Search

The portability of social benefits is gaining importance given the increasing share of individuals working at least a part of their life outside their home country. Bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) are considered a crucial approach to establishing portability, but the functionality and effectiveness of these agreements have not yet been investigated; thus important guidance for policymakers in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries is missing. To shed light on how BSSAs work in practice, this document is part of a series providing information and lessons from studies of portability in four diverse but comparable migration corridors: Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco. A summary policy paper draws broader conclusions and offers overarching policy recommendations. This report looks specifically into the working of the Austria-Turkey corridor. Findings suggest that the BSSA between Austria and Turkey is broadly working well, with no main substantive issues in the area of pension portability and few minor substantive issues concerning health care portability and financing. Process issues around information and automation of information exchange are recognized and are beginning to be addressed.

Improved outcomes for women and children - more education, lower fertility rates, higher nutritional status, and lower incidence of illness, among other outcomes - have broad individual, family, and societal benefits. For nearly 15 years, the targets of the millennium development goals (MDGs) have been a bellwether for progress, particularly for maternal and child health (MCH) - a two-thirds reduction in under-five mortality in MDG 4 and a three-quarters reduction in the maternal mortality ratio in MDG 5. This systematic review by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is a learning exercise that looks beyond World Bank experience. It is intended to be used a reference for practitioners in the Bank and elsewhere with an interest in interventions that have demonstrated attributable improvements in skilled birth attendance and reductions in maternal and child mortality. This review also identifies important gaps in the impact evaluation evidence for interventions that may be effective in reducing maternal and child mortality but whose impacts have not yet been tested using robust impact evaluation methods. The systematic review provides findings on what is known about the effects of interventions on skilled birth attendance, maternal mortality, neonatal mortality, infant mortality, and under-five mortality, as well as the effect of skilled birth attendance on these and other intermediate MCH outcomes. Finally, the review highlights the main gaps in the body of impact evaluation knowledge for maternal and child mortality.

In 2000, the United Nations (UN) Member States pledged to work towards a series of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the target of a three-quarters reduction in the 1990 maternal mortality ratio (MMR; maternal deaths per 100 000 live births), to be achieved by 2015. This target (MDG 5A) and that of achieving universal access to reproductive health (MDG 5B) together formed the two targets for MDG 5: Improve maternal health. In the five years counting down to the conclusion of the MDGs, a number of initiatives were established to galvanize efforts towards reducing maternal mortality. These included the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which mobilized efforts towards achieving MDG 4 (Improve child health) as well as MDG 5, and the high-level Commission on Information and Accountability (COIA), which promoted “global reporting, oversight, and accountability on women’s and children’s health”. Now, building on the momentum generated by MDG 5, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) establish a transformative new agenda for maternal health towards ending preventable maternal mortality; target 3.1 of SDG 3 is to reduce the global MMR to less than 70 per 100 000 live births by 2030.

The authors investigate determinants of individual migration decisions in Vietnam, a country with increasingly high levels of geographical labor mobility. Using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) of 2012, the authors find that probability of migration is strongly associated with individual, household and community-level characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for young people and those with post-secondary education. Migrants are more likely to be from households with better-educated household heads, female-headed households, and households with higher youth dependency ratios. Members of ethnic minority groups are much less likely to migrate, other things equal. Using multinomial logit methods, we distinguish migration by broad destination, and find that those moving to Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi have broadly similar characteristics and drivers of migration to those moving to other destinations. The authors also use VHLSS 2012 together with VHLSS 2010, which allows us to focus on a narrow cohort of recent migrants, those present in the household in 2010, but who have moved away by 2012. This yields much tighter results. For education below upper secondary school, the evidence on positive selection by education is much stronger. However, the ethnic minority ‘penalty’ on spatial labor mobility remains strong and significant, even after controlling for specific characteristics of households and communes. This lack of mobility is a leading candidate to explain the distinctive persistence of poverty among Vietnam’s ethnic minority populations, even as national poverty has sharply diminished.

Honduras has experienced moderate economic growth in the past decade, in line with the rest of the region. Despite this growth track record, limited opportunities for decent jobs for the majority of workers have resulted in stagnant poverty and inequality rates that are still the highest in Central America (CA). In parallel, progress in human development indicators has also been mixed in the last decade. In education, while primary enrollment has significantly increased, low coverage at all other levels of education, inequalities in access and low quality persist. In health, Honduras is close to achieving the 2015 child mortality Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but maternal mortality, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), and violence pose additional challenges. And despite advances in setting up a social protection system, fiscal sustainability and lack of coordination among interventions prevail, undermining poverty reduction efforts. The ability of the Honduras government to expand safety nets, to increase the access and quality of public education and health services, to engage in active labor market policies, and to improve human development indicators in general, remains limited for a number of reasons. First, overall real social public spending has been on the decline in the last few years. Second, low revenues and fiscal deterioration pose challenges to adequately financing needed social sector improvements. Third, challenges in budget formulation and execution (mainly due to institutional factors) also diminish the impact of social spending. But more importantly, Honduras needs to significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its social spending. This note argues that moving forward Honduras should prioritize three main aspects: a) to rationalize and increase the effectiveness of social public spending by enhancing the pro-poor features of targeting mechanisms; b) to significantly redress the imbalance between recurrent spending, especially the wage bill, and capital expenditure; and c) to continue strengthening information systems tools, legislation, and institutions in an effort to consolidate programs into fewer and higher impact interventions. Sector-specific challenges aligned with these broad objectives are addressed below.

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and one of the most densely populated in the world. El Salvador is among the countries most affected by weather-related events and other hazards, incurring annual losses of around 2.5 percent of GDP. Worldwide, it ranks second highest for risk exposure to two or more hazards and highest for the total population at a relatively high risk of mortality. Furthermore, climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of weather, related events. The new Administration is committed to making El Salvador more ‘productive, educated, and safe’ by promoting inclusive growth and resilience. The World Bank Group’s (WBG) proposed new CPF intends to promote inclusive growth and to foster resilience, with a focus on policy levers that could contribute to break the vicious circles in a sustainable manner. The proposed CPF is aligned with the Government’s priorities and informed by the WBG’s recent SCD. To strengthen the mutually-reinforcing foundations of inclusive growth, the proposed WBG engagement would support objectives which seek to: (i) build capacity to create safer communities for economic development; (ii) improve secondary-school attainment; (iii) enhance youth employability and skills; and (iv) increase access to finance. To foster sustainability and resilience, the proposed CPF seeks to: (v) promote the efficiency of public spending; and (vi) build capacity to manage disasters and environmental challenges. Taking into account the challenges faced by El Salvador, the WBG wishes to provide a modest but catalytic role through the implementation of these six objectives.

Sex ratios at birth rose sharply in the South Caucasus countries after 1991, but recent data indicate that this trend is turning. What caused this rise, and what can be done to accelerate its normalization? Traditional kinship systems in the region are similar to those of other settings with sex-selection: structured for collaboration among male kin and dependence only on sons, not daughters. Yet it is anomalous to find sex-selection in a region that under the Soviet Union has for long been substantially urbanized and gender-equitable in public life — factors associated with declines in sex-selection elsewhere. Sex-selection manifested itself only after the sudden economic and governance meltdown following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Jobs, basic services, and social protection mechanisms unraveled. People scrambled for coping mechanisms, and sons offer the traditional form of support under uncertainty. Basic services, pensions, and safety nets have been rebuilt, but the process involved years of policy changes. Strengthening these institutions, and maintaining credible continuity of expectations in them, is critical to accelerating normalization of sex ratios.

In mid-2014, the Government of Ukraine (GoU) requested technical assistance and financial support from the inter¬national community to assess and plan priority recovery and peacebuilding efforts in the conflict-affected regions of eastern Ukraine. Following these requests, and within the framework of the 2008 Joint Declaration on Post-Crisis Assessments and Recovery Planning, the EU, UN, and WBG agreed to support the government in undertaking a Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessment (RPA). This assessment follows the Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA) methodology. In view of the continuing conflict in eastern Ukraine, it was decided to undertake an initial rapid assess¬ment as a first phase of activity, which would provide an analytical and programmatic baseline for recovery efforts to inform urgent interventions and provide a basis for scaling up recovery plan¬ning and responses as the situation and needs evolve on the ground. This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of the first phase of the RPA, which was undertaken in the period November 2014 to February 2015. In light of the dynamic and fluid nature of the situation in eastern Ukraine, these findings should be considered as a snapshot in time. In particular, the assessment of infrastructure damage is limited to the damage that occurred on or before November 2014. Furthermore, the number of registered internally displaced persons (IDPs), utilized as a reference to estimate the needs of this affected population, corresponds to the official government estimates as of February 2015.

Africa’s population is young and growing at twice the pace of other continents. A youth bulge presents a series of development policy opportunities and challenges. In this context, simplistic linkages between the youth bulge, high unemployment, and fragility have gained traction and given rise to a youth policy agenda that targets urban male youth as the problem and emphasizes formal sector development as the solution. This paper questions some of the core assumptions that underpin mainstream perceptions of the linkages between youth, employment, and fragility in West Africa, and presents an alternative analysis. The study will use the language of livelihoods to reflect on youth employment experiences, as livelihoods take into account the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources), and activities required for a means of living beyond traditional ideas of employment, and thus enable a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the realities of many young West Africans. The paper argues that a nuanced understanding of specific groups of young people and their livelihood activities in their specific social, cultural, political, and economic context is necessary to understand how young peoples’ lives intersect with fragility dynamics. The paper aims to highlight that the relationship between youth, unemployment, underemployment, livelihoods, and fragility is far more complex than is often recognized and should not be exaggerated or taken out of context.

This report summarizes findings from an allocative efficiency and financial commitment analysis conducted for the Government of Zambia by the World Bank and the University of New South Wales. It uses Optima, a mathematical model of HIV transmission and disease progression. Optima is a population-based and flexible model, which provides a formal method of optimization and determines optimal allocations of HIV resources across numerous HIV programs, target populations, and funding levels. It also provides epidemic, investment scenario and financial commitment analysis.

Investments in education, health and social protection are the key to improving the state of human development in any society. In recent years, Nepal too has invested heavily in these sectors, particularly in education and health. This note provides an overview of the progress and current state of access and equity in these three sectors. It also presents evidence on some aspects of quality in the education and social protection sectors. While the country has made substantial improvements in different indicators of access at the aggregate level, disaggregated data show that disparities in access continue to exist across demographic and geographical dimensions. There is some evidence of improvement in the quality of educational inputs over the years, but the quality of outcomes remains poor.