Developing and Spreading a Social Investment Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Jenson
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Capital Investments ◽  
Capital Development

In the mid-1990s, the practice of international organizations began to cohere around the social investment perspective, with strategies that were child-centred and advocated human capital investments for economic growth and social development. This chapter examines the World Bank, which endorsed the policy instrument of conditional cash transfers (CCT) to allow very poor families to invest in children’s health and education—a stock-plus-buffer strategy. Then it scans the OECD, which recommended early childhood education to ensure human capital development and the labour-market activation of parents—a stock-plus-flow strategy. Both organizations developed anti-poverty positions with attention to the intergenerational transfer of disadvantage and investments in human capital. This similarity has declined in recent years, as the World Bank incorporated the social investment perspective into its new inclusive growth frame, while the OECD turned its attention to problems of inequality rather than poverty and thereby associated itself less with the social investment perspective.

Social investment, inclusive growth that is sustainable and the new global social policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Deeming ◽  
Paul Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Inclusive Growth ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

The chapter will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social investment approach before looking at how it can be enhanced by the inclusive growth framework which has been the subject of a major dialogue between the OECD itself with the World Bank. This chapter reflects on how well the social policy discipline is responding to the challenge of reintegration with economic policy identifying the key challenges which lie ahead for developed economies.

scholarly journals Broadening the social investment agenda: The OECD, the World Bank and inclusive growth

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rianne Mahon
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Inclusive Growth ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Work Family ◽  
Intergenerational Cycle

Towards the close of the 20th century, the idea of social investment gained purchase as a way to legitimise social policy as a productive contribution. For those in the North, social investment provided a new rationale to counter neoliberal attacks on the welfare state, while in the South, the idea caught on in the form of conditional cash transfers. The World Bank and Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) played key roles in the development and diffusion of the social investment agenda beginning in the mid-1990s. While hewing to a common core, their interpretations of social investment differed in important respects. The OECD sought to grapple with the emergence of more flexible, post-industrial labour markets, marked by growing precarity, dualisation and feminisation and focused on work–family balance as a solution while the Bank, focused on the South, emphasised social investment in very poor children to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. In response to new pro-equality movements and intellectual research documenting the growth in inequality, however, a decade later, both organisations moved to incorporate a broader orientation, focused on the concept of ‘inclusive growth’. This article explores these developments.

ASSESSMENT OF UKRAINE'S HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT IN WORLD RATINGS IN CONDITIONS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryna Nochka ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
World Economic Forum ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic ◽  
Capital Development ◽  
The University

The article is devoted to the analysis tools for assessing human capital based on world rankings in the context of sustainable development. The most famous world rankings of human capital, studied by such international organizations as the World Bank, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the University of Groningen in collaboration with the University of California at Davis and others, are considered. Quantifying human capital as the economic and social value of a skill set is measured through an index. Each organization makes measurements according to its own method. The application of different criteria and indicators for assessing human capital at the macroeconomic level is analyzed. The considered assessment methodologies are overwhelmingly based on statistical approaches. Analyzed the position of Ukraine in the world rankings in recent years in dynamics. It has been confirmed that these international ratings can be considered as a reflection of the state of human capital in Ukraine. Revealed quite high rating positions of Ukraine in comparison with other countries. The results allow us to conclude that there is insufficient government funding for the development of human capital. It is concluded that Ukraine needs to improve the quality of human capital as a leading factor in increasing the efficiency of the country's economy in the context of sustainable development. The study showed that the use of high-quality, highly qualified human capital leads to an improvement in the country's position in the world rankings.

Cognitive abilities and income: preliminary evidence from a developing country

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raufhon Salahodjaev ◽  
Ziyodakhon Malikova
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Standard Deviation Increase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Unconditional Model ◽  
The World

Purpose Related literature finds that human capital proxied by cognitive abilities is an important antecedent of numerous specific life outcomes. The purpose of this study is to extend existing evidence by investigating the link between cognitive skills and income in Tajikistan. Tajikistan is a landlocked low-income country situated in Central Asia. Its population is 9.1 million people and gross domestic product per capita of US$822. According to the World Bank, Tajikistan has made significant progress in decreasing poverty levels from 83% in 2000 to 29.5% in 2017. Design/methodology/approach The data for this study comes from the 2013 Jobs, Skills and Migration Survey conducted by the World Bank and the German Society for International Cooperation. The main explanatory variable of the study is the cognitive abilities index of the respondents. The survey used item response theory (IRT) approach to estimate the ability of respondents. IRT is a method or a set of statistical frameworks, used to explore assessment item data, such as cognitive abilities assessment data. The wage function was estimated using the ordinary least squares method because the results are easier to interpret (Jencks, 1979; Bowles et al., 2001; Groves, 2006). Findings The baseline results are reported in Table 2. The results in Column 1 demonstrated the link between cognitive abilities and income without control variables (unconditional model). As expected, cognitive abilities are positively and significantly related to income (a1 = 0.0715, p < 0.01). The results from the unconditional model suggest that one standard deviation increase in cognitive abilities is associated with a nearly 17% increase in income. Research limitations/implications However, the study has a number of limitations. First, the dependent variable measures the overall income of the respondent, which includes the profit from other businesses. The survey does not provide data on monthly wages of respondents. Second, the sample may not perfectly represent the overall population of Tajikistan. To partially resolve this issue, this paper re-estimated out results for various sub-samples. Another important limitation of this study is the lack of respondent’s family background, which is an important correlate of human capital and income. Practical implications The results in the study offer preliminary evidence on the link between cognitive abilities and income in Tajikistan. However, the results of the study also suggest that both measures of human capital are positively related to income. Therefore, policymakers in Tajikistan should invest greater resources to health care, education and training programs as cognitive skills can be built in particular in the early stages of the life cycle. Indeed, Tajikistan has a significant potential for economic growth model driven by human capital. According to the World Bank, the adult literacy rate in Tajikistan is 100%, which is significantly above of what is observed in other developing countries. This may imply that the human potential in this country is considerable, and further investment in soft and hard skills would have a positive impact on economic growth. Originality/value This paper offers new evidence on the link between cognitive abilities and income, using data from Tajikistan. First, this paper finds that cognitive abilities are positively and significantly correlated with income. Second, this paper finds that this link remains robust even when this paper control for a large set of personal and job-related characteristics. The results from the unconditional model suggest that one standard deviation increase in cognitive abilities is associated with nearly a 17% increase in income.

scholarly journals New possibilities of identifying social capital for its use in sustainable rural development

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Lošťák
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

In relation to sustainable rural development, the paper starts with the question of its conditions. One of them is social acceptance of various projects or programmes. This issue is joined with the co-ordination of human activities. The mechanism facilitating the co-ordination in contemporary societies is related to social capital. Its concept is outlined through the references to the basic literature about the topic. Using content analysis, based on the quantification of the categories created through the analysis of the literature about the topic, the social capital in selected municipalities is investigated. The main aim of the paper, however, is to show the role of this method in social capital fast identification. Although the approach necessitates further elaboration, it can be considered as the first important step in the practice of development activities. The background of the paper reflects the challenges of the World Bank concerning the elaboration and development of the new methods of measuring social capital.

On the Brain Drain of Africans to America: Some Methodological Observations

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo ◽  
Baffour Takyi ◽  
Jesse Mann
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Accounting System ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Relative Comparisons ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Brain

AbstractRecurring debates about the impact of the brain drain— the developing world's loss of human capital to more developed countries—has motivated estimation of the magnitude of the phenomenon, most recently by the World Bank. Although frequently cited as a key contributor to Africa's wanting development record, what constitutes the "brain-drain" is not always clearly defined. Today, in the absence of an accounting system, resolution of the definitional and measurement question depends on relative comparisons of measurement variants, which will identify definitional shortcomings by clarifying the merits and demerits of these variants, and thereby suggest corrective imputations. This paper compares the World Bank's approach to a chronological precedent (Dodoo 1997) to clarify the value of variant comparisons. The resultant implications for corrections are also discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document