World Bank

About: World Bank is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poverty. The organization has 7813 authors who have published 21594 publications receiving 1198361 citations. The organization is also known as: World Bank, WB & The World Bank.

Social capital, household welfare, and poverty in Indonesia

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate empirically the links between social capital, household welfare, and poverty in Indonesia. Specifically, the authors undertake a multivariate analysis of the role of local institutions in affecting household welfare and poverty outcomes and in determining access to services. The authors compare the impact of household memberships in local associations with the impact of human capital. They first consider six social capital dimensions: the density of associations, their internal heterogeneity, the frequency of meeting attendance, members' effective participation in decisionmaking, payment of dues, and the community orientation of associations. Second, in addition to estimating the effects on household welfare, the authors model the impact of ownership of social capital on the incidence of poverty. They also attempt to compare the returns to social capital between poor and non-poor households. Third, since the impact of social capital on household welfare is usually indirect, they attempt to measure some of these links--access to credit, asset accumulation, collective action--directly. Fourth, they revisit the question of whether social capital operates at the household level or at the village level. Fifth, the authors differentiate four types of institutions, specifically differentiating between voluntary associations and those with mandatory membership. Lastly, they revisit the question of causality.

Absolute poverty measures for the developing world, 1981–2004

Abstract: The authors report new estimates of measures of absolute poverty for the developing world over 1981-2004. A clear trend decline in the percentage of people who are absolutely poor is evident, although with uneven progress across regions. They find more mixed success in reducing the total number of poor. Indeed, the developing world outside China has seen little or no sustained progress in reducing the number of poor, with rising poverty counts in some regions, notably Sub-Saharan Africa. There are encouraging signs of progress in reducing the incidence of poverty in all regions after 2000, although it is too early to say if this is a new trend.

Effectiveness of Strict vs. Multiple Use Protected Areas in Reducing Tropical Forest Fires: A Global Analysis Using Matching Methods

Abstract: Protected areas (PAs) cover a quarter of the tropical forest estate. Yet there is debate over the effectiveness of PAs in reducing deforestation, especially when local people have rights to use the forest. A key analytic problem is the likely placement of PAs on marginal lands with low pressure for deforestation, biasing comparisons between protected and unprotected areas. Using matching techniques to control for this bias, this paper analyzes the global tropical forest biome using forest fires as a high resolution proxy for deforestation; disaggregates impacts by remoteness, a proxy for deforestation pressure; and compares strictly protected vs. multiple use PAs vs indigenous areas. Fire activity was overlaid on a 1 km map of tropical forest extent in 2000; land use change was inferred for any point experiencing one or more fires. Sampled points in pre-2000 PAs were matched with randomly selected never-protected points in the same country. Matching criteria included distance to road network, distance to major cities, elevation and slope, and rainfall. In Latin America and Asia, strict PAs substantially reduced fire incidence, but multi-use PAs were even more effective. In Latin America, where there is data on indigenous areas, these areas reduce forest fire incidence by 16 percentage points, over two and a half times as much as naive (unmatched) comparison with unprotected areas would suggest. In Africa, more recently established strict PAs appear to be effective, but multi-use tropical forest protected areas yield few sample points, and their impacts are not robustly estimated. These results suggest that forest protection can contribute both to biodiversity conservation and CO2 mitigation goals, with particular relevance to the REDD agenda. Encouragingly, indigenous areas and multi-use protected areas can help to accomplish these goals, suggesting some compatibility between global environmental goals and support for local livelihoods.