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1. Why Are Women Opting Out of India’s Growing Economy?

Author:
Alex Tammaro and Alex Katz
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Despite India’s strong economic growth, women’s labor force participation in India has decreased—from 33 percent in 2005, to 27 percent in 2010, to 24 percent in 2019. Even with increased investment in women’s access to education and professional opportunity, women are leaving the labor market, dampening economic productivity and innovation. So why are women opting out? Bhavani Arabandi offered answers in a presentation to Urban Institute staff titled Karma and the Myth of the Indian Superwoman. Arabandi spoke to highly skilled, highly educated Indian women as part of an ethnographic study to determine why they step away from lucrative, fulfilling careers. She examined how structural barriers—the disadvantages, constraints, and discouragement women face—are “treated as normal by society and often internalized.”
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Economic Growth, and Participation
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

2. Kenya’s Optimistic Revenue Forecasts Are Causing Problems, but Better Tools Can Help

Author:
Cade McCurdy, Harvey Galper, and Reehana Raza
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
For national governments around the world, effective budgeting depends on accurate revenue forecasts. Revenue forecasts are estimates of what governments will collect from various sources, such as income taxes, value-added taxes, corporate taxes, and excises, which together determine the funds available to allocate to various public programs. If revenues are significantly overestimated in the budgetary process, the results can be unexpected borrowing, high debt-service costs, and cutbacks in these important governmental services. Under Kenya’s newly decentralized government structure, accurate revenue forecasting has become more important than ever. Kenya’s new constitution, approved in 2010, decentralized the country’s government structure and created 47 county governments, each responsible for a broad range of programs and services. Counties’ execution of these programs depends heavily on funds from the national government.
Topic:
Government, Budget, Economic Growth, and Revenue Management
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

3. Is there a right way to accommodate rapid urban growth in developing countries?

Author:
Matthew Eldridge
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The United Nations projects that by 2050, urban areas will swell in size by 2.5 billion people, with 90 percent of that growth occurring in Asia and Africa. Urbanization presents significant development benefits—boosting innovation, human capital accumulation, and access to opportunities—but it also strains existing physical infrastructure, social services, and public health systems. To manage the challenges and maximize the benefits of rapid growth, national and municipal governments, civil society, and development partners (among others) must weigh interrelated financial, political, cultural, economic, and technical considerations. For many, the big question is whether cities should build anew in urban peripheries or retrofit and reinvest in urban cores. At a recent event hosted by the Urban Institute, in partnership with the World Bank, experts considered this question through the lens of one rapidly growing city: Dhaka, Bangladesh, examined in a new World Bank report, Toward Greater Dhaka.
Topic:
Development, Economic Growth, and Urban
Political Geography:
Bangladesh and Global Focus

4. Digital payments in transportation can help developing cities drive economic growth

Author:
Ammar A. Malik
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Over the next decade, cities in developing markets will drive global economic expansion. McKinsey predicts that 440 cities in emerging markets will generate half of all growth through 2025. To realize the potential of urbanization, developing cities need to become denser, easier to navigate, and more adept at using data to deliver public services. Inefficient public transit has posed a significant challenge to urban areas around the world. 1.2 billion trips are made using public transit every day, but the share of trips via public transit has declined in developing cities from 35.5 percent in 1995 to 23.7 percent in 2012.
Topic:
Development, Economic Growth, Cities, and Digital Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Dynamic Cities? The Role of Urban Local Governments in Improving Urban Service Delivery Performance in Africa and Asia

Author:
Jamie Boex, Ammar A. Malik, Devanne Brookins, and Ben Edwards
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Cities are engines of economic growth that provide spaces for social transformation and political inclusion. Their ability to deliver widely accessible and efficiently functioning public services drives productivity and sustains development. We design and apply an assessment framework to 42 cities in 14 African and Asian countries to better understand the functional, administrative, and political dimensions determining the quality and coverage of water, sanitation, and solid waste collection services. We find that urban local governments are constrained in their authority and discretion to deliver basic public services. Reforming intergovernmental institutional structures to better match responsibilities is essential for realizing cities’ full economic potential.
Topic:
Government, Water, Governance, International Development, Economic Growth, Urban, Sanitation, Services, and Cities
Political Geography:
Africa, Asia, and Global Focus

6. Women’s Economic Empowerment: A Review of Evidence on Enablers and Barriers

Author:
H. Elizabeth Peters, Nan Marie Astone, Ammar A. Malik, Fenohasina Rakotondrazaka Maret, and Caroline Heller
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Besides human rights protection and social welfare improvement, fostering female participation in the economy can stimulate growth with human capital accumulation and enhance the competitiveness of businesses. But women face many barriers to participating in the labor market, particularly in high productivity sectors, due to limited investments in education, time burdens from care responsibilities, legal prohibitions to land ownership, and sexual harassment and violence. We find evidence that improving access to infrastructure and public services, reforms in inheritance laws, family friendly workplace policies, and reduction in levels of violence can significantly improve women’s economic empowerment.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, International Development, Economic Growth, and Cities
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Women in Pakistan's Urban Informal Economy

Author:
Ammar A. Malik, Hadia Majid, Husnain Fateh, and Iromi Perera
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
In rapidly urbanizing developing countries, the prevalence large-scale informality within urban economies increases social vulnerabilities, stifles worker productivity and dampens regional economic growth. With the prospect of better jobs attracting millions into cities each year, rising urban poverty levels are encouraging international nonprofits to allocate greater resources toward urban programs. Our fieldwork in Pakistan reveals that above all else, urban informal workers require improvements in public service delivery, skillset development and collective bargaining capacity. We propose implementing future urban programs through an iterative learning, adaptation and implementation approach allowing nonprofits to leverage greater impact from finite resources.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Income Inequality, International Development, Economic Growth, Family, and Cities
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia

8. What keeps cities in Asia and Africa from effective public service delivery?

Author:
Madeline Roth and Ammar A. Malik
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Cities are widely regarded as engines of economic growth. Their ability to attract and retain talent and financial capital drives productivity and the well-being of societies. But cities across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, two of the world’s most populous and rapidly urbanizing regions, are unable to provide basic services to most of their residents. Countries with greater levels of urbanization have traditionally enjoyed greater prosperity, but the rise of poor megacities in recent years has cast doubts on this relationship. By 2040, over half the world’s poor earning less than $1 per day are expected to live in cities. To realize their full economic potential, cities must offer quality public amenities, modern urban infrastructure, and widely accessible basic public services such as water and sanitation. What factors prevent cities from better serving residents? And what can city governments do improve the status quo?
Topic:
Infrastructure, Urbanization, Economic Growth, and Public Service
Political Geography:
Africa and Asia

9. Putting politics into international development? It’s about time

Author:
Charles Cadwell
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
It may be difficult in the current political season to welcome news that international development agencies are paying more attention to the politics of reform when designing their assistance programs to poor countries. But we should be relieved that agencies like the World Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development, and our own US Agency for International Development are doing just that. For too long, aid programs operated with the convenient fiction that assistance work was purely technical. The premise of many programs was “simply transfer missing knowledge, skills, or cash to people in the foreign government or local organizations, and they could adopt policies and programs to promote growth and reduce poverty."
Topic:
Poverty, Foreign Aid, International Development, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Europe, Global Focus, and United States of America

10. Without improved public service delivery, women in developing countries can’t take advantage of economic opportunity

Author:
Ammar A. Malik and Jasmina Pless
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
An estimated 1.5 billion people live on less than $1 per day—the majority of whom are women. The “the feminization of poverty,” the worldwide gap between women and men trapped in poverty, has grown during the past decade. As developing countries continue to urbanize, uneven access to public services prevents women from taking full advantage of the newly available economic opportunities. Despite women’s improved overall labor force participation, they often end up with lower paying, precarious jobs—often in the informal economy. In Pakistan for instance, three-quarters of women engaged in non-agriculture jobs work in the informal economy without laws or public policies to protect them. That’s an estimated 8.5 million domestic workers. Governments typically clamp down on informal establishments by shutting them down or simply ignore their existence. The lack of appropriate legal or regulatory systems further increases women’s vulnerability to exploitation through low wages or lack of employment protections. Women are seldom viewed as productive economic agents as they are outside the tax net.
Topic:
Development, Women, Economic Growth, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia