World Development最新文献

{"title":"Gender and development in the agrarian south","authors":"Lyn Ossome","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106876","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106876","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A central question posed by the still largely peasant populations of the global south is the feasibility of reproducing a model of development which in advanced capitalist economies, settled the classical agrarian question through the transfer and application of organizational models derived from large-scale industry to agriculture, and in favor of a minority of their populations. In the global south, the transplanting of this development model has been characterized by the dominance of large-scale corporate capital and financial monopolies in agriculture, a structure that jeopardizes the future of family farming, food sovereignty, and agroecological sustainability. The result has been massive loss of arable land, deepening precarity and exploitation of labor, disintegration of indigenous food systems, and the commodification of nature. Such (under)developmental logics directly affect processes of social reproduction here, in part because agrarian livelihoods remain central to the survival of the majority in the global south. Contrary to prevailing neoliberal logic, these outcomes actually reassert the continued relevance of land and the peasantry, and raise new or contemporary agrarian questions, among which gender (gendered labor) is central. The chapter links these concerns through an examination of the structures, trajectories and gendered outcomes of capitalist development in the agrarian south, with the aim also of outlining a feminist decolonial critique of economic development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106876"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wages and the division between mental and manual labor in China","authors":"Bolun Zhang ,&nbsp;Yimang Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106878","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106878","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper analyzes the wage system in Mao-era China (1949–1976) and the early reform period, focusing on how it structured the mental-manual labor divide as a form of cultural infrastructure that embedded values of labor and worth. Key distinctions—positions, grades, wage forms, and allowances—delineated mental from manual labor in multiple ways. The paper outlines Maoist interventions, such as “politics in command” and the abolition of piecework, which aimed to reduce disparities but often inadvertently reinforced hierarchical boundaries based on position. In the post-Mao era, the concept of management labor redefined mental labor as productive, justifying higher cadre compensation and enabling a market-driven return to class distinctions. By historicizing these interventions, the paper highlights the intersection of economic policies and cultural infrastructures that shaped the evolving division between mental and manual labor, underscoring the political dimensions of valuation and classification in socialist economies. The authors argue that addressing the mental-manual labor divide requires tackling these embedded cultural boundaries and fostering democratic participation in labor valuation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106878"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143169156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cultural taboos and misinformation about menstrual health management in rural Bangladesh","authors":"Silvia Castro ,&nbsp;Kristina Czura","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106871","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106871","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Millions of women worldwide face challenges in managing menstruation, which negatively affects their health, education, labor force participation and productivity. Cultural taboos and social norms are believed to be at the core of this issue, perpetuating stigma and harmful health behaviors, and interfering with attempts to improve knowledge. Our study explores how deep-rooted cultural norms relate to, and potentially hinder, effective menstrual hygiene practices in rural Bangladesh. With an educational intervention, we disseminate crucial knowledge on menstrual hygiene practices. While the intervention succeeded in reshaping certain misconceptions and easing restrictions on hygienic drying of menstrual absorbents, it was less effective in changing deep-seated harmful practices related to their washing and maintenance. The findings suggest that information alone is insufficient to change entrenched norms, highlighting the need for more comprehensive strategies to improve menstrual health management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106871"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adapting the Women’s empowerment in nutrition index: Lessons from Kenya","authors":"Erin Lentz ,&nbsp;Nathan Jensen ,&nbsp;Watson Lepariyo ,&nbsp;Sudha Narayanan ,&nbsp;Elizabeth Bageant","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106887","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106887","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Women face a disproportionate burden of malnutrition and food insecurity. Research has shown that women’s empowerment can buffer women against nutritional problems. This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to measure women’s empowerment that are both context-sensitive and universal, focusing on the recently developed Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI). Earlier research has shown it is both a valid construct and positively related to dietary and nutritional outcomes of women in South Asia. We establish that WENI is generalizable to agropastoral and pastoral Kenya, an area with substantially different livelihoods, food system, norms, and institutions than South Asia. We find that a locally contextualized WENI is strongly associated with women’s body mass index and dietary diversity as well as household level food insecurity. We also present findings for two shorter variations of WENI: an abbreviated WENI (A-WENI) and a cross context WENI (CC-WENI). A-WENI contains a small subset of WENI indicators identified using machine learning with South Asian data and therefore is context-specific. CC-WENI does not contain indicators specific to the validation context. We find that they perform comparably well with caveats. Thus, as use of WENI expands we recommend adapting WENI for in-depth analyses of women’s nutritional empowerment; using CC-WENI for cross-context comparisons; and using A-WENI for rapid appraisals of community level progress in a given context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106887"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drivers of conflict over customary land in the Middle Drâa Valley of Morocco","authors":"Luis Miguel Silva-Novoa Sánchez ,&nbsp;Janpeter Schilling ,&nbsp;Lisa Bossenbroek ,&nbsp;Rachid Ezzayyat ,&nbsp;Elisabeth Berger","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106872","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106872","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since the early 1980s, the Middle Drâa Valley (MDV) in south-eastern Morocco has seen agricultural expansion from oases into customary land owned by different tribes, creating the potential for conflict. Customary land conflicts are often depicted as obstacles to socioeconomic development. This article analyses the drivers of land conflict between the Mssoufa and Kaaba tribes, explaining how the conflict restructures power and authority relations to control resource access. We use an actor-based approach and access theory to analyse data from observations and 34 semi-structured interviews conducted between May and July 2021 and September and November 2022. Interviewees included members of the conflicting tribes, government representatives, and private sector actors. The conflict stems from unequal land access between tribes, rooted in historical power reconfigurations influenced by droughts, market dynamics, national agrarian development policies, and changes in customary land access rules. We argue that preventing further escalation of intertribal land conflicts in the MDV requires directing the actors’ motivations and capabilities towards cooperation and resource sharing by implementing a third-party intervention model of conflict resolution in combination with a structural peacebuilding approach. Additionally, we discuss the implications of our findings for promoting sustainable development in the MDV, particularly focusing on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, while also identifying implications for SDGs 1, 10, and 13.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106872"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Migration and nutrition of the left behind: Evidence from Ghana","authors":"Adrien Gosselin-Pali","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106853","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106853","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the effect of migration on the nutritional outcomes of the left behind—individuals who previously co-resided with a migrant. Utilizing longitudinal data from Ghana and employing a combination of kernel matching and difference-in-differences, I find that internal migration negatively impacts the nutritional status of left-behind individuals, particularly children. Although remittances do not reliably offset these negative effects, they can potentially contribute to improved outcomes for left-behind children in the long run. The primary channel driving the adverse nutritional impact on left-behind children is the short-term disruptive effect caused by migration, which may lead to a negative income shock. This shock could have lasting consequences for children’s growth trajectories.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106853"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Boosting the adoption of sustainable land-use systems for achieving Colombian land-based climate action and peacebuilding goals","authors":"Lisset Pérez-Marulanda ,&nbsp;Martin Rudbeck Jepsen ,&nbsp;Augusto Castro-Nunez","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106888","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106888","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sustainable land-use systems (SLUS), such as agroforestry cocoa, implemented using organic fertilization, prescribed post-harvest practices and rainwater irrigation, can potentially increase farm productivity, while reducing pressure on natural resources by decreasing deforestation, providing legitimate incomes for rural households and helping farmers to adapt to extreme weather events. SLUS also contributes to peacebuilding by providing sustainable income sources and enhancing social cohesion and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation and reduce climate vulnerability. SLUS can contribute to agroecology transition through a cumulative process, boosting adoption rates and encouraging farmers to remain committed to a sustainable process. Despite evidence of their potential and global efforts to promote their use, SLUS adoption rates remain low. Building on traditional ex-post generic adoption studies, we identify the enabling factors for farm-level transitions to SLUS in Colombia to propose policy design that will boost SLUS adoption in areas that are conflict affected and exposed to deforestation. We surveyed a sample of 922 cocoa producers in conflict-affected areas prone to deforestation. To reveal SLUS adoption factors, we (i) classified farmers according to number of sustainable practices applied; (ii) estimated an ordered probit econometric model; and (iii) assessed existing policies to promote cocoa production systems in Colombia, comparing their alignment with the adoption factors identified. We find a mismatch between farm-level adoption factors and policies promoting SLUS in Colombia. The principal factors enabling farm-level adoption of sustainable cocoa production system depend on: (i) cocoa plantation age; (ii) technical assistance provided; (iii) social organization membership; and (iv) farmer-to-farmer interaction, while national policies to promote sustainable cocoa are mostly oriented towards (i) renewing and rehabilitating established farming areas (directly related to crop age); (ii) expanding cocoa agroforestry systems; and (iii) establishing zero-deforestation cocoa production agreements. Our results indicate that to achieve wide-scale SLUS adoption, policies should focus on: (i) capacity building through technical assistance and strengthening farmers’ associations; (ii) strengthening farmer’s social organizations, social interactions, and knowledge sharing between producers to generate cascading information (iii) land-use conversion instead of expansion, for example from pastures to cocoa.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106888"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Detecting Corruption: Evidence from a World Bank project in Kenya","authors":"Jean Ensminger ,&nbsp;Jetson Leder-Luis","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106858","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106858","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Corruption is a major problem in development aid, in part because areas with the greatest need for development assistance often have weak governance. In these environments, traditional anti-fraud measures such as audits or criminal enforcement are limited in their effectiveness. Moreover, aid organizations face incentives to downplay bad outcomes for fear of alienating donors, which has led to the suppression of negative findings related to development aid fraud.</div><div>In this paper, we develop new statistical tests to uncover strategic data manipulation consistent with fraud, which can help identify falsified data and facilitate monitoring in difficult-to-audit circumstances. We apply this method to a World Bank community driven development project in Kenya. Our statistical tests rely on the fact that human-produced digits and naturally occurring digits have different digit patterns: unmanipulated digits follow the Benford’s Law distribution. We improve upon existing digit analysis techniques by being sensitive to the value of digits reported, which helps distinguish between intent to defraud and error, and by improving statistical power to allow for finer partitioning of the data. We also produce simulations that demonstrate the superiority of our new tests to the standards in the field, and we provide a new <em>R</em> package for conducting our statistical tests.</div><div>Our study finds substantial evidence of fraud, validated by qualitative data, a forensic audit conducted by the World Bank, and replication with a separate dataset for external validity. We uncover higher levels of fraud in a Kenyan election year when graft also had political value and in harder to monitor sectors. This methodology also has broad applications to many forms of data beyond those encountered in development aid.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106858"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Corrigendum to “Does household electrification empower rural boys and girls alike? Evidence from Brazil” [World Dev. 186 (2025) 106788]","authors":"Yeonbin Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106891","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106891","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"189 ","pages":"Article 106891"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143444636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Political competition, fiscal policy, and economic performance in techno-creative places","authors":"Amitrajeet A. Batabyal ,&nbsp;Karima Kourtit ,&nbsp;Peter Nijkamp","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106881","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106881","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper introduces a model of political competition under distinct institutional regimes to trace the economic performance of what we call “techno-creative places.” Specifically, we analyze how political competition in high-tech places that are creative in the sense of Richard Florida affects fiscal (tax) policy and consequent economic outcomes. There are three stylized groups of actors in our analysis: laborers or workers, techno-creative class members or entrepreneurs, and the elites who make the political decisions. We study two broad institutional-economic scenarios. In the first (second) scenario, the likelihood of political power shifting permanently from the elites to entrepreneurs is an increasing (decreasing) function of the net income of a representative techno-creative entrepreneur. Our study addresses the institutional implications of both scenarios and then comments on the implications of these two scenarios for the welfare of the elites and the techno-creative entrepreneurs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106881"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}