World Bank Development Economics

WATCH LIVE! https://lnkd.in/eNx3_2V2 Global debates on achieving key development goals are clouded by growing incoherence. Join us at the opening sessions of #ABCDE2024, co-hosted by The World Bank & the Center for Global Development &featuring Ajay Banga, Indermit Gill, Lawrence H. Summers, Danny Quah, Rachel Glennerster, Kathleen Hays & more.

🥦 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2022, according to new data released today and summarized in our blog post: https://lnkd.in/dfhDVq8x.   The blog, “Uneven recovery post-COVID: healthy diets remain out of reach for many in lower-income economies,” co-authored by Development Data Group experts Marko Rissanen and Yan Bai, reviews findings from the just-released State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2024: Financing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity, and Malnutrition in All Its Forms. The piece also explains how data underlying the report are constructed.   Some more highlights: 🔹 While the share of the global population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022 (35%) has decreased since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (when 38% were affected), recovery has been slower in lower-income economies. 🔹There has been an uneven recovery since the pandemic across regions. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa remain at a similar level of prevalence of unaffordability seen in 2020. 🔹In low-income economies, where the population rose by 6% over this period, an extra 16 million people found a healthy diet unaffordable in 2022 compared with 2020. 🔹Globally, the average cost of a healthy diet — defined as one that meets requirements for energy and food-based dietary guidelines — was $3.96 per person per day in 2022. 🔹The cost of a healthy diet indicator for 2017 to 2022 was calculated using updated 2021 global retail food prices from the latest International Comparison Program cycle, replacing the 2017 data used in previous editions. As the world continues to face challenges from global disruptions and economic inequalities, ensuring access to affordable, healthy diets remains a key priority for achieving development goals and informing policies to improve food and nutrition security and nutritional outcomes. The updated cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) and the unaffordability of a healthy diet indicators (PUA and NUA) provide critical insights for addressing disparities.   #data #SOFI2024 #FoodPricesForNutrition #FoodSecurity

With machine learning and sensor-based physical activity tracking, we can predict men’s and women’s time use, our new paper finds ➡ https://lnkd.in/dsep-i-G. Understanding such time allocation is key to informing policies on division of labor, domestic work, and gender disparities.   📰 The findings of the paper, “Making Time Count: A Machine Learning Approach to Predict Time Use in Low-Income Countries from Physical Activity Tracking Data,” indicate that we can improve the quality of costly and difficult-to-obtain time use surveys with cheaper, yet accurate, modeled estimates.   Leveraging unique survey data collected in rural Malawi, the study – co-written by Development Data Group experts Talip Kilic and Alberto Zezza – investigates the possibility of predicting men’s and women’s time allocation to an extensive set of activities, based on sensor signal data captured by accelerometers. Using machine learning techniques, the study builds a supervised classification model that is trained on the accelerometer data and a random subset of the time use survey data to predict individuals’ time allocation to 12 broad activity groups.   The findings prove the feasibility of this methodology and offer insights for enhancing both survey and accelerometer data collection processes to build better models.   Read the paper for more insights.   #survey #data #Malawi #MachineLearning

It's no wonder the 'Dutch disease' is a trending topic among economists worldwide. A lesser-known aspect of the #ResourceCurse, this phenomenon goes beyond exports and impacts resource-dependent countries by causing import market concentration, driven by protectionist tariffs and non-tariff measures. A new study using firm-level data exposes a robust link between commodity exports and import market concentration, showing how resource-rich economies suffer from import monopolization, leading to market concentration and higher domestic prices, hinting at a hidden cost of resource wealth. Time to rethink trade policies? Read this piece by Rabah Arezki, Ana Margarida Fernandes, Federico Merchan Alvarez, Ha Nguyen & Tristan Reed: https://lnkd.in/dS59b_fZ

🌍🚜 How have recent global crises, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, affected smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa? Our new paper has found that a surge in inorganic fertilizer prices has negatively impacted smallholder agriculture in the region ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dTpkaDqz. 📰 “Fertilizer Price Shocks in Smallholder Agriculture: Cross-Country Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa” – written by Development Data Group experts Akuffo Amankwah, Alemayehu Ambel, Sydney Gourlay, Talip Kilic, Yannick Markhof, and Philip Wollburg – uses high-frequency phone survey data spanning four years and six countries to examine the dynamics of smallholder agriculture against the backdrop of these crises, with particular focus on prices, availability, and use of inorganic fertilizer, as well as the strategies employed by farmers to cope with high fertilizer prices and other accessibility constraints. It finds that a sudden increase in inorganic fertilizer prices has forced smallholder farmers to adopt coping mechanisms that are less productivity-enhancing, making them even more susceptible to future crises. Specifically, farming households reduced the quantity of inorganic fertilizer applied, by applying it at lower rates or to a smaller area. In some cases, households sold assets or borrowed money to cope with the high prices of inorganic fertilizers. This calls for policies to help smallholder farmers in the region to build strong support systems to be more resilient and better able to cope with the adverse effects of rising inorganic fertilizer prices during crises and related shocks. #survey #data #agriculture #SubSaharanAfrica

At the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (#ABCDE2024), The World Bank's Chief Economist Indermit Gill highlighted the contradictions between ambitious development goals and current economic realities, while Danny Quah called for a unified global growth strategy, and Center for Global Development Rachel Glennerster stressed that, without shaping incentives, innovation won’t automatically benefit the poor. 📺 Watch the replay ➡️ https://lnkd.in/euRFhP9H

Agriculture's goes way beyond food production—it's a top contributor to air pollution, with significant health and economic impacts. In our new blog, A. Patrick Behrer shares insights on how to balance the sector's contribution to pollution with its sensitivity to pollutants in order to avoid counterproductive outcomes.   💡 Surprising findings? While wildfire smoke can hinder crop growth by blocking sunlight, low levels may actually boost yields by changing light quality. But there are also negative effects. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dMAuzPpK

📰 Stay up to “data” with the latest edition of "This Month in Data," the Development Data Group’s newsletter ➡️ https://lnkd.in/d39zVJ2j.   Learn more about how we use #data to gain new insights about #poverty, including: 🕯️ our new joint research on #energypoverty, 📉 a new key indicator on #prosperity, 🌍 World Bank Group’s country income classifications for 2024-2025, & 🌐 more #data research, events, & updates.   Sign up to receive the newsletter in your mailbox every month: http://wrld.bg/uE5A50S7hMg.

In "Addressing the 2024 Great Incoherence" I made three points:  One, the 2024 Great Incoherence shows multiple dimensions. One of the most significant is the mismatch between **rising demand**---ever greater resources needed to "tackle climate change, improve health and education, and rebuild war-torn nations"---and **falling supply**, from declining economic growth and investment, record high public debt, and countries' everywhere sacrificing multilateral cooperation on the altar of national security.  Without growth, investment, and multilateralism somewhere, we will not be improving health and education and tackling climate change anywhere.  Two, there are no automatic forces reducing this Great Incoherence. The mismatch I described might be usefully viewed as demand and supply, but unlike in a market, excess demand is not met by rising supply while over time the needs of our world make for ever escalating demand.  Two millennia ago Thucydides wrote, Great Powers do what they will, the rest of us suffer what we must. If it is the advanced economies that form the supply side in the Great Incoherence, we should expect no reduction in imbalance any time soon. To add to all else, the Great Incoherence is only worsened by world order's move away from unipolarity and the intensification of US-China rivalry.  My third and final point: Build the causal mechanism that takes us from micro-intervention to aggregate growth. Reasoning by Dani Rodrik and Mike Spence have long indicated that combining knowledge transfer and international exchange constitutes a growth strategy; market intervention and efficiency gains do not. Aggregate growth is itself a positive externality, and it is that, in my view, that will make our planet liveable, and resolve this Great Incoherence.

Exciting news! 🎉 The World Bank's Development Impact team is building ImpactAI as part of the Google.org Generative AI Accelerator. Our mission is to make development research more accessible to everyone. 🌍  🤝 Learn about our partnership with Google: https://rb.gy/o2qj55     📲 Get the latest news on ImpactAI: https://rb.gy/0nrkqj     🔍 Explore our other AI projects: https://rb.gy/9phzp5