Dena Ringold

Making Services Work : Indicators, Assessments, and Benchmarking of the Quality and Governance of Public Service Delivery in the Human Development Sectors

Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is therefore a growing demand for indicators to measure how and whether these processes work, and how they affect health and education results. This paper makes the case for measuring governance policies and performance, and the quality of service delivery in health and education. It develops a framework for selecting and measuring a set of indicators and proposes options, drawing from new and innovative measurement tools and approaches. The paper proposes the adoption of a more systematic approach that will both facilitate the work of health and education policymakers and allow for cross-country comparisons and benchmarking.

Cash Transfers, Children and the Crisis: Protecting Current and Future Investments

Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While some countries have introduced new safety net programs, others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Since many countries have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, these programs have been used as an important starting point for a response. This paper aims to describe how conditional cash transfers have been used by different countries to respond to the crises (e.g. by expanding coverage and/or increasing benefit amounts), distill lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programs, identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and assess how they can complement other safety net programs.

Social Assistance in the New EU Member States: Strengthening Performance and Labor Market Incentives

This report looks at safety nets in the new member states from the perspective of fiscal impact and effectiveness. Given the limited budgets for social assistance, ensuring that resources are spent well, reach those who need them, and optimize welfare gains and labor market outcomes. This also requires attention to the balance between spending on means-tested antipoverty programs and family benefits and social insurance programs. Because of high levels of pension spending and rapidly aging populations, there is a risk that contributory social insurance spending will crowd out spending on social assistance. Managing the long-term fiscal sustainability of these programs to meet emerging needs is a priority. This paper looks at social assistance within the broader context of social protection. The main focus of the policy discussion is on the guaranteed minimum income programs, which comprise the centerpiece of the social assistance systems in each of the EU8 countries. Child allowances are also discussed, which are the most important programs from the perspective of spending levels. The first Chapter reviews the datasets and approach. Chapter 2 looks at the context of poverty and social exclusion in the EU8 and the implications for safety nets. Chapter 3 analyses social protection spending. Chapter 4 reviews the performance of social assistance and social protection based on household survey data for six of the countries. Chapter 5 discusses policy design issues including administration, decentralization and activation measures. Chapter 6 looks at the labor market incentives of combined taxes and benefits, and discusses in-work benefits. Chapter 7 concludes.

From mines and wells to well-built minds : turning Sub-Saharan Africa's natural resource wealth into human capital

Sub-Saharan Africas natural resource-rich countries have poor human development. Children in these countries are more likely to die before their first birthday, more likely to be stunted, and less likely to attend school than children in other countries with similar income. Despite the current price downturn, extractives will remain an important part of Sub-Saharan Africas growth story—using resource rents wisely remains a long term challenge.Governments must choose how to allocate resource rents between spending, investing in human or physical capital, or investing in global financial assets. The return to investing in physical and human capital will be high in countries where the capital stock is low. Moreover, higher levels of human capital make investments in physical capital more productive, which suggests that the optimal portfolio will involve investing in both. Human capital should be prioritized in many of Sub-Saharan Africa’s resource-rich countries because of the low starting point. Investing effectively in human capital is hard because it involves delivering services, which means coordinating a large number of actors and activities. Three dimensions of governance are key: institutions, incentives and information. Decentralization and leveraging the private sector are entry points to reforming institutional structures. Revenues from natural resources can fund financial incentives to strengthen performance or demand. Producing information, making it available, and increasing social accountability helps citizens understand their rights and hold governments and providers accountable. Improving the quality of education and health services is central to improving human capital. Two additional areas are promising. First, early child development—mother and newborn health, and early child nutrition, care, and education—improves outcomes in childhood and later on. Second, cash transfers—either conditional or unconditional—reduce poverty, increase household investments in child education, nutrition, and health, and increase the investment in productive assets which foster further income generation.