Healthy children are better able than sick or malnourished children to go to school and learn. Developed and developing countries are increasingly concerned about how childrens health impacts their school attendance, learning, and development.
... Vea más + For this reason, school health and school feeding policies and programs are critical components of an effective education system. School health refers to school-based interventions that have health and education outcomes, while school feeding refers to interventions involving the supply of food to school-aged children. School feeding is a part of school health, but because of the importance of the resources in school feeding, it is often treated separately. The World Banks Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) is an initiative to collect and analyze information on government policies in order to improve education systems. Based on a review of the available evidence, the SABER, school health and school feeding program identified four school health policy goals with corresponding policy levers to highlight best practices and key challenges to inform policy decisions. These goals were selected based on the initiative known as the FRESH (Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) framework that was developed in partnership with the global community to provide a set of unifying principles to guide school health policies and programs globally. The four goals are: health-related school policies, safe, supportive school environments, school-based health and nutrition services, and skills-based health education.
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This paper assesses the link between democracy and inequality. Inequality is measured at the cohort level with pseudo-panel data built from nine Latin American countries' household surveys (1995-2009, biannual).
... Vea más + Democracy is measured as a stock during long periods of time both before and after each cohort's year of birth. The paper presents evidence that long-run historical patterns in the degree of democracy relate to income inequality. However, this relationship is non-monotonic: inequality ?rst increases with the stock of democracy before falling. The paper also presents evidence that education may be a mechanism explaining this result.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS7153 JAN 01, 2015
This paper assesses the impact of the rise of China on the trade of Latin American and Caribbean economies. The study proposes an index to measure the impact on trade, which suggests sizable effects, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, and Paraguay.
... Vea más + The paper uses the index and a model of labor mobility, to calculate the impact of China's growth on labor markets in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The resulting evidence suggests that the rise of China has had positive effects on agriculture and mining in Argentina and Brazil, which offset negative impacts on manufacturing industries, thus leaving total employment and real wages virtually unchanged in the long run. In contrast, the estimated impacts of China's rise on Mexico imply that the sizable shock to manufacturing was not offset by the positive shocks on mining and agriculture, reducing employment in the long run. The paper also discusses the effect of China on the degree of informality in these three economies and contrasts short-run and long-run effects on employment and wages across industries.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS7155 JAN 01, 2015
This paper examines public sector size and performance management in post-revolution Tunisia, drawing on macro-empirical, legal, and qualitative analyses.
... Vea más + The paper first shows that public sector employment figures and the wage bill have increased significantly since the 2011 revolution, but that this represents merely an acceleration of the previous trend. The paper then examines de jure and de facto performance management in Tunisia's public sector, covering incentives through recruitment, evaluation, compensation, and promotion. The examination shows that Tunisia's legal framework is well-designed for recruiting the most skilled candidates into the public sector and promoting the most high-performing employees. De facto, the link between an employee's performance and evaluation, compensation, and promotion is weak. Performance evaluation is virtually nonexistent and promotions are automatic or awarded through a process that emphasizes seniority over performance. This is particularly true during the post-revolution period, in which a number of ad-hoc arrangements multiplied divergences between the legal basis for performance management and its application. These ad-hoc changes allowed the state to act as employer of last resort, significantly increasing direct (noncompetitive) recruitment and regularizing temporary staff. The increase in and proliferation of allowances have added to the complexity of the compensation system. In a qualitative review of past reform attempts, the paper demonstrates that reformers had identified the weaknesses of Tunisia's public sector performance system as early as 1989, but failed to achieve major change.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS7159 JAN 01, 2015
Brockmeyer, Anne; Khatrouch, Maha; Raballand, Gael
The main objective of the UYEP is to provide disadvantaged urban youth between the ages of 16 and 35 in the National Capital District (NCD) with income from temporary employment opportunities, and to increase their employability.
... Vea más + This will be done through three components: (1) Youth Job Corps: Community awareness, mobilization and screening campaign followed by basic life skills training and 40 days of labor-intensive employment for eligible youth; (2) Skills Development and Employment Scheme: Additional Pre-Employment Training (PET) and a further five months of on-the-job placements/training for eligible youth; and (3) Project Management: Implementation and technical support to NCDC. The project aims to impact 10,500 beneficiaries in the NCD and produce more than one-million work days. Eighty percent of the projects budget will be invested directly into the economy in the form of training, youth stipends, goods, and services through contracted public works. The project will issue mobile phones and establish BSP Kundu bank accounts for almost all youth participants with the help of Bank of South Pacific, Digicel, and PNG Telikom. Exxon Mobil will provide supervision and monitoring support, valuable to improve the delivery of the project, the project's youth and the future of PNG.
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The Ombudsman Bureau in Jordan was established in 2008. It was created to provide an avenue for redress by citizens for complaints against public sector bodies - part of the Governments drive to improve the public sector.
... Vea más + Such a body is important in providing checks and balances in a government dominated by a strong executive branch. It also provides an alternative process of dispute resolution to filing cases in courts, thus relieving pressure on the court system and providing a means of redress that may prove more accessible than the courts for certain categories of disputes.
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The Syrian war and the subsequent emergence and spread of the Islamic State (ISIS) have transformed the Levant in ways one could not have imagined prior to 2011.
... Vea más + As the numbers of dead and of refugees and internally displaced kept climbing, and as families were torn apart and neighborhoods were turned into war zones, economies slumped and regional economic ties broke down. The shock of these events, henceforth referred to as the Levant conflict or war, has changed the region in profound ways, yet there are no systematic evaluations of its economic impact. Our objective was to address this gap and quantify both the direct and indirect economic effects of the war on the countries in the greater Levant--Turkey, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is important to note that the analysis in our paper does not factor in several types of costs. The authors do not assess the cost of delivering basic services to refugees in receiving countries; these costs could be substantial for Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The costs of replenishing depleted human and physical capital in Syria will also be sizable. The authors also ignore important dynamic investment-growth links that may amplify the effects discussed here.
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This report is about education, skills, and labor market outcomes in the Kyrgyz Republic. The report shows that skills are valued in the Kyrgyz Republic labor market, yet skills gaps persist.
... Vea más + Three findings are particularly noteworthy. First, higher skilled youth have better employment outcomes, meaning that youth with more cognitive and non-cognitive skills are more likely to be employed than inactive or discouraged youth. Second, workers with higher cognitive and non-cognitive skills are more likely to use those skills in their daily work. Third, workers with higher skills, cognitive skills especially, tend to have higher quality (formal sector, less repetitive tasks, less physical work) jobs. However, large variations in observed skills among those with the same level of educational attainment indicate that formal education is failing too many people, even though skill development occurs at different stages in the life cycle and a host of actors are involved, families, for example, play a central role. The report argues that the government could shift some of its focus from providing access to educational institutions and instead focus on providing the skills (cognitive, non-cognitive, and technical) students need to succeed as adults. The government can also do more to get children off to the right start by investing in early childhood development programs, where rates of return to investment are generally very high and important soft skills are learned. Finally, more can be done to match the supply of skills with employer demand by improving the use of information in matching skills to jobs in the labor market.
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The development objective of the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Growth Innovation and Inclusive Finance Project for India is to improve access to finance of MSMEs in manufacturing and service sectors from early to growth stage, including through innovative financial products.
... Vea más + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (1) controlling methods like appropriate ventilation and wet dust suppression for dust; (2) in distillery, generally anaerobic digestion (biomethanation) is widely used for wastewater treatment for production of bio methane which is used as fuel in boilers; (3) preventing formation of moulds on edible materials by controlling and monitoring air humidity; and (4) collecting waste products for use in by-products such as animal feed, where feasible without exceeding cattle-feed quality limits.
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Ratings for the Emergency Crisis Recovery Project for Yemen, Republic of were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was substantial, the Bank performance was satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also satisfactory.
... Vea más + Some lessons learned included: Yemens geographical conditions are treacherous and unique in the region. While the project benefitted from lessons of experience and ongoing ISP support, the operational trade-offs and administrative procedures should have been capable of responding to the local conditions. Inadequate attention was given to the delays in payments, lack of alternative payment distribution mechanisms in remote locations, and readiness of local organizations (or payment agents). The project suffered throughout, especially in the first 6 months, due to delayed funds transfer from Ministry of Finance, or MOF. The project team was highly concerned with regard to the lack of funds from MOF upfront before the project negotiation. The Government expressed concern of the fact that the cash benefits may not be utilized for the intended purposes and may not be making much development impact on the beneficiaries. The Bank team did not push hard for beneficiary assessment or designing the impact study, thus it is hard to reconcile beyond the objective of distributing cash. With another upcoming unconditional cash-transfer project, it is critical to consult with the Government and ensure that funds are allocated for an impact study and efforts are made early to prepare for it.
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Informe final de ejecución y resultados ICR3148 DEC 29, 2014
Ratings for the Emergency Peace Support Project for Nepal were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was low or negligible, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also moderately satisfactory.
... Vea más + Some lessons learned included: teams preparing emergency operations should be encouraged to be more conservative with planned outputs than they would for a standard investment project, especially in a low-capacity setting and with new processes. The videotape revelation precipitated a restructuring of the project to avoid misuse of funds and adverse reputational consequences. The risk of this occurring was acknowledged at preparation and mitigated through the use of BPOG. A reliable process was put in place to identify genuine beneficiaries, minimizing grievances and the risk of leakage, while close supervision and a timely response from the Bank team averted any reputational impact from the videotape revelation. A high level of risk is likely in emergency operations, and this should not be a deterrent to such projects. Rather, task teams should manage this risk by strengthening borrower capacity for oversight and fiduciary control, ensuring transparency of processes, and maintaining close supervision during implementation. Projects often encounter delays that hamper progress against the project development objective, or PDO, and this was the case both in the early stages of ESES and immediately following restructuring. While some of these delays are unavoidable, such as the need to develop operations manuals before commencing the work, others (such as the delay in commencing phase two of ESES) might have been identified and mitigated earlier with closer supervision and more proactive planning.
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Informe final de ejecución y resultados ICR3161 DEC 22, 2014
The objective of the Social Protection (SP) System Operation Project for Rwanda is to support the Government of Rwanda to improve the efficiency, accountability, and coverage of its social protection system.
... Vea más + This programmatic work will help the Government of Rwanda stay on course for reaching its ambitious poverty reduction goals, while addressing a set of second-generation reforms critical to strengthening Rwanda's SP system. This operational series will focus on three main areas: improving the efficiency of Rwanda's SP system, strengthening accountability and transparency, and expanding appropriate coverage. The Government of Rwanda has established SP as a priority in its ambitious goal to accelerate poverty reduction to less than 30 percent of the population and to reduce extreme poverty to 9 percent by 2018. Rwanda is among global leaders in building an integrated SP system in a low-income environment that is closely tied to national goals of poverty reduction. This development policy operation (DPO) series is fully supportive of the end-line goals for Rwandas national SP strategy (2013-18) and second economic development and poverty reduction strategy (EDPRS-2) (2013-18) as well as with Rwanda's goals of strengthening the prospects of its vulnerable population for graduation from poverty and social assistance.
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Ratings for the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest Project (EGPP) for Bangladesh were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was moderate, the Bank performance was satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also satisfactory.
... Vea más + Some lessons learned included: the project served as a strategic entry point for the Bank on its policy dialogue in the social protection arena and, by enabling incremental and positive changes to the Program, it led to strong collaboration between the Bank and the Government and established the Bank as a credible partner in bringing relevant international good practice in building sound social protection systems in Bangladesh. This has resulted in a longer term programmatic engagement and continued dialogue on improving the design, implementation and monitoring of safety net programs. Although no external validation mechanism was put in place under the Project to measure and monitor results, the Bank team utilized Trust Fund resources to conduct independent spot-checks and operational assessments during each phase of the Program which enabled a positive feedback loop by identifying areas that required remedial measures and course correction, and thus informed necessary changes and updates to program guidelines. Operational assessments highlighted two potential areas of weakness in program administration, namely irregularities in recording attendance at work sites and payment mismanagement. An innovative pilot using mobile phones and Bangladesh Post Office cash cards for attendance verification and payment solutions demonstrated that while there may be initial hurdles, as would be expected with introducing any new technology, once beneficiaries understand how a new solution helps them directly (reduced processing time, greater transparency, etc.), there will be greater effort on their part to learn it more proactively.
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Informe final de ejecución y resultados ICR3276 DEC 15, 2014