1,721,786 research outputs found
The Right Skills for the Job? Rethinking Training Policies for Workers
Full text linkThis book addresses the question of how to build and upgrade job relevant skills. Specifically, the authors focus on three types of training programs relevant for individuals who are leaving formal general schooling or are already in the labor market: pre-employment technical and vocational education and training (TVET); on-the-job training (OJT); and training-related active labor market programs (ALMPs). ALMPs are usually of shorter duration and target individuals who are seeking a second chance and who do not have access to TVET or OJT; these are often low-skilled unemployed or informal workers. Contrary to training-related ALMPs, pre-employment TVET is usually offered within the formal schooling track and tends to be administered by the ministries of education. The book discusses the main justifications for these programs and how they relate to market failures that can lead to underinvestment in training and misalignment between supply and demand for skills. Unfortunately, governments are also prone to failure and many of the programs that countries have adopted today are part of the problem and not the solution. This book proposes options to improve the design and implementation of current skills development systems. Clearly, the authors cannot cover all issues in detail. Training methods among TVET, OJT, and ALMP programs are quite different, ranging from classroom instruction, laboratory research, TVET workshops, and apprenticeship arrangements and internships in firms. All have different challenges and specificities. The report highlights the most important design features of the different programs and points to the main knowledge gaps and areas for future research and analysis. The book is organized into five chapters. Following this overview, chapter two introduces the policy framework that guides the analysis in the book. This framework describes the main market and government failures that require attention and identifies potential interventions to address them. Chapter's three to five then discuss the main challenges facing, respectively, TVET, OJT, and training-related ALMP programs and outlines recommendations to address them. The rest of this overview summarizes the main messages from each of the chapters and in the last section outlines the main knowledge gaps and proposes an agenda for future research and policy analysis
Child nutrition, child health, and school enrollment : a longitudinal analysis
Full text linkBetter health and nutrition are thought to improve children's performance in school, and therefore their productivity after school. Most literature ignores the fact that child health and schooling reflect behavioral choices, so the estimated impact of health and nutrition on a child's schooling reflects biases in the studies. Using an explicit dynamic model for preferred estimates, the authors use longitudinal data to investigate how children's health and nutrition affect school enrollment in rural Pakistan. They use price shocks when children were of preschool age to control for behavior determining the measure of children's health and nutrition stock. The authors find that children's health and nutrition is three times more important for enrollment than is suggested by"naive estimates"that assume that children's health and nutrition is predetermined rather that determined by household choices. Not only does improved nutrition increase enrollments, it does so more for girls, thus closing a portion of the gender gap. These results strongly reinforce the importance of using estimation methods that are consistent with the economic theory of households to explore the impact of some choice variables on others, using socioeconomic behavioral data. Private behaviors and public policies that affect the health and nutrition of children have much greater effect on school enrollment and on eventual productivity than suggested by early literature methods.Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Early Child and Children's Health,Public Health Promotion,Science Education,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Economic Theory&Research,Primary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation
Who's In and Who's Out: Social Exclusion in Latin America
No full textSocial exclusion is closely linked with many economic problems in Latin America, as it prevents people from reaching their full productive potential -in turn constraining growth and revenues- and makes them more likely to incur public health and social service costs. Who's In and Who's Out explores various forms of social exclusion, including residential segregation in Bolivian cities, exclusion from health care in Brazil, barriers to legal status of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica, geographic isolation in El Salvador, and educational inequality among the indigenous in Mexico. The book describes how the exclusion process is exacerbated by self-perpetuating networks of association, prohibitive prices for certain services, and misperceptions between the societal mainstream and excluded groups
Who's In and Who's Out: Social Exclusion in Latin America
No full textSocial exclusion is closely linked with many economic problems in Latin America, as it prevents people from reaching their full productive potential -in turn constraining growth and revenues- and makes them more likely to incur public health and social service costs. Who's In and Who's Out explores various forms of social exclusion, including residential segregation in Bolivian cities, exclusion from health care in Brazil, barriers to legal status of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica, geographic isolation in El Salvador, and educational inequality among the indigenous in Mexico. The book describes how the exclusion process is exacerbated by self-perpetuating networks of association, prohibitive prices for certain services, and misperceptions between the societal mainstream and excluded groups
Does finance accelerate or retard growth? : theory and evidence
No full textFinance can be beneficial for growth, but it can also contribute to financial crises, which are often very damaging for growth. An extensive review of the literature suggests that financial development has a positive impact on economic growth at adequate levels of financial depth but that the effect vanishes, or even becomes negative, when finance becomes excessive. Excessive finance can incubate economic booms and asset price bubbles that end in financial crises, followed by low rates of economic growth for sustained periods. Too little finance is not desirable—but too much is not desirable either
What is the real impact of schooling on age of first union and age of first parenting ? New evidence from Guatemala
Full text linkThe ages of first union and of first parenting are of considerable interest, not only because of their implications for individual welfare and well-being over the life cycle, but also because they are strongly associated with fertility patterns that are thought to have important implications for the broader society. But the many positive associations between schooling attainment and ages of first union and first parenting do not mean that increasing education causes increases in ages of first union and first parenting. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the impact of schooling on ages of first union and first parenting using data collected over 35 years in Guatemala. It advances beyond the previous literature by (1) treating schooling as behaviorally-determined, which changes the estimated schooling impacts considerably in a number of cases, tending to result in stronger positive effects of schooling for females and weaker ones for males; (2) including other aspects of individuals'human capital and parental family background, which in some cases changes the estimated impact of schooling attainment a fair amount; and (3) including outcomes, additional to ages of first union and first parenting, such as union partner's human capital and union partner's family's social and economic status, which enriches the understanding of the multiple effects that schooling attainment has on the processes under study.Population&Development,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Population Policies,Science Education,Scientific Research&Science Parks
Early childhood development through an integrated program : evidence from the Philippines
Full text linkMore attention and resources have been devoted in recent years to early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries. Rigorous studies on the effectiveness of ECD-related programs for improving children's development in various dimensions in the developing world are scant. The authors evaluate an important ECD initiative of the Philippine government using longitudinal data collected over three years on a cohort of 6,693 children age 0-4 years at baseline in two"treatment"regions and a"control"region that did not receive the intervention. The initiative includes a wide range of health, nutrition, early education, and social services programs. The authors estimate its impact by using"intent-to-treat"difference-in-difference propensity score matching estimators to control for a variety of observed characteristics measured at the municipality, barangay, household, and child level and unobserved fixed characteristics, with differential impacts by age of children and duration of exposure to the program. There has been a significant improvement in the cognitive, social, motor, and language development, and in short-term nutritional status of children who reside in ECD program areas compared to those in non-program areas, particularly for those under age four at the end of the evaluation period. The proportions of children below age four with worms and diarrhea also have been lowered significantly in program compared to non-program areas, but there are effects in the opposite direction for older children so the overall impact on these two indicators is mixed.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Early Childhood Development,Youth and Governance,Primary Education,Educational Sciences
Increasing Incomes for the Poor and Economic Growth: Toward a Simple Taxonomy for Policies
Full text linkInspired by a suggestion from Anne Krueger, this paper explores the attraction and power of a simple two-by-two taxonomy for the analysis of policies as they relate to increasing incomes for the poor and economic growth. However, real-world complexities and serious policy assignment, estimation and measurement problems limit the overall utility of such simplified taxonomies. Nevertheless, useful policy insights, in particular contexts within certain markets and institutions, might be gleaned through the development of slightly more sophisticated taxonomies, as considered here in detail, that could apply continuous dimensions of poverty alleviation and increased efficiency. The author concludes that such scientific analyses will certainly raise important policy and research questions as to the choices made, their characterization, and why political economy processes do not lead to “better” policy choices in a particular context
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