COVID-19 is accentuating the risks facing an increasing number of poor and vulnerable individuals and households in a myriad of… Read more ways. In many countries, the pandemic and associated lockdowns have had devastating impacts across several dimensions, including health (e.g. increased mortality and morbidity), economic (e.g. job/livelihood loss or reduced earnings, and some supply shortages), and social (e.g. negative coping mechanisms, disruptions to services such as education, immunisation and other healthcare). These impacts have motivated many governments across the world to use social protection, including social assistance, as a short-term measure to help poor and vulnerable households meet basic needs. As the effects of the crisis evolve, many actors are considering whether and how to complement social assistance measures with additional inputs, components and linkages – including economic inclusion approaches – to help mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and move towards early economic recovery. This paper therefore explores the opportunities and challenges of economic inclusion approaches alongside social assistance responses in the COVID-19 context. It shows how evidence can inform the design of measures to help people recover from the impacts of the pandemic over the medium- and longer-term through the lens of government-led economic inclusion programmes which leverage national social protection systems. Read less ...

Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) often struggle to integrate the labor market. Even where they have the unrestricted right… Read more to work their labor market outcomes lack behind those of other groups, at least in the short- to medium-term. This literature review brings together two strands of research to inform the design of successful job interventions in this context: the evidence on how forced displacement impacts those forcibly displaced in their economic lives and the existing knowledge on jobs interventions for refugees and IDPs. The specific challenges that those forcibly displaced face on the labor market are linked to the loss of assets and separation from family members; the lack of skills required on the host labor market; the impacts of forced displacement on their physical and mental health and their economic behavior (in terms of prospects and aspirations, risk-aversion and time horizon); their legal situation; a lack of social networks and discrimination as well as a high likelihood of excess supply on the labor market at destination. Rigorous quasi-experimental or experimental evidence on jobs interventions for this target group is scarce and mainly focused on high-income countries. A review of the existing literature points to the importance of conducting thorough assessments of the demand and supply side of the labor market, including the legal situation of those forcibly displaced and their perceptions and aspirations, before designing intervention. Read less ...

In 2016, the Kalobeyei refugee settlement was created, just 3.5 kilometres from the Kakuma camps in Kenya. In a departure from… Read more Kenya’s policy of not allowing refugees to work, its aim was to provide self-reliance to refugees and greater refugee–host interaction. But are refugee policies and programmes in Kalobeyei really different from those in Kakuma? If so, what are the differences? And do these differences actually translate into different self-reliance outcomes for refugees? Drawing upon a mixed-methods approach, we compare aid models, self-reliance enabling factors and self-reliance outcomes between Kalobeyei and Kakuma. After just 15 months, we find that self-relianceenabling factors—such the environment, assets, networks, markets and public goods—remain similar across both sites and, in some cases, are better in Kakuma. The major differences between the sites are in the aid model: Kalobeyei’s cash-assistance and agricultural programmes. We find improved nutritional outcomes and a greater perception of autonomy in Kalobeyei, both of which may be attributable to differences in the aid models. These findings have implications for how we conceptualize the institutional design of self-reliance in Kalobeyei and elsewhere. Read less ...

The quantity of literature on the livelihoods of refugees is increasing, yet there is a lack of com-parative analysis of… Read more their strategies in this regard vis-à-vis their host communities and living locations. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the city of Nairobi and Kakuma Camp in Kenya in 2016–17, this paper narrows the gap by presenting an examination of the economic activities in which refugees in different contexts engage, and highlighting some of the institutional factors that distinguish refugees’ economic lives from those of members of the host community. The find-ings suggest that while some Kenyans are encumbered by challenges comparable to those faced by refugees, the myriad political, legal, and policy factors that characterise refugeehood are none-theless particular in the ways that they influence livelihoods. By emphasising the multiple actors and aspects that shape refugees’ economic strategies, this paper also reveals the political economy within which refugee livelihoods are embedded. Read less ...

Authors of this report measure the impacts of the National Rural Livelihoods Programme on a range of household and individual… Read more level economic, social and empowerment outcomes and also assess the quality of institutions created by the programme. Read less ...

In the Sahel subregion, which extends over Central and Western Africa, low labor productivity poses a challenge to poverty reduction,… Read more economic growth, and social stability. Social Safety Net Projects target the poorest households who derive their livelihoods from low-productivity activities. As such, they have the potential to improve labor productivity. As part of the Sahel adaptive social protection program (ASPP), the World Bank supports the design and implementation of productive accompanying measures for safety nets beneficiaries. This report sets out the results of a qualitative assessment of the constraints to productive employment that was conducted in the Social Safety Net Project areas, across five of the six countries covered by the ASPP: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad. This assessment identified the main challenges to productivity growth in farm and nonfarm sectors and, jointly with other surveys and local and regional consultations, helped define accompanying measures to safety nets programs aimed at increasing current employment productivity and generating more productive jobs. Read less ...

Social protection programs are needed more than ever during periods of social upheaval, but are also likely to be even… Read more harder to implement successfully. Furthermore, social upheaval makes measuring the impact of such policies all the more difficult. We study the impact of a multi-faceted social protection program, often referred to as a “graduation” model program, in Yemen during a period of civil unrest. We are unable to measure outcomes for four years, thus much remains unknown about what transpired in the intermediary time. After four years we find positive impacts on asset accumulation and savings behavior, albeit substantially less than the amount the household originally received. Read less ...

It is widely understood that poverty undermines early childhood development (ECD). In turn, poor ECD reinforces intergenerational transmission of poverty.… Read more Comprehensive economic strengthening and social protection programmes, such as ‘graduation programmes’, may offer a ‘double boon’: they can improve ECD in the short term and break the intergenerational cycle of poverty in the long run. This article provides a comprehensive review of the state of the evidence regarding the role of graduation pogrammes in ECD in the Global South. We find positive effects in relation to nutrition and health, but observe large evidence gaps with respect to safety and security, responsive caregiving and early learning. Tension between work and care, short comings in design and delivery and structural barriers form impediments to positive change. A greater and more holistic focus on children within graduation programming is crucial for securing ECD outcomes and ultimately achieving poverty reduction in the long run. Read less ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has meant sweeping changes for economies and societies, with the most devastating consequences for individuals and groups… Read more with pre-existing vulnerabilities. These impacts are likely to be compounded in contexts with greater fragility. As attention shifts from addressing urgent humanitarian needs and crafting quick response systems to long-term solutions, it is time to think about the role of social protection as part of a longer-term solution to living with Covid-19, as well as supporting efforts to build back better. This paper considers how social protection can offer support and be supported in short, medium- and long-term responses, under different scenarios for how the pandemic might unfold. Planning must anticipate the possibility of an enduring pandemic, one stretching over many years if not decades. Thus, the expansion of social protection should not be limited to a short-term response to immediate needs. Rather, Covid-19 presents an opportunity to establish firm foundations for more comprehensive social protection systems for years to come, including leveraging greater domestic expenditure and international assistance. Read less ...

We use a randomized experiment to compare a workforce training program to cash transfers in Rwanda. Conducted in a sample… Read more of poor and underemployed youth, this study measures the impact of the training program not only relative to a control group but relative to the counterfactual of simply disbursing the cost of the program directly to beneficiaries. While the training program was successful in improving a number of core outcomes (productive hours, assets, savings, and subjective well-being), cost-equivalent cash transfers move all these outcomes as well as consumption, income, and wealth. In the head-to-head costing comparison cash proves superior across a number of economic outcomes, while training outperforms cash only in the production of business knowledge. We find little evidence of complementarity between human and physical capital interventions, and no signs of heterogeneity or spillover effects. Read less ...