S6 Ep18: Improving sanitation: What works and what doesn’t
Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where it’s hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you don’t hear about so much is the call to end open defecation by 2030. What progress are we making, and what health improvements are we seeing so far? In the latest of our episodes based on J-PAL’s policy insights, Karen Macours of the Paris School of Economics, also co-chair of J-PAL's Health Sector, tells Tim Phillips about how we can achieve this development goal, why it’s not a quick fix, and the surprising results of research into the health benefits of improving sanitation.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/improving-sanitation-what-works-and-what-doesnt
Read the Policy Insight on J-PAL: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-insight/improving-sanitation-access-subsidies-loans-and-community-led-programs
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18:41
S6 Ep17: Improving worker well-being
We often talk about providing not just jobs, but decent jobs, in developing countries. But in many parts of the world, workers still have incredibly harsh working conditions.
There have been interventions at the firm level to create safer workplaces, better health,
higher job satisfaction. But have they succeeded? And, if these policies succeed in raising worker well-being, is there a cost or a benefit for the employer?
In the latest in our collaborations with J-PAL to discuss their policy insights, Achyuta
Adhvaryu, UC San Diego about their review of the research into worker well-being, the
policies that encourage firms to improve it, and the outcomes for employees and employers alike.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/labour-markets/improving-worker-well-being-good-workers-good-business
You can find the review here https://www.povertyactionlab.org/
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30:36
S6 Ep16: What have we learned about the informal sector?
A large proportion of economic activity takes place in the informal sector in every country, particularly in LMICs. Informality, and the lack of rights and protection that goes with it, affects the families who live in slums, the people who take off-the-books jobs, and the firms that choose to skirt regulations. It also affects the governments who want to increase the size of the formal sector – and the revenue they can collect from it.
Gabriel Ulyssea of UCL and Mariaflavia Harari of the University of Pennsylvania are two of the editors of new VoxDevLit that examines what we know about the size of the informal sector and how it operates. They talk to Tim Phillips about the grey areas between formal and informal, and the limitations of policies that try to increase the size of the formal economy.
Read the VoxDevLit here: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/informality
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36:10
S6 Ep15: How poverty fell
In 1981, 44% of the world’s population were living in extreme poverty. By 2019, that number had fallen to 9%. This seems like a good news story, but how did it happen?
Tom Vogl of UC San Diego is one of the authors of a paper called simply, “How Poverty
Fell”. In it, they use surveys to track the progress out of poverty of individuals and
generations, to discover whether this progress has been driven by individuals and families becoming less poor over their lives or by successive generations who are less likely to be born into poverty. Has the progress been driven by women in the workplace, by government support, or by the move out of agriculture? And, significantly, do those who move out of poverty stay in that position or, is it, as Tom tells Tim Phillips, “Like climbing a slippery slope”?
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/methods-measurement/how-has-global-poverty-fallen
Read the paper: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/how_poverty_fell.pdf
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S5 Ep5: Development Dialogues: Who will pay for the global energy transition?
In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale’s Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney is asking one of the most complex questions in global development: how can the clean energy transition move forward quickly and equitably, particularly for low- and middle-income countries still grappling with poverty? There is a balance between emissions reductions and economic growth. While wealthy nations historically contributed the most to climate change, LMICs are now under pressure to take costly action to avoid it.
Catherine is joined by Max Bearak of the New York Times, Jessica Seddon of Yale Jackson School and the Dietz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs, and Anant Sudarshan of the University of Warwick and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/climate-capital-and-conscience-who-will-pay-global-energy-transition
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