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.

Finance, inequality and the poor

Abstract: Financial development disproportionately boosts incomes of the poorest quintile and reduces income inequality. About 40% of the long-run impact of financial development on the income growth of the poorest quintile is the result of reductions in income inequality, while 60% is due to the impact of financial development on aggregate economic growth. Furthermore, financial development is associated with a drop in the fraction of the population living on less than $ 1 a day, a result which holds when conditioning on average growth. These findings emphasize the importance of the financial system for the poor.

Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric Analysis

Abstract: THE RELATIONSHIP between economic growth and environmental quality has been a source of great controversy for a very long time. At one extreme has been the view that greater economic activity inevitably leads to environmental degradation and ultimately to possible economic and ecological collapse. At the other extreme is the view that those environmental problems worth solving will be addressed more or less automatically as a consequence of economic growth. The longevity and passion of this debate has, in part, been a reflection of the lack of substantial empirical evidence on how environmental quality changes at different income levels. Compilation of such evidence has been constrained by the absence of data for a large number of countries. While data remain a problem, the situation is much improved and this paper takes a first step at systematic analysis of what data are available (see Appendix I for details). A number of caveats are in order. The data on environmental quality are patchy at best, but are likely to improve over time with better monitoring. Comparability across countries is affected by definitional differences and by inaccuracies and unrepresentative measurement sites. At this stage of knowledge, this paper has the modest objective of opening up the empirical debate using a relatively simple modeling technique applied on a consistent basis to a large number of environmental quality indicators and countries. The relationship between income and the costs and benefits associated with any given level of environmental quality is complex because it operates through a number of different channels, such as preferences, technology, and economic structure. The types of environmental degradation that occur depend on the composition of output, which changes with income. Some income levels are often associated with increases in certain polluting activities such as the development of heavy industry whereas economies with large service sectors may generate less pollution. There is a view that rising incomes imply that the cost of environmental degradation is greater because the wages used to value the opportunity cost of illness or work days lost are higher. This would imply increases in marginal benefits as incomes rise. But the poor are often the most exposed and vulnerable to the health and productivity losses associated with a degraded environment. There are some environmental problems where thresholds like survival are at stake. Here, the willingness to pay to avert damage is close to infinity and the level of per capita income only affects the capacity, not the willingness, to pay. With other environmental issues, most of

Natural Capital and Sustainable Development

Abstract: A minimum necessary condition for sustainability is the maintenance of the total natural capital stock at or above the current level. While a lower stock of natural capital may be sustainable, society can allow no further decline in natural capital given the large uncertainty and the dire consequences of guessing wrong. This “constancy of total natural capital” rule can thus be seen as a prudent minimum condition for assuring sustainability, to be relaxed only when solid evidence can be offered that it is safe to do so. We discuss methodological issues concerning the degree of substitutability of manufactured for natural capital, quantifying ecosystem services and natural capital, and the role of the discount rate in valuing natural capital. We differentiate the concepts of growth (material increase in size) and development (improvement in organization without size change). Given these definitions, growth cannot the sustainable indefinitely on a finite planet. Development may be sustainable, but even this aspect of change may have some limits. One problem is that current measures of economic well-being at the macro level (i.e., the Gross National Product) measure mainly growth, or at best conflate growth and development. This urgently requires revision. Finally, we suggest some principles of sustainable development and describe why maintaining natural capital stocks is a prudent and achievable policy for insuring sustainable development. There is disagreement between technological optimists (who see technical progress as eliminating all resource constraints to growth and development) and technological skeptics (who do not see as much scope for this approach and fear irreversible use of resources and damage to natural capital). By maintaining natural capital stocks (preferably by using a natural capital depletion tax), we can satisfy both the skeptics (since resources will be conserved for future generations) and the optimists (since this will raise the price of natural capital depletion and more rapidly induce the technical change they predict).