The global food, fuel, and financial crises have given new prominence to school feeding as a potential safety net and as a social support measure that helps keep children in school. 'Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development, and the Educator Sector' was written jointly by the World Bank Group and the World Food Programme (WFP), building on the comparative advantages of both organizations. It examines the evidence base for school feeding programs with the objective of better understanding how to develop and implement effective school feeding programs in two contexts: as a productive safety net that is part of the response to the social shocks of the global crises and as a fiscally sustainable investment in human capital, as part of long-term global efforts to achieve Education for All and to provide social protection to the poor. School feeding programs provide an explicit or implicit transfer to households and can increase school attendance, cognition, and educational achievement, particularly if supported by complementary actions such as deworming and food fortification. When combined with local purchases of food, school feeding can potentially be a force multiplier, benefiting both children and the local economy. Today, every country for which we have information is seeking to provide food, in some way and at some scale, to its schoolchildren. Coverage is most complete in high- and middle-income countries―indeed it seems that most countries that can afford to provide food for their school children do so. But where the need is greatest, in terms of hunger, poverty, and poor social indicators, the programs tend to be the smallest, though usually targeted to the most food insecure regions. These programs are also those most reliant on external support, and WFP supports nearly all of them. So the key issue today is not whether countries will implement school feeding programs, but how and with what objective. The near universality of school feeding provides important opportunities for WFP, the World Bank, and other development partners to assist governments in rolling-out productive safety nets as part of the response to the current global crises and to sow the seeds for school feeding programs to transition into fiscally sustainable investments in human capital in the future. 'Rethinking School Feeding' will be useful to government agencies and nonprofit organizations working in education reform and food and nutrition policies.

Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development, and the Education Sector (Directions in Development - Human Development)

Business & Money

Jukes, Matthew

Grosh, Margaret

Drake, Lesley

Bundy, Donald

Burbano, Carmen

Gelli, Aulo

Education & Reference

World Bank Publications

This study reviews the role and workings, with their strengths and weaknesses of last-resort income support (LRIS) programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It draws on a combination of household survey and administrative data for a large group of countries and detailed case studies for a smaller number of countries that span the spectrum of the income range in the region. It thus combines the value of wide, comparable multi-country work with that of in-depth, country-specific probing on key themes.The experiences of LRIS programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have demonstrated the technical feasibility of highly efficient poverty-targeted programs in the region. The detailed case studies suggest how programs can improve their coverage, control error and fraud and be implemented effectively in decentralized settings. This experience is pertinent to other regions as well, adding to the know-how for poverty targeting programs in middle and low income countries. Perhaps especially importantly, the book shows that means testing can be accomplished in settings with sizeable informal sectors and at reasonable administrative costs.The study also suggests that currently the role of last resort income support programs within the overall social protection systems of the region is often too small and that their eligibility thresholds should be revised and indexed, so that the programs continue to serve a meaningful swath of the low income households in each country. Moreover the programs can be used as the nexus to weave together a variety of income supports and services for low income households.

Income Support for the Poorest: A Review of Experience in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Directions in Development - Human Development)

Politics & Social Sciences

Tesliuc, Emil

Pop, Lucian

Yemtsov, Ruslan

Social Sciences

Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas (Human Development Perspectives)

Leite, Phillippe

Wai-Poi, Matthew

Economics

The World Bank

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Books by Grosh, Margaret