Innovation Driving the City

Development Matters Asia , , , , ,

By Ms. Theresa Mathawaphan and Ms. Yaowarat Kekina, National Innovation Agency (Public Organisation), Thailand

Check out the 28 March 2019 EMnet meeting on
“Global Challenges for Business in Emerging Markets”
with a special focus on Smart Cities in Asia

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Bangkok CyberTech District Development

Innovation and technology currently play an increasing role in developing the urban city by tackling multiple challenges. Many cities in the ASEAN region have set-up urban development strategies by creating an innovation ecosystem to elevate the area’s economy and investment, reaching a global level. This makes the “innovation city” concept more recognised and used as a new way of driving the development of cities.

Proof of this is the Innovation Cities Index 2018. This report evaluates the city innovation ecosystem capability of 500 cities worldwide, reflecting the vision that a city can grow and be sustainably driven when citizens and corporations are capable of generating innovation. This index measures three main aspects, namely cultural assets, human infrastructure and networked markets, and has a total of 162 indexes. Continue reading →

Why you should care about unpaid care work

Development Matters Gender , ,

By Jorge Moreira da Silva, Director, Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD

The way we currently measure our economies ignores a large portion of work that affects all of us. Most of this work is done by women and girls for free, every day. Around the world, they are responsible for 75% of unpaid care and domestic work in our homes and communities (see Figure 1). So these issues are not just hypothetical, but critical to achieving inclusive economic growth and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Figure 1: Gender gaps in unpaid care work by geographic region

Unpaid work Graph

Note: NA stands for North America, ECA for Europe and Central Asia, LAC for Latin America and the Caribbean, EAP for East Asia and the Pacific, SSA for Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA for Middle East and North Africa, SA for South Asia.  

Source: OECD Gender Institutions and Development Database (GID-DB), 2019, oecd.stat.org.

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The Future of Development Co-operation: Not the end, just the beginning of a new era?

Development Matters Development finance, ODA, policy ,

DEV-IN-TRANS-BANNER

By Andy Sumner, King’s College London

This blog is part of an ongoing series evaluating various facets
of Development in Transition
The 2019 Perspectives on Global Development
on Rethinking Development Strategies adds to this discussion

immigration-integrationYesterday’s blog listed five areas of change related to global poverty and economic development in developing countries. What do these changes mean for development co-operation?

First, development co-operation needs to adapt to the new polarisation within the developing world. More precisely, the old model of supporting ‘stuck’ and ‘ODA-dependent’ developing countries needs to be complemented with a new model of collaborating with ‘moving’ and ‘post-ODA’ developing countries.

Second, development co-operation to support expanding social welfare regimes and social protection systems focused particularly on children is important to disrupt the inter-generational transmission of poverty, especially given that under 18-year olds make up half of global poverty.

Over 100 developing countries have already established cash transfer schemes, which indicates that these systems are already being built, and systematic reviews concur on poverty reduction impacts. A global knowledge bank on building social welfare and social protection systems is thus one potential area for post-ODA development co-operation. Continue reading →

5 facts about global poverty that may surprise you

Development Matters policy , , ,

DEV-IN-TRANS-BANNER

By Andy Sumner, King’s College London

This blog is part of an ongoing series evaluating various facets
of Development in Transition
The 2019 Perspectives on Global Development
on Rethinking Development Strategies adds to this discussion

poverty-DiT-facts

This blog is the first of two. Part one outlines five facts about global poverty and economic development in the developing world and discusses how the nature of development is changing. Part two, which will post tomorrow, will consider the implications of these changes for future development co-operation.

Fact 1. A new polarisation is emerging in the developing world. A new polarisation is emerging within the developing world between ‘moving’ and ‘stuck’ countries, as well as between ‘high-ODA’ and ‘post-ODA’ countries. Continue reading →

Social protection systems that work for women’s rights

Development Matters Gender, policy, Social Protection , ,

Sigi-banner-for-blogBy Shahra Razavi, Chief of Research and Data, UN Women

This blog is part of a special series marking the intersection between
the 2019 Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI),
the 2019 SIGI Global Report and work on Social Protection

Social-protection-women-cashGender-responsive social protection systems have been very effective in mitigating the inequalities generated by markets. Take the case of work-related benefits, such as maternity and parental leave and sickness and unemployment benefits. Thanks to these transfers, the gender gap in disposable incomes in a range of high- and middle-income countries becomes much smaller than the gap in market incomes, while affordable childcare services have been pivotal in giving women, especially mothers, a foothold in the labour market.

Globally, however, only 41% of mothers with newborns receive a maternity benefit, with coverage rates as low as 16% in Africa. Widespread labour market informality is at the root of this exclusion. Yet, in Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa, social insurance-based leave schemes have been extended to cover informal wage workers, such as domestic workers and seasonal agricultural labourers. Mongolia provides an interesting combination of contributory and non-contributory benefits, including maternity cash benefits to all pregnant women and mothers of infants regardless of their contribution to the social insurance scheme, employment status or nationality. In recent decades, child- and family-related allowances have also gained traction in developing countries. Their aim is to offset some of the costs of raising children while promoting basic income security and investing in children’s capabilities. Such schemes mostly target mothers on the premise that women are more likely than men to prioritise child-oriented spending.

Continue reading →

Gender and social protection: fighting for equality and against poverty

Development Matters Africa, Gender, policy, Social Protection , , ,

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By Liévin Feliho, Chief Executive Officer, SOLIHO; Former Government Commissioner at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in France  

This blog is part of a special series marking the intersection between
the 2019 Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI),
the 2019 SIGI Global Report and work on Social Protection

Social-protection-women-poverty

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO)1, only a minority of the world’s inhabitants (45.2%) enjoy at least one social protection benefit today. If this protection amounts to 84.1% in Europe, it is in Africa that the situation is most worrying with only 17.8% of the population covered. It is difficult to have a fair assessment of women’s coverage level since most of the available and disaggregated data only concern benefits provided to mothers with newborns.2 Evidence points to the fact that, regarding social protection also, women are structural victims.

The Protection and Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) promulgated on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama and the 2011 report on the Social Protection Floor for a Fair and Inclusive Globalization by the advisory group chaired by Michelle Bachelet, set by ILO with the collaboration of the WHO, have increased awareness around the concept of social protection. After the economic and financial crisis of 2008, these initiatives allowed policy makers from poor countries to more freely defend the idea of institutional solidarity. Indeed, Africans had prioritised social protection since at least the early 2000s3 but poor governance and the conflicting requirements of donors in budgetary matters have failed to bring to fruition their ambitions in the area of social protection and health. So, what does this specifically mean for African women and social protection? Three considerations follow:

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Why looking at discriminatory social institutions is critical for the gender-responsiveness of social protection policies

Development Matters Gender, policy, Social Protection , , ,

Sigi-banner-for-blog

By Gaëlle Ferrant and Caroline Tassot, Economists, OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a special series marking the intersection between
the 2019 Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI)
the 2019 SIGI Global Report and work on Social Protection

SIGI-Gender-Social-ProtectionThe call for leaving no one behind includes extending social protection to excluded groups, such as vulnerable women, and providing all women with similar benefits as men. For instance, despite the universal provision of paid maternity leave (only 2 out of the 180 SIGI1 countries do not provide paid maternity or parental leave for mothers), only 41% of mothers with newborns receive a maternity benefit (with fewer than 16% in Africa), while 83 million remain uncovered (ILO, 2017). In Europe, the relatively narrow gender gap in old-age pension coverage (6.5 percentage points) hides extensive gender disparities in the actual benefits: women’s pensions are, on average, 40% lower than those of men (Directorate for Citizens Rights and Constitutional Affairs, 2016).

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG 5 on gender and SDG 1.3 on social protection, means better understanding the conditions that will allow such universal social protection coverage to translate into fair and equal outcomes at all stages of the lifecycle for women and men. This is exactly what the Commission on the Status of Women will discuss in New York this March (11-22 March 2019). It is also at the heart of the Joint Statement by the Social Protection Inter-Agency Co-operation Board (SPIAC-B), in which the OECD Development Centre is a member.

Continue reading →