Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.

Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy

This paper uses survey data from 13 countries to document the economic lives of the poor (those living on less than $2 dollar per day per capita at purchasing power parity) or the extremely poor (those living on less than $1 dollar per day). We describe their patterns of consumption and income generation as well as their access to markets and publicly provided infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of some apparent anomalous choices.

The Economic Lives of the Poor

A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world We find that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005, as judged by what “poverty” typically means in the world's poorest countries This is higher than past estimates Substantial overall progress is still indicated—the corresponding poverty rate was 52% in 1981—but progress was very uneven across regions The trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology, though precise counts are more sensitive

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The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty

World Development Report 2012: Gender equality and development Washington, DC: The World Bank 2011, 426 pp., ISBN: 978-0821388259 Since the 1970s, Gender in development has emerged as an issue of c...

World Development Report 2012: Gender equality and development

In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators make unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities.

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Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries

Twenty-five percent of teachers were absent from school, and only about half were teaching, during unannounced visits to a nationally representative sample of government primary schools in India. Absence rates varied from 15% in Maharashtra to 42% in Jharkhand, with higher rates concentrated in the poorer states. We do not find that higher pay is associated with lower absence. Older teachers, more educated teachers, and head teachers are all paid more but are also more frequently absent; contract teachers are paid much less than regular teachers but have similar absence rates; and although relative teacher salaries are higher in poorer states, absence rates are also higher. Teacher absence is more correlated with daily incentives to attend work: teachers are less likely to be absent at schools that have been inspected recently, that have better infrastructure, and that are closer to a paved road. We find little evidence that attempting to strengthen local community ties will reduce absence. Teachers from the local area have similar absence rates as teachers from outside the community. Locally controlled nonformal schools have slightly higher absence rates than schools run by the state government. The existence of a PTA is not correlated with lower absence. Private-school teachers are only slightly less likely to be absent than public-school teachers in general, but are 8 percentage points less likely to be absent than public-school teachers in the same village. (JEL: O15, I21, H41, H52)

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Teacher absence in india: a snapshot

Chaudhury and Hammer report on a study in which unannounced visits were made to health clinics in Bangladesh with the intention of discovering what fraction of medical professionals were present at their assigned post. This survey represents the first attempt to quantify the extent of the problem on a nationally representative scale. Nationwide the average number of vacancies over all types of providers in rural health centers is 26 percent. Regionally, vacancy rates (unfilled posts) are generally higher in the poorer parts of the country. Absentee rates at over 40 percent are particularly high for doctors. When separated into level of facility, the absentee rate for doctors at the larger clinics is 40 percent, but at the smaller subcenters with a single doctor, the rate is 74 percent. Even though the primary purpose of this survey is to document the extent of the problem among medical staff, the authors also explore the determinants of staff absenteeism. Whether the medical provider lives near the health facility, access to a road, and rural electrification are important determinants of the rate and pattern of staff absentee rates. This paper - a product of Public Services, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to assess and improve the quality of services for poor people.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID636427_code258113.pdf?abstractid=636427&mirid=3

Ghost Doctors: Absenteeism in Bangladeshi Health Facilities

Instead of mean-tested conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, some countries have implemented gender-targeted CCTs to explicitly address intra-household disparities in human capital investments This study focuses on addressing the direct impact of a female school stipend program in Punjab, Pakistan: Did the intervention increase female enrollment in public schools? To address this question, the authors draw on data from the provincial school censuses of 2003 and 2005 They estimate the net growth in female enrollments in grades 6-8 in stipend eligible schools Impact evaluation analysis, including difference-and-difference (DD), triple differencing (DDD), and regression-discontinuity design (RDD) indicate a modest but statistically significant impact of the intervention The preferred estimator derived from a combination of DDD and RDD empirical strategies suggests that the average program impact between 2003 and 2005 was an increase of six female students per school in terms of absolute change and an increase of 9 percent in female enrollment in terms of relative change A triangulation effort is also undertaken using two rounds of a nationally representative household survey before and after the intervention Even though the surveys are not representative at the subprovincial level, the results corroborate evidence of the impact using school census data

Conditional Cash Transfers and Female Schooling: The Impact of the Female School Stipend Program on Public School Enrollments in Punjab, Pakistan

Unannounced visits were made to health clinics in Bangladesh to determine what proportion of medical professionals were at their assigned post. Averaged over all job categories and types of facility, the absentee rate was 35 percent. The absentee rate for physicians was 40 percent at the larger clinics and 74 percent at the smaller sub-centers with a single physician. Whether the medical provider lives near the health facility, the opportunity cost of the provider's time, road access, and rural electrification are highly correlated with the rate and pattern of absenteeism.

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Nazmul Chaudhury

Papers

Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries

Teacher absence in india: a snapshot

Ghost Doctors: Absenteeism in Bangladeshi Health Facilities

Conditional Cash Transfers and Female Schooling: The Impact of the Female School Stipend Program on Public School Enrollments in Punjab, Pakistan

Ghost Doctors : Absenteeism in Rural Bangladeshi Health Facilities