Five criteria for choosing among poverty programs

The author addresses the issue of how to choose among discreet poverty interventions such as food stamp programs, public works, or small enterprise credit schemes where little formal policy modeling is done prior to decisionmaking. The minimum criteria on which to judge the relative merits of poverty programs are the following. Administrative feasibility. This depends on the detailed designof the program, the level of resources available for administration, and the degree of imperfection that can be tolerated. Political feasibility. This depends on how the program is promoted to the public, how coalitions of supporters or detractors are built, and the relative power of beneficiaries, suppliers, and administrators. Collateral effects on the poverty strategy. How will a safety net program affect, for example, the participants'labor supply, participation in other programs, and receipt of private interhousehold transfers, and how will those changes affect markets and government finances? What will be the net effect on poverty reduction. Potential for targeting the poor. Will the program reach significant number of the poor? How much leakage of benefits will there be to the nonpoor? Tailoring the solution to the problem. The program choice should address the real problem. Where the poor have suffered a loss of real wages rather than a loss of jobs, for example, transfers to the working poor may be more relevant than creating jobs. This criterion may seem obvious, but many proposals seem to ignore it. The author illustrates her main points by applying these criteria to a range of poverty programs commonly used in Latin America. General subsidies of food prices, for example, are administratively and politically feasible and lower food costs to the consumer, but they may distort the economy, harming growth. Food stamps are easy to target to the poor, are fairly difficult to administer, depending on program design, but depending on program design, may encourage the use of schools and primary health care. But there is controversy about whether they encourage dependency and diminish the work ethic.Rural Poverty Reduction,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Services&Transfers to Poor,Safety Nets and Transfers

Social safety nets in World Bank lending and analytical work : FY2002 - 2007

This paper summarizes the state of the portfolio of World Bank lending activities and analytic work on social safety nets between FY2002-2007. It presents a description of the methodology used for compiling the inventories and analyses by region, type of intervention involved, sector board, and instrument. The World Bank has engaged with 118 countries on safety nets issues over the six years under review, providing lending in 68, analytic products in 86, training in 87, and a combined package of all three services in 42, demonstrating the increased sophistication and the important role of safety nets in social policy. There is noticeable variability over time as the portfolio and analytic effort expand when large or multiple countries face economic crises. The regional distribution of safety net activities shows the dominance of Latin America. The analysis also shows the diversity within the portfolio, with respect to both the type of intervention supported and the range of sectors involved in safety net work. Finally, the report delineates the implications and outlook for the future.Safety Nets and Transfers,Banks&Banking Reform,,Labor Policies,Debt Markets

Levels and patterns of safety net spending in developing and transition countries

This paper offers a new set of data compiled from individual World Bank country reports. The authors give a brief textual description of patterns and trends in spending, and provide the raw data and documentation of its sources in the appendix. The data are also provided in an excel spreadsheet on the safety nets website www.worldbank.org/safetynets so that others may use them. Mean spending on safety nets is 1.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and median spending is 1.4 percent of GDP. For about half of the countries, spending falls between 1 and 2 percent of GDP. Some variation is apparent. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, for example, spend considerably less than 1 percent of GDP, while spending on social safety nets in Ethiopia and Malawi is nearly 4.5 percent of GDP because international aid is counted, but will be more like 0.5 percent if only domestically financed spending were counted. Other high-spending countries Mauritius, South Africa, and the Slovak Republic finance their safety nets domestically. Spending on safety nets is less variable than spending on social protection or the social sectors.Safety Nets and Transfers,,Public Sector Expenditure Policy,Population Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Performance of infrastructural parastatals in Kenya since independence: transport, communications and electricity

The paper examines the performance of seven parastatal firms including Kenya Airways, Kenya Railways, Kenya Pipeline, Kenya Power & Light, Kenatco, Kenya Posts and Telecommunications and Kenya Ports Authority. It is shown that those firms which enjoyed natural monopolies performed well financially, which allowed them to expand rapidly and avoid major operational problems. Those firms which faced more competition were more vulnerable financially, which led in turn to operating problems

Improving parastatal performance: an organizational approach: a research proposal

Improved parastatal performance is increasingly crucial to the Kenyan economy because of its macro-economic effects and because of the key sectors controlled by parastatals. There is a consensus that the sector has performed poorly in Kenya, especially in terms of profitability and efficiency. In the literature review it is shown that no author has articulated a positive theory of how public firms respond to their environments. This lack of a theory of the firm has weakened policy analysis in Kenya and elsewhere. It is proposed that each firm should be thought of as a coalition between consumers, input suppliers, management and stock holders. The coalition together produces a surplus, with coalition members competing for shares thereof. The performance of a parastatal can thus be characterized by the way this surplus is allocated. A central assumption of this model is that management will behave strategically to appropriate its share of the surplus, rather than passively obeying the wishes of the stockholders. Analysis of a firm's performance then turns into an examination of the mechanisms by which a coalition member can increase its share in the surplus. Policy prescriptions revolve around strengthening or weakening those mechanisms, taking into account the likely responses of other actors in the coalition. There is sufficient richness of experience in the parastatal sector in Kenya that it should be possible, through a careful comparative study, to demonstrate the effectiveness or lack thereof, of various types of controls which have been proposed

ADAPTABILITY IN A BHUTANESE REFUGEE COMMUNITY: NAVIGATING INTEGRATION AND THE IMPACTS ON NUTRITIONAL HEALTH AFTER U.S. RESETTLEMENT

Increasing rates of overweight, obesity, and related metabolic diseases documented among refugee communities across the United States necessitate greater attention to how processes of integration impact refugee health. These nutritional health trends (e.g., increasing rates of obesity) suggest potential disconnects between refugees\u27 past environments and their conditions after re-settlement, which may contribute to adverse changes in energy balance (diet and exercise). While Bhutanese refugees were among the largest refugee groups entering the US during the five years leading up to this research, very few studies have examined how they have responded to integration and the impact of this transition on their health. Grounded in human adaptability and political economic theories, and adopting a biocultural approach, this dissertation investigates how Bhutanese refugees in “Prospect City” (pseudonym) negotiate changing and unfamiliar structural and sociocultural conditions after resettlement and the consequences for energy balance and nutritional status. The results reveal high rates of overweight and obesity compared to US averages. Age and caste related differences in nutritional status were also found. High rates of overweight and obesity corresponded with an energy imbalance due to over consumption of energy dense traditional foods and limited understanding of the importance of regular exercise. Over consumption of energy dense traditional foods stemmed from several interrelated factors: the abundance of foods in the US, prior experiences with food deprivation, a history of political exile that reinforced desires to preserve cultural food preferences, and joint family efforts to accommodate work-related time constraints by increasing food production and availability. Decreases in exercise appeared to stem from more sedentary lifestyles in the US as a result of work environments and available transportation, coupled with a lack of health knowledge regarding health benefits of physical activity. This dissertation’s findings are being reported to Prospect City’s Bhutanese Community Organization to help develop strategies for improving nutritional health in the community

Performance of development finance institutions in Kenya, 1964-89

The paper examines the performance of eight parastatals which share the goal of fostering development of one or more sectors of the economy primarily via equity participation in joint ventures with the private sector, or via loan schemes. The firms examined include ICDC, DFCK, IDB, KTDC, ADC, KIE, NCC and KNTC. The paper examines the terms on which the parastatals have made finance available to their clients, their managerial efficiency, and their profitability. The performance of manufacturing firms which are subsidiaries of the parastatal firms is compared with performance of purely private manufacturing firms. The paper shows that the performance of the firms has varied widely, but several of the firms have made important positive contributions to the Kenyan capital market, allocating their investment funds to projects which are or average commercially viable and economically competitive

Performance of financial parastatals in Kenya, 1964 - 1984

The paper analyses the performance of four parastatal financial institutions, including the KCB, NBK, HFCK and AFC. Performance is analysed in terms of the four potential beneficiary groups: depositors, borrowers, stockholders and employees. It is shown that the depository financial parastatals played an important role in the development of the Kenyan financial sector. They performed efficiently enough to compete successfully with the private sector, while remaining highly profitable. Since 1979 their performance relative to the private sector has suffered as they have been used to extend banking services into more remote rural areas. The positive performance of the depository institutions contrasts sharply with that of the Agricultural Finance Corporation. The AFC is shown to be inefficient, unprofitable and to serve mainly to transfer state funds to its rather elite clientele