Employability of the Poor

RAND Europe is an independent, not-for-profit policy research organisation that aims to improve policy and decisionmaking in the public interest through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the sponsor. Preface While the number of people living in extreme poverty, defined as persons living on less than $1.25 per day, has declined over the last decades, estimates of global poverty remain high in the 21 st century. In order to lift people out of poverty, employment is crucial. Increasing the productive capacity of the poor can instigate a cycle of employment that may span generations and thereby reduce the risk of falling into extreme poverty. Large-scale interventions have been developed and implemented by regional and national governments and international development organisations to raise levels of employment and improve the skills and education of the poor to allow them to take up jobs. The World Bank asked RAND Europe to conduct a stocktaking exercise to map the diversity of employment interventions in South Asia and to review evidence of the impact of interventions. To generate an understanding of the type of interventions currently carried out in the region, the stocktaking exercise aimed to map the most prominent employment interventions in a number of countries suggested by the World Bank: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The second step involved an assessment of the impact of such interventions to understand if they are effective vehicles to increase employment. As the evidence on the interventions identified through the stocktaking exercise is quite marginal however, the scope of the search for evidence was widened to include other developing countries as well as former Communist countries. The evidence of the impact of interventions has been assessed through a meta-regression based on a scoping of academic literature.