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Romania aims to be a country in which all citizens are provided with an equal opportunity toparticipate in society, where their basic needs are met and their differences respected, and whereall people feel valued and can live in dignity.Our society is still far from this ideal. One in every five Romanian people is income poor. Most of the people living in relative poverty in Romania are in persistent poverty, meening that they have been in poverty for at least the last three years. Despite its relatively low unemployment rate, the country has a very high rate of poverty for in-work people, which is double the EU-27 rate (9 percent). As a response to this situation, the Government of Romania (GoR) has committed itself to lifting 580,000 people out of poverty by 20205 as part of the Europe 2020 Strategy.By 2020, Romania is committed to putting in place a set of policies and programs to (i) lift at least 580,000 people out of relative income poverty by 2020, compared to 2008; (ii) break the inter-generational cycle of poverty; (iii) prevent the recurrence of poverty and social exclusion; and (iv) ensure equal access to social assistance, cash transfers and services to strengthen social cohesion.the GoR asked for the World Bank’s support to develop detailed implementation plans for the 2015-2018 period in the form of nine Flagship Innitiatives that are expected to have the greatest impact in terms of reducing poverty and promoting social inclusion. This Atlas of Rural Marginalized Areas and Local Human Development in Romania represents the Flagship Initiative develop an instrument to identify poor villages and marginalized rural communities. Specifically the Bank’s technical assistance provided through this project has helped the GoR to develop: (i) a methodology for defining different types of rural marginalized areas based on a set of key criteria and indicators; (ii) detailed maps that present the spatial distribution of the rural marginalized communities by county; (iii) a methodology for defining degrees of local human development from low to comprehensive development, for rural and small urban settlements; and (iv) detailed county-level maps of local human development. In short, the Atlas helps to define which rural areas are marginalized, who lives in these areas (the profile of various disadvantaged groups), and where they are located in Romania.

Myanmar grew at an estimated 8.5 percent in real terms in 2014-15. Economic reforms have supported consumer and investor confidence despite business environment and socio-political challenges. The economic impact of the floods that hit Myanmar from July 2015 is still being assessed, but will likely adversely affect the main rice crop this year. According to preliminary analysis of census data, the areas most affected by the floods are those where people were relatively worse off. Fiscal policy is expected to remain broadly on track, but the current account will come under further pressure due to import demand for post-flood rehabilitation and slowing agricultural exports. Addressing short-term macroeconomic challenges will require continued efforts at maintaining exchange rate flexibility supported by fiscal and monetary discipline. Supporting governance improvements is a core focus of the World Bank Group (WBG) program. The WBG is well positioned to support the improvement of corporate governance standards in order to build confidence and facilitate investment in domestic firms.

This paper presents early evidence from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization program. The study examines the links between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with the model, improved tenure security under demarcation induces a shift toward long-term investment on treated parcels. This investment does not yet coincide with gains in agricultural productivity. The analysis also identifies significant gender-specific effects. Female-managed landholdings in treated villages are more likely to be left fallow—an important soil fertility investment. Women further respond to an exogenous tenure security change by moving production away from relatively secure, demarcated land and toward less secure land outside the village to guard those parcels.

Mauritania is a vast country covering over a million square kilometers, where a relatively small population of 3.5 million people lives on just one-fifth of the country’s total area. With extremely advanced desertification, the country is particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change and other external shocks. The main sources of income in Mauritania are agriculture, which is either irrigated or rain-fed, and livestock. This is especially the case in the Senegal River Valley, where people make their living farming, raising livestock, and fishing, while mining is prevalent in the north. Arable land is therefore one of the country’s main resources, but it is also a major source of contention due to increasing urbanization and the limited availability of arable land. This presentation relies on the key recommendations emphasized in the Land Governance Framework Report (LGAF), published by the World Bank in 2014. This report established a far-reaching and more inclusive national land policy that strengthens the security of land tenure for vulnerable groups, including women. This framework was the first to propose a national platform for all stakeholders, including women, to openly discuss and reach consensus around land issues. The inclusive workshops that were held by LGAF helped stimulate discussion at all levels, from civil society, both men and women, to senior officials, promoting a national debate on land issues with a strong gender perspective. The workshops were particularly beneficial for many female participants, as these women now have increased access to information about land issues in their own communities.

This paper brings together sociological theories of culture and gender to answer the question – how do large-scale development interventions induce cultural change? Through three years of ethnographic work in rural Bihar, the authors examine this question in the context of Jeevika, a World Bank-assisted poverty alleviation project targeted at women, and find support for an integrative view of culture. The paper argues that Jeevika created new “cultural configurations” by giving economically and socially disadvantaged women access to a well-defined network of people and new systems of knowledge, which changed women’s habitus and broke down normative restrictions constitutive of the symbolic boundary of gender.

This report is based on a field study of two large settlements, Satghara (a census town) and Bhagwatipur (a rural cluster with 10,000 plus population) in the Madhubani district of Bihar. The study explores the social dynamics of the rural non-farm economy by empirically mapping non-farm occupations in both the settlements. It examines the dynamics of caste, community, and gender within the social organization of the non-farm economy in terms of their economic and social hierarchies and the differential incomes and status they provide. The study also looks at the relationship of the local non-farm economy with patterns of outmigration. It further attempts to understand the manner in which the changes in the regional structures of power and domination have influenced the local economic processes and are being influenced by them with a specific focus on the non-farm economy in the two setting. The study also attempts an assessment of the possible development and urbanizing effects of the rather rapid growth of nonfarm economy in rural Madhubani.

As part of a national experiment, in 2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms, including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned land use closer to economic incentives, mainly through market transfers, and led to an increase in enterprise start-ups. These impacts, most of which are more pronounced for villages with lower travel time to Chengdu city, point toward high potential gains from factor market reform.

As part of a national experiment in 2008, Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property rights reforms, including complete registration of all land together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate migration restrictions. A triple difference approach using the Statistics Bureau’s regular household panel suggests that the reforms increased consumption and income, especially for less wealthy and less educated households, with estimated benefits well above the cost of implementation. Local labor supply increased, with the young shifting toward agriculture and the old toward off-farm employment. Agricultural yields, intensity of input use, and diversity of output also increased. Improving property rights in peri-urban China appears to have increased investment and diversification.

Albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 percent of its population through a system that allows some community discretion in determining distribution. This study investigates how well this social assistance program is targeted to the poor. Relative to other safety net programs in low-income countries, social assistance in Albania is fairly well targeted. Nevertheless, the system is hampered by the absence of a clear, objective criterion to determine the size of the grants from the central government to communes as well as limited information that could be used to implement this criterion. Substantial gains in targeting could be achieved if the central government better allocated transfers to local governments, even holding local targeting at base levels.

The Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (PNPM) or National Community Empowerment Program is the world’s largest program of its kind with long term goals to reduce poverty by making development planning more inclusive, accountable, and reflective of local needs. PNPM currently covers about 70,000 rural and urban communities across Indonesia. PNPM works by giving communities block grants to spend on projects developed through a participatory, bottom-up planning process, facilitated by social and technical specialists who provide advice to communities without controlling funds. PNPM is supported by a multi-donor trust fund called the PNPM Support Facility (PSF). Part of PSF’s role is to provide more effective strategic support to the government’s objectives, especially by improving the effectiveness of PNPM’s gender action plan. Increasing women’s voice in community planning and decision-making has been an explicit goal of PNPM since its founding, and since 2007 PNPM Rural has had an overarching gender action plan to guide actions to involve women in all procedures. A maximum of 25 per cent of all PNPM funds are reserved to support proposals from village women’s groups for RLF groups referred to in this report as SPP. Women play increasingly central roles in PNPM’s kecamatan and village administration. The PSF engaged a gender specialist with expertise in working in challenging rural contexts to review the system and provide a short critical report and practical recommendation on gender sensitive approaches in the overall implementation of PNPM Rural. A PSF operational analyst with in depth knowledge of PNPM accompanied the specialist to the field. Objectives and outputs are laid out in full in described in Appendix 6. The report below lays out the findings and recommendations of the mission.

Energy poverty is a global problem: access to energy services is crucial to meet basic household needs, deliver and access public services, and generate income. Less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan (SSA) rural households have access to electricity, with an overall access rate below 25 percent. One of the main obstacles for SSA electrification practitioners is the difficulty in obtaining practical and timely knowledge on how to overcome economic, technical, institutional, and political barriers to electrification in their day-to-day work. Launched in 2008, the Africa Electrification Initiative (AEI) seeks to create and sustain a living body of practical knowledge and a network of SSA practitioners for the design, development, and implementation of rural, peri-urban, and urban on-grid and off-grid electrification programs. AEI supports the network by organizing workshops and promoting online discussions and knowledge exchanges on topics important for its members. The workshop set out to address a number of relevant electrification topics previously identified through in-depth discussions and ongoing knowledge exchanges among a growing network of SSA practitioners. The workshop's main focus was on ground-level implementation of different institutional approaches to electrification, with particular focus on the experiences of rural energy agencies/rural energy funds (REAs/REFs) across SSA. The workshop lasted two and a half days, comprising 21 sessions, including regular session panels and discussion clinics with a longer duration. It also featured exhibition space for posters submitted by participating institutions, an expo of approved lighting products from the lighting Africa program, and an awards ceremony to recognize the best papers submitted by SSA electrification practitioners in response to the AEI call for papers.

The World Bank commissioned this report as part of a set of studies concerned with the Uganda Demobilization and Reintegration Program and the Amnesty Commission. The study represents one element of the set of studies which included the Final Independent Evaluation of the Uganda Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (UgDRP), Reporter Reintegration Survey and Community Dynamics Survey, and a study on the relationship between the Amnesty Commission and its DDR Implementing Partners study. The background field work and research for this study was integrated into the overall background research and fieldwork for the set of studies. In this study the focus of the analysis is on processes of reintegration rather than the achievement of a static marker of reintegration. In other words rather than examining the experience of reporters to identify the ones who are reintegrated and the ones who are not, the study examines the complex interplay of elements in the process of social and economic reintegration to identify which drivers have most influenced (positively and negatively) the reintegration process in which reporters are and have been engaged. The study identifies the drivers of successful or unsuccessful reintegration and the crosscutting dynamics such as gender, tradition, poverty and economic markets that exacerbate the impact of drivers of reintegration on the lives of reporters and communities. The report presents actionable findings that can inform future programming in the area. The overall purpose of the study is to provide an analysis of the drivers of reintegration and to identify the distinguishing features of successful reintegration amongst reporters.

The Philippines has made significant progress in empowering women and in advancing gender equality. The government's policy on gender equality and women's empowerment has prioritized women's economic empowerment, advancing human rights and enhancing gender-responsive local governance. All these priority concerns are integral components of poverty reduction programs in the Philippines. The Philippines has made significant progress in empowering women and in advancing gender equality. Since the government introduced a constitution in 1987 affirming the equality of women, it has pursued a number of initiatives to mainstream gender concerns in national policies and programs. A development plan for women was launched in 1987, followed by a plan for gender-responsive development, 1995-2025, coordinated by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino women. In 2004, the commission drafted a framework plan for women that identify three priority concerns to meet the objectives of gender equality and women's empowerment: economic empowerment of women, protection and fulfillment of women's human rights, and gender-responsive governance. Projects that support these priorities will facilitate more equitable development across the Philippines, including supporting the full participation of women in political processes and governance in the international and national local level, strengthening gender-sensitive and inclusive programs and mechanisms with civil society, and increasing women's access to economic resources such as capital, technology, information, markets, and training.

The purpose of this study was to provide a better understanding for policy makers and service providers of mobility and migration among ex-combatants and the effectiveness of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programming in Uganda. The study followed a scoping study on migration in Uganda conducted in March 2011 by the Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP) of the World Bank. This study had the following specific objectives: 1) to analyze push/pull migration factors of ex-combatants in Uganda, with a specific focus on social as well as economic factors both within communities of origin and at new communities of re-settlement; 2) to explore any impact of DDR programming on migration of ex-combatants in Uganda; 3) to increase the understanding of the impact of migration by ex-combatants on the effectiveness of past and current DDR programming, specifically on reintegration efforts; and 4) to generate recommendations on how to improve DDR programming, taking into account findings from other related studies.

The objectives of the study are to: a) increase understanding of the effects and effectiveness of the implementation of the local government reform launched in 2006; and b) assess the impact of a World Bank-supported intervention that aimed to enhance effectiveness of the reforms by increasing local capacity and local participation. In line with these objectives, the study assessed the perceived effects and effectiveness of the implementation of the local government reform in selected provinces. The study also constitutes a baseline to allow for on-going assessment of progress and to inform corrective policy actions. The instruments and methods created during the study may be used in future assessments of the dynamics of local governance reform. These effects are reviewed in section two. The study also carried out a rigorous evaluation of the impact of an operational intervention carried out with World Bank support in the three regions of the study. This grant-funded project was aimed at increasing the effectiveness of participation of rural citizens in public life and increasing the capacity of local administrations to operate in the new legal and fiscal environment created by the decentralization reform. The summary of the impact evaluation can be found in section three.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the World Bank Group's (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [IBRD], International Development Association [IDA], and International Finance Corporation [IFC]) effectiveness in promoting growth in agricultural productivity in Azerbaijan, and to derive lessons that may be relevant for the World Bank Group's future engagement in Azerbaijani agriculture. The study covers the World Bank's entire agricultural lending and analytical portfolio, and the full period of the Bank's involvement with Azerbaijan's rural sector, commencing in 1997 when the first agricultural project was launched, to 2010. The report begins (section one) with an overview of agriculture's role in Azerbaijan's economy, the strategic need for increased agricultural growth and the technical, economic and policy constraints impeding growth. Section two reviews the Bank's lending program and analytical work, and considers the appropriate balance between lending and analytical activities. Section three assesses the Bank's impact on agricultural productivity, and section four considers how environmental management, social welfare and agricultural growth can be mutually complementary. Section five and six reviews cross-cutting aspects of the Bank's work in Azerbaijan's agriculture sector, including the Bank's effectiveness as an innovator and as a partner with the government in agricultural reform. And section seven assesses the impact of the Bank's own institutional structure and practices on its operational effectiveness promoting agricultural productivity. Concluding the report, Section 8 highlights the main areas where the Bank could have had greater impact on the country's agricultural productivity, and the lessons thereby emerging for the Bank's agricultural role in Azerbaijan in future years.

This report seizes the opportunity to learn from existing evidence by analyzing lessons derived from impact evaluations produced between 2000 and January 2009 to begin to discern what has been effective in agriculture. It is part of a broader effort being undertaken by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank to understand how impact evaluations can help improve performance and broadly disseminate those lessons. Specifically, the report has three objectives: 1) assess the current state of impact evaluations in the agriculture sector and highlight challenges that users face when trying to answer what works best in the sector; 2) derive a taxonomy of agriculture interventions evaluated using impact evaluation methodology, and identify the most common constraints for farmers and addressed by those interventions; and 3) highlight what can be said about the impact of different interventions on agricultural outcomes (focusing on productivity and farm income). Also, point to areas for future research of agricultural interventions to broaden the use of this analysis. The rest of this chapter provides some necessary definitions for the report, outlines the conceptual framework, and presents a brief background on the selection of impact evaluations (IEs) from the evaluation literature. Chapter two provides a profile of the evidence, including IE characteristics and challenges encountered in the analysis. Chapter three looks within the interventions and presents a formal taxonomy of all agricultural interventions represented in the group analyzed for the report. Chapter four delves into the evidence by presenting the primary constraints dealt with in the interventions, the results reported by the evaluations, and some lessons that may be incorporated into future project design. Chapter five concludes with some general remarks.

The point of departure of this paper is that in the absence of effectively functioning asset markets the distribution of wealth matters for efficiency. Inefficient asset markets depress total factor productivity (TFP) in two ways: first, by not allowing efficient firms to grow to the size that they should achieve (this could include many great firms that are never started); and second, by allowing inefficient firms to survive by depressing the demand for factors (good firms are too small) and hence factor prices. Both of these effects are dampened when the wealth of the economy is in the hands of the most productive people, again, for two reasons: first, because they do not rely as much on asset markets to get outside resources into the firm; and second, because wealth allows them to self insure and therefore they are more willing to take the right amount of risk. None of this, however, tells us that efficiency enhancing redistributions must always be targeted to the poorest. There is some reason to believe that a lot of the inefficiency lies in the fact that many medium size firms are too small.

Bu tezde sunulan toprak mülkiyeti ve yönetim yapısı açısından farklı yapılara sahip iki köyün karşılaştırmalı monografisidir. Söz konusu toprak mülkiyeti biçimleri büyük toprak mülkiyeti ve küçük köylü mülkiyetidir. Büyük toprak sahipliğinin hakim olduğu ilk köyün üç tane mezrası bulunmaktadır ve bu özelliğiyle ikinci köyden yönetim yapısı açısından da farklılık göstermektedir. 1950'lerdeki ilk mekanizasyondan sonra ikinci bir teknolojik girdi olarak bölgeye girecek olan sulamanın bu iki farklı kirsal yapıda yaratacağı olası dönüşüm süreçleri konusunda birtakım sonuçlara ulaşmak yanında her iki köyün bugün sahip olduğu sosyo-ekonomik ve kültürel yapıların analizini amaçlayan tezin ana konusunu bu köylerdeki toprak mülkiyeti yapılarının şimdiyekadarki dönüşümü ve modern teknolojinin bu yapılardaki etkileri oluşturmaktadır. Tezin bulguları kırsal Türkiye üzerine yapılan tartışmalar çerçevesinde yorumlanmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (GAP), Sulama Projesi, Sosyo-kültürel ve sosyo-ekonomik Tarımsal Yapılar ve Değişme, Küçük Köylü Mülkiyeti ve Küçük Üreticilik, Büyük Toprak Mülkiyeti ve Ağalık, Geleneksel Sosyo-kültürel yapılar; Aşiretler ve Şıhlar. Bilim Dalı Sayısal Kodu: 211.03.01 vı This thesis presents a comparative study of two villages which have different structures at land property and administrative levels, in the form of monographs. The two types of landholdings are those of large estates and small peasant holdings. The first village in which large land holding predominates has three subvillages (hamlets) which creates another difference at the administrative level. The dynamics of transformation of pre-existing structure of land tenure in these villages and the effects of the introduction of modern technology on these two different structures are the main subject of the thesis which is aimed at analyzing their present socio economic and cultural structures as well as deriving c/conclusions concerning the possible transformation processes of these types of villages considering the impact of the irrigation project to be implemented soon, which will constitute the second technological input in the region after the first mechanization in 1950' s and onwards. The findings of present thesis are interpreted in the context of general debates on rural Turkey. Keywords: South East Anatolia Project, Irrigation Project, Socio-cultural and Socio-economic Agricultural Structures and Changes, Small Peasant Holdings and Petty Commodity Production, Large Land Holdings and Landlordship, Traditional Socio-cultural Structures; Tribes and Sheikhs. Science Code: 211.03.01 228