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The Elderly and Old Age Support in
 Rural China : Challenges and ProspectsAlthough average incomes in China have
 risen dramatically since the 1980s, concerns are increasing
 that the rural elderly have not benefited from growth to the
 same extent as younger people and the urban elderly.
 Concerns about welfare of the rural elderly combine spatial
 and demographic issues. Large gaps exist between conditions
 in coastal and interior regions and between conditions in
 urban and rural areas of the country. In addition to
 differences in income by geography, considerable differences
 exist across demographic groups in the level of coverage by
 safety nets, in the benefits received through the social
 welfare system, and in the risks of falling into poverty.
 This book aims to do two things: first, it provides detailed
 empirical analysis of the welfare and living conditions of
 the rural elderly since the early 1990s in the context of
 large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and second, it
 explores the evolution of the rural pension system in China
 over the past two decades and raises a number of issues on
 its current implementation and future directions. Although
 the two sections of the book are distinct in analytical
 terms, they are closely linked in policy terms: the first
 section demonstrates in several ways a rationale for greater
 public intervention in the welfare of the rural elderly, and
 the second documents the response of policy to date and
 options to consider for deepening the coverage and effects
 of the rural pension system over the longer term.
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Nepal's Investment Climate : Leveraging the Private Sector for Job Creation and GrowthThe objective of the Nepal Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in Nepal in all its dimensions and promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of many dimensions that shape the opportunities for investments, employment creation, and growth of private firms. Such dimensions include factor markets, product markets, infrastructure services, and the macroeconomic, legal, regulatory, and institutional framework. The report's key finding is that while there are some niche sectors growing and expanding employment in Nepal (including tourism and certain educational and other services), there are many constraints to the investment climate in Nepal that are hindering the development and growth of the private sector. In particular, political instability, poor infrastructure, poor labor relations, poor access to finance, and declining exports plague Nepal's private sector. To overcome many of these issues and move forward, many reforms are needed. Given the extent of the challenge, effective public-private dialogue is required so that the government and the private sector can work in partnership to address these constraints. The pervasiveness and impact of political instability in Nepal makes the investment climate in the country comparable more to Afghanistan than other countries in the region or the comparator countries used in the analysis. While this comparison is unflattering, it is true. Political instability has stifled growth and limited Nepal's ability to exploit its hydropower and tourism potential. Interestingly, many firms do not perceive access to land and finance as major obstacles. This could be a reflection of lack of dynamism: Nepalese firms are simply not planning to invest, expand, and grow in their unstable and unpredictable environment. The peace dividend is not difficult to measure. As the surveys show, ending civil unrest alone would give back to enterprises 44 working days a year. The effects on economic activity, investment, growth, and job creation could be potentially huge.
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Sewing Success? Employment, Wages, and Poverty following the End of the Multi-Fibre ArrangementThe global textile and apparel sector is critically important as an early phase in industrialization for many developing countries and as a provider of employment opportunities to thousands of low-income workers, many of them women. The goal of this book is to explore how the lifting of the Multi-fibre Arrangement/ Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (MFA/ATC) quotas has affected nine countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam with the broader aim of better understanding the links between globalization and poverty in the developing world. Analyzing how employment, wage premiums, and the structure of the apparel industry have changed after the MFA/ATC can generate important lessons for policy makers for economic development and poverty reduction. This book uses in-depth country case studies as the broad methodological approach. In-depth country studies are important because countries are idiosyncratic: differences in regulatory context, history, location, trade relationships, and policies shape both the apparel sector and how the apparel sector changed after the end of the MFA. In-depth country studies place broader empirical work in context and strengthen the conclusions. The countries in this book were chosen because they represent the diversity of global apparel production, including differences across regions, income levels, trade relationships, and policies. The countries occupy different places in the global value chain that now characterizes apparel production. Not surprisingly, the countries studied in this book represent the diversity of post-MFA experiences. This book highlights four key findings: The first is that employment and export patterns after the MFA/ATC did not necessarily match predictions. This book shows that only about a third of the variation in cross-country changes in exports is explained by wage differences. While wage differences explain some of the production shifts, domestic policies targeting the apparel sector, ownership type, and functional upgrading of the industry also played an important role. Second, changes in exports are usually, but not always, good indicators of what happens to wages and employment. While rising apparel exports correlated with rising wages and employment in the large Asian countries, rising exports coincided with falling employment in Sri Lanka. Third, this book identifies the specific ways that changes in the global apparel market affected worker earnings, thus helping to explain impacts on poverty. Fourth, in terms of policies, the countries that had larger increases in apparel exports were those that promoted apparel sector upgrading; those that did not promote upgrading had smaller increases or even falling exports.