Making Parliaments Work through Better Communication

 

SUBMITTED BY PAUL MITCHELL ON  People, Spaces, Deliberation

Governments and development agencies have devoted many years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing democratic governance in countries around the world. The idea of creating democracies is still the primary driver of many governance improvement agendas. Clearly, democratic systems often bring with them improvements in governance and economic development, but simply putting a democracy into place is not enough.

Last week, this blog featured a quote by Elinor Ostrom, which contains an interesting sentence: “Yet I worry that the need for continuous civic engagement, intellectual struggle, and vigilance is not well understood in some of our mature democracies and is not transmitted to citizens and officials in new democracies….We have to avoid slipping into a naïve sense that democracy – once established – will continue on its own momentum.” READ MORE »

 

One Minute to Save the World

 

SUBMITTED BY KAVITA WATSA ON  Development In A Changing Climate

A friend sent me the link to “One Minute to Save the World”, an interesting campaign that is inviting one-minute films from people across the world who care about climate change. The organizers are offering £1,000 as first prize for the best film, and there’s a nice line-up of films already. The panel of judges is a qualified one, and includes a number of well-known names, from Shekhar Kapur, Oscar-winning director, to Franny Armstrong of The Age of Stupid fame.

READ MORE »

 

Environmental action and the action of others

 

SUBMITTED BY ROBERT CIALDINI ON Development In A Changing Climate

The results of a large survey I conducted with my fellow environmental researcher, Wes Schultz, produced a pair of actionable results. First, people who thought their neighbors were conserving energy were more likely to conserve themselves. Second, at the same time, almost all of the nearly 3,000 survey respondents underestimated the conservation efforts of their neighbors. This suggests a simple way to increase conservation activity—by trumpeting the true levels of conservation that are going unrecognized.

To investigate this idea, we examined resource conservation choices in an entirely different setting—upscale hotel rooms, where guests often encounter a card asking them to reuse their towels. As anyone who travels frequently knows, although the wording of this card may vary somewhat, it always requests compliance for the sake of the environment. What the card never says, however, is that the great majority of guests do, in fact, reuse their towels when given the opportunity. We suspected that this omission was costing the hotels—and the environment—plenty. READ MORE »

 

Online mapping tool gives view of forests in developing countries

SUBMITTED BY JAMES I DAVISON ON  East Asia & Pacific On The Rise

In July, biodiversity specialist and blogger Tony Whitten wrote a post about not abandoning old-fashioned conservation techniques as an important method of taking positive action on climate change. One of the important old-school mitigation methods, he wrote, lies in protecting the world’s forests through reforestation and avoiding further deforestation.

Accordingly, a big part of the ongoing climate change discussion includes reducing emissions through deforestation and degradation (known as REDD). And the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization now offers a tool to help monitor forests in developing countries. Using satellite imagery and other data, the Global Forest Resources Assessment Portal displays the information on an interactive map. READ MORE »

Another Reason Why Aid to Africa Must Increase

SUBMITTED BY SHANTA ON AFRICA CAN END POVERTY BLOG OF WORLD BANK

Cliquez ici pour lire ce post en français

Given its massive development deficits and the effects of the global economic crisis, many observers,included me, are calling for increased aid to Africa. Most of these appeals are based on Africa’s need for more resources.  But there is a different argument.

Aid to Africa is today as productive as it has ever been.

Craig Burnside and David Dollaridentified a group of policies (including fiscal stability and low trade barriers) that strengthened the link between foreign aid and per capita income growth. These are the very policies that African governments have been improving over the past decade.

Even after the onset of the global economic crisis, and despite the fears that these… READ MORE »

What AIDS Leaves Behind: A Heavy Burden on African Women

SUBMITTED BY KATHLEEN BEEGLE ON AFRICA CAN END POVERTY BLOG of World bank

Unlike other diseases in Africa (malaria, tuberculosis, intestinal worms, etc.), which mainly affect the young and the old, HIV/AIDS takes its toll on prime-age adults during the most productive years of their lives. The death of an adult family member can have large consequences for the surviving family. Given prevailing social norms in many African societies, the burden may likely be heaviest for women.

Most studies focus on the consequences for orphaned children – their schooling and health. We know less about how older adults are impacted.  In our study, we track individuals and their households in northwest Tanzania, an area of high HIV prevalence in the 1990s, over a 13-year period.

We find that, when a family member dies, women (even old women) end up working more on the farm; men do too, but not as much.  Having an asset such as goats enables them to work less. READ MORE »

Source: http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/

Are China’s banks having a “good crisis”?

The crisis certainly hit China hard, but the spillover to banks has been minimal thus far.Photo courtesy of randylane under a Creative Commons license.

The story of the current financial crisis is well-known now and much has been written.  Indeed, we’re now at the point where many observers are indicating that the crisis is now at an end.  It would seem that the immediate financial sector impacts are leveling off, but in many countries the economic recovery will likely take a long time.  However, a number of emerging markets have come out of the crisis in relatively stable shape.  China is the most prominent example.  In fact, one might say that China is having a “good crisis” in certain ways as it has lifted its prominence – it is the one large country seen as leading the world out of this global crisis.  The same applies for China’s financial system given that many of its banks are now the largest in the world and (at least on the surface) posting strong performance. … READ MORE »

Source: http://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/are-china-s-banks-having-a-good-crisis

A quick look at 60 years of China’s development

SUBMITTED BY JAMES I DAVISON on Eat asia and pacific on the rise blog of world bank

Last week’s 60th anniversary celebrations marking the founding of the People’s Republic of Chinaseemed to generate a lot of coverage and interest on news and social media websites. Business magazine Fast Company used the occasion to consider 15 different development-related statistics – comparing then to now.

Most of the figures are striking, and the graphic’s triangles illustrate how rapid and staggering the changes have been in China in just six decades. Interesting data (although the magazine doesn’t specify its sources) in the infographic include:

• The average life expectancy has increased from 35 to 73 years old.
• The rate of illiteracy was 80 percent in 1949 and is 9.1 percent now.
• The enrollment rate for primary-school children went from 20 percent to 99.3 percent.

Take a closer look at the chart here. (Hat tip to Cool Infographics.)

The Labor Market, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction (I)

The labor market represents one of the main conduits through which economic growth can help to reduce poverty.  Economic growth arises from increases in employment and/or productivity (how employment-intensive economic growth is and what part of growth is due to labor productivity will be discussed).  And, from the flip side, an economy’s failure to translate economic growth into employment opportunities can stunt its efforts to reduce poverty. Labor is the main asset of poor people and jobs represent the main pathway out of poverty for the poor. Furthermore, labor is an important factor of production for firms.

 

The functioning of countries’ labor markets is affected by a wide array of factors, including not only labor market conditions (labor regulations, tax wedges, and so on), but also natural endowments, cultural factors, and long-run economic performance.  Furthermore, external factors such as globalization and technological change play an increasing part in determining labor market outcomes within countries.  

 

Given its importance, strengthening and improving labor market conditions should bring about tangible improvements in poverty. In the short run, this will require measures that make the labor market more flexible, while closing the gap between labor supply and demand in the long run requires slower yielding policies, including improvements in human capital and training.   

 

During the next few Fridays we will analyze “labor friendliness” of economic growth, a recurring theme of the developing economy literature. We shall see that labor friendly economic growth, while sometimes useful, is a double edged sword, representing also low labor productivity growth. We will also analyze the links between the investment climate and labor market performance. We will conclude by examining labor supply trends of particular interest to developing countries, including in terms of labor force growth rates (high in developing countries), unemployment (generally accompanied by informal sector employment and underemployment in developing country cases), wages (highly unequal in certain regions), and gender issues (also highly unequal in many countries). 

Source: World Bank Poverty and Growth Program

Health, Poverty Reduction and Economic Development (VI)

The PRSP and Funding for Health

From the late 1990s, the multilaterals, working through the Enhanced HIPC Initiative and the PRSP, have recognized the importance of social spending for health and education in the macroeconomic framework by strengthening the link between debt relief, poverty and social policies. Funds freed up because of debt relief can now be increasingly targeted for government spending on public services that directly benefit the poor.  

According to Gupta et al. (2001), countries that have reached their completion point should benefit from a reduction in debt service payments of 1.9 percentage points of GDP on average a year.  For some countries, the savings from debt relief would be even more substantial—9 percent of GDP in Guyana over the coming years, Exhibit below.

 

Total revenue, Total Spending and Spending on Health in HIPCs that have reached the Decision Point

                      Source: Gupta et al., 2001  The savings freed up by debt relief can then be allocated towards social spending.  Measures to increase the poor’s access to health care and education form part of the country’s poverty reduction strategy (PRS) that is delineated in their PRSP. The increased focus on poverty reduction programs in the PRSP is likely to change the composition of total public spending and increase the budget allocation for health and education.

Annual percentage change in health spending and social indicators, 1985-99

             Source: Gupta et al., 2001   

The PRSPs of the 23 countries at the decision point in 2001 contain measures for increased spending on primary and preventive health care and primary education and the countries have increased significantly public health care spending in per capita terms. Yet health care spending in the HIPCs lagged behind that of other non-HIPC countries that were eligible for debt relief under the IMF’s PRGF in 1999, Exhibit above. About 9 percent of total government outlays went toward health care in the HIPCs in 1999, ranging from US$3 a person in Madagascar to US$35 a person in Bolivia and Guyana.  Ample scope remains to increase productively the proportion of public spending going to health care.  

However, targeting public health care alone, although on the surface compelling, may not be the most expedient way of spending funds made available under debt relief to improve social outcomes.  Targeting other high priority areas such as water and sanitation and nutrition will also improve the health of the poor.  Furthermore, available evidence suggests that increased outlays on health care do not always translate into better health care indicators.  Moreover, a focus on health care indicators alone as a measure of government policy can be misleading.  Health care indicators need to be treated with caution. Limited data and changes in the methodologies used over time also affect changes in these indicators as well as factors other than government expenditures—household income, general economic conditions, improvements in health technology and the activities of nongovernmental organizations and other private sector providers (Gupta, 1998). 

In addition, benefit incidence studies suggest that the poor gain very little from increased health outlays.  A more comprehensive strategy for improving health care spending would focus on removing the inefficiencies that exist with regard to spending, and reallocating funds to programs such as prenatal care and vaccinations against preventable diseases that are more beneficial to the poor (Gupta et al., 2001).  This has been the approach adopted in the PRSPs of the 23 countries at decision point—a commitment to increased public outlays on health care covering a wide range of poverty reduction programs.  Funds for the health sector alone are expected to increase by 0.4 percentage points of GDP between 1999 and 2001, less than the total amount of HIPC debt relief.

Source: World Bank Poverty and Growth Program