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The Philippines’ experience in implementing the social amelioration program (SAP) in response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the pressing need for financial inclusion, especially among the poor. The absence of a national identification (ID) system and low bank account ownership posed a challenge in the delivery of SAP. The Government of the Philippines (GoP) expedited the development and registration for the national ID system (PhilSys) and used the opportunity to facilitate bank account opening. Not only ownership of bank or mobile money accounts but also accessibility to financial services is essential for financial inclusion. This study assesses the challenges and opportunities in financial inclusion, especially among the poor in remote communities. First, the study carries out a mapping of all financial transaction points and estimates the travel time to the nearest point. Second, the map is superimposed with the poverty and potential vulnerability of families in remote communities. Finally, the study assesses the coverage of 4Ps in remote areas in view of the potential challenges in implementing the social assistance program in hard-to-reach communities.

The September 2018 earthquake, tsunami, and liquefaction in Central Sulawesi—the deadliest natural disaster to hit Indonesia since the 2004 Aceh tsunami—exposed challenges in accessing real-time data on what assistance, how much assistance, and where immediate assistance is needed for emergency relief, and the subsequent recovery and reconstruction phases. In response, the World Bank developed a Welfare Tracking in the Aftermath of Crisis (WelTrAC) tool, which employs a mixture of panel household survey data and remote-sensed satellite imagery data to integrate micro and macro levels of disaster impact and recovery assessments, and presents the updated findings regularly on an interactive web-based monitoring dashboard. WelTrAC aims to fill the information gaps on the dynamics of welfare and living conditions of disaster-affected victims during the period following a disaster. Such information is crucial in strengthening the Government’s ability to implement effective disaster response strategies for rapid and sustainable recovery.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a dramatic disruption in the delivery of education and health services in the Philippines. With school closures and challenges in the delivery of distance learning, students learning losses are expected to be enormous. Meanwhile, the health system is strained under the challenge of management of Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases which likely crowd out the delivery of essential health services. This note, a third note of the series using the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Low Income Household Panel and Economic (HOPE) Survey, investigates the impact of the pandemic on education and health behaviors as well as other welfare indicators of low-income households in the Philippines.

This report summarizes the findings of a unique panel survey of rural households in Nepal, conducted between 2016 and 2018 by the World Bank with financing from the UK Department for International Development (DfID). The survey covered six thousand households in rural and peri-urban areas nationwide. The objective of the survey was to better understand the exposure of households to major natural and socio-economic shocks, their means of coping with these shocks, and the impact of shocks on household welfare. While most households appear to be able to withstand a range of smaller shocks to assets and income, larger and more covariate shocks continue to pose a major risk to household assets, food security and overall welfare. These effects persist for up to two years following the shock. The authors findings point to the importance of having established formal social assistance to help the chronically poor build their resilience and assist other households that are normally non-poor to cope in the event of major shocks.

Simple linear distances between origin and destination poorly describe travel in Nepal, where rugged terrain, underdeveloped transportation infrastructure, and diverse vegetation heavily influence favorable travel routes. In this context, expected travel times explain more about the remoteness of starting locations than geographic distance. Applied to service facilities, these time‐based measures of remoteness amount to measures of physical accessibility to services. However, traditional survey‐based measures of time suffer from problems of inaccurate reporting and standard survey error. Instead, this study built a geographic information system–based cost time model of travel that enables more accurate and generalizable assessment of accessibility. Having validated the generic model and compared it with other popular metrics, the study demonstrates its value by inputting a variety of services into it. This paper provides descriptive analyses of accessibility trends to these services at national, provincial, municipal, and geographic scales and suggests research possibilities unlocked by such a general purpose model. The paper concludes with thoughts for how the data and analysis, both freely available public goods, can enable additional research and better policy making.

This paper builds on the existing literature assessing retrospectively the quantitative effects of natural disasters on different dimensions of household welfare, to make progress toward the ex ante identification of households that are vulnerable to poverty due to natural disasters, especially typhoons. A wind field model for the Philippines is employed to estimate local wind speeds at any locality where a tropical typhoon directly passes over or nearby. The estimated wind speeds are merged with the household Family Income and Expenditure Surveys at the barangay level, and consumption expenditures are then regressed against wind speed (or a related damage index) and household socioeconomic characteristics. The estimated coefficients from the regression model are then used to estimate ex ante household vulnerability to poverty (the likelihood that household consumption falls below the poverty line) in the event of future natural disasters of different intensities.