Development Policy Review最新文献

Motivation

Understanding the consequences of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site is crucial for global nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, and community-centred social policies. This article highlights the ongoing challenges faced by the inhabitants of the Abay region in Kazakhstan.

Purpose

The primary objective of the study is to inform and enhance policies related to the former Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site. A key focus is understanding how locals perceive the site's impact on socioeconomic development.

Methods and Approach

This study uses semi-structured interviews with locals. The research question addresses how locals perceive the impact of the Semipalatinsk test site on socioeconomic development. Data were collected through 48 interviews from January to March 2024 in the cities of Semey and Kurchatov and thematic patterns were analysed within Galtung's (1990) social justice framework.

Findings

The research shows how prolonged neglect by government impacts the investment climate and social well-being. Restricted access to information on land contamination has hindered explanatory work. The study reveals gaps in understanding among residents and varying access to information.

Policy Implications

An effort on the part of the government to improve information and communication exchange is needed to address the nuclear site's impact, considering differing perceptions. Legislative actions should focus on remediating contamination, protecting public health, and ensuring participatory environmental governance. Policies must address the socioeconomic effects of environmental degradation, promoting social justice and sustainable development. Targeted infrastructure investment is vital for economic growth. Supporting emerging sectors such as medicine, services, and knowledge-based industries will create employment opportunities and address brain drain.

Motivation

Nigeria ranks third in Africa for the number of US dollar millionaires, but whether these high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) are contributing their fair share to domestic revenue mobilization is open to question. Although there have been various attempts to improve tax collection in recent years, including the establishment in 2023 of a presidential committee to harmonize fiscal policy across the country's 36 states, some of which are developing compliance strategies for wealthy individuals, very little is known about the impact of these reforms.

Purpose

To understand what approaches are currently prevalent to improve HNWI compliance across Nigeria and whether they are perceived to be effective.

Methods

The study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with public and private stakeholders from North East Nigeria, analysis of federal and state-level legislation, data collected from 10 State Boards of the Internal Revenue Service from all Nigerian geopolitical zones in preparation for a two-day workshop on HNWIs, and discussions with the 26 participants in the workshop.

Findings

Despite the great diversity in the economic and social structures of the states of Nigeria, legal, administrative, and political challenges faced by the State Boards of the Internal Revenue Service are very similar. Different states have passed subnational legislation that introduces requirements over and above those present in federal legislation to collect the information required to identify HNWIs. However, enforcement is made complex by low tax morale amongst the citizenship and political interference in tax administrative processes. These trends are then discussed in more depth for the particular case of Borno State.

Policy implications

Given the similarities between the obstacles faced by State Boards of the Internal Revenue Service in taxing HNWIs, there is scope for promoting regional approaches coordinated by the Nigerian Joint Tax Board. More evidence needs to be gathered on the effectiveness of policy measures implemented by particular states and the sharing of experiences across State Boards of the Internal Revenue Service needs to be facilitated.

Motivation

The transition from adolescence to adulthood encompasses key social changes. NEET status (Not in Education, Employment or Training) during this period disrupts this transition and alters an adolescent's life course. This is of particular concern in South Africa, a middle-income country with one of the world's highest rates of youth unemployment.

Purpose

The pathway to becoming NEET emerges over time by accumulating risks in early life and adolescence. Early-life adversities can increase the probability of events associated with becoming NEET. We aim to identify early-life and adolescent predictors of events associated with becoming NEET, as well as predictors of NEET status itself.

Methods and approach

We analyse four rounds of longitudinal data from a sample of 1,174 adolescents growing up in peri-urban KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Using a socioecological life-course model, we create two overlapping analytic cohorts and two NEET vulnerability indices to evaluate whether risks for vulnerability in schooling (early outcomes) are similar to those affecting post-schooling education and labour-market outcomes (later outcomes). We use a linear probability model to analyse the relationship between the vulnerability indices and the range of risk factors in the socioecological life-course model.

Findings

A strong predictor of both NEET vulnerability indices includes reporting feeling hopeless about the future. Other significant predictors include behavioural factors (getting pregnant or impregnating someone during adolescence, and drinking alcohol before age 16), family structure (residing with one's biological mother in early adolescence was protective) and demographics (age).

Policy implications

By deepening our understanding of how individual and contextual characteristics shape the transition into productive adulthood through a life-course approach, we can identify possible early intervention points lost once young people become NEET.

Motivation

The proxy means test (PMT) has become the predominant targeting mechanism for social assistance schemes in many low- and lower-middle income countries, including Jamaica. It has many powerful advocates amid claims that it can accurately and cost-effectively target the poor. However, recently, there have been concerns expressed by beneficiary groups, government stakeholders, and civil society on the selection of households for benefits under Jamaica's Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

Purpose

An evaluation of PATH suggests that it covers only about 71% of households ranked in the poorest quintiles, while 23% of programme beneficiaries are from households considered to be non-poor (ranked in the top two quintiles). This study introduces innovations to the current PMT model with the objective of improving targeting of the poor for social protection benefits.

Approach and methods

We draw on data collected by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) regarding the PATH programme to show that an application of the poverty-weighted least squares regression estimation method improves coverage of households ranked in the poorest quintiles. Poverty-weighted least squares places higher weights on the squared errors of poor households, which avoids the tendency of least squares regression to increase the predicted consumption of the poor.

Findings

Using data compiled by the STATIN through the annual Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions, we showed that the construction of a national model estimated using poverty-weighted least squares, and adjusting predicted consumption to the lower limit of the 95% confidence interval, improves coverage of the poorest households from 71% to over 85%. Achieving this high rate of coverage among the poor came at a cost, in the form of high coverage among the non-poor and, particularly, an increase in inclusion errors.

Policy implications

We believe these results demonstrate that in certain contexts it is possible to improve upon the Basic PMT model and meet the goals the PMT was intended to achieve, efficiently directing social assistance to the poor, minimizing leakage to the non-poor, and maintaining integrity in the overall social assistance mechanism.

Motivation

Contract farming plays a significant role in the growth of agriculture in many countries. Contracting poses substantial challenges when courts and companies are insufficiently developed, constraining the fulfilment of contracts. Exploring innovative contract enforcement mechanisms could yield valuable insights.

Purpose

We evaluate the effectiveness of state subsidies as a hybrid enforcement mechanism of the marketing contract developed by the Algerian government for tomato processors and their farmer suppliers.

Approach and methods

We examine the delivery decisions of Algerian tomato farmers to honour contracts or to deliver to the spot market. From the findings we evaluated the direct and indirect effects of subsidies on expanding the self-enforcing range of contracts and on encouraging firms to establish private contract enforcement mechanisms. Propensity scoring was used to match farmers. The data come from a comprehensive database of contracted tomato producers and surveys of all tomato canneries in 2021.

Findings

Subsidies, by reducing processor costs and raising famer prices, help to make contracts self-enforcing. Subsidies, moreover, encouraged half of the processors to adopt private contract enforcement mechanisms, above all loans to their supplier farmers. These mechanisms have had a positive, albeit moderate, effect on farmer deliveries.

Farmers still deliver only half of their contracts owing to weakening self-enforcement as the subsidy can be accessed in the spot market.

Policy implications

Public subsidies can help enforce contracts in agricultural value chains, especially where legal systems are fragile. Strict control of access to subsidies and incentives is crucial to ensure that the contract price provides sufficient incentive to farmers and to encourage processors to provide additional incentives.

Motivation

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) have a significant role to play at a time of environmental upheavals, but their ability to mobilize climate funds in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Ghana, remains under question.

Purpose

The study asked three questions: (1) What spectrum of climate change investment opportunities are FBOs seeking? (2) What are the untapped climate change investment opportunities that FBOs can pursue? (3) What are the constraints that hinder FBOs in mobilizing funds to finance these opportunities?

Approach and methods

A qualitative research approach was adopted for the study and 18 FBOs in Ghana were purposively selected as a sample for the study.

Findings

The study uncovered the spectrum of climate change investment opportunities pursued by FBOs in the areas of agriculture and waste. However, there are untapped climate change investment opportunities in the energy and transport sectors. The constraints associated with mobilizing climate finance are ideological differences, knowledge gaps, limited institutional capacity, and bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Policy implications

Climate action funders need to reduce complications surrounding the means of obtaining funding and streamline their funding requirements to suit FBOs. They should also reassess their credibility evaluation standards to help FBOs from being sidestepped due to limited funding track records, despite the promising adaptation and mitigation initiatives they may have to offer. FBOs must upgrade their skills in the climate finance landscape by taking advantage of capacity-building programmes and training that seek to increase their understanding of the climate finance opportunities and requirements of climate funders.