5 ways to make the most of Philippine education investments

Investing in education is a priority for most Filipinos.

This month, millions of students nationwide started the new school year in the Philippines. Good education is key to a successful life and an important driver of economic growth.

In the Philippines, it is not unusual for families to pawn their last asset to support their child’s education. But with education costs rising and the job market uncertain, returns to education are not necessarily viewed as being commensurate to education-related investments.

Families and policy makers alike are looking to understand how to better invest in education and maximize positive outcomes. To support this effort, ADB partnered in 2017 with the Philippine Department of Education to conduct the Youth Education Investment and Labor Market Outcomes Survey (YEILMOS).

It’s time to end malnutrition in South Asia

Chronic malnutrition remains prevalent across South Asia as many poor South Asians cannot afford nutritious foods or don’t have the relevant information or education to make smart dietary choices.

In Sri Lanka, as in the rest of South Asia, improving agricultural production has long been a priority to achieve food security.

But growing more crops has hardly lessened the plight of malnutrition.

Chronic malnutrition remains prevalent across the region as many poor South Asians cannot afford nutritious foods or don’t have the relevant information or education to make smart dietary choices.
And children and the poorest are particularly at risk.

Regenerative PPPs (R+PPP): Designing PPPs that keep delivering

Photo: Misako Kuniya | Flickr Creative Commons

The time is ripe to explore innovative ways to implement PPPs through a synthesis of sustainable and resilient best practices that progressively improve delivery and outperform original expectations.

During my recent travels as a PPP advisor to Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, I worked closely with public sector leaders who are increasingly focused on procuring a new generation of PPPs that are meaningful, sustainable, resilient, people-focused, and will support their governments’ goals of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Big Data can transform SDG performance. Here’s how

Data on mobile customer behavior is being used to proxy the poverty status of users.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer specific, time-bound, and quantifiable targets in sync with national development plans and priorities. However, with over 230 SDG indicators—many of which require disaggregation by location, sex, gender, age, income, and other relevant dimensions—collecting the necessary granular data to monitor all SDGs and targets is no easy feat for national statistical systems (NSS).

To better understand how ready national statistical systems are for the SDG era, ADB and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) have taken stock of 22 countries’ experience in disaggregating SDG indicators and using multiple types of data sources.

In this survey, the national statistical organizations (NSOs) of 16 ADB developing member countries reported disaggregation of statistics by location for several SDG indicators. The disaggregation is sparse for some SDG indicators by sex, and it is even scarcer—if not absent—for disabled persons and indigenous peoples (see Figure 1).

Financing urban planning in Asia: From land value “capture” to “creation” (and more)

Better transport connectivity drives up land prices, creating an opportunity to raise revenues.

Cities are often lauded for being innovation hubs, places where connectivity encourages the flow of ideas and people. But as Asia urbanizes at an unprecedented rate, the people seem to flow faster than the ideas on how to fit them all—sustainably—into their new metropolitan homes.

If you work in Jakarta, you might travel 60 kilometers one-way to get to the office; in Metro Manila, you could spend 1,000 hours a year in traffic; in Bangkok, you’re going fast if you are able to drive 20 kilometers per hour.

Mass transit systems in the region are, for the most part, underdeveloped and underequipped for growing urban populations. So how can we steer urban planning and infrastructure investment to turn cities from congested to comfortable?

Achieving Financial Inclusion: Fintech, account usage, and innovation

A teller at a Baobab bank outlet counting out money for a customer in Antananarivo, Madagascar. © Nyani Quarmyne/IFC

For almost a decade, the global community and national governments have made concerted efforts to expand financial inclusion—creating a financial system that works for all and opens the doors to greater stability and equitable progress.

This has been a demanding challenge. At the start of our engagement on financial access back in 2013, we said that having a real target with an end date would keep us focused and give us a benchmark against which we could measure progress.

3 ways to fill Asia-Pacific’s social protection gap

Indonesia finances cash transfers for the poor with savings from reduced fuel subsidies.

Social protection is crucial to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG Target 1.3 emphasizes the importance of a social protection floor covering the nutritional, health, and educational needs of children; income security for the working-age population; pensions for the elderly; and universal health care coverage.

In recent years, countries in Asia and the Pacific have taken serious steps to expand various aspects of their social protection systems with increased spending. Nearly 60% of the region’s population now has access to health care.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mongolia, Thailand, and Viet Nam have established comprehensive social protection programs that cover not only social pensions but also health insurance. But many gaps remain. Benefits are generally low, and informal workers are not fully covered by pension and health insurance.

Can good infrastructure decisions be made with little information?

The simple answer is yes—with a little help from the Infrastructure Prioritization Framework developed by the World Bank.

Experts can make decisions based on remarkably few pieces of information. Research by James Shanteau at Kansas State University has shown that expertise is reflected in the type of information used, not the amount of it. The Infrastructure Prioritization Framework, or IPF, attempts to capitalize on precisely these aspects of expertise and decision-making. This enables objective evaluations of infrastructure projects using minimal but relevant data in information-constrained environments.

How can more private sector participation in providing adult skills training be encouraged?

When private sector firms provide skills for adults, most do so through on-the-job training (OJT). However, under what conditions can private sector firms provide more OJT? Investigating this question is critical to help governments leverage scarce domestic resources for public investments, and to support, vulnerable groups, while enabling the private sector to take on the bulk of adult skills training provision.

Can temporary employment help reduce crime?

Activities of the Temporary Income Support Program, or PATI / World Bank

With collaboration of Emma Monsalve.

The 2008-09 financial crisis significantly affected El Salvador. The economy, as measured by gross domestic product, contracted 3.1 percent in 2009. The crisis seriously affected employment: between 2008 and 2009, more than 100,000 Salvadorans, or 3 percent of the labor force, became unemployed or under-employed.

Aiming to mitigate the effects of the crisis, the Government of El Salvador launched a new safety net program called Programa de Apoyo Temporal al Ingreso (Temporary Income Support Program, or PATI in Spanish). The program had two goals. One was to provide short-term income support to poor and vulnerable individuals in urban areas. The other was to increase medium-term employability by offering training and opportunities for beneficiaries to gain experience working in productive social activities.

With intelligent transport systems, Asia can beat traffic and boost growth

Bus information systems encourage the use and sustainability of bus rapid transit.

An intelligent transport system (ITS) utilizes vehicle and transport infrastructure data to manage and distribute information to improve transport outcomes. Developing such systems to connect multiple modes of transport and facilitate travel demand management is crucial for continued economic growth and sustainable urbanization.

Some ITS technologies are already well integrated into modern life. For instance, many of us rely on apps to manage our travel patterns, like Waze for deciding which route to take, or Uber and Grab for ride sharing.

Other apps highlight the fastest bicycle routes or tell us which train lines are in service. They help us determine which transport mode to use at what time, and how long a journey will take.

What’s the latest systems research on the quality of governance?

Blog reader: “Dan! The government is one big system. Why didn’t your blog on the latest research on the quality of governance take this into account?”
Dan (Rogger): “Well, typically frontier papers in the field don’t frame their work as ‘modeling the system’ [which do?] However, Martin Williams at the Blavatnik School of Government hosted a conference last week on ‘Systems of Public Service Delivery in Developing Countries’ that directly aims to discuss how research can take into account the systemic elements of governance.

How to maintain one of the world’s toughest road systems

The Kyrgyz Republic is one of 5 CAREC countries with dedicated funding for the road sector.

Central Asia has some of the world’s most challenging road networks. Steep mountain passes, long deserted stretches of highway, and sweltering summers combined with icy winters, make these road networks difficult to manage.

The result has been poor road conditions, high accident rates, excessive costs for road users and countless hours of lost productivity. The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) program is trying to help its member countries address these problems.

As part of efforts to improve transport in the region, CAREC countries plan to build or repair 7,800 kilometers of roads by 2020. An integral part of this massive regional transport upgrading program is to keep the new and refurbished roads in good condition.

Yes they can: SMEs filling the infrastructure gap in fragile countries

Photo: Trocaire | Flickr Creative Commons

In war-torn post-1991 Somalia, running water was a scarce commodity, to the misfortune of millions of people. Members of local communities rose to the occasion, “pooling” consortia of companies to fill the gap in water provisions. Eight public-private partnerships (PPPs) were formed through these consortia, benefiting 70,000 people in the Puntland and Somaliland regions of the country.

As demonstrated in the Somalia case, infrastructure needs are substantial in fragility, conflict and violence-affected (FCV) contexts—especially for recovery and reconstruction in war-torn areas. Yet often there is insufficient public sector funding to address such needs, compounded by lack of interest on the part of large private sector firms, who may not even be on the scene. In such FCV contexts, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), making up a substantial share of the private sector, may be critical to filling the infrastructure services gap.

Making the built environment more resilient: lessons learned from Japan

Globally, up to 1.4 million people are moving into urban areas per week, and estimates show that nearly 1 billion new dwelling units will be built by 2050 to support this growing population. The way we build our cities today directly impacts the safety of future generations.

So how do we ensure that we are building healthy, safe, and resilient cities?

Building codes and regulations continue to be among the most cost-effective tools, and can be seen in Japan’s effective use of building regulations to reduce risk.

Want to keep girls in school? Teach them to negotiate.

Across low-income countries, fewer than one in every three girls are enrolled in secondary school. Many interventions to improve girls’ access to school provide cash, such as cash transfers in Malawi or Nepal. But what if girls had better skills to advocate for their own interests? In a recent experiment in Zambia, Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low, and Kathleen McGinn tested what happens when adolescent girls receive negotiation training. The results are documented in their paper, “Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment.” Over the course of six two-hour after-school sessions, eighth-grade girls engaged in discussion, role-playing, storytelling, and game play to learn four principles of negotiation from college educated Zambian women.

8 ways to promote natural capital investments in the GMS

Payments for ecosystem services offer the rural poor incentives to practice conservation.

Natural capital has been a key contributor to the Greater Mekong Subregion’s (GMS) rapid economic growth over the past 3 decades. However, the subregion’s key natural capital stocks are in a state of decline.

The GMS is poised to continue developing at a significant pace, but its future prosperity could be undermined unless it invests significantly more in safeguarding and enhancing its natural capital. This need is exacerbated by the subregion’s vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters, and human-induced shocks.

Simple strategies that work for job seekers

Action planning and the use of reference letters are two strategies that work for job seekers to improve their search effectiveness and employment outcomes. Moreover, reference letters have an important impact for women job seekers, who often face additional constraints stemming from differential access to key resources. (Photo: Dominic Chavez / World Bank)

Finding a job is a challenging process ---and it can be especially difficult and overwhelming for youth and people entering the labor market for the first time. Youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa are double those of adult unemployment for both men and women. Estimates show that 11 million youth will enter the labor market in Sub-Saharan Africa each year for the coming decade. This offers the potential to dramatically reduce poverty. But to make the most of this opportunity, young people need to engage in productive employment that fuels economic growth. In this blog, we present two simple and effective strategies to support job seekers to find employment.

When (and when not) to use PPPs

Photo: torstensimon | Pixabay

In the context of strained public finances and limited borrowing capacity for developing countries, there is growing debate on the roles of public and private actors to deliver the trillions of dollars of infrastructure necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On one hand, high-profile public-private partnership (PPP) project failures have cast doubt about the viability of the model. On the other hand, while public authorities are ultimately responsible for the delivery of public services, deficient infrastructure services in some countries have raised concerns about the ability of the public sector to deliver on its own.

Migration and remittances can speed up Asia’s development. Here’s how

Financial literacy programs should focus on educating migrants and their families.

Globally, an estimated 266 million people live and work outside their countries of origin to seek opportunities provided by economic globalization. About one-third of them are from Asia and the Pacific.

Asian migrant workers tend to be semi- or low-skilled. They usually migrate to countries such as the US, high-income OECD countries, the Middle East, or middle- or upper-income countries within the region.

Migrant worker remittances have become a significant source of foreign exchange earnings for many low- and middle-income countries in Asia and the Pacific. Remittance inflows have increased nearly ten-fold from $26 billion in 1999 to $251 billion last year.