Quentin Wodon

Anna O'Donnell

Household vulnerability to weather shocks and changing climatic conditions has become a major concern in developing countries. Yet the empirical evidence remains limited on the impact that changing environmental conditions have on households. This book explores climate change adaptation using a social resilience approach. The book is based on primary data from the Sundarbans, a densely populated area located across parts of Bangladesh and India (West Bengal) which is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change. The focus is on assessing how households are affected by cyclones: whether they are able to cope with, adapt to and recover from events and changes; whether they are warned ahead of time; whether they benefit from government safety nets and other social programs; and finally whether they are driven to either temporary or permanent migration. This assessment leads to a better understanding of how exposure to an area of climate change vulnerability and risk affects and shapes human responses.

Climate Change Adaptation and Social Resilience in the Sundarbans

This study provides evidence on the role of faith-inspired, private secular, and public schools in Africa using nationally representative household surveys as well as qualitative data. The study focuses on a comparative assessment of market share, reach to the poor, cost for households, and satisfaction of households with the services received.

Comparing Faith-Inspired, Private Secular, and Public Schools

Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Julia Ross

Kevin Orr

Rosalia Rodriguez-Garcia

Rene Bonnel

Sam McPherson

Jill Olivier

This report provides a comprehensive description of how AIDS community responses have been funded by international donors and in the process they have become key implementers of AIDS responses. However, the road map towards a more effective taking better advantage of the role that community responses

The Experience of the AIDS Response

Funding Mechanisms for Civil Society

This volume provides a set of six case studies from West Africa. These assess the benefits of growth (or the costs of a lack of growth) in terms of poverty reduction in those countries. The first part of this book describes the experience of two countries (Ghana and Senegal) that achieved high levels of growth in the 1990s, and that also experienced important reductions in poverty, even though growth was not strictly pro-poor. The second part describes the experience of two other countries (Burkina Faso and Cape Verde) that also achieved high levels of growth in the 1990s, but where there was an initial perception that growth did not lead to much poverty reduction. The more detailed analysis of poverty presented here suggests however that these two countries did witness a sharp reduction in their population share in poverty, as would have been expected given their growth record. Finally, in the third part, the authors argue that a lack of growth in the 1990s in Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria has been a key reason for their persistently high levels of poverty. Overall, the case studies in this Working Paper make a strong case for the positive impact of growth on poverty reduction in West Africa. However, they also point to the need to pay close attention to changes in inequality, because such changes have limited the gains from growth for the poor in several of the countries considered here.

Case Studies from West Africa

Growth and Poverty Reduction

Martin Ravallion

Evidence on Behavioral Responses to an Enrollment Subsidy

Does Child Labor Displace Schooling?

Shekhar Shah

"Reducing poverty is the central development challenge in Bangladesh. This poverty assessment addresses several basic "counting the poor" questions: Who are the poor? How numerous are they? Where do they live? What are the characteristics of poor households? How should we measure poverty? Has poverty declined? Has inequality increased? In answering these questions this poverty assessment constructs a poverty profile for Bangladesh."Although poverty has declined in Bangladesh in the 1990s, the remaining challenges are enormous. This report is part of a long-term process of capacity building and mainstreaming of poverty analysis in Bangladesh. Its findings suggest five pillars of a possible poverty reduction strategy:  Accelerating economic growth  Promoting education for the poor  Investing in poor areas  Improved targeting of public expenditures and safety nets  Forming further partnerships with NGOs Discussions with stakeholders, NGOs, the government, poverty researchers, and other donors in Bangladesh arising from this report will help to build support for an action plan and more detailed policy and institutional changes for faster poverty reduction.

From Counting the Poor to Making the Poor Count

Bangladesh

Michelle J. Neuman

Rebecca K. Sayre

Amanda E. Devercelli

This study provides an overview of Bank investments in Early Childhood Development (ECD) from 2000-2013 within the Education, Health, Nutrition and Population, and Social Protection and Labor practices.

Review of the World Bank's Recent Experience

Investing in Early Childhood Development

George Joseph

Andrea Liverani

Nathalie Bougnoux

Climate change and migration are major concerns in the MENA region, yet the empirical evidence on the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on migration remains limited. Information is broadly lacking on how households in vulnerable areas perceive changes in the climate, how they are affected by extreme weather events, whether they benefit from community and government programs to help them cope with and adapt to a changing climate, and how these conditions influence the decision of household members to migrate, either temporarily or permanently. This introductory chapter summarizes briefly the main results of the study which relied on existing data as well as focus groups and new household surveys collected in 2011 in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. The results suggest that households do perceive important changes in the climate, and that many households are being affected by extreme weather events resulting in losses in income, crops, and livestock. The coping and adaptation strategies used by households to deal with weather shocks are diverse, but also limited, with most households not able to recover from the negative impact of weather shocks. The ability of community level responses and government programs to support households is also very limited. Finally, while climate change is not today the main driver of migration flows, it does appear to contribute substantially to these flows, so that worsening climatic conditions are likely to exacerbate future migration flows.

Evidence from the Middle East and North Africa

Climate Change and Migration

Juan Carlos Parra Osorio

This volume, that includes evaluations of academic performance and other management aspects and pedagogical practices of Fe y Alegr a schools, is a selection of contributions made at the international workshop Fe y Alegr a: Expanding the Quality Education Opportunities in Latin America

Case Studies on Fe Y Alegria

Faith-Based Schools in Latin America

Rony Brauman

François Ost

Mireille Delmas-Marty

Robert Legros

Éric Goemaere

Ada Neschke

Olivier Abel

Au cours de l'année 1996-97, l'École des Sciences philosophiques et religieuses a organisé une conférence et une journée d'études axées sur ce couple de notions qui condensent nombre de questions fondamentales de notre temps. Les profondes tribulations de notre époque semblent bien liées au déclin des références absolues et des idéologies sûres d'elles-mêmes et monolithiques. Mais au désenchantement moral et au désarroi de la pensée que redoublent les incertitudes économiques et politiques, répondent, un peu partout, une protestation et un refus du fatalisme qui se traduisent sous la forme de la réflexion critique et sous la forme, plus spectaculaire sans doute, de l'action, animées d'une volonté de transcender les particularismes et l'égoïsme frileux. Un nouvel élan de générosité, de risque, d'aventure même surgit au nom d'idéaux humanitaires. Cette effervescence d'initiatives force à revenir sur le sens de ces idéaux qui, au fond, de manière explicite ou confuse, en appellent à la valeur nodale d'humanité. L'action humanitaire, autant pour ceux qui la portent sur le terrain de la détresse, du désarroi et de la souffrance que pour ceux qui la soutiennent de plus loin, comporte évidemment des enjeux politiques, juridiques, philosophiques, éthiques, économiques et culturels d'une telle ampleur qu'il faut s'accorder du temps pour la penser. Une telle exigence de pensée ne peut en l'occasion prendre réellement forme sans le débat et le dialogue. C'est d'un tel travail de fond que témoigne cet ouvrage. La notion d'humanité s'y trouve réinterrogée à partir des contradictions, des ambiguïtés et des effets paradoxaux des actions humanitaires ou des débats juridiques ou économiques qui tentent de s'en inspirer. Le théologien, le philosophe, le juriste, le médecin, l'économiste, chacun selon son propre mode de questionnement, s'essaient à cerner les difficultés de formuler les éléments essentiels du noyau de sens irréductible, dont sont porteuses ces deux idées : l'humanité - l'humanitaire.

Humanité, humanitaire

World Bank

World Bank Staff

Kristin Komives

Vivien Foster

Jonathan Halpern

This book reviews the prevalence and variants of consumer subsidies found in the developing world and the effectiveness of these subsidies for the poor. It places consumer subsidies in a broader social protection framework and compares them with poverty-focused programmes in other sectors using a common metric. It concludes that the most common subsidy instruments perform poorly in comparison with most other transfer mechanisms. Alternative consumption and connection subsidy mechanisms show more promise, especially when combined with complementary non-price approaches to making utility services accessible and affordable to poor households. The many factors contributing to those outcomes are dissected, identifying those that can be controlled and used to improve performance.

Who Benefits from Utility Subsidies?

Water, Electricity, and the Poor

Ruwan Jayasuriya

Annotation To reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) countries have two options: increasing these inputs used to "produce the outcomes measured by the MDGs, or increasing the efficiency with which inputs are used. This study looks at whether improvements in efficiency could bring gains in outcomes.

Efficiency in Reaching the Millennium Development Goals

Kevin Carey

Glenn-Marie Lange

Countries regularly track gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of their economic progress, but not wealth—the assets such as infrastructure, forests, minerals, and human capital that produce GDP. In contrast, corporations routinely report on both their income and assets to assess their economic health and prospects for the future. Wealth accounts allow countries to take stock of their assets to monitor the sustainability of development, an urgent concern today for all countries. The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future covers national wealth for 141 countries over 20 years (1995†“2014) as the sum of produced capital, 19 types of natural capital, net foreign assets, and human capital overall as well as by gender and type of employment. Great progress has been made in estimating wealth since the fi rst volume, Where Is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, was published in 2006. New data substantially improve estimates of natural capital, and, for the fi rst time, human capital is measured by using household surveys to estimate lifetime earnings. The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018 begins with a review of global and regional trends in wealth over the past two decades and provides examples of how wealth accounts can be used for the analysis of development patterns. Several chapters discuss the new work on human capital and its application in development policy. The book then tackles elements of natural capital that are not yet fully incorporated in the wealth accounts: air pollution, marine fi sheries, and ecosystems. This book targets policy makers but will engage anyone committed to building a sustainable future for the planet.

Building a Sustainable Future

The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018

Quentin Wodon

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