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  • 1
    UID:
    almafu_9958143917402883
    Format: 1 online resource (48 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Since the early 2000s, after a long period of wide and persistent gaps, Latin America has experienced a steady decline in income inequality. This paper presents evidence of a trend reversal in labor income inequality, which is considered the main factor behind such a decline in income inequality across the region. The analysis shows that, while labor income inequality increased during the 1990s, with heterogeneous experiences across countries, it fell in a synchronized way across countries beginning in the early 2000s. This systematic decline was supported by an expansion in real hourly earnings among the bottom of the wage distribution and, to a lesser extent, the middle part of the earnings distribution, thus reducing upper and lower tail inequality. This trend reversal is explained by a lower dispersion of earnings among workers with observable different attributes and by a much less extensive dispersion of residual labor inequality. Regarding the earnings differentials among workers with observable different attributes, the analysis concludes that the decline in labor inequality in Latin America has been closely associated with a reduction in the college/primary education premium and in the urban-rural earnings gap, coupled with a steady drop in the high school/primary education premium, which accelerated markedly since the 2000s, as well as a reduction in the experience premium across all age groups.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 2
    UID:
    almafu_9959833870802883
    Format: 1 online resource (34 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Developing countries are implementing policies expanding the adoption and productive use of digital technologies to advance economic development and inclusion. Yet, systematic analyses of the welfare and distributional effects of digital technologies on households and individuals-especially broadband mobile internet-remain limited. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper proposes a simple analytical framework to offer insights on how more equitable access to digital technologies affects household welfare, which can be organized into four areas: (1) determinants of adoption of digital technologies; (2) distributional effects of increasing competition in the information and communication technology industry; (3) welfare and poverty effects of coverage and access to digital technologies; and (4) local economic effects of access to digital technologies. To illustrate the relevance and replicability of this framework across developing countries, the analysis is carried out for Senegal, a country that has recently experienced a rapid expansion in digital infrastructure.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (kostenfrei)
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  • 3
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C. :The World Bank,
    UID:
    almafu_9958143944102883
    Format: 1 online resource (32 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: This paper contributes to the limited literature on the welfare impacts of market concentration by developing a simple model that shows how exogenous variations in market power affect poverty. Increased market power leads to economy-wide welfare losses, because it raises the prices of goods and services for all agents in an economy and thus reduces the relative incomes of households, particularly among the poor. Declines in poverty in this context are only possible in the case wherein the poor have access to a share of oligopolistic rents. Although this scenario seems highly unlikely, this result has important implications for public policy, particularly for economies with less-than-perfect markets and social objectives of poverty eradication. This result suggest the possibility of taxing extranormal rents extracted by firms with market power and redistributing them through targeted lump-sum social transfers, thereby contributing to poverty reduction by mitigating welfare losses from the negative price effect.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 4
    UID:
    almafu_9959833872302883
    Format: 1 online resource (33 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Mobile broadband internet is the main technology through which individuals access the internet in developing countries. Understanding the barriers to broadband adoption is thus a priority in designing policies aiming to expand access and close the digital divide across socioeconomic groups and territories. This paper exploits data from harmonized household expenditure surveys in seven countries in West Africa in 2018/19-a subregion with one of the lowest levels of mobile internet penetration in the world-to identify the main factors that limit mobile broadband internet adoption. Results show that low levels of household consumption and prices of services are two key constraints. One standard deviation increase in household expenditure, about USD 65 per capita per month, is associated with a 6.5 percentage point rise in the probability of adoption, while one standard deviation drop in the price of mobile internet services, about USD 3.60, increases the probability of adoption by 2.4 percentage points. Other determinants include demographic characteristics (sex, age, language, urban location), socioeconomic features (educational attainment, sector of employment), and other factors linked to policy (access to electricity, ownership of assets, alternative means of internet access). Results are robust to specifications focusing only in areas with mobile internet coverage (3G).
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (kostenfrei)
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  • 5
    UID:
    almafu_9958143902602883
    Format: 1 online resource (42 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Conditional cash transfer programs, whereby transfers to households are conditional on school attendance or health checkups, have become a widespread policy tool. They are viewed as a means of immediate poverty alleviation through the cash payments, and as a foundation of long-term poverty reduction through the emphasis on human capital formation. Because targeted transfers are usually conditioned on the consumption of normal goods, richer eligible households are more likely to consume more educational and health care opportunities than poorer ones. Thus, the eligible poorest households may benefit least from conditional cash transfers even to the extent that they may not participate at all. If conditionality is conceptualized as a cost at the margin, it may be leading poor households to opt out. This paper proposes a framework to model household decision making on participation (or not) in cash transfer programs depending on whether a conditionality exists. The paper outlines the optimal size of the cash transfer such that a fixed government budget maximizes the poverty reduction. The paper also shows that unconditional cash transfers may be preferable over conditional cash transfers if a government has a sufficiently high degree of poverty aversion, that is, if, beyond the poverty headcount, the government cares about how poor the poor are or the distance of the poorest among the poor below the poverty line. This basic argument carries over from income poverty to education poverty. The framework can be useful in shaping the recent discussion on the merits of universal benefits over conditional transfers in reducing poverty.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 6
    UID:
    almafu_9958143903802883
    Format: 1 online resource (50 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Labor market dynamics have played a significant role in the remarkable social gains experienced across Latin America over the recent past. Assessing the quality of employment, beyond the perspective of income, to include other fundamental aspects of jobs-such as whether jobs are secure, provide benefits, or allow human capital accumulation-can shed light on the sustainability of these achievements. This is particularly pertinent given the region's current economic slowdown. Using harmonized data for 17 countries in Latin America, this paper connects the role of job quality with the recent process of inclusive growth across the region, and particularly with how individuals worked their way out of poverty. The paper first proposes a multi-dimensional measure for job quality, and then uses this measure to compare job quality across countries and over time. The paper also studies some of the correlates of job quality and the relationship between job quality and poverty. The main finding is that job quality across the region began to increase since 2004, coupled with the favorable terms of trade brought to the region by the commodities super cycle of the 2000s. The best predictors of job quality are age, gender, education, formal employment, and union membership. Both health and retirement benefits are the dimensions of job quality that are best correlated with not living in poverty.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 7
    UID:
    almafu_9958143926202883
    Format: 1 online resource (23 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: The relationship between violence and chronic poverty has been studied mostly in the context of war or long-term episodes of conflict. In contrast to previous studies, this paper explores whether violence that does not include the shattering of infrastructure impacts the chance that poverty may remain chronic. A long-run perspective is gained by analyzing unique, recently gathered panel data at the municipality level in the Mexican context, covering the period from 1990 to 2010. Violence is measured as the number of non-drug-related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. A municipality is classified as chronically poor if the percentage of people in food poverty remains above the national average during two consecutive periods. Econometric analysis is carried out through discrete choice models. Putting the results in context, consider of a chronically poor municipality in 2005 in which average household income is below the 25th percentile in 2000. If this municipality had a 10.47 non-drug-related homicide rate, the 75th percentile in 2000, its chance of remaining chronically poor into 2005 was almost double the corresponding chance of a municipality with the same mean household income but at the national median of violence in 2000 (zero non-drug-related homicides).
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 8
    UID:
    almafu_9960787091002883
    Format: 1 online resource (52 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: What are the impacts of expanding mobile broadband coverage on poverty, household consumption and labor market outcomes in developing countries? Who benefits from improved coverage of mobile internet? To respond to these questions, this paper applies a difference-in-differences estimation using panel household survey data combined with geospatial information on the rollout of mobile broadband coverage in Tanzania. The results reveal that being covered by 3G networks has a large positive effect on total household consumption and poverty reduction, driven by positive impacts on labor market outcomes. Working age individuals living in areas covered by mobile internet witnessed an increase in labor force participation, wage employment, and non-farm self-employment, and a decline in farm employment. These effects vary by age, gender and skill level. Younger and more skilled men benefit the most through higher labor force participation and wage employment, while high-skilled women benefit from transitions from self-employed farm work into non-farm employment.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (kostenfrei)
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  • 9
    UID:
    almafu_9959780148902883
    Format: 1 online resource (22 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: This paper presents a novel method for estimating the likely welfare effects of competition reforms for both current and new consumers. Using household budget survey data from 2015/16 for Ethiopia and assuming a reform scenario that dilutes the market share of the telecommunications state-owned monopoly to 45 percent, the model predicts a 25.3 percent reduction in the price of mobile services and an increase of 4.6 million new users of mobile phone services. This reform is expected to generate a welfare gain of 1.37 percent among all consumers. Poverty rates are expected to decline by 0.31 percentage point, driven by a reduction of 0.22 percentage point for current consumers and 0.09 percentage point among new users. Inequality would increase by 0.23 Gini point since better-off consumers are more likely to reap the benefits of greater competition. This method represents a powerful tool for supporting the analysis of competition reforms in developing countries, particularly in sectors known for excluding significant segments of the population due to high consumer prices.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (kostenfrei)
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  • 10
    UID:
    almafu_9958143906802883
    Format: 1 online resource (35 pages)
    Series Statement: Policy research working papers.
    Content: Growth is an important channel for poverty reduction. Policies to make growth more "inclusive" have permeated the development debate and "pro-poor growth" has been the subject of a wide range of papers in the literature, including issues related to measurement, modeling, and policy. However, the analytical and particularly empirical literature to support the idea that equity-enhancing policies have a positive effect on growth is more scarce and limited, especially on the potential policy links. This paper proposes a simple conceptual framework to identify the main elements that contribute to the income generation of households, building on the notion that growth can be seen partly as the aggregate outcome of the income generation capacity of households. The framework relies on an asset-based approach, and offers insights on how a more equitable distribution of assets and opportunities for their productive use can feed back into higher growth in the long term. Using this framework, the paper links the World Bank's twin goals to specific policy channels that have direct impacts on the income generation capacity of households, with a particular focus on households at the bottom of the income distribution. The four key policy channels include (i) implementing equitable, efficient and sustainable fiscal policy and macroeconomic management, (ii) strengthening fair and transparent institutions capable of delivering quality basic services, (iii) enabling well-functioning markets, and (iv) establishing adequate risk management instruments at the macro and household levels.
    Language: English
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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