Download or read book Household Consumption Volatility and Poverty Risk Case Studies from South Africa and Tanzania written by Mr.Matthieu Bellon and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g. by education, ethnic group, and economic activity) and we quantify the impact that reducing consumption volatility would have on aggregate poverty. We then discuss coverage of consumption insurance mechanisms, including financial access and transfers. Country characteristics crucially determine which household-level shocks are most prevalent and which consumption-smoothing mechanisms are available. In Tanzania, agricultural shocks are an important source of consumption risk as two thirds of households are involved in some level of agricultural production. For South Africa, we focus on labor market risk proxied by transitions from formal employment to informal work or unemployment. We find that access to credit, when available, and government transfers can effectively mitigate labor market shocks.

Download or read book Shock Waves written by Stephane Hallegatte and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Download or read book Household Vulnerability to Income Shocks in Emerging and Developing Asia the Case of Cambodia Nepal and Vietnam written by Alessia De Stefani and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-04 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We leverage survey data from emerging and developing Asia to highlight different aspects of household vulnerability to income shocks arising from the Covid-19 pandemic: occupation in Cambodia, self-insurance mechanisms in Nepal, and financial leverage in Vietnam. Occupation and ex-ante income levels emerge as the main drivers of vulnerability. We estimate that the pandemic could have placed an additional 6 to 9 percent of the population of each country in a vulnerable position, with the impact concentrated on urban, informal, and service sector workers. Government intervention and financial access emerge as key resilience-enhancing mechanisms.

Download or read book Global Trends 2040 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Download or read book The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty looks at the complex relationships between economic growth, poverty reduction and trade, and examines the challenges that poor people face in benefiting from trade opportunities. Written jointly by the World Bank Group and the WTO, the publication examines how trade could make a greater contribution to ending poverty by increasing efforts to lower trade costs, improve the enabling environment, implement trade policy in conjunction with other areas of policy, better manage risks faced by the poor, and improve data used for policy-making.

Download or read book Energy Efficiency Financing and Market Based Instruments written by Yang Liu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is devoted to investigating the policy design and effectiveness of financial and market-based instruments to promote energy efficiency financing. The concept of this monograph is to present the latest results related to energy efficiency funding schemes, energy efficiency obligations, voluntary agreements, auction mechanisms, and Super Energy Services Companies (Super ESCOs) in major jurisdictions across the world. The book focuses on financial and market-based instruments as they deliver a price signal, which provides an incentive for firms to invest in innovation or implement more energy-efficient technologies and deliver energy savings while minimizing costs. Such instruments can have significant advantages for the government, supporting the fiscal sustainability of the government’s energy efficiency efforts, requiring less enforcement than regulation and according the market flexibility to select the most cost-efficient technologies. This book is highly recommended to researchers, policy experts, and business specialists who seek an in-depth and up-to-date integrated overview of energy efficiency financing.

Download or read book West African Agriculture and Climate Change written by Abdulai Jalloh and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of three books in IFPRI's climate change in Africa series, West African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing 11 of the countries that make up West Africa -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo -- and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. West Africa's population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth. Both will put increased pressure on the natural resources needed to produce food, and climate change makes the challenges greater. West Africa is already experiencing rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme events. Without attention to adaptation, the poor will suffer. Through the use of hundreds of scenario maps, models, figures, and detailed analysis, the editors and contributors of West African Agriculture and Climate Change present plausible future scenarios that combine economic and biophysical characteristics to explore the possible consequences for agriculture, food security, and resources management to 2050. They also offer recommendations to national governments and regional economic agencies already dealing with the vulnerabilities of climate change and deviations in environment. Decisionmakers and researchers will find West African Agriculture and Climate Change a vital tool for shaping policy and studying the various and likely consequences of climate change.

Download or read book Yes Africa Can written by Punam Chuhan-Pole and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes an in-depth look at twenty-six economic and social development successes in Sub-Saharan African countries, and addresses how these countries have overcome major developmental challenges.

Download or read book Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa written by Kathleen Beegle and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty remains a pervasive and complex phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the agenda in recent years to tackle poverty in Africa has been the launching of social safety nets programs. All countries have now deployed safety net interventions as part of their core development programs. The number of programs has skyrocketed since the mid-2000s though many programs remain limited in size. This shift in social policy reflects the progressive evolution in the understanding of the role that social safety nets can play in the fight against poverty and vulnerability, and more generally in the human capital and growth agenda. Evidence on their impacts on equity, resilience, and opportunity is growing, and makes a foundational case for investments in safety nets as a major component of national development plans. For this potential to be realized, however, safety net programs need to be significantly scaled-up. Such scaling up will involve a series of technical considerations to identify the parameters, tools, and processes that can deliver maximum benefits to the poor and vulnerable. However, in addition to technical considerations, and at least as importantly, this report argues that a series of decisive shifts need to occur in three other critical spheres: political, institutional, and fiscal. First, the political processes that shape the extent and nature of social policy need to be recognized, by stimulating political appetite for safety nets, choosing politically smart parameters, and harnessing the political impacts of safety nets to promote their sustainability. Second, the anchoring of safety net programs in institutional arrangements †“ related to the overarching policy framework for safety nets, the functions of policy and coordination, as well as program management and implementation †“ is particularly important as programs expand and are increasingly implemented through national channels. And third, in most countries, the level and predictability of resources devoted to the sector needs to increase for safety nets to reach the desired scale, through increased efficiency, increased volumes and new sources of financing, and greater ability to effectively respond to shocks. This report highlights the implications which political, institutional, and fiscal aspects have for the choice and design of programs. Fundamentally, it argues that these considerations are critical to ensure the successful scaling-up of social safety nets in Africa, and that ignoring them could lead to technically-sound, but practically impossible, choices and designs.

Download or read book Poverty in a Rising Africa written by Kathleen Beegle and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perceptions of Africa have changed dramatically. Viewed as a continent of wars, famines and entrenched poverty in the late 1990s, there is now a focus on “Africa rising†? and an “African 21st century.†? Two decades of unprecedented economic growth in Africa should have brought substantial improvements in well-being. Whether or not they did, remains unclear given the poor quality of the data, the nature of the growth process (especially the role of natural resources), conflicts that affect part of the region, and high population growth. Poverty in a Rising Africa documents the data challenges and systematically reviews the evidence on poverty from monetary and nonmonetary perspectives, as well as a focus on dimensions of inequality. Chapter 1 maps out the availability and quality of the data needed to track monetary poverty, reflects on the governance and political processes that underpin the current situation with respect to data production, and describes some approaches to addressing the data gaps. Chapter 2 evaluates the robustness of the estimates of poverty in Africa. It concludes that poverty reduction in Africa may be slightly greater than traditional estimates suggest, although even the most optimistic estimates of poverty reduction imply that more people lived in poverty in 2012 than in 1990. A broad-stroke profile of poverty and trends in poverty in the region is presented. Chapter 3 broadens the view of poverty by considering nonmonetary dimensions of well-being, such as education, health, and freedom, using Sen's (1985) capabilities and functioning approach. While progress has been made in a number of these areas, levels remain stubbornly low. Chapter 4 reviews the evidence on inequality in Africa. It looks not only at patterns of monetary inequality in Africa but also other dimensions, including inequality of opportunity, intergenerational mobility in occupation and education, and extreme wealth in Africa.

Download or read book Africa s Infrastructure written by Vivien Foster and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This booklet contains the Overview as well as a list of contents from the forthcoming book Africa's Infrastructure: A time for Transformation.

Download or read book Fiscal Monitor October 2022 written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-10-12 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report explores how fiscal policy can foster resilience by protecting households against large income and employment losses. Governments face increasingly difficult trade-offs in tackling the spikes in food and energy prices when policy buffers are largely exhausted after two years of pandemic. They should prioritize protecting vulnerable groups through targeted support while keeping a tight fiscal stance to help reduce inflation. Building fiscal buffers in normal times would allow governments to respond swiftly and flexibly during adversities. Several fiscal tools, such as job-retention schemes, have proven useful to preserve jobs and income for workers. Social safety nets should be made more readily scalable and better targeted, leveraging digital technologies. Exceptional support to firms should be reserved for severe situations and requires sound fiscal risk management.

Download or read book Attacking Poverty written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of each decade the World Development Report focuses on poverty reduction. The World Development Report, now in its twenty-third edition, proposes an empowerment-security-opportunity framework of action to reduce poverty in the first decades of the twenty-first century. It views poverty as a multidimensional phenonmenon arising out of complex interactions between assets, markets, and institutions. This Report shows how the experience of poverty reduction in the last fifteen years has been remarkably diverse and how this experience has provided useful lessons as well as warnings against simplistic universal policies and interventions. It shows how current global trends present extraordinary opportunities for poverty reduction but also cause extraordinary risks, including growing inequality, marginalization, and social explosions. The World Development Report 2000/2001 explores the challenge of managing these risks in order to make the most of the opportunities for poverty reduction.

Download or read book Globalization and Poverty written by Ann Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Download or read book Handbook on Poverty Inequality written by Jonathan Haughton and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-03-27 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone wanting to learn, in practical terms, how to measure, describe, monitor, evaluate, and analyze poverty, this Handbook is the place to start. It is designed to be accessible to people with a university-level background in science or the social sciences. It is an invaluable tool for policy analysts, researchers, college students, and government officials working on policy issues related to poverty and inequality.

Download or read book Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 written by World Bank Group and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-10-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. This edition will also document trends in inequality and identify recent country experiences that have been successful in reducing inequalities, provide key lessons from those experiences, and synthesize the rigorous evidence on public policies that can shift inequality in a way that bolsters poverty reduction and shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the report will address the following questions: • What is the latest evidence on the levels and evolution of extreme poverty and shared prosperity? • Which countries and regions have been more successful in terms of progress toward the twin goals and which are lagging behind? • What does the global context of lower economic growth mean for achieving the twin goals? • How can inequality reduction contribute to achieving the twin goals? • What does the evidence show concerning global and between- and within-country inequality trends? • Which interventions and countries have used the most innovative approaches to achieving the twin goals through reductions in inequality? The report will make four main contributions. First, it will present the most recent numbers on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. Second, it will stress the importance of inequality reduction in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 in a context of weaker growth. Third, it will highlight the diversity of within-country inequality reduction experiences and will synthesize experiences of successful countries and policies, addressing the roots of inequality without compromising economic growth. In doing so, the report will shatter some myths and sharpen our knowledge of what works in reducing inequalities. Finally, it will also advocate for the need to expand and improve data collection—for example, data availability, comparability, and quality—and rigorous evidence on inequality impacts in order to deliver high-quality poverty and shared prosperity monitoring.

Download or read book The Cash Dividend written by Marito Garcia and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides in-depth descriptions and analysis of how cash transfer programs have evolved and been used in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. The analysis focuses on program features and implementation, but it also highlights political economy issues and current knowledge gaps.