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...
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...
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...