Minh Cong Nguyen

Understanding the roles of faith-based health-care providers in Africa: review of the evidence with a focus on magnitude, reach, cost, and satisfaction

At a time when many countries might not achieve the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 agenda for sustainable development is being negotiated, the contribution of faith-based health-care providers is potentially crucial. For better partnership to be achieved and for health systems to be strengthened by the alignment of faith-based health-providers with national systems and priorities, improved information is needed at all levels. Comparisons of basic factors (such as magnitude, reach to poor people, cost to patients, modes of financing, and satisfaction of patients with the services received) within faith-based health-providers and national systems show some differences. As the first report in the Series on faith-based health care, we review a broad body of published work and introduce some empirical evidence on the role of faith-based health-care providers, with a focus on Christian faith-based health providers in sub-Saharan Africa (on which the most detailed documentation has been gathered). The restricted and diverse evidence reported supports the idea that faith-based health providers continue to play a part in health provision, especially in fragile health systems, and the subsequent reports in this Series review controversies in faith-based health care and recommendations for how public and faith sectors might collaborate more effectively.

Child Marriage, Education, and Agency in Uganda

ABSTRACT This contribution relies on four different approaches and data sources to assess and discuss the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion in Uganda. The four data sources are: (1) qualitative evidence on differences in community and parental preferences for the education of boys and girls and on the higher likelihood of girls to drop out of school in comparison to boys; (2) reasons declared by parents as to why their children have dropped out of school; (3) reasons declared by secondary school principals as to why students drop out; and (4) econometric estimation of the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion. Together, the four approaches provide strong evidence that child marriage reduces secondary school enrollment and completion for girls with substantial implications for agency.

MARKET SHARE OF FAITH-INSPIRED HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS IN AFRICA

This paper relies on facilities and household survey data to estimate the ‘market share’ of faith-inspired institutions (FIIs) in the provision of health care services in Africa. While estimates based on facilities data, especially for hospitals, often suggest that the market share of FIIs is at 30 percent to 40 percent, estimates from household surveys are typically at less than ten percent. A number of potential explanations for these large differences are provided. Both types of estimates suffer from limits, but observing the two types of estimates alongside one other provides a more balanced view of the market share of FIIs in health care systems as a whole than is the case for any single type of measure.

Who Are the Poor in the Developing World

This paper presents a new demographic profile of extreme and moderate poverty, defined as those living on less than

Robustness of Shared Prosperity Estimates: How Different Methodological Choices Matter

1.90 and between

When and where do we see regional poverty reduction and convergence ? lessons from the roof of Turkey

1.90 and

The impact of migration on food consumption patterns: The case of Vietnam

3.10 per day in 2013, based on household survey data from 89 developing countries. The face of poverty is primarily rural and young; 80 percent of the extreme poor and 75 percent of the moderate poor live in rural areas. Over 45 percent of the extreme poor are children younger than 15 years old, and nearly 60 percent of the extreme poor live in households with three or more children. Gender differences in poverty rates are muted, and there is scant evidence of gender inequality in poor childrens educational attainment. A sizable share of the extreme and moderate poor, 40 and 50 percent, respectively, have completed primary school. Compared with the extreme poor, the moderate poor are significantly more likely to have completed primary school and are less likely to work in agriculture. After conditioning on other individual and household characteristics, having fewer than three children, having greater educational attainment, and living in an urban area are strongly and positively associated with economic well-being. The results reinforce the central importance of households in rural areas and those containing large numbers of children in efforts to reduce extreme poverty, and are consistent with increased educational attainment and urbanization hastening poverty reduction.

Measuring child marriage

This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world. The tests that are conducted include grouped versus microdata, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.

ADECOMP: Stata module to estimate Shapley Decomposition by Components of a Welfare Measure

In the past decade, Turkey has experienced a notable level of poverty reduction at all levels (extreme poor, poor, and vulnerable). The steady decline in poverty was also resilient to the decline in gross domestic product per capita growth during the crisis. However, although poverty convergence was strong before the financial crisis, there was an absence of regional convergence afterward. This paper analyzes poverty trends, poverty convergence, economic mobility, and the determinants of poverty reduction at the regional level over the period 2006–13. The analysis finds that agricultural growth in the east was an important contributor to Turkeys regional poverty reduction. In additionally, employment growth in the services sectors boosted poverty reduction throughout the entire country. From a fiscal perspective, the amount of per capita central spending is also linked to poverty reduction, although more strongly for regions in the west.