by Juan Pablo Guerrero
Corruption and public sector governance were the issues of discussion at the 2018 Fiscal Forumof the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department, as part of the Spring Meetings. At the center of the conversation around Institutional reforms to fight corruption was fiscal transparency. As It becomes an increasingly complex, vast and challenging matter, the official launch of the IMF Fiscal Transparency Handbook and the OECD Budget Transparency Toolkit at the Forum comes as timely and relevant. Vitor Gaspar (Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF), Luiz de Mello (Director, Policy Studies Branch, Economics Department, OECD), and I had the honor to present these new tools to the Forum’s public in a reception that took place on April 21, 2018.
These new resources aim to answer two basic questions: How is my country doing regarding fiscal transparency? And how to move forward? by providing elements that will help better understand the dimensions of these challenges and what countries around the world are doing in the field.
2018 Freedom in the World Report: Democracy in Crisis - Gender
Freedom in the World 2018
Democracy in Crisis
By Michael J. Abramowitz, President-Freedom House
Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.
Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies—particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are under assault and in retreat globally.
Cycle: Global
ABSTRACT - This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of gender differences by looking at the available individual and household level information. The estimates are based on the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank poverty estimates. The paper focuses on the relationship between age, sex and poverty. And finds that, girls and women of reproductive age are more likely to live in poor households (below the international poverty line) than boys and men. It finds that 122 women between the ages of 25 and 34 live in poor households for every 100 men of the same age group. The analysis also examines the household profiles of the poor, seeking to go beyond headship definitions. Using a demographic household composition shows that nuclear family households of two married adults and children account for 41 percent of poor households, and are the most frequent household where poor women are found. Using an economic household composition classification, households with a male earner, children and a non-income earner spouse are the most frequent among the poor at 36 percent, and the more frequent household where poor women live. For individuals, as well as for households, the presence of children increases the household likelihood to be poor, and this has a specific impact on women, but does not fully explain the observed female poverty penalty.
