Live Long and Prosper

Live Long and Prosper PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464804702
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Aging is a challenge which countries in East Asia and Pacific (EAP) regions are grappling with or will soon confront. It raises many questions for policymakers ranging from potential macroeconomic impacts, to fiscal challenges of supporting pension, health and long-term care systems, and labor market implications as countries seek to promote productive aging. The urgency of the aging challenge varies across the region, but it will confront all EAP countries in time and early preparation is essential to avoid the missteps of other regions. Live Long and Prosper discusses the societal and public policy challenges and reform options for EAP countries as they address aging. It aims to strike a balance between aging optimists and pessimists. On the one hand, the impacts of aging on growth, labor markets and public spending are not the unavoidable catastrophe often feared. However, minimizing the downside risks of aging and ensuring healthy and productive aging will require proactive public policy, political leadership, and new mindsets across society. The report reviews the evidence on demographic transition in EAP and its potential macroeconomic impact. It addresses the current policy environment including pensions and social security, health, and long-term care and labor markets to assess the risks of 'business as usual'. It also suggests policy directions to promote healthy and productive aging in EAP, and emphasizes that aging is not just about older people, but requires policy and behavioral change across the life cycle.

Live Long and Prosper

Live Long and Prosper PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464804702
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Aging is a challenge which countries in East Asia and Pacific (EAP) regions are grappling with or will soon confront. It raises many questions for policymakers ranging from potential macroeconomic impacts, to fiscal challenges of supporting pension, health and long-term care systems, and labor market implications as countries seek to promote productive aging. The urgency of the aging challenge varies across the region, but it will confront all EAP countries in time and early preparation is essential to avoid the missteps of other regions. Live Long and Prosper discusses the societal and public policy challenges and reform options for EAP countries as they address aging. It aims to strike a balance between aging optimists and pessimists. On the one hand, the impacts of aging on growth, labor markets and public spending are not the unavoidable catastrophe often feared. However, minimizing the downside risks of aging and ensuring healthy and productive aging will require proactive public policy, political leadership, and new mindsets across society. The report reviews the evidence on demographic transition in EAP and its potential macroeconomic impact. It addresses the current policy environment including pensions and social security, health, and long-term care and labor markets to assess the risks of 'business as usual'. It also suggests policy directions to promote healthy and productive aging in EAP, and emphasizes that aging is not just about older people, but requires policy and behavioral change across the life cycle.

Growing Smarter

Growing Smarter PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464812691
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
One-quarter of the world’s school-age children live in East Asia and Pacific. During the past 50 years, some economies in the region have successfully transformed themselves by investing in the continuous upgrading of the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their workforce. Through policy foresight, they have produced graduates with new levels of knowledge and skills almost as fast as industries have increased their demand for skilled workers.Yet the success of these high-performing systems has not been replicated throughout the region. Tens of millions of students are in school but not learning, and as many as 60 percent of students remain in school systems that are struggling to escape from the global learning crisis or in systems where performance is likely poor. Many students in these systems fail to reach basic levels of proficiency in key subjects and are greatly disadvantaged because of it.Growing Smarter: Learning and Equitable Development in East Asia and Pacific focuses on the experiences of economies in the region that have been able to expand schooling and learning and showcases those that have managed to pursue successful education reforms at scale. By examining these experiences, the report provides both diagnoses and detailed recommendations for improvement not only for education systems within East Asia and Pacific but also for countries across the globe. In East Asia and Pacific, the impressive record of success in education in some low- and middle-income countries is proof of concept that schooling in resource-constrained contexts can lead to learning for all. This report identifies the policies and practices necessary to ensure that students learn and suggests how countries can improve learning outcomes.

The Innovation Imperative for Developing East Asia

The Innovation Imperative for Developing East Asia PDF Author: Xavier Cirera
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464816565
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
After a half century of transformative economic progress that moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, countries in developing East Asia are facing an array of challenges to their future development. Slowed productivity growth, increased fragility of the global trading system,and rapid changes in technology are all threatening export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing—the region’s engine of growth. Significant global challenges—such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic—are exacerbating economic vulnerability. These developments raise questions about whether the region’s past model of development can continue to deliver rapid growth and poverty reduction.Against this background, The Innovation Imperative in Developing East Asia aims to deepen understanding of the role of innovation in future development. The report examines the state of innovation in the region and analyzes the main constraints that firms and countries face to innovating. It assesses current policies and institutions, and lays out an agenda for action to spur more innovation-led growth.A key finding of the report is that countries’ current innovation policies are not aligned with their capabilities and needs. Policies need to strengthen the capacity of firms to innovate and support technological diffusion rather than just invention. Policy makers also need to eliminate policy biases against innovation in services, a sector that is growing in economic importance. Moreover, countries need to strengthen key complementary factors for innovation, including firms’ managerial quality, workers’ skills, and finance for innovation.Countries in developing East Asia would also do well to deepen their tradition of international openness, which could foster openness in other parts of the world. Doing so would help sustain the flows of ideas, trade, investment, and people that facilitate the creation and diffusion of knowledge for innovation.

World Development Report 2009

World Development Report 2009 PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 082137608X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
Rising densities of human settlements, migration and transport to reduce distances to market, and specialization and trade facilitated by fewer international divisions are central to economic development. The transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are most noticeable in North America, Western Europe, and Japan, but countries in Asia and Eastern Europe are changing in ways similar in scope and speed. 'World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography' concludes that these spatial transformations are essential, and should be encouraged. The conclusion is not without controversy. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. Globalization is believed to benefit many, but not the billion people living in lagging areas of developing nations. High poverty and mortality persist among the world's 'bottom billion', while others grow wealthier and live longer lives. Concern for these three billion often comes with the prescription that growth must be made spatially balanced. The WDR has a different message: economic growth is seldom balanced, and efforts to spread it out prematurely will jeopardize progress. The Report: documents how production becomes more concentrated spatially as economies grow. proposes economic integration as the principle for promoting successful spatial transformations. revisits the debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration and shows how today's developers can reshape economic geography.

World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update 2012

World Bank East Asia and Pacific Economic Update 2012 PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464800766
Category : East Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
"Growth in developing East Asia and the Pacific remained strong in 2011, although it slowed from its post-crisis peaks. Strong domestic demand offset weaker external demand from the United States and Western Europe. Looking ahead, the external environment is likely to remain weak. The best prospects for the region to maintain high rates of growth, job creation, and poverty reduction are through rebalancing towards domestic demand and investing in productivity increases and further international integration. Developing East Asia grew by 8.2 percent in 2011 (4.3 percent excluding China), a sharp decline from the nearly 10 percent growth rate recorded in 2010 (7.0 percent excluding China). This slowdown was largely due to lower-thanexpected growth in manufacturing exports and supply disruptions in the wake of the Japan earthquake and tsunami and the severe flooding in Thailand, Lao, PDR, and Cambodia. Domestic demand and investment compensated for these factors and were aided by monetary policy loosening in some countries. Yet, for many countries, this pace of growth was a return to pre-crisis growth trends following the 2010 rebound that followed the global financial and economic crisis. East Asian growth remained impressive on a global scale. In 2011, growth was around a percentage point higher than in South Asia and around 3 percentage points higher than in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Poverty continued to fall across the region with the number of people living on less than US$2 a day expected to decrease to 513 million by 2012 from 565 million in 2010. Yet much of this is driven by gains in China, and the rate of poverty reduction seems to be slowing in step with moderating economic expansion in China and other parts of the region."--page 1.

World Development Indicators 2014

World Development Indicators 2014 PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464801649
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank s premier annual compilation of data about development. This year s print edition and e-book have been redesigned to allow users the convenience of easily linking to the latest data on-line.

East Asia's Changing Urban Landscape

East Asia's Changing Urban Landscape PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464803641
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
This study uses satellite imagery and population data for the decade 2000 to 2010 in order to map urban areas and populations across the entire East Asia region, identifying 869 urban areas with populations over 100,000, allowing us for the first time to understand patterns in urbanization in East Asia.

The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty

The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty PDF Author: World Bank Group
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
"Written jointly by the World Bank Group and the WTO, the publication examines trade and poverty across four dimensions: rural poverty; the informal economy; the impact of fragility and conflict; and gender. The publication looks at how trade could make a greater contribution to ending poverty by increasing efforts to lower trade costs, improve the enabling environment, implement trade policy in conjunction with other areas of policy, better manage risks faced by the poor, and improve data used for policy-making." --

Doing Business 2020

Doing Business 2020 PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464814414
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Doing Business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. It provides quantitative indicators covering 12 areas of the business environment in 190 economies. The goal of the Doing Business series is to provide objective data for use by governments in designing sound business regulatory policies and to encourage research on the important dimensions of the regulatory environment for firms.

World Development Report 2020

World Development Report 2020 PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464814953
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Global value chains (GVCs) powered the rapid expansion of international trade after 1990. Countries import not only for domestic consumption, but also to export, and transactions typically involve long-term, firm-to-firm relationships rather than anonymous spot market transactions. Trade and the rise of GVCs enabled an unprecedented convergence: poor countries grew faster and began to catch up with richer countries. More than 1 billion people escaped poverty as a result. Since the Great Recession, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has slowed down. At the same time, potentially serious threats have emerged to the model of labor-intensive, trade-led growth. New labor-saving technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce demand for labor. And trade conflict among large countries could lead to a retrenchment of supply chains or a segmentation of GVCs. The World Development Report (WDR) 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs. It concludes that technological change is at this stage more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty, provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms and industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies.