical task: reconstructing their welfare states given the failures of the standard Bismarckian model and the challenges posed by rapid technological change. This book—known to many as the White Paper—is indispensable for tackling this task. It develops a clear conceptual framework to help policy makers understand this complex issue, set clear objectives, evaluate trade-offs, and chart a coherent path of reform. A much-needed and very welcome contribution." --Santiago Levy, Senior Fellow—Global Economy and Development, Brookings Economic and Social Policy in Latin America Initiative, Brookings Institution "Most countries have failed to support people adequately as the combination of globalization and technology changes the structure of their economies and their jobs. This has fostered a backlash in which economic insecurity is widespread and support for populist policies is on the rise. We can do much better than this by sharing risks and providing a guaranteed minimum to everyone. This important book lays out a set of policies that strikes a new balance between economic flexibility and individual security that is relevant to both advanced and developing countries." --Minouche Shafik, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science "Economic insecurity confronts working people around the world today. To overcome this insecurity through suitable risk-sharing interventions is a policy challenge of the first order. This exceptionally thoughtful and clearly written book charts a course for replacing employment-based risk-sharing policies with social insurance†“based ones, financed by general revenues with the broadest possible base. The resultant Flexicurity model promises 'a more robust and resilient policy response to a diverse and fluid world of work.' " --Gary Fields, Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics, Cornell University "Protecting All presents thoughtful, thorough, and bold proposals to achieve universal social protection in a modern welfare state. This lucid document identifies implementable policies for poverty prevention, coping with livelihood shocks, and managing labor market risks that range from state-guaranteed publicly funded income floors to mandated consumption-smoothing mechanisms funded by individual contributions to privately financed incentivized and purely voluntary consumption-smoothing schemes. Clearly written, rich with ideas, and relevant for countries at all income levels, Protecting All is bound to become an essential reference for policy makers and policy analysts focused on (re)designing social protection systems that achieve key social goals in ways consistent with fast-changing labor markets, fiscal sustainability, and economic efficiency and growth." --Nora Lustig, Professor of Latin American Economics and Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute, Tulane University
Despite strong recent economic growth, Sub-Saharan Africa has levels of economic transformation, poverty reduction, and skill development far below those of other regions. Smart investments in developing skills—aligned with the policy goals of productivity growth, inclusion, and adaptability—can help to accelerate the region’s economic transformation in the 21st century. Sub-Saharan Africa’s growing working-age population presents a major opportunity to increase shared prosperity. Countries in the region have invested heavily in building skills; public expenditure on education increased sevenfold over the past 30 years, and more children are in school today than ever before. Yet, systems for building skills in this population have fallen short, and these shortcomings significantly impede economic prospects. In half of the countries, fewer than two in every three children complete primary school; even fewer reach and complete higher levels of education. Learning outcomes have been persistently poor, leading to substantial gaps in basic cognitive skills—literacy and numeracy—among children, young people, and adults. The literacy rate of the adult population is below 50 percent in many countries; functional literacy and numeracy rates are even lower. Systemwide change is required to achieve significant progress. Multiple agencies at the central and local levels are involved in skills development strategies, making skills “everyone’s problem but no one’s responsibility.†? Policies and reforms need to build capacity for evidence-based policies and create incentives to align the behaviors of all stakeholders with the pursuit of national skills development goals. The Skills Balancing Act in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investing in Skills for Productivity, Inclusivity, and Adaptability lays out evidence to inform the policy choices that countries will make in skill investments. Each chapter addresses a set of specific questions, drawing on original analysis and synthesis of existing studies to explore key areas: • How the skills appropriate to each stage of the life cycle are acquired and what market and institutional failures affect skills formation • What systems are needed for individuals to access these skills, including family investments, private sector institutions, schools, and other public programs • How those systems can be strengthened • How the most vulnerable individuals—those who fall outside the standard systems and have missed critical building blocks in skills acquisition—can be supported. Countries will face trade-offs—often stark ones—that will have distributional impacts and a bearing on their development path. Committed leaders, reform coalitions, and well-coordinated policies are essential for taking on the skills balancing act in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Socially inclusive growth is the talk of the town in developing countries. But to go from talk to walk these countries face a critical task: reconstructing their welfare states given the failures of the standard Bismarckian model and the challenges posed by rapid technological change. This book—known to many as the White Paper—is indispensable for tackling this task. It develops a clear conceptual framework to help policy makers understand this complex issue, set clear objectives, evaluate trade-offs, and chart a coherent path of reform. A much-needed and very welcome contribution." --Santiago Levy, Senior Fellow—Global Economy and Development, Brookings Economic and Social Policy in Latin America Initiative, Brookings Institution "Most countries have failed to support people adequately as the combination of globalization and technology changes the structure of their economies and their jobs. This has fostered a backlash in which economic insecurity is widespread and support for populist policies is on the rise. We can do much better than this by sharing risks and providing a guaranteed minimum to everyone. This important book lays out a set of policies that strikes a new balance between economic flexibility and individual security that is relevant to both advanced and developing countries." --Minouche Shafik, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science "Economic insecurity confronts working people around the world today. To overcome this insecurity through suitable risk-sharing interventions is a policy challenge of the first order. This exceptionally thoughtful and clearly written book charts a course for replacing employment-based risk-sharing policies with social insurance†“based ones, financed by general revenues with the broadest possible base. The resultant Flexicurity model promises 'a more robust and resilient policy response to a diverse and fluid world of work.' " --Gary Fields, Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics, Cornell University "Protecting All presents thoughtful, thorough, and bold proposals to achieve universal social protection in a modern welfare state. This lucid document identifies implementable policies for poverty prevention, coping with livelihood shocks, and managing labor market risks that range from state-guaranteed publicly funded income floors to mandated consumption-smoothing mechanisms funded by individual contributions to privately financed incentivized and purely voluntary consumption-smoothing schemes. Clearly written, rich with ideas, and relevant for countries at all income levels, Protecting All is bound to become an essential reference for policy makers and policy analysts focused on (re)designing social protection systems that achieve key social goals in ways consistent with fast-changing labor markets, fiscal sustainability, and economic efficiency and growth." --Nora Lustig, Professor of Latin American Economics and Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute, Tulane University
What can be done to create more and better jobs in Europe and Central Asia? And should there be specific policies to help workers access those jobs? The authors of this book examine these questions through the lens of two contextual factors: the legacy of centralized planned economies and the mounting demographic pressures associated with rapid aging in some countries and soaring numbers of youth entering the workforce in others. The authors find the following: Market reforms pay off, albeit with a lag, in terms of jobs and productivity. A small fraction of superstar high-growth firms accounts for most of the new jobs created in the region. Skills gaps hinder employment prospects, especially of youth and older workers, because of the inadequate response by the education and training systems to changes in the demand for skills. Employment is hindered by high implicit taxes on formal work and barriers that affect especially women, minorities, youth, and older workers. Low internal labor mobility prevents labor relocation to places with greater job creation potential. Back to Work: Growing with Jobs in Europe and Central Asia asserts that to get more people back to work and to grow with jobs, countries, especially late reformers, need to regain the momentum for economic and institutional reforms that existed before the economic crisis. They should lay the fundamentals to create jobs for all workers, by pushing reforms to create the enabling environment for existing firms to grow, become more productive, or exit the market and let new firms emerge and succeed (or fail fast and cheap). They should also implement policies to support workers so that those workers are prepared to take on the new jobs being created, by having the right skills and incentives, unhindered access to work, and being ready to relocate.
Despite strong recent economic growth, Sub-Saharan Africa has levels of economic transformation, poverty reduction, and skill development far below those of other regions. Smart investments in developing skills—aligned with the policy goals of productivity growth, inclusion, and adaptability—can help to accelerate the region’s economic transformation in the 21st century. Sub-Saharan Africa’s growing working-age population presents a major opportunity to increase shared prosperity. Countries in the region have invested heavily in building skills; public expenditure on education increased sevenfold over the past 30 years, and more children are in school today than ever before. Yet, systems for building skills in this population have fallen short, and these shortcomings significantly impede economic prospects. In half of the countries, fewer than two in every three children complete primary school; even fewer reach and complete higher levels of education. Learning outcomes have been persistently poor, leading to substantial gaps in basic cognitive skills—literacy and numeracy—among children, young people, and adults. The literacy rate of the adult population is below 50 percent in many countries; functional literacy and numeracy rates are even lower. Systemwide change is required to achieve significant progress. Multiple agencies at the central and local levels are involved in skills development strategies, making skills “everyone’s problem but no one’s responsibility.†? Policies and reforms need to build capacity for evidence-based policies and create incentives to align the behaviors of all stakeholders with the pursuit of national skills development goals. The Skills Balancing Act in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investing in Skills for Productivity, Inclusivity, and Adaptability lays out evidence to inform the policy choices that countries will make in skill investments. Each chapter addresses a set of specific questions, drawing on original analysis and synthesis of existing studies to explore key areas: • How the skills appropriate to each stage of the life cycle are acquired and what market and institutional failures affect skills formation • What systems are needed for individuals to access these skills, including family investments, private sector institutions, schools, and other public programs • How those systems can be strengthened • How the most vulnerable individuals—those who fall outside the standard systems and have missed critical building blocks in skills acquisition—can be supported. Countries will face trade-offs—often stark ones—that will have distributional impacts and a bearing on their development path. Committed leaders, reform coalitions, and well-coordinated policies are essential for taking on the skills balancing act in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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