Poor Places, Thriving People

Poor Places, Thriving People PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821384236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Geographical differences in living standards are a pressing concern for policymakers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Economies of agglomeration mean that production is most efficient when concentrated in leading areas. So how can the region reduce spatial disparities in well-being without compromising growth? The solution to spatial disparities lies in matching the policy package to a lagging area s specific characteristics. Key questions include: is the lagging area problem really as serious as one thinks; is it a problem of low economic opportunity or of poor human development; are lagging area populations close enough to agglomerations to benefit from spillovers; and is there manifest private investor interest? Drawing on the World Bank s 2009 World Development Report, Reshaping Economic Geography, the book proposes 3 policy packages. First, all lagging areas can benefit from a level playing-field for development and investment in people. Geographic disparities in the policy environment are a legacy of MENA s history, and gaps in human development are a major component of spatial disparities. Smart policies for the investment environment, health, education, social transfers and urban development can therefore close spatial gaps in living standards. Second, lagging areas that are close to economic agglomeration can benefit from spillovers - provided that they are connected. MENA s expenditure priority is not necessarily long-distance primary connections, but infrastructure maintenance and short-distance connections such as rural roads and peri-urban networks. Public-private partnerships can also bring electronic connectivity to lagging areas. Third, shifting regional development policy away from spatial subsidies towards the facilitation of cluster-based growth will increase the chance of cost-effective impacts. The final chapter of the book examines the institutional prerequisites for effective spatial policy. It argues that MENA s centralized/sectoral structures are not always adapted to governments spatial development agendas, and describes alternative institutional options.

Poor Places, Thriving People

Poor Places, Thriving People PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821384236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
Geographical differences in living standards are a pressing concern for policymakers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Economies of agglomeration mean that production is most efficient when concentrated in leading areas. So how can the region reduce spatial disparities in well-being without compromising growth? The solution to spatial disparities lies in matching the policy package to a lagging area s specific characteristics. Key questions include: is the lagging area problem really as serious as one thinks; is it a problem of low economic opportunity or of poor human development; are lagging area populations close enough to agglomerations to benefit from spillovers; and is there manifest private investor interest? Drawing on the World Bank s 2009 World Development Report, Reshaping Economic Geography, the book proposes 3 policy packages. First, all lagging areas can benefit from a level playing-field for development and investment in people. Geographic disparities in the policy environment are a legacy of MENA s history, and gaps in human development are a major component of spatial disparities. Smart policies for the investment environment, health, education, social transfers and urban development can therefore close spatial gaps in living standards. Second, lagging areas that are close to economic agglomeration can benefit from spillovers - provided that they are connected. MENA s expenditure priority is not necessarily long-distance primary connections, but infrastructure maintenance and short-distance connections such as rural roads and peri-urban networks. Public-private partnerships can also bring electronic connectivity to lagging areas. Third, shifting regional development policy away from spatial subsidies towards the facilitation of cluster-based growth will increase the chance of cost-effective impacts. The final chapter of the book examines the institutional prerequisites for effective spatial policy. It argues that MENA s centralized/sectoral structures are not always adapted to governments spatial development agendas, and describes alternative institutional options.

Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa

Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa PDF Author: Daniel Krížek
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498547249
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book deals with the waves of revolutions in North Africa labelled as the Arab Spring. Each of the countries in the region was affected by the Arab Spring and has experienced specific processes and consequences. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, any kind of comprehensive research and analyses need an interdisciplinary approach to deal with the Arab Spring from multiple perspectives. This volume brings together a group of scholars from various disciplines covering different aspects of the revolutionary changes in the North African countries. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa collects diverse studies with an emphasis on specificity. Chapters deal with a wide range of topics that include both minor as well as major themes. These include the formation of youth movement in Egypt long before the Arab Spring and their subsequent participation in the revolution; analysis of Tunisian women’s participation in Arab Spring events; spatial disparities in Tunisia and their impact on the revolution with special focus on Sidi Bouzid as one of the socio-economically weakest areas; rights and social status of sexual minorities in Tunisia; polemics over the role of New Media as both revolutionary and contra-revolutionary tools; broader discussion over the prospects for multilateral cooperation and regional integration in the studied area; reflection of the Arab Spring in the Czech media; impact of the work of ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq on the debates over political secularism in Islamic society; as well as a general debate over democratization in North Africa, or Arab states as such. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa will find its readers in all relevant social sciences dealing in various contexts with the contemporary North Africa.

Convergence

Convergence PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464814511
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Policy makers across the Middle East and North Africa have for many years articulated plans to integrate their people spatially and economically. Wishing to bring communities together and narrow economic gaps, governments have made large capital investments in transport corridors and “new cities.” Hoping to provide jobs in places with little economic activity, governments have designated new industrial zones supported by spatially targeted business incentives.Yet the results of these place-based initiatives in MENA are limited. The disparities between capital cities and lagging areas, and between richer and poorer quarters of cities, remain stark. Across much of the region, a fortunate few are connected to opportunity, while many more people are marginal to the formal economy—or live outside it, seemingly forgotten. Why have place-based spatial initiatives in MENA countries largely underdelivered, not yielding more sustainable jobs and growth? Although the challenges are many and vary across the region, this book explains that many of these place-based policies get one thing wrong: they attempt to treat inequity‘s spatial and physical symptoms, not its causes.This book presents the five roots causes of spatial inequity in institutional inefficiencies across MENA—urban regulatory frictions, credentialist education systems, centralized control over local public services, barriers to the spatial mobility of goods and people, and barriers to market entry and lopsided business environments—within cities, within countries, and across national borders

Climate Change Adaptation and Social Resilience in the Sundarbans

Climate Change Adaptation and Social Resilience in the Sundarbans PDF Author: Anna O'Donnell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766454X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Household vulnerability to weather shocks and changing climatic conditions has become a major concern in developing countries. Yet the empirical evidence remains limited on the impact that changing environmental conditions have on households. This book explores climate change adaptation using a social resilience approach. The book is based on primary data from the Sundarbans, a densely populated area located across parts of Bangladesh and India (West Bengal) which is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change. The focus is on assessing how households are affected by cyclones: whether they are able to cope with, adapt to and recover from events and changes; whether they are warned ahead of time; whether they benefit from government safety nets and other social programs; and finally whether they are driven to either temporary or permanent migration. This assessment leads to a better understanding of how exposure to an area of climate change vulnerability and risk affects and shapes human responses.

Urban Change in Iran

Urban Change in Iran PDF Author: Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319261150
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book, based on conference excerpts, investigates various aspects of contemporary Iranian urbanism. The topics covered range from the impacts of political developments on the cities’ rapid socio-economic developments, to the cities’ troubled relationship with the country’s built-environment history and their frequently ill-managed exposure to Western notions of development and globalisation. Last but not least, the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters in an age of increasing urban-population densification is also considered. Alongside more theoretically and artistically oriented debates, the book’s individual contributions turn their attention to the now much higher proportion of urban dwellers in the country’s rising population. It also discusses the policies designed in response to these demographic moves, including those to develop new towns, find housing for the excess population in existing cities, renovate historic buildings and create new public spaces. The practice-policy oriented contributions also include those concerning the country’s responses to natural disasters.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh PDF Author: Elisa Muzzini
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821398652
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Bangladesh seeks to attain middle-income status by 2021. To accelerate growth enough to do so, Bangladesh needs to build a competitive urban space that is innovative, connected and livable. This book identifies what is unique about Bangladesh's process of urbanization and examines the implications for economic growth.

Hand to Mouth

Hand to Mouth PDF Author: Linda Tirado
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425277976
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.

Social Policy in the Middle East and North Africa

Social Policy in the Middle East and North Africa PDF Author: Rana Jawad
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786431998
Category : Africa, North
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This book presents a state of the art in the developing field of social policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It offers an up-to-date conceptual analysis of social policy programmes and discourses in the MENA region by critically reviewing the range of social insurance and social assistance schemes that are currently in existence there. It also analyses and offers suggestions on which of these policies can positively impact the region’s advancement in terms of human development and in addressing social and economic inequalities and exclusion.

Economics Of The Middle East: Development Challenges

Economics Of The Middle East: Development Challenges PDF Author: Julia C Devlin
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814675210
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This lecture note volume aims to introduce economic concepts and analysis to undergraduate level students, in the context of contemporary development challenges in the economics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Climate Change and Migration

Climate Change and Migration PDF Author: Quentin Wodon
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821399721
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Climate change and migration are major concerns in the MENA region, yet the empirical evidence on the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on migration remains limited. Information is broadly lacking on how households in vulnerable areas perceive changes in the climate, how they are affected by extreme weather events, whether they benefit from community and government programs to help them cope with and adapt to a changing climate, and how these conditions influence the decision of household members to migrate, either temporarily or permanently. This introductory chapter summarizes briefly the main results of the study which relied on existing data as well as focus groups and new household surveys collected in 2011 in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. The results suggest that households do perceive important changes in the climate, and that many households are being affected by extreme weather events resulting in losses in income, crops, and livestock. The coping and adaptation strategies used by households to deal with weather shocks are diverse, but also limited, with most households not able to recover from the negative impact of weather shocks. The ability of community level responses and government programs to support households is also very limited. Finally, while climate change is not today the main driver of migration flows, it does appear to contribute substantially to these flows, so that worsening climatic conditions are likely to exacerbate future migration flows.