Development Policy Review最新文献

Motivation

The participation rate of women in India's labour force is not only one of the lowest in the world, it has also been declining. To increase women's employment, some observers argue for reducing occupational gender segregation so that more women enter non-traditional jobs.

Purpose

I ask how aspirations for non-traditional jobs are formed among young women in Delhi. The aim was to enable policy-makers to foster occupational aspirations for non-traditional jobs so women could enter jobs considered to be men's work, reducing gender segregation and increasing women's participation in the labour market.

Methods and approach

I interviewed 72 young women from low-income households in Delhi, following a semi-structured guide. These young women were training either in jobs seen as the preserve of men—taxi drivers, electricians, and electronics mechanics—or in traditionally female work in beauty salons.

Findings

Contrary to conventional wisdom, young women's entry into non-traditional training in Delhi was not a result of their occupational aspirations. Rather, entry into training saw them aspire to the jobs for which they trained.

Policy implications

To increase women's entry into jobs dominated by men, policy-makers do not need to influence young women's occupational aspirations. Instead, they should focus on factors that directly affect job entry—for example, having training centres close to where these young women live—and provide opportunities for young women to train.

Traditional concepts of occupational aspirations, generally derived from the global North, do not apply in the same way to young women in India. My study raises questions about these conceptions of aspirations and prompts future studies to assess whether they apply in other parts of the global South.

Motivation

Child streetism, a concept that describes the desperate situations of children working, living, or surviving on the street, is a complex phenomenon and one of the challenges posed by urban poverty worldwide.

Purpose

The increased study of street children in Nigerian urban centres over the last 10 years has seen the accumulation of evidence underpin new policies to address this worldwide problem. This article summarizes the determinants of child streetism, the risks associated with it (violence, street gangsterism, drugs and substance abuse), and the intervention policies and programmes for street children in Nigeria.

Methods and approach

The article is based on a textual narrative synthesis analysis of the relevant literature published between 2012 and 2023.

Findings

Analysis of the literature shows that street children engage in harmful and risky behaviours and are caught in a cycle of abuse and poverty. Interventions to help street children are generally hampered by a lack of understanding of the causes, impacts, situations, and general characteristics. The literature suggests that the most successful interventions typically capitalize on people's strengths, incorporate elements of participation, self-help, and mutual support, and take the least stigmatizing approach.

Policy implications

Child streetism is an expression of a complicated web of determinants that require structural solutions. Any policy addressing the problem of child streetism must consider the phenomenon as a product of several complex and interrelated factors. Of these, uncontrolled urbanization, poor urban planning and management, and poverty are the most obvious.

Motivation

Investing in girls' schooling in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is seen as central to improving gender equity. It is argued that interventions to promote girls' enrolment are appropriate as girls face gendered barriers to school enrolment and completion and investing in girls' schooling has high economic and human development returns. But is this fair to boys and enough for girls?

Purpose

We ask how appropriate it is to direct development assistance towards improving girls' school enrolment, compared to prioritizing schooling for both girls and boys, and addressing barriers to gender equality throughout the life course.

Methods and approach

We frame the enquiry through a human development framework with three distinct but interdependent domains: protection of human development potential; realization of human development potential; and use of human development potential.

Using publicly available data, we identify indicators that are likely to be correlated with the degree to which human development potential is protected, realized, and utilized in LMICs. We compare male and female outcomes on each of these indicators to assess gender parity at different life stages.

Findings

In most regions, girls are ahead of boys in both school enrolment and completion. Girls have better outcomes than boys in several other indicators in early life and childhood.

In adolescence and adulthood, girls and women fall behind boys and men. This is especially apparent in workforce participation, in unemployment, in pay, and in share of unpaid care work and political participation, where women have less favourable outcomes than men. The bias against women is most marked in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Policy implications

A focus on girls' schooling should be tempered by ensuring quality pre-primary, primary, and secondary schooling for both boys and girls. At the same time, we must address causes of gender inequality, including labour market discrimination and social norms that justify the exclusion and exploitation of women and girls.

Motivation

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs) often deliver services that high-income states might themselves provide, such as education and health care. But such service provision usually requires NGOs to engage with the state. Whether NGO–government relations affect NGO service provision to beneficiaries is not well studied.

Purpose

We assess how NGO–government relations affect the reported outcomes of NGO service provision. We look at evidence from 1980 to 2014, a time when NGOs grew in number and activity. We consider five types of relatively constructive relations between NGOs and states along a spectrum from high to low engagement: collaboration, contracting, consultation, advocacy, and substitution.

Methods and approach

We reviewed 109 articles from academic journals on NGOs working in education and health in L&MICs published between 1980 and 2014. These articles describe the activities of both international and domestic NGOs working at both national and subnational levels. We coded articles for content to allow detection of associations.

Findings

First, authors overwhelmingly report favourable outcomes from NGO service provision, regardless of the nature of the NGO–government relationship. Second, collaborative, advocacy, and substitutive relationships are most often associated with favourable outcomes. This is especially true in democratic states. Third, subnational NGO service provision is more frequently associated with favourable outcomes. Fourth, NGO service provision in low-income and African countries is disproportionately associated with reports of unfavourable or null outcomes.

Policy implications

Governments and development agencies should prioritize collaboration and engagement at the subnational level, create space for NGO advocacy, and redouble efforts to understand what drives favourable outcomes in low-income countries.

Motivation

The eradication of poverty is one of Mexico's greatest challenges. This challenge is even greater for Indigenous communities, where seven out of 10 people were living in poverty in 2018. Despite the economic, social, and cultural impacts on Indigenous people, there has been scant literature addressing the determinants of Indigenous poverty in Mexico, while studies on the Guerrero Mountain Region (GMR) are scarcer still.

Purpose

This study aims to identify the socioeconomic and contextual determinants of income and multidimensional poverty in the GMR, one of the poorest regions in Mexico and Latin America, inhabited primarily by Indigenous people.

Methods and approach

We use data on 989 individuals in the GMR, collected during the 2018 Socioeconomic Conditions Module of Mexico's National Household Income and Expenditure Survey. To examine the main determinants of individual poverty, we use Bayesian logistic regression (BLR), which allows us to use the data to update information about the parameters and evaluate their distributional properties. The method simplifies multi-causal elements by classifying them into categories of well-being that incorporate more than economic factors.

Findings

The income-poor population is also multidimensionally poor. Education helps to reduce poverty as households that spend more on schooling are less likely to be poor. Households with many members, those with high dependency ratios, and those with members living with disability all tend to be poor. Households with access to landlines and the internet are less likely to be poor.

Policy implications

More diagnosis of poverty is needed. This should consider overlapping vulnerabilities (institutional, socioeconomic, environmental, and sociocultural) in this region for each Indigenous group. Public policies need to be monitored for performance.