Private firms are at the forefront of the development process, providing more than 90 percent of jobs, supplying goods and services, and representing a significant source of tax revenues. Their ability to grow, create jobs, and reduce poverty depends critically on a well-functioning investment climate--defined as the policy, legal, and institutional arrangements underpinning the functioning of markets and the level of transaction costs and risks associated with starting, operating, and closing a business. The World Bank Group has provided extensive support to investment climate reforms. This evaluation by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assesses the relevance, effectiveness, and social value of World Bank Group support to investment climate reforms as it relates to concerns for inclusion and shared prosperity. IEG finds that the World Bank Group has supported a comprehensive menu of investment climate reforms and has improved investment climate in countries, as measured by number of laws enacted, streamlining of processes and time, or simple cost savings for private firms. However, the impact on investment, jobs, business formation, and growth is not straightforward. Regulatory reforms need to be designed and implemented with both economic and social costs and benefits in mind; IEG found that, in practice, World Bank Group support focuses predominantly on reducing costs to businesses. In supporting investment climate reforms, the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation use two distinct but complementary business models. Despite the fact that investment climate is the most integrated business unit in the World Bank Group, coordination is mostly informal, relying mainly on personal contacts. IEG recommends that the World Bank Group expand its range of diagnostic tools and integrate them in the areas of the business environment not yet covered by existing tools; develop an approach to identify the social effects of regulatory reforms on all groups expected to be affected by them beyond the business community; and exploit synergies by ensuring that World Bank and IFC staff improve their understanding of each other's work and business models.
This paper reports on proceedings from an international workshop on social funds, held on May 21-24, 1997, in Washington, DC. The objectives of the workshop were to take stock of a decade's implementation experience of social funds with a view to assessing their impact on poverty reduction; establish a broad consensus on their main achievements, weaknesses, and risks; generate a set of recommendations for improving existing operations as well as for the design of future social funds; and facilitate the integration of international and regional networks of social funds.
TheWorld Development Report 2003addresses how to lift from poverty the three billion people now living in severe deprivation. It also explores how to improve the quality of life for everybody today and for the two billion more who will join mankind in the next thirty years. Substantial increases in growth and productivity will be necessary to achieve this goal. The current scale of economic activity and speed of change is such that ecosystem and social structures cannot keep up. TheReportputs forth two main messages: the first point is that enhancing prosperity and reducing poverty requires better care of the planet's ecosystem and social fabric. And secondly, that stronger collective action at all levels--from local to global--is essential for generating and scaling up the institutions that can transform growth.
African countries need to improve the performance of their public sectors if they are going to achieve their goals of growth, poverty reduction, and the provision of better services for their citizens. Between 1995 and 2004, the Bank provided some $9 billion in lending and close to $900 million in grants and administrative budget to support public sector capacity building in Africa. This evaluation assesses Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa over these past 10 years. It is based on six country studies, assessments of country strategies and operations across the Region, and review of the work of the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation.
Women perform 66% of the world's work, produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own 1% of the property. To shed light on why this grim statistic still holds true, Women, Business and the Law aims to examine legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 143 of the world's economies. Women, Business and the Law tracks governments' actions to expand economic opportunities for women across six key areas: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit and going to court. The report uncovers legal differentiations for women and married versus unmarried women such as being able to register a business, open a bank account and work at night. These issues are of fundamental importance. When, because of tradition, social taboos or simple prejudice, half of the world's population is prevented from making its contribution to the life of a nation, the economy will suffer. The empirical evidence does suggest that, slowly but surely, governments are making progress in expanding opportunities for women. It is our hope that data presented in Women, Business and the Law will both facilitate research on linkages between legal differentiation and outcomes for women, and promote better informed policy choices on what governments can do to expand opportunities for women.
This, the second title in the World Bank Policy Research Reports (the first was the headline-making The East Asian Miracle), discusses the economic situation in Africa as it has evolved over the past several decades. To reverse the economic decline that began in the 1970s, many sub-Saharan African countries have undertaken efforts to restructure their economies. This has included liberalizing trade, deregulating markets and prices, privatizing public enterprises, and strengthening management of the financial and public sectors. Implementation has been uneven in different countries, and even those countries that have attempted major reforms have not achieved policies that are considered sound by international standards. A key finding is that improving policies paid off in higher GDR and sectoral growth rates, which are vital to reducing poverty; but in countries where policies deteriorated economic performance worsened. The report also shows that, despite the importance of reforming economic policies, countries need to invest more in human capital and infrastructure, expand their institutional capacity, and develop better governance.
This revised and updated edition of the pathbreaking report on the global AIDS epidemic outlines the strategic role that government must play in slowing the spread of HIV and mitigating the impact of AIDS. Drawing on the knowledge accumulated in the 17 years since the virus that causes AIDS was first identified, the report highlights policies that are most likely to be effective in managing the epidemic. These include early actions to minimize the spread of the virus, aiming preventive interventions at high risk groups, and evaluating measures that would assist households affected by AIDS according to the same standards applied to other health issues. This revised edition will a valuable resource for public health, policymakers, researchers, and anyone with an interest in this devastating global health crisis.
Globalization - the growing integration of economies and societies around the world, is a complex process. The focus of this research is the impact of economic integration on developing countries and especially the poor people living in these countries. Whether economic integration supports poverty reduction and how it can do so more effectively are key questions asked. The research yields 3 main findings with bearings on current policy debates about globalization. Firstly, poor countries with some 3 billion people have broken into the global market for manufactures and services, and this successful integration has generally supported poverty reduction. Secondly, inclusion both across countries and within them is important as a number of countries (pop. 2 billion) are failing as states, trading less and less, and becoming marginal to the world economy. Thirdly, standardization or homogenization is a concern - will economic integration lead to cultural or institutional homogenization?
Using data from household and labor force surveys, this study documents the effects of the 2008–09 global financial crisis on poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, the social protection policy responses activated, and a macro-micro modeling of crisis/no-crisis scenarios for Mexico and Brazil.
Known as the standard reference for international economic data, the twenty-second annual edition of the World Development Report provides a set of Selected World Development Indicators as an appendix, presenting social and economic statistics for more than 200 countries.
Regardless of the poverty line used, the speed and scale of China’s poverty reduction is historically unprecedented. Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below US$1.90 per day—the international poverty line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty—has fallen by close to 800 million, accounting for almost three-quarters of the global reduction in extreme poverty. In 2021, China declared that it had eradicated extreme poverty according to its national poverty threshold, and that it had built a “moderately prosperous society in all respects.†? However, a significant number of people remain vulnerable, with incomes below a threshold more typically used to define poverty in upper-middle-income countries. China has set a new goal of approaching common prosperity by 2035, which can help keep the policy focus on the vulnerable population. Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead explores the key drivers of China’s poverty alleviation achievements and considers the lessons of China’s experience for other developing countries. The report also makes suggestions for China’s future policies. China’s approach to poverty reduction was based on two pillars. The first aimed for broad-based economic transformation to open new economic opportunities and raise average incomes. The second was the recognition that targeted support was needed to alleviate persistent poverty; this support was initially provided to disadvantaged areas and later to individual households. The success of China’s economic development and the associated reduction of poverty also benefited from effective governance, which helped coordinate multiple government agencies and induce cooperation from nongovernment stakeholders. To illustrate the role of broad-based economic transformation for poverty alleviation, separate sections of the report analyze growing agricultural productivity, incremental industrialization, managed urbanization and rural-to-urban migration, and the role of infrastructure.
Living Standards Measurement Study Paper No. 120. Provides an overview of the World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Studies (LSMS) surveys and outlines how readers may find more information on specific surveys. A first reference for those interested in using LSMS data in their research.
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