IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/wbk/wbpubs/15057.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Evaluating Social Funds : A Cross-Country Analysis of Community Investments

Author

Listed:
  • Laura B. Rawlings
  • Lynne Sherburne-Benz
  • Julie van Domelen

Abstract

The study seeks to answer four questions that summarize the fundamental issues in the international debate about the capacity of social funds to improve beneficiaries' living conditions: o Do social funds reach poor areas and poor households? Do social funds deliver high-quality, sustainable investments? Do social funds affect living standards? How cost-efficient are social funds and the investments they finance, compared with other delivery mechanisms? The findings and lessons from this research reflect a specific moment in the evolution of six social funds and therefore may not fully predict the future impact of current investments. The evaluation assesses subprojects identified and implemented between 1993 and 1999, a period when longer-term objectives-such as increasing access to and utilization of basic services-began to supplant the funds' original emergency mandates. The time period selected allowed enough elapsed time following the implementation of the social fund subprojects to make measurement of impact and sustainability possible. The evaluation does not consider the effects of social fund projects on employment or on income generation-the original objectives of the first generation of social funds, which were introduced in Latin America. It also does not discuss the effect of social fund investments on capacity building-a more recent emphasis of social funds seeking to assist decentralization and community development.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura B. Rawlings & Lynne Sherburne-Benz & Julie van Domelen, 2004. "Evaluating Social Funds : A Cross-Country Analysis of Community Investments," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 15057, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbpubs:15057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/15057/278340PAPER0Evaluating0social.pdf?sequence=1
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reddy, S., 1998. "Social Funds in Developing Countries : Recent Experiences and Lessons," Papers 98-002, California Los Angeles - Applied Econometrics.
    2. Christina Paxson & Norbert R. Schady, 2002. "The Allocation and Impact of Social Funds: Spending on School Infrastructure in Peru," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 16(2), pages 297-319, August.
    3. Gopal, G. & Marc, A., 1994. "World-Bank Financed Projects with Community Participation. Procurement and Disbursement Issues," World Bank - Discussion Papers 265, World Bank.
    4. Lavy, Victor & Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan & de Vreyer, Philippe, 1996. "Quality of health care, survival and health outcomes in Ghana," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 333-357, June.
    5. Margaret Grosh & Paul Glewwe, 2000. "Designing Household Survey Questionnaires for Developing Countries : Lessons from 15 Years of the Living Standards Measurement Study, Volume 3," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 15195, July.
    6. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    7. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics,in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097 Elsevier.
    8. Germano Mwabu & Martha Ainsworth & Andrew Nyamete, 1993. "Quality of Medical Care and Choice of Medical Treatment in Kenya: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(4), pages 838-862.
    9. Schuknecht, Ludger, 1996. "Political Business Cycles and Fiscal Policies in Developing Countries," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 155-170.
    10. Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "Monitoring Targeting Performance When Decentralized Allocations to the Poor Are Unobserved," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 14(2), pages 331-345, May.
    11. Jimenez, Emmanuel & Paqueo, Vicente, 1996. "Do local contributions affect the efficiency of public primary schools?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 377-386, October.
    12. Hanushek, Eric A, 1986. "The Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public Schools," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 1141-1177, September.
    13. Barrientos, Jorge C., 1999. "Coordinating poverty alleviation programs with regional and local governments : the experience of the Chilean Social Fund - FOSIS," Social Protection and Labor Policy and Technical Notes 21335, The World Bank.
    14. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 416-416.
    15. Glewwe, Paul, et al, 1995. "An Eclectic Approach to Estimating the Determinants of Achievement in Jamaican Primary Education," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 9(2), pages 231-258, May.
    16. Salmen, Lawrence F., 1999. "Beneficiary assessment manual for social funds," Social Protection and Labor Policy and Technical Notes 21336, The World Bank.
    17. Cornia, G.A., 1999. "Social Funds in Stabilization and Adjustment Programmes," Research Paper 48, World Institute for Development Economics Research.
    18. Tugrul Gurgur & Anwar Shah, 2014. "Localization and corruption: panacea or pandora's box?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 109-136, May.
    19. Judy L. Baker, 2000. "Evaluating the Impact of Development Projects on Poverty : A Handbook for Practitioners," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 13949, June.
    20. Newman, John & Jorgensen, Steen & Pradhan, Menno, 1991. "How Did Workers Benefit from Bolivia's Emergency Social Fund?," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 5(2), pages 367-393, May.
    21. Jimenez, Emmanuel & Sawada, Yasuyuki, 1999. "Do Community-Managed Schools Work? An Evaluation of El Salvador's EDUCO Program," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 13(3), pages 415-441, September.
    22. Pradhan, Menno & Rawlings, Laura & Ridder, Geert, 1998. "The Bolivian Social Investment Fund: An Analysis of Baseline Data for Impact Evaluation," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 12(3), pages 457-482, September.
    23. James J. Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Petra Todd, 1998. "Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 65(2), pages 261-294.
    24. Brown, L. David & Korten, David C., 1989. "Understanding voluntary organizations : guidelines for donors," Policy Research Working Paper Series 258, The World Bank.
    25. Grossman, Jean Baldwin, 1994. "Evaluating Social Policies: Principles and U.S. Experience," World Bank Research Observer, World Bank Group, vol. 9(2), pages 159-180, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arlette Campbell White & Thomas W. Merrick & Abdo S. Yazbeck, 2006. "Reproductive Health—The Missing Millennium Development Goal : Poverty, Health, and Development in a Changing World," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 7116, July.
    2. Reynolds, Joanna & Egan, Matt & Renedo, Alicia & Petticrew, Mark, 2015. "Conceptualising the ‘community’ as a recipient of money – A critical literature review, and implications for health and inequalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 88-97.
    3. Heinrich, Carolyn J. & Lopez, Yeri, 2009. "Does Community Participation Produce Dividends in Social Investment Fund Projects?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1554-1568, September.
    4. World Bank, 2007. "From Social Funds to Local Governance and Social Inclusion Programs," World Bank Other Operational Studies 7775, The World Bank.
    5. Marcos Robles & Viviane Azevedo, 2008. "Inequality and geographical targeting of social spending: The case of Ecuador," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1630, Inter-American Development Bank.
    6. World Bank, 2012. "Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity
      [Capacidad de recuperación, equidad y oportunidades]      ," World Bank Other Operational Studies 12648, The World Bank.
    7. Anju Vajja & Howard White, 2008. "Can the World Bank Build Social Capital? The Experience of Social Funds in Malawi and Zambia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(8), pages 1145-1168.
    8. Léandre BASSOLE & Jean-Louis ARCAND, 2006. "Does Community Driven Development Work? Evidence from Senegal," Working Papers 200606, CERDI.
    9. Ministry of Planning of the Arab Repubic of Egypt & World Bank, 2004. "A Poverty Reduction Strategy for Egypt," World Bank Other Operational Studies 15713, The World Bank.
    10. Hala Abou-Ali & Hesham El-Azony & Heba El-Laithy & Jonathan Haughton & Shahid Khandker, 2010. "Evaluating the impact of Egyptian Social Fund for Development programmes," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(4), pages 521-555.
    11. World Bank, 2006. "India - District Poverty Initiatives Project : Joint Interim Assessment - Understanding Differences in Project Design," World Bank Other Operational Studies 19468, The World Bank.
    12. Subhrendu K Pattanayak, 2009. "Rough Guide to Impact Evaluation of Environmental and Development Programs," Working Papers id:2187, eSocialSciences.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbpubs:15057. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Thomas Breineder). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.