Part of 'ReCom – research and communication on foreign aid' project
Since the late 1990s there has been shift in the way foreign aid is intended to be distributed to the social sectors, moving from traditional forms of project aid towards more comprehensive instruments of development assistance, including public-private partnerships, and international financing mechanisms.
Foreign aid to the social sectors, and the number of donors, has been quickly growing. For instance, since the 1990s, aid to health care has increased almost threefold to 12 billion US dollars. In this animation we look at how aid works in relation to social sectors such as health, education, water, sanitation, and social protection.
The film is part of a series produced by UNU-WIDER on the project 'ReCom--Research and Communication on Foreign Aid'. It can, for instance, be used when teaching students about the impact of foreign aid.
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via savings...
by
Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Serena Masino
January 2016
In a recent article in the International Journal of Educational Development we present the results of a systematic review conducted to identify policy...
We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: (1)...
The UNU-WIDER Special Issue aims to address collectively the following questions: (1) What are the principles and facts that have underpinned the evolution of bilateral and multilateral social sector aid over the past 25 years? In particular, how pro...
An interview with Professor Lant Pritchett from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, conducted during his visit to Helsinki to deliver a presentation titled 'It’s a Deals World: The Dynamics of Capitalism with Weak Institutions' at a...
At the ReCom meeting evaluating the results on aid and social sectors, speakers were asked the question; what role are results-based approaches playing in foreign aid to the social sectors?
In this interview Professor Armando Barrientos from the University of Manchester explains why the use of social protection is increasing and highlights a number of success stories. But he also explains why foreign aid can play only a limited role in this area.
How can aid to the social sectors—particularly health care and education, but also water and sanitation, and more recently social protection—be justified? These topics were discussed during the ReCom Results meeting on ‘Aid and social sectors’ in...
In foreign aid, results are the buzz word of the day; evaluation, monitoring, and quality control are the means of demonstrating to critical legislators and the public that tax money budgeted to foreign aid does achieve something. At the ReCom...
Webcasts from the event 9:00-10:40 Lena Ingelstam 2:50 Finn Tarp 11:42 Miguel Niño-Zarazúa 23:53 Arnab Acharya, Zulfiqar Bhutta and PB Anand 32:00 11:00-13:00 Bob Baulch, Katharina Michaelowa and Abby Riddell 13:32 Elizabeth Kristjansson, Armando...
We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality...
To assess the effectiveness of non-clinical interventions against acute respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases among young children in developing countries.
This paper develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resort to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 51...
In addition to large class sizes, peer effects, such as overage-for-grade and late-starting pupils, are challenges for the successful development of education sectors in East Africa; there is a comparative lack of research on the impact of peer...
Each dollar of aid per year provides 0.17 people with access to water or sanitation. This amounts to a cost of US$5.88 per person. Due to economies of scale, countries with large populations benefit more from aid to the water and sanitation sectors...
Notwithstanding the unprecedented attention devoted to reducing poverty and fostering human development via scaling up social sector spending, there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical work on the question of whether social spending is...
This position paper on Aid and the Social Sectors was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-todate overview and analysis of an extraordinarily...
Identifying the poorest for selection into social transfer programmes is a major challenge facing programme implementers. An innovative cash transfer programme in northern Kenya trialed three targeting mechanisms to learn lessons about which approach...
School-feeding is an important intervention to attract children to school and augment their learning. The benefits of school-feeding cover several domains. Key to the overall assessment of these benefits is understanding how different implementation...
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have...
While the majority of interventions against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria had positive short-term effects, these were frequently not translated into long-term sustainable results. Cash transfers may have the potential of reducing HIV...
Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive...
The reduction in deaths from diarrheal diseases is one of the significant public health successes of the twentieth century. That said, the disease still accounts for a significant burden of childhood morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income...
This paper discusses shifts in development assistance for health (DAH) since 1990, analyses the nature of the current distribution of funding, and considers future implications. Based on Jamison et al. (1998) and Frenk and Moon (2013), we introduce...
Over the last decade there has been increasing demand to make research more useful and applicable for policy-making. And that is also very true within...
30 October 2013 Miguel Niño-Zarazúa Children have been at the centre of recent global efforts to improve well-being conditions in developing countries...
This paper primarily focuses on how global funding has supported interventions that have proven to be successful in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality around the world. The growth rate of development assistance targeted towards these...
Financing and the role of aid within the water sector are poorly understood. We estimate the levels of spending achieved in developing countries during the Millennium Development Goals period to be US$80 billion per year. Aid represented a...
Preventable and treatable childhood diseases, notably acute respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases are the first and second leading causes of death and morbidity among young children in developing countries. The fact that a large proportion...
This paper analyses the distribution of total aid and aid to the social sectors between 2009 and 2011. Its key findings are four-fold. First, despite the stated objectives of donors, total aid disbursements are broadly neutral, favouring neither the...
Raising schooling quality in low-income countries is a pressing challenge. Substantial research has considered the impact of cutting class sizes on skills acquisition. Considerably less attention has been given to the extent to which peer effects...
There is a growing interest in the debate on aid effectiveness for assessing the impact of aid not only on economic growth and poverty reduction, but also on intermediate outcomes such as health and education. This paper reviews evidence from recent...
See working papers and policy briefs presented at our ReCom results meeting on aid and social sectors in Stockholm 13 March, 2013. Here you can also find videos from the day as well as a summary of what was said.
The most successful projects and programmes are those that give local partners real ownership over the development process. Aid to health is not always allocated to the areas where it is most needed. Aid fragmentation creates extra costs for...
Lessons of what works in foreign aid to education are often known but not implemented. Developing the technical capacity of those involved in education is a crucial part of improving educational quality. Many of the problems related to capacity...
Progress towards the achievement of MDG4 and MDG5 has been impressive with both maternal and child mortality being reduced by over 40 per cent since 1990. However, achieving the goal of a reduction of two-thirds by 2015 will not be easy. The Paris...
Evaluations of social protection programmes have been much more comprehensive in Latin America than in sub-Saharan Africa. Monitoring and evaluation protocols are crucial to facilitate improvements in government effectiveness. Anti-poverty transfer...
An increase of education aid by one per cent increases the rate of primary education enrolment by 0.06 percentage points. The most robust effect on primary enrolment is obtained by aid to the category ‘education facilities and training’. High levels...
Most studies show that education aid has a modest but positive effect on enrolment levels. Less is known about the effect of aid on the quality of education. The effectiveness of education aid is to a large degree dependent on the stability of the...
Water and sanitation sectors have been the ‘natural’ subjects of aid for several decades. However, these sectors also were among those most affected by changes in aid approaches and tools. The aim of this paper is to capture some of the complexity in...