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This IEG evaluation, requested by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, represents the first independent evaluation of the PSIA experience. The evaluation finds that:. • The PSIA approach has appropriately emphasized the importance of assessing the distributional impact of policy actions, understanding institutional and political constraints to development, and building domestic ownership for reforms. • PSIAs have not always explicitly stated their operational objectives (i.e., informing country policies, informing Bank operations, and/or contributing to country capacity). • PSIAs have had limited ownership by Bank staff and managers and have often not been effectively integrated into country assistance programs. • Quality assurance and Monitoring and Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of PSIAs have been weak. The evaluation recommends that the World Bank:. • Ensure that Bank staff understand what the PSIA approach is and when to use it. • Clarify the operational objectives of each PSIA and tailor the approach and timeline to those objectives. • Improve integration of the PSIA into the Bank’s country assistance program by requiring that all earmarked funding for PSIAs be matched by a substantial contribution from the country unit budgets. • Strengthen PSIA effectiveness through enhanced quality assurance.

The Sourcebook introduces a framework for social analysis in Poverty and Social Impact Analysis along with a set of practical tools that address the institutional, political, and social dimensions of policy design and implementation and how these impact poverty and distributional equity. It is designed for country practitioners working in policy analysis in a range of areas, including macroeconomic, sectoral, and public sector policy.

Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) is an approach used increasingly by governments, civil society organizations, the World Bank, and other development partners to examine the distributional impacts of policy reforms on the well-being of different stakeholders groups, particularly the poor and vulnerable. PSIA has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries because it promotes evidence-based policy choices and fosters debate on policy reform options. This publication presents a collection of case studies that illustrate the spectrum of sectors and policy reforms to which PSIA can be applied; it also elaborates on the broad range of analytical tools and techniques that can be used for PSIA. The case studies provide examples of the impact that PSIA can have on the design of policy reforms and draw operational lessons for PSIA implementation. The case studies deal largely with policy reforms in a single sector, such as agriculture (crop marketing boards in Malawi and Tanzania and cotton privatization in Tajikistan); energy (mining sector in Romania and oil subsidies in Ghana); utilities (power sector reform in Ghana, Rwanda, and transition economies, and water sector reform in Albania); social sectors (education reform in Mozambique and social welfare reform in Sri Lanka); taxation reform (Nicaragua); as well as macroeconomic modeling (Burkina Faso).

The Covid-19 pandemic generated a global crisis involving most countries in the world. State governments worldwide were forced to take appropriate measures impacting different fields. The Romanian government and other local public authorities developed special measures to curb the spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus in Romania in general and in Bucharest, the country’s capital. The purpose of our research was to identify the social and psychological impact of the governmental measures on the citizens of Bucharest. The research was conducted between 28 November and 25 December 2020, but refers to the measures taken by the government and local authorities from the onset of the Covid-19 pandemicto date. The sample, representative for Bucharest, included 421 citizens living in Bucharest, aged between 19 and 40 years. The data were collected using an online questionnaire. Other methods used to analyse the results and verify the hypothesis included the multiple regression model and some applications in Excel. The results confirmed that governmental measures had a strong social and psychological impact on citizens, changing their social behaviour and causing psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Our research results can help the Romanian authorities avoid problems among the population and adapt their measures to better meet the population’s psychosocial needs in time of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, which is far from over.

Global Social Policy examines trends in global inequity and summarizes the diverse experiences of different welfare regimes across the world. The authors review the social policies of international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UN Agencies and the European Union, and show them to be engaged in heated controversy regarding the future for welfare. `There is a lot of good material in this book. The detailed case studies offer real depth in reviewing the process of social policy `transition′ in former Soviet-type regimes. The survey of policy-making within the major international agencies offers real insights′ - Social Policy.

Objective Field interventions employed to improve preventive health behaviors and outcomes generally use well-established approaches; however, recent studies have reported that health education and promotional interventions have little to no impact on health behaviors, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We aimed to develop a conceptual framework to improve intervention designs that would internalize these concerns and limitations. Results We identified three major experimental design- and implementation-related concerns associated with mental models, including the balance between the treatment and control groups, the treatment group’s willingness to adopt suggested behaviors, and the type, length, frequency, intensity, and sequence of treatments. To minimize the influence of these aspects of an experimental design, we proposed a mental model-based repeated multifaceted (MRM) intervention design framework, which represents a supportive intervention design for the improvement of health education and promotional programs. The framework offers a step-by-step method that can be used for experimental and treatment design and outcome analysis, and that addresses potential implementation challenges.

This article briefly assesses the research methods that were applied in the SOPHIE project to evaluate the impact of structural policies on population health and health inequalities. The evaluation of structural policies is one of the key methodological challenges in today’s public health. The experience in the SOPHIE project was that mixed methods are essential to identify, understand, and predict the health impact of structural policies. On the one hand, quantitative studies that included spatial comparisons or time trend analyses, preferably in a quasi-experimental design, showed that some structural policies were associated with improved population health and smaller health inequalities. On the other hand, qualitative studies, often inspired by realist approaches, were important to understand how these policies could have achieved the observed impact and why they would succeed in some settings but fail in others. This review ends with five recommendations for future studies that aim to evaluate, understand, and predict how health inequalities can be reduced through structural policies.

This paper aims to open a discussion in the scientific point of view and policy making processes on sustainability of water policies. The social and environmental impact on the Agriculture sector in Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) will be investigated to analyse the adoption of measures taken by decision makers on water policies. The community assets of farmers will have an important role on the implementation of different strategies concerning agriculture water management. The paper will focus on the role of farmer’s participation as central actors of implementation in water policy. Furthermore, the social and the environmental aspects will be addressed.

Several studies have recognized the health disadvantage of residents in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods, independent of the influence of individual socioeconomic conditions. The effect of neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation on general mortality has appeared heterogeneous among the cities analyzed: the underlying mechanisms have been less empirically explored, and explanations for this heterogeneous health effect remain unclear. The present study aimed to: (1) analyze the distribution of socioeconomically disadvantaged persons in neighborhoods of 4 European cities—Turin, Barcelona, Stockholm and Helsinki—trying to measure segregation of residents according to their socioeconomic conditions. Two measuring approaches were used, respectively, through dissimilarity index and clustering estimated from Bayesian models. (2) Analyze the distribution of mortality in the above mentioned cities, trying to disentangle the independent effects of both neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and neighborhood segregation of residents according to their socioeconomic conditions, using multilevel models. A significantly higher risk of death was observed among residents in more deprived neighborhoods in all 4 cities considered, slightly heterogeneous across them. Poverty segregation appeared to be slightly associated with increasing mortality in Turin and, among females and only according to dissimilarity, in Barcelona. Few studies have explored the health effects of social clustering, and results could inform urban policy design with regard to social mix.

The article analyzes the social, economic, and political changes taking place in developed capitalist countries that are affecting their welfare states, in particular the changes in the family, in people's life cycles, in economic and social structures, and, most importantly, in the political contexts. The author shows how these changes take place and how the ways in which various countries respond to them depend mainly on the correlation of forces (of which class forces continue to be of great importance) and their expression in the political space. The dominant theoretical frame (promoted by international agencies and many governments) assumes that all governments, regardless of their political coloration, are forced to follow the same policies because of the need to be competitive in the globalized economy, where international markets (whether financial or commercial) determine what governments can and must do. Questioning this economic determinism, the article recovers the importance of politics, putting politics at the center of the explanation of what is happening in the welfare states of the developed capitalist countries, including the neoliberal aggression against them.