World Development Perspectives最新文献

Using a multinomial endogenous switching regression model, this study examined the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt multiple integrated technologies and then estimated the effects of adopting integrated farm technologies on farm yield, farm income, and household food expenditure. The results showed that adopting higher-order suites of technologies provides higher dividends to farmers in terms of farm yield and income relative to a single technology adoption. Among different integrated technologies, the study found that the technology mix involving crop and soil innovations exerts the greatest impact. Further findings from the study, however, shows that there are no statistical differences in food expenditure from adopting higher-order packages of technologies, albeit the impacts being positive. This could explain the diversion of additional gains obtained towards investing in family assets, child education, and health expenditures. In addition, the study suggests that the level of education of the family head and access to credit significantly influence the decision to adopt multiple integrated technologies. The study provides suggestive evidence for a shift in policy design for the country’s farm productivity coupled with investment policies that promote access to credit and education, especially among rural communities.

This article intends to understand the impact of resettlement and upgrading in the context of Coimbatore, a second-tier city in India. It aims to explore the effects of these housing policies on the urban poor's daily lives and lived experiences by data triangulation. It describes these effects concerning residents’ social networks, livelihoods and commute, infrastructure and maintenance as well as process participation.

Most concerns raised for both resettlement and upgrading – such as destruction of livelihoods and social networks - that have so far primarily been investigated in bigger cities, are found to also apply for housing projects in this second-tier city. To a certain degree, location is an exemption here as three of the four investigated colonies are located near the city center, thereby enabling most of their residents to walk to work and many amenities. Public land in such a central location was thus available to the Urban Local Body (ULB). However, this land was found to be of low quality and rather unsuitable for construction. Overall, the lack of agency vested in residents during planning and implementation gravely contributed to several different projects’ deficiencies.

Exposure to environmental stressors during early childhood can significantly impact a child’s development and educational outcomes. In this paper, we examine the effects of exposure to unimproved sanitation in the surrounding environment during early childhood on primary school enrollment later in life in Bangladesh between 2007 and 2014. While Bangladesh has made significant progress towards eradicating open defecation, the country still suffers from inadequate access to improved sanitation. Additionally, although policies aiming at improving primary school enrollment have been in place since the 1990s, many children of school age were not enrolled at the appropriate time during the period studied. Using a pseudo-panel dataset for children aged six to nine compiled from the 2007, 2011, and 2014 DHS surveys, we find that children exposed to a higher proportion of unimproved sanitation in their community early in their life are less likely to be enrolled in primary school at the time of survey by about five percentage points on average, indicating delayed school enrollment. This effect is more pronounced for children aged six and seven than those eight and nine, likely because parents of children experiencing poor health or cognitive development delay enrolling their children in school until they are slightly older or healthier. Our results are robust to potential omitted variable biases and are further supported by additional analyses on matched samples. Taken all together, our findings highlight that increasing coverage of improved sanitation facilities can help improve school enrollment rates. However, this should not only occur at the household level alone but also should extend to cover all households in the community to ensure achieving maximum benefits. The findings indicate that the provision of safer sanitation facilities is not only good by itself but also is crucial for achieving improvements throughout the human capital development cycle, including health and nutrition, as well as education.

In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the central government operations were paralyzed, and municipal officials became even more important as they were more readily able to respond to their constituents’ needs during this time of crisis. The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) five-year post-earthquake Limyè ak Òganizasyon pou Kolektivite yo Ale Lwen (LOKAL+) program aimed to bolster the capacity of municipalities – beyond this disaster event – through revenue mobilization activities, within quake-affected and non-quake affected areas. The intended outcome of this effort was to improve local public service delivery throughout Haiti.

Nearly all participating LOKAL+ municipalities experienced increased local revenue collection, particularly in property and business taxes, from 2012 through 2017. However, the impact of these increases on public investment spending was not evident even though this was a stated objective of the program. To evaluate whether public services improved in two of the nine LOKAL+ localities, due to USAID’s local revenue mobilization efforts, I employed a case study analysis using descriptive statistics, in-depth interviewing, and content analysis.

The findings revealed modest public service improvements in one of the two case study sites. However, the political climate within which LOKAL+ was executed – mainly, the unlawful installation of interim executive agents throughout the country at the time – had an observed impact on the study’s findings. The implications of country-specific political economic realities on the timing of donor-led local governance efforts are underscored, as Haiti continues to navigate compounding political crises – including the assassination of the President in 2021 – since the end of the LOKAL+ program.

This study explores material, relational and subjective elements of wellbeing as micro-level gendered impacts of COVID-19 policy responses on agro-based livelihoods. Using a test case of rural Zambia, we apply a mixed methods research design and draw data from household surveys, household case study interviews, group discussions, and multi-level interviews. Results show gendered impacts at four significant levels of granularity: markets and material wellbeing, household provisioning, labour and care burdens, relationships and social networks, and disruptions to membership organisations and social initiatives. Production and processes leading to market disruptions lead to a gendered reconcentration of economic activities around men who flex financial muscle and flout COVID-19 guidelines respectively. Women on the other hand are squeezed out of production and market circuits, quickly loosing livelihood strategies and getting relegated to unpaid and invisible household work. Whereas women endeavour to find ways to support their families, such as attempting to maintain group savings initiatives, low levels of policy satisfaction, including declining production and market dynamics limit actions towards inclusive and equitable forms of COVID-19 recovery in rural geographies. We call for holistic interventions that consider community patterns of livelihoods and how they are impacted by the pandemic, necessitating a focus on gender sensitive initiatives that are locally driven, build resilience and empower women.

While the number of impact evaluations has increased in international development, the use of evidence has remained an issue. This study investigates and conceptualizes how a development agency can use evidence to improve and expand its development programs, taking the case of the Indian NGO “Pratham.” In a series of experiments with researchers, Pratham developed and refined their learning agenda to search for a better strategy to improve children’s foundational learning. Pratham has also regularly conducted a nationwide survey on children’s foundational learning. Data from the nationwide survey demonstrated the problem in children’s foundational learning, and evidence from experiments showed an option for an effective strategy to address it. The search, learning, and communication cycle using data and evidence, conceptualized from the case of Pratham, would enhance the effectiveness of development agencies to better support educational development.

This paper uses a theoretical model to explain the patterns and determinants of labour market participation behaviour of young urban women in India. Based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) data and through probit regression results, it argues that the labour market participation decision of young women is an outcome of the joint utility maximization behaviour of their family. The standard of living of the family, market wage, other family characteristics, including the number of children, adult women in the family, elderly members, and occupation, and gender of the head, etc., are significantly determining their labour market participation; apart from women’s individual characteristics like age (experience) and level of education and training. The empirical result also reflects that the “discouraged worker effect” is stronger than the “added worker phenomenon”. Hence, measures to create jobs in modern services could help boost the stagnant female labour force participation in urban India.

Enhancing productivity and profitability of farm households were key focuses among Nigerian agricultural policymakers in their design of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) of 2011–2015. There were several prominent policy initiatives and market development activities included in the ATA. The main direct effects of implementing them were increased public expenditures on subsidized fertilizer and seeds and increased average productivity among subsidy recipients. There were also indirect effects pertaining to greater awareness of agricultural development initiatives among the public and increased farm input availability. However, due to relatively greater physical and transportation infrastructure in urban relative to rural areas, we hypothesized that farm households in peri-urban regions nearest to markets were better positioned to benefit from such initiatives as compared to rural farm households. In this context, the empirical analysis in this article estimates differences among peri-urban versus rural farm households regarding their crop produce marketing and farm input purchase decisions during the period of ATA policy implementation. The results support the hypothesis that peri-urban farm households increased purchases of farm inputs to a greater degree than did rural farm households as well as had higher crop sales values. Data limitations do not allow for determining the causal reason for relatively higher crop sales values. Overall, the policy and market development activities appear to have achieved some intended outcomes among farm households in both peri-urban and rural areas, but the impacts were most pronounced among households nearest to markets.

Achieving sustainable development requires peaceful conditions. However, current sustainability impact assessment tools tend to overlook aspects of positive peace, particularly in societies transitioning from conflict. Recent efforts attempt to address this gap, but the examination of how positive peace indicators integrate into major global sustainability assessment (GSA) frameworks remains underexplored. This study evaluates whether GSA frameworks consider positive peace or the elimination of structural violence and enabling societal conditions that sustain peace. We selected eight GSA frameworks for the analysis: Environmental Performance Index, Global Green Economy Index, Green Growth Index, Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index, Happy Planet Index, Planetary Adjusted Human Development Index, Sustainable Development Goals Index, and Sustainable Society Index. We first evaluated the eight GSA frameworks using the Bellagio Sustainability Assessment and Measurement Principles (BellagioSTAMP) covering guiding vision, essential considerations, adequate scope, framework and indicators, transparency, effective communication, broad participation, and continuity and capacity. Then we analyzed consolidated indicators from the frameworks to determine if they pay balanced attention to different sustainability dimensions and integrate positive peace. While evaluation using BellagioSTAMP is generally satisfactory, positive peace is inadequately addressed in some frameworks, despite peace being a prerequisite for sustainable development. The study results can inform the development of assessment frameworks that better integrate the components of peace and sustainability. The study also highlights the importance of positive peace in achieving sustainable development and the need to ensure assessment frameworks inform actions toward building peaceful communities.

The dramatic increase in Artisanal and Small-scale gold mining (ASM) in the developing world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, is not a happenstance. This has been due to the steady decline in livelihoods based on agriculture and the increasing destitution of many households in these areas. In Ghana, the ASM sector is ever-expanding, providing direct employment for many individuals. The nature of the activity, however, is labour-intensive and thus requires the miners to collaborate and work in groups. Even though traditionally, numbers have mattered in group formation, this paper argues that size is not a critical consideration in forming mining groups. Based on fieldwork in the Birim North District of Ghana using focus group discussions and interviews, the paper found that issues of leadership, reciprocity, trust, and mutual respect are instrumental in forming ASM groups. Not discounting the strengthening of their bonds through multiple locations, the respondents are empathic that rather than size, issues of leadership qualities and conformity to rules and arrangements are vital considerations for group formation. It is recommended that stakeholders take a critical look at ASM to sanitise and improve the perception of the ASM miners as they are well-organised. Still, if they have internal structures which are well organised, they can be relied upon in a comprehensive sanitization.