Development, Finance and Trade in the Context of Globalized Inequality

of the 37th annual norris and marjorie benson epic international symposium with this year's topic being problems without passports thank you for your participation throughout the weekend i think we've all found it invaluable to hear from such a range of experts providing insight on these permanent global issues and have had the opportunity to interact with them it really has been such a thought provoking series of events my name is ian boldeston i'm a senior here at tufts i'm from albany new york majoring in international relations and i've been a member of the epic colloquium this year we'll be focusing on the current landscape of international financial institutions and foreign aid organizations with development finance and addressing global inequality especially with respect to the context of the kobe 19 pandemic that currently dominates our world today i think it's particularly fitting that we've saved this panel for last many of the transnational issues that have been discussed from climate change to conflict to racism to pandemics have the potential to have significant impacts on global inequality today we live in a world in which the richest one percent on 45.8 of global wealth not only does inequality permeate through differences between individuals but between countries as well un has reported that income inequality between countries has improved in the past 25 years although there is still great work to be made in making our world more equitable for example average income in north america is 16 times higher than that of people in sub-saharan africa unfortunately income inequality within countries is on the rise with 71 percent of the global population living in a country where inequality is currently growing in the face of this context the kova 19 pandemic and the rise of problems without passports strong effective action by global governors is needed more than ever international institutions like the world bank and bilateral foreign aid agencies like millennium challenge corporation play crucial role in this space to help finance and aid sustainable and resilient development for communities around the world hopefully ultimately helping to ameliorate the inequality that we see today and progressing towards a more equitable future the structure of this afternoon's panel will consist of a 5-10 minute speech opening of opening remarks by each panelist followed by a moderated discussion section and then a q a session in which i invite the audience to participate i would like to now introduce our first panelist dr gabriela inchobuste she is lead economist in the poverty and equity global practice of the world bank she currently leads work on fiscal and social policies for poverty reduction and shared prosperity in the past she has worked at the international monetary fund and the inter-american development bank where she contributed to operational and analytical activities in several countries covering topics like macroeconomic forecasting public expenditure policy poverty and social impact analysis physical and debt sustainable and physical and debt sustainable analysis dr intros day if you would like to start us off with your opening remarks the floor is yours thank you very much ian and thank you for uh inviting me i apologize i'm i cannot be there in person but um thank you for for uh your invitation i'm gonna share my screen i have a few slides that will help me show you what i what i have prepared so next month we'll mark two years since coven 19 was declared a global pandemic over this period we have seen recording in progress the global health emergency become an economic crisis with the poorest and the most vulnerable countries hit the hardest in fact because of covet 19 we estimate that global poverty has increased for the first time in a generation a lot of the development gains achieved over the last 15 years in terms of education health and nutrition have been wiped out in addition probing 19 has increased inequality in nearly every sphere in the availability of vaccines and economic growth rates in the access to education and healthcare and in the scale of job and income losses which have been higher for women and for informal workers the ongoing hostilities in ukraine will likely exacerbate these impacts there is no doubt that the war is completely devastating the people of ukraine and we cannot be anything but horrified at the loss of life and assets that we are witnessing every day the economic impacts will likely be more acute in the countries closest to the conflict but the fallout is being felt far and wide countries around the world are now having to deal with higher food and oil prices unfortunately low-income countries who are dependent on food and fuel imports are especially vulnerable as they have limited mechanisms to cope with these shocks before the pandemic we have seen convergence between developing and developed countries as both within and between country inequality had declined over the last 20 years recent analysis has found that following the pandemic inequality in incomes between countries has increased to levels not seen in a decade now we fear that the trend is towards a divergence between developed and developing countries assuming a swift end to hostilities we expect that the vast majority of advanced economies will be able to regain their pre-pandemic income levels by next year yet because of divergent growth rates between developing and advanced countries 40 percent of emerging markets and developing economies would likely remain below their 2019 levels including more than half of fragile and conflict-affected areas and three-quarters of small states inequality within countries has also increased because severe job and income losses have disproportionately affected poorer and more vulnerable workers including low-income groups youth women and informal workers these trends should worry us all countries with wider income inequality face greater risks to social and political stability making crisis more likely while also making it harder to achieve sustained economic growth and development we know from history that much smaller setbacks in development have less left scars that were felt over generations in burkina faso for example poor nutrition in pregnant women resulted in resulting from a decline in rainfall has been associated with a decline in cognitive ability of children during the financial crisis in mexico and southeast asia during the 1990s families were more likely to pull their children out of school if the household breadwinner became unemployed unfortunately we're seeing some of these effects post-pandemic once again reversing inequality will not be easy education has been severely disrupted in many emerging market and developing economies and disproportionately for children in low-income households given the tight links between education and income this may set back income prospects for several generations including inequality of opportunity and reduced intergenerational mobility meanwhile high inflation and surging debt could hinder the ability of countries to support vulnerable vulnerable groups and facilitate recovery the situation requires forceful policy responses from governments as well as the global community a comprehensive strategy needs to include measures to reduce both between country and within country inequality through national reforms and with the support from the global community in fact the global community must support national efforts by accelerating vaccine distribution debt relief where it's most needed and maintain an open and rule-based trade and investment climate redoubled efforts to implement reforms to boost productivity growth in emerging markets and developing countries can help reduce between country inequality support to targeted groups worst affected by the pandemic and food price increases combined with efforts to reduce inequality of outcomes and opportunities can reduce within country income inequality fiscal measures to raise government revenues reduce spending inefficiencies and target government support to the most vulnerable can help improve equality of outcomes and finally measures to broaden access to health care and education infrastructure and technology as well as finance can help reduce inequality of opportunity and with this i thank you thank you for those illuminating first remarks um i'd now like to introduce our next panelist ms fatima sumar she's vice president of the department of compact operations a millennium challenge corporation in her position miss sumoir leverages her expertise in international development foreign policy diplomacy and advocacy to lead efforts to fight poverty by transforming global systems and reaching vulnerable populations she oversees all compacts which are mcc signature grant investment vehicle to reduce poverty through economic growth she recently returned to mcc after extent working in civil society as the vice president of global programs at oxfam america where she oversaw regional development and humanitarian response to fight the injustice of poverty she's also the author of the book that recently was published the development diplomat mr sumar it's great to have you in person here at tufts today and foreign thank you guys so much and uh congratulations i i looked through the whole um package for the last two days you guys have been really busy um i can't believe you're not really depressed in all of the challenges of the world that you're trying to tackle um and the fact that you've made it to the last panel of the last day like and you're here is amazing so congratulations to all of you congratulations to tufts and to um putting on this symposium and for all of you that worked behind the scenes to put it on thanks so much gabriella it's such a pleasure to see you um look forward to seeing you in person when our paths crossed but a real pleasure to be on the panel with you and thank you for helping organize and put all this on so i i thought because it's the last panel i wanted to actually illustrate a couple of pieces that gabriella said and put it into concrete terms so because sometimes you know it gets depressing right when we hear all these big statistics and we're trying to figure out what it really means um so as ian said um i recently published a book on many of these topics it's called the development diplomat there's a lot of statistics in there but i wanted to actually illustrate some of them with all of you in the room so if the middle section could help me out for a bit um if everyone in the middle section could stand up let me just put your phones away i know i have three i three girls so i know how this works all right and the ones who are not standing up or sitting on the sides i think if i did my numbers right if you're standing up in the middle it's around 25 of you or so rough rubber take okay so i want to look if you guys take a look at everyone who's standing up right now put this in perspective if if you were 22 men you're not i know let's say you were 22 men right now do you know that those who are standing up in the room do you know what they would be representing for the world right now anyone want to wager a guess the 22 of you if you were standing up here yeah go ahead or no 22 out of the whole universe but let's play this game with 25 of you the number 22 or 25 doesn't matter [Music] yeah anyone other guesses those are good guesses you ready for this you can sit down for a second actually i'll say the statistic then you can sit down all right because it's it's actually amazing when you put this into um this crowd that's standing up here represents more wealth than all of the women in africa today all of the women in africa you guys would be richer than all of them thanks that's it that is what the world gabriella just illustrated that's the world congratulations that you get to inherit and congratulations because that's the world you get to fix right so it's a big job you all have it it's a big job and it's really complex and i love your title i love the title of this symposium because in fact if you're going to tackle the root causes of this world of this dynamic of this illustration no country is going to solve it by itself right no country is going to solve it and not one of us individually is going to fix any of this right it's going to take an entire systemic approach to fix the problem i want to put this in a little bit of perspective and then talk about what we're doing about it to help fix so that you also have a sense of some of the great stuff that is happening but if you think we're in what decade are we in we're in the 2020s right so in the 1960s so right that's like 60 years ago 60 years ago what percentage of the world lived in poverty anyone want to read your guess what percentage of the world was in poverty 60 years ago now looking at you yeah i would say 60 in the 1960s it was probably far more equal so let's say 40 okay anyone else over here on the left far left i'll go like higher everything's 65 percent so in the 1960s about 80 percent of the world live in extreme poverty [Music] four out of every five people in this world live in extreme poverty not poverty extreme poverty so we've made really great progress actually in the world to the point where pre pre-code 19 extreme poverty was hovering around 10 right that's a big jump in 70 years relatively speaking and it speaks to a lot of gains on the world stage including the millennium development goals and many many global efforts it really speaks to the games india and china in particular made to bring their populations out of poverty but the world the fragility of these gains is also gabriela illustrated right because in the height of coban 19 in 2020 in 25 weeks the world under 25 years of poverty in 25 weeks right so it took us 70 years 60 70 years to make these huge gains and it took us 25 weeks to erase a lot of them so that's the state of the fragility of what we are talking about and you all talked about different angles of that right over the last few days climate immigration conflict you've looked at it from different angles so i want to pivot a little bit to the work many of us are doing the world bank mcc and others around what we're doing to actually tackle this so i work for a u.s government development agency it's called the u.s millennium challenge corporation it's an independent aid agency and we have a very simple but profound mission our mission is to reduce poverty through economic growth and i'm going to add to inclusive and sustainable economic growth so we fork focus on a lens solely of economic uh growth and crowding in private sector-led growth so that economies become engines that actually work for all citizens including and especially the poor now we only work in a handful of countries we work in countries that are lower income and lower middle income countries that have a track record for good governance and we measure it quantitatively there's a scorecard for every single country in the world whatever country you're from go to mcc.gov type in scorecard and see how your country or your country of interest racks and stacks around investments in people democratic rights and economic freedoms and we staff all of these countries and we really look for the countries that can govern themselves well and we believe those countries should be partners of ours because if you can be governed well even if you're really poor and we work in very we work in some very very challenging countries with very poor circumstances but if you're governed well then we think you've got a shot to really help your citizens out and we want to partner with you and so through mcc's history and we're only founded in 2004 so we're a teenage organization relatively speaking in mcc's history we've invested more than 15 billion dollars and it's all grant assistance so all 100 grants in 29 countries and we've helped more than 200 million people either get out of or reduce poverty in in in concrete ways so we're really proud of our track record we're really driven by impact by evidence by data in informing our own decision making we're the part of the us government um that i like to say builds things we build things we still build things overseas we build infrastructure we build and support community-led growth but more important than building bricks and mortars and concrete although we do it we do roads and power power lines and schools and we do we do all of that but even more important than that we work on the broader environment of governance of what it takes to crowd in sustainable reform so we work really hard on policy institutional reforms to leverage every single dollar of grant assistance to make the sectoral and institutional changes in the countries so that these things last and that the entire sector can be sustainable not just the school or the road or the power line right and we really leverage the investment we really leverage the grant to say we're going to come in upscale we'll put in a few hundred million dollars of rent assistance in a partner country but we're going to do it in a way that is in line 100 with country priorities so country ownership is one of our bedrock principles so we're not trying to be donor driven where we're setting the agenda in washington we're really trying to put a model and since our founding in 2004 where partner countries are in the driver's seat to decide what's in their interest what are part of their national plans what really would solve the binding constraints and economic growth and then partner with them to get the job done both in terms of concrete infrastructure but also the investment capacity institutional capacity to get the job done so i say all of that in the opener because as we think about the complex world that we've just described that all of you are inheriting and get to fix alongside us i'm really proud to work for an agency that is looking at a new model of development and a new way of working that a puts partner countries in the driver's seat b focuses in on what are the binding constraints what is the thing that's sticky that's not making the economy work in the first place and if you can really understand the stickiness of what is preventing the whole thing from working and then attack it at its root [Music] those are the ways we are spurring economic growth in our partner countries and we're really proud of our track record of success so ian excited to talk further with you and gabriella about some concrete examples around that and excited to get to meet all of you and hear your thoughts on how we're going to solve some of these problems cool thanks so much from thanks for uh getting them up on their screen i think that's great um so you know i think sort of when we've been thinking about these issues when people think about them in general and with inequality it can seem really daunting from the global sort of perspective and you have these kind of large institutions that work across sports to try and solve them i guess for this question uh i'm gonna ask you doctor interested but i think you're also certainly relevant to hear your perspective as well mr but how does your sort of work specifically at your organization and then maybe also how in general people can think about things how do you kind of incorporate into poverty reduction policies and practices sort of this understanding of the importance of wealth inequality at the individual level and maybe marginalized groups who are affected and kind of keeping that perspective that this is a human issue that there are families and and personal people who experience you know extreme poverty every day while still kind of keeping this broader perspective at the global level well you know a very important part of what we do at the world bank is to study the sources of poverty and inequality so not only do we have sort of boots on the ground people who actually live and work all around the world but we also spend a lot of time really trying to study and understand what's going on so very much along the lines of what um sumar was saying um so what this means in practice at the country level is that all of our country strategies and the policies that we support are informed by core analytics on poverty and inequality and we specifically undertake systematic analysis of the underlying reasons for these uh phenomena to try to understand what are the or and identify the priority areas for actions that are the basis of what we do in our country so um you know we like to call ourselves a knowledge bank we like to think of ourselves as a knowledge bank and we might like to ensure that everything we do it comes out of this this analysis and deep understanding of what's going on in the country um so in it so actually in addition to the that core analytic that informs our policies and priorities we also have very strong vetting a very strong vetting mechanism to ensure that our interventions do no harm and ideally do a lot of good um so this means that all of our investment operations you know the world bank invests in in roads and all kinds of infrastructure we invest in systems we invest in uh core governance etc but all of our investment operations must have an environmental and social safeguards in place but more than that these operations aim to proactively support vulnerable groups to ensure that they benefit from these investments in addition considerable effort is spent to making sure that all of everything you do is very well vetted you cannot imagine how much how much review there is internal and we look at it from all sides um our policy lending operations this is budget support that we provide to governments around the world they must always contain detailed poverty and social impact analysis of each and every policy that we support sometimes there are potent there potentially are negative short-term effects um but long-term benefits so when when short-term uh negative impacts are found uh we ensure that mitigation mechanisms are put in place now you may think oh that's that sounds like very nice but what does it really mean in practice well actually implementing this is actually taking takes a lot of effort everyone at the world bank is working towards our goals of eliminating poverty and promoting shared prosperity but we are perhaps the only international organization that has a poverty economist embedded in every country team i am part of the poverty and equity global practice of the world bank which houses about 190 full-time economists and living all over all around the world we are we not only study poverty we we live next to the poor and we live in the countries where the poor are we see it every day it is part of our everyday life um we are embedded in the country teens and we we are our our work is to make sure that we understand and undertake analysis that informs everything that the world bank does uh and and to ensure that we do we do what's right you know in addition we have a social development global practice which houses sociologists anthropologists and other economists who focus on promoting social inclusion resilience and empowering marginalized groups these colleagues are experts in their field and they try to ensure that we are at all points building inclusion and ensuring citizen engagement and making sure that these anything that we do is um owned by by the by the country itself not just by the sort of the um the authorities in place but also by the people um so we we try with this to be systematic in bringing evidence to bear on how our policies could affect poverty inequality and to ensure that marginal marginalized groups are given a voice at the global level we spend a lot of time in aggregating this country level experience and indicators and analysis to ensure that we learn from each other and that any innovation in one country can then serve as a lesson to another country so we not only share across regions across countries but we regularly publish global reports on the state of global poverty and inequality and and we use this power of having people all over the world to aggregate in a country experience to inform global messages at the same time our global team it works on thematic global pieces which can inform the work that we do at the at the country level needless to say our best work both at the country the regional and the global level usually requires extensive collaboration with both local and global institutions bilateral partners multilateral partners civil society etc so we are no by no means alone in the effort um that i don't know if i answer your questions thank you you want to speak all of that um yeah so as kind of i mean you can talk a little bit i guess about mcc or just kind of in general i think that you know how do you kind of keep perspective on the role of inequality at the individual level among smaller less communities and kind of your work and kind of still keep that global perspective on it all right so i'm going to answer this in two different ways i'm going to answer this individually first as a practitioner because you're all going to be in jobs soon right where you have to figure this out and then i'll answer institutionally does that work so let me talk as a practitioner first um you know one of the things that i think is really important and throughout my career i've been in lots of different spaces both across the us government and both the executive and legislative branches but also in civil society and you're gonna face moments in your career where you're facing really hard things right you're really trying to tackle tough sticky issues and if you succeed you can help a lot of people and if you fail well you didn't really help anyone and in fact you could have stepped back the agenda so you know in the first thing i would say is don't forget why you're in this business in the first place don't forget why you signed up to serve right and what i mean by that is i bet each of you i do and i'm certain it's true for each of you if you're interested in a career that's around international development or foreign policy or national security or anything related really to public policy right there's a reason for that right there's some driver you each have of a reason you care right keep this very very centered every single day and year of the work that you're doing and don't forget because you know especially as you get older you can forget and the second thing related to that is when you keep that vision and that memory and that power at the forefront of the drive for what it is you do you also start to remember all the other people in the room that are not in the room and one of the biggest challenges i think we have and even this example right even this visual example this illustration is a problem of structural inclusion exclusion right the reason he and i think we have we're seeing such a backsliding on poverty reduction why we're seeing such a rise in inequality one of the reasons we're seeing the fragility of the entire global system whether that's from conflict or climate or multiple crises man-made humanitarian um is because if you look at our institutional seats of power and who's at the table more importantly who's not at the table right and structural exclusion is something where when you cannot bring in the voices of the very people you're talking about the very people whose lives you hope to change and affect your solution is just not as good it can't be by d by definition it cannot be right because you're talking for somebody else and so to me structural exclusion and and for mcc this is an issue you know we're launching a new inclusion and gender strategy this year we're really really proud of this work and this is coming out of everything we just talked about and everything you've all just talked about the last few days in this symposium um when we think about structural exclusion it's not just who's in a room that's that's obvious right but it's also around the biases we have institutionally in our laws in our policies in our organizations as well as on how law and policies are actually implemented right that is the very nature of structural exclusion and there's a lot of complex barriers to break down in order to do this and even when you remove one there's so much work to do to remove the others so one of the challenges i would say one of the things that mcc is going to start really focusing on tackling as part of our new inclusion and gender work and going beyond structural exclusion and we're really proud that we're going to go and tackle some of these thorny issues so over the past six months we've developed a new strategy it's being finalized right now but we're really looking to see how can we expand excluded groups ability to have access to participate in or derive opportunity from the benefits of our investments and so the idea that we're not just going to be inclusive but we're going to actually think and target exclusion as a way to think about the problem i think is something that i'm really excited about it's actually a really different lens and approach to think about some of these problems and when we start thinking and addressing you know this idea that so many of the very people that are the ones that are on the front lines of these challenges are the ones that usually don't often have voice access power representation money privilege right that's the fragility of the global system right now um and that's why i think it's really exciting to think about um when you're tackling these big problems and you're and you're daunted by what it is that you face to keep in mind that actually the solutions exist they structurally exist for years because some of us have been working on this for a long time and have proven solutions but they structurally also exist because local societies civil society local organizations women-led organizations those on the front lines actually know the best solutions to their own communities and if you can bring them into the room lo and behold we can actually tackle and solve some of this stuff and i would wager for a little bit cheaper um than than otherwise as well so i think well i would you know kind of love to kind of keep doing this though a little bit more because i know that you know kind of one of i think the historical critiques of the brandon woods institutions and maybe organizations and similar kind of development field have kind of been that they're of a colonial nature and that they kind of impose um sort of their own kind narratives or what they want to sell development on sort of receiving communities but i know that recently in development localization has kind of been a big trend and you were talking about kind of the ways that mcc um really is seeking to put the countries receiving countries and communities in the driver's seat um so i kind of love to hear from both of you about how your kind of organizations and how in the field like how that's uh really playing out and how you kind of are moving around or trying to work out of this structural exclusion within uh the communities on the receiving end of development finance and aid either you can start it definitely go ahead okay well you know there's no question that countries need to retain sovereign control over the policy decisions in fact i would argue that there is no way for a reform to be truly successful unless the the reformers believe in what they're doing so in general it it doesn't work if you're trying to impose anything on anyone we basically tried to strive to support countries only only when there's you know a point of common ground now what what that means is our mandate is to provide our best advice to all of our member countries whether they want to receive it or not we still provide our best guidance our best advice we work extremely hard to understand their challenges undertake in-depth analysis and seek to really provide evidence-based policy uh you know suggestions advise support typically we partner with global and local academia think tanks and other development partners to make sure that we're always bringing our best to the table our goal is to be credible eight political advisors that governments and populations can trust but this of course doesn't guarantee that we're going to agree on everything so to the extent that the country's fiscal and macroeconomic framework is sustainable our lending is in areas where there is common ground we go through considerable lengths to ensure that our programs and our policies are country owned and to ensure that there's broader consultations undertaken on the policy measures that we support so i think that that's the only way to go typically as as you've been discussing a lot of the really great solutions are coming from from the the owners of you know of the they're coming from the policy makers they're coming from the people who are on the ground and are seeing the problems and they they're also sort of being devised but and and figured out they they are figuring out the solutions it is almost it would be impossible for us to impose something on a country and really expect it to work um so i think that um there is you know pretty broad consensus that that's that's the way to go thanks and i can build on that so we're mcc is also similar like the world bank i mean let me explain our model to you so it gives you something in concrete terms to understand so once our board of directors we're governed by a board of directors it's a public private board chaired by the u.s secretary of state with five uh public board members and four private sector board members every december they meet they look at the scorecard that we talked about earlier right they meet they look at the scorecard and for those countries that are eligible for mcc assistance they get selected every december so every december in our annual cycle once countries are selected for either our large-scale grants which is the compact programs which are what i oversee or smaller scale ones which are our threshold program they then get come over to our respective operations teams to then design the programs and so here's how that works that means the country is selected in the december cycle the first thing we do is we work together with our infrastructure experts our gender experts our inclusion experts our private sector and our economists and we look at with with that country so we partner directly with that country like starting with their government but we partner with private sector and civil society there and we say what are the binding constraints to your country's growth so why isn't your economy working for your people and you'll be surprised because if you know like think about any country i know we have people here from argentina and greece and chile and many other countries here right think about think about that country or think about any country that's important to you you can usually think of lots of different reasons of what's not working right is that fair but in fact in the analysis mcc will do with that country's economist there's actually typically two to four three or three to five binding constraints to growth things that are actually preventing the entire economy from working it's not a big list it's not it's not 10 12 20 things it's just a handful of things so we isolate what are those things and we come up with a short list and then we work with that government to say of that short list where do you think you can really put leadership during the five years of implementation to make real sustainable change in your country but you're gonna have to make real reforms and you're gonna have to own it everything you sign up for you're gonna have to own and we'll work with the government to then identify in nepal for example we identified four binding constraints to growth and then the nepali government came back and they said they wanted to be two out of the four it happened to be in the transport and power sectors if you're from south asia or you know south asia you know nepal no surprise that those are the two areas that they picked given the fact of how many people still don't have access to electricity and work on very difficult roads there so they picked those two out of the four sectors and then we spent the next couple years together and we designed the investment right we looked at pre-feasibility work feasibility work and we agreed on the final contours of the investments in this case we agreed in the power sector that we would actually build out one-third of the central backbone of the the entire country's transmission system which was never built so that they would have a functioning transmission grid we'd help build out the second cross-border line electricity line to india so that in um they could import in the short term and export surplus hydro in the medium term not just to india but all of south asia and that we would help them rehabilitate hundreds of kilometers of road and create um an incentive fund to actually do road maintenance which is actually the most uh cost-effective way to fix roads it's not to build new ones it's actually to maintain the roads that you have right so we agreed together because that's what they agreed to do right when that compact starts we will have five years that's it five years by our congressional statute to do all of the implementation of very complex infrastructure works but also significant policy institutional reforms to make sure the entire sector can function that can mean things like changing laws in parliament it can mean in certain cases around the world it can mean privatizing utilities or making sure that there's private sector actors that actually have a chance to work on different aspects of the value chain so that the private sector has a role and more efficiently run certain parts of different sectors it can mean making sure that countries pass legislation around sexual health sexual well being gender rights gender norms worker rights right every country will be different in terms of what the menu and what the options and the ranges are but it is significant policy and institutional reforms that will accompany the infrastructure and the beauty of it is these are hard things for the country to do very hard politically in their systems to actually enact but the beauty of it is they're the ones that design this they're the ones that agree to it and that's why when we agree to it we sign a compact and it's a compact that's the word compact the power of the word compact and it's actually so powerful that it has the force of an international treaty between the united states government and that country's government regardless even when political parties change power right through election cycles in that country and so it can withstand and it has to in order for it to succeed withstand political turbulence right both in washington and in that host capital country each of those investments is designed by uh is is implemented by that government but also overseen by an independent board about the public private board where you bring in voices from civil society in the private sector as well to hold us accountable that we're getting the job done mcc is really proud because we're voted one of the most transparent the one of the most transparent aid agencies in the world everything's on our website if you go in our partner countries in multiple languages so that citizens actually know what is happening what are these deals their countries their governments are signing up for how much debt are they taking on what are the terms of the agreement citizens need to hold us accountable for that and we do that by also using information access accountability as values and norms to make those decisions as well so when we talk about local ownership when we talk about localization when we talk about country ownership to me it's it's not one of the reasons i love working at mcc and i'm so passionate about the work mcc does is it's we take the principle and put into practice by making sure that from governments to the private sector to civil society to the very people on the ground there's an entire accountability network to make sure that ultimately the deals that governments sign up for actually work for the people because when you don't have that right the entire system actually does break down and you're seeing that happen in so many places around the world if you have more time lots of examples to talk through and talk about um but let me pause there thank you so much for watching on that um i think maybe we could i guess shift gears a little bit but um kind of going back to a little bit about what both of you mentioned and european remarks i was kind of wondering what are sort of the biggest um gaps in global development and inequality that have been sort of exacerbated or brought on by the coke 19 pandemic and what are sort of the significant adjustments or adaptations in the field in terms of different strategies that are going to be needed to address these and kind of progress the mission missions of both of your organizations forward well as i mentioned in my opening remarks i think that we you know in general were especially worried about the scarring effects of of education um and the lack of education now it's painfully clear that children have learned less during the pandemic our recent estimates find that pandemic related school closures could not have led to substantia could have led to substantial learning losses driving up what we call learning poverty so this is the share of 10 year olds who cannot read a basic text we see that that has increased to about 70 percent in low and middle income countries for almost every country around the world we're estimating you know how many years of schooling have been lost etc it depends on how long the school closures have been going on for but what we it what is very clear is that um that learning loss will have long-term consequences and on lifetime earnings of an entire generation of school children similarly before the pandemic gender parity in education was improving but we have seen that school closures placed an estimated 10 million more girls at risk of early marriage which practically guarantees that that that's the end of their schooling so um you know there's a lot that needs to be done to reverse the regression in learning and to [Music] you know curtail the potential human capital loss that could um hold economic economies and societies back for decades some countries were able to deploy massive stimulus packages in response to the health crisis but most of these funds were spent in advanced economies richer countries had the resources and the systems in place to activate social assistance measures that help to cushion the impact of the crisis there are a few countries in fact that actually let those those social assistance measures led to declines in poverty it was only temporary uh but the the fact of the matter is for many low-income countries i would say most low-income countries elevated debt service payments crowd out essentials social spending including for education and really during the pandemic there was very little to go on in order to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic so while we know that in many countries there's space to use existing resources more efficiently the bottom line is that more resources are needed for middle-income countries this will require efforts to collect more tax revenues ideally focusing on those that are you know the taxes that are more progressive and with limited impacts on the poor but for the world's poorest countries an acceleration in debt relief uh would provide fiscal space to increase support for human capital having said that supporting education will not be enough ultimately we cannot address the structural factors behind poverty and inequality without the creation of good productive jobs therefore beyond investing in education and training what we need to do is to focus on enabling the creation of productive jobs that can employ large amounts of people at decent wages you know in development we typically talk about structural transformation to refer to the process through which agrarian workers moved into manufacturing and service sectors becoming more productive earning higher wages and thus leading to growth and poverty reduction however that textbook description of what happens with industrialization isn't really happening for countries outside of some of the southeast asian countries we in fact are seeing that what's happening is it's something that we're calling premature industrialization with people leaving the agrarian or agriculture sector but not finding adequate employment elsewhere in many places most manufacturing and service firms are small informal and unproductive while certainly more can be done to improve the productivity productivity growth in agriculture we know that that cannot be the only solution so strategies are also needed to focus on enhancing the productive potential of small and medium-sized firms this will require supporting governments to provide the necessary environment for firms to thrive including enforcement of contracts and property rights access to finance technical assistance and technology transfer and other solutions that seek to maximize the success of these firms which can then guarantee better employment opportunities for the population in terms of the shifts that we are seeing now in development perhaps perhaps the main thing that i'm seeing is that there's a growing recognition that economic and social policies need to work together to enable poverty reduction supporting just the education and health of children is not enough we need to also focus on what's going to happen once those children graduate and go out into the market and look for jobs um so they multi-dimensional these multi-dimensional problems are going to need multi-sectoral and coordinated solutions something that for those of us who are practitioners uh you know we we know these things but doing them are is actually much much harder than that you know than than is to say them um and it does take you know a village to really get get these things going let me stop there um so i'm gonna pick a topic that i know you've talked a lot about this the last few days which is climate and um look when we talk about climate change right everyone's seized on this right now right we're all talking about it we're all very seized and understanding you know the statistics you know how bad the situation is but one of the things that really strikes me about climate change is it's not a 20 it's not something that was just created in 2022 right or 2020 or 2015 or 2010 right one of the studies that really stuck out at me and all the research is there's a study from stanford university and it found that climate change has increased economic inequality between developed and developing nations by 25 since do you know what date 1960 so we're certainly seeing how climate change is getting even worse right and exponentially so with um the trend lines that we're seeing and we know the statistics about you know the world what the world could look like by as short as 2050 with more than 143 more million people driven from their homes um just from water and food and uh scarcity but this is something that has been in the making for a really long time so um scc a couple things i wanted to say about climate and the kind of examples i want to give you examples of what success can look like right because that's also really important so at mcc we were founded in 2004. we've been working on climate for a long time and in fact between 2015 and 2020 alone we invested more than 1.7 billion dollars again 100 all grants on climate-related activities so and this is across energy water water transportation multiple sectors and we've been working on this it's in our dna we've been working on this for a long time um and so even as we put out a new climate strategy to keep increasing the pace of our investments we're really proud to build on a really strong foundation so here's what that looks like in places like binit you guys know open in it's a country in west africa and in places like benin we are working on a power compact so this is a close to 400 million dollar compact that is really working to look at and tackle the problems that many benenois have because they don't access both on-grid and off-grid to power and what's really interesting when you think about things like climate what that could look like is that we are not just increasing in terms of generation and distribution both on-grid and off-grid solar power we're actually working to create an enabling environment for independent power producers so ipps independent power producers and bring electricity to nearly 630 000 people for the first time and in benin through this investment we're working right now on a 50 megawatt solar photovoltaic ipp transaction it's nearing commercial close right now if if we get to financial close and are literally able to seal the deal this would be benin's first successful ipp ever in the history of the country which means that it has a way of crowding successfully in the private sector on key sectoral areas to actually make sure there's long-term efficiencies and sustainabilities for the sector to run so in this case the energy sector to bring power to people who otherwise don't have power so i'm really excited about the excitement about the work we're doing in places like benin we're also doing work in places like niger and i was just in easier in yame a couple weeks ago in fact talking with our political partner our government partners private sector civil society partners out in niger in niger we have a 400 close to 440 million dollar grant in nishar and we're working primarily on water because india is a country in the sahel it's one of the most water scarce countries in the world right and water scarcity drives every single problem that you can imagine across across uh society over there so we're working on irrigation infrastructure we're working on management systems climate resilient ag upgrades to road market access we're looking at natural resource management and we're looking to empower entrepreneurs and farmers um in total this 440 million dollar investment is going to help about four million people on poverty production in india but here's the exciting thing about the work that we're doing um you know throughout the the life cycle of the compact we also use really innovative technologies and during cobit we have to up our game right literally and use virtual technologies to do that so through the compact and the work we're doing including using drone technology in many places around the world our aerial tools did mapping through our partners and basically discovered that sitting underneath the groundwater in nishar are some of the largest reserves of groundwater in the entire sahel city underground in niger unexplored undiscovered and for the first time we found it and making niger have the potential to literally change the entire way life can function across this country and so now we're working with the government to figure out now that we know they have access to one of the most amazing resources on the planet water right around water how to actually use it in a way that benefits its entire population and doesn't become an extractive industry that only benefits a certain segment of society right and so it's not just you know one of the things i'm really excited about is that we can connect these challenges to opportunities to technology on the ground the last example i want to give you is timor elasticity so timor leste is a small island state out in southeast asia um you know emerged out of war in 2005 and one of the one of the poorest countries in the world emerging out of war 15 15 plus years ago we're developing a compact with timor leste and one of the binding constraints again not surprising that was identified there is around um around water and sanitation and so we're developing an investment around water disinfection sanitation and drainage and we're going to upgrade throughout the entire capital city of dilli a modern water and sanitation system to reduce disease burden and improve population health but um and this obviously for for an island state that is on the front lines of climate is is critical and super important we haven't yet signed the compact we're working to finalize it in the coming months or so but even without the compact without a dollar even flowing of the entire compact investment amount the government is so committed so excited about this and it's already led to the government passing new legislation to create the country's first water utility and put in place a water regulation things that the development community the donor community have been asking for a long time and finally happened because of the design and the nature and being on the front lines of some of these problems so um those are ian just some concrete examples of both what i think are some of the biggest challenges but also some of the really exciting work that organizations are undertaking to solve some of these problems and yeah it's really exciting to hear something you know i think also shows how necessary this kind of work is right now in this context um so i guess i know that one sort of challenge uh that's faced within the development field is kind of building these more sort of sustained legacies uh institutionally and i guess structurally where after certain development actors leave the communities can continue them and continue to economically grow and move out move out of poverty so i was sort of wondering how sort of within the the field different organizations like mcc and world bank kind of coordinate and maybe work together to make sure that there's sort of you move towards this one kind of larger vision um of of development that's not a bunch of different sort of disconnected uh projects yeah so this is a great question um you know usually what what happens is there um is a lot of discussion across uh multilateral bilateral donors to make sure that number one we're not uh you know duplicating efforts number two that we're actually complementing each other and um in number three that you know anything that we learn especially in the low-income countries where literally you know they need so much there's so much to do there's so much work to do that we're that we're working sort of together and in collaboration with the government so um governments have a have a big say in this um sometimes we'll find each other you know saying oh i think this is most the most important thing and the other institution says the same thing but in the end it doesn't make sense for both to to move forward with the same thing so you know one institution will take the lead sometimes in collaboration sometimes will join up and move together sometimes it's um you know one institution does one thing and the the other institution does another thing i have participated in africa in cases where you know there are continuous donor meetings so there's a lot of discussion across donors let's say uh so we keep each other in the loop and make sure that we we know what everybody's doing and make sure that we're not uh duplicating uh any any of these activities more broadly i would say that there is uh you know definitely efforts to to collaborate so one example i can give is it you know the kobe 19 pandemic i think that um that it took us all by surprise um it took the world by surprise nobody had anticipated it and for an institution as as large as the world bank it actually you know it's a it was a shock to to try and change things around and do things that were not planned etc but sometimes unprecedented time you know unprecedented crises bring about unprecedented responses so you know the world bank you know moved very swiftly to approve six billion dollars to to uh to as a response to the camp to the pandemic uh reaching over a hundred countries with emergency operations to prevent detect and respond to the to the crisis as well as technical assistance and financing is aimed at strengthening public health systems and i can tell you for most of us that were in the trenches um it was crazy 2020 was just nuts but i think what also came out of that is uh you know very concrete collaboration across global institutions we the world bank partnered with the imf the who the wto governments regional development banks and and also members of um you know private organizations and um and pharmaceuticals etc to um to actually put forward um a response for vaccine vaccinations right now that is our one of our big um things that that we're trying to do working with the private sector to accelerate carbon 19 vaccines therapeutics and diagnostics across uh across the world so we're really leveraging multilateral finance and trade solutions particularly in low and middle income countries we we aim to vaccinate at least 60 of people in every country by mid-2022 this is a huge task right so it requires a task force that monitors gaps in financing production delivery trade supply chains and the deployment of vaccines at the country level so we are trying to coordinate an advanced delivery of these vaccines therapeutics um everywhere and really trying to address some of the things that were long-standing problems such as um trade barriers and and and access for to health for vulnerable populations um so beyond sort of approving our lending um to to governments to try to um and support this vaccine roll out we've at the moment you know 7.6 billion dollars in 70 countries is going to vaccination um it is a a broader kind of global response and you know it i think in general for global challenges now i'm thinking again about climate change um in line with what fatima was saying it will require this kind of um very coordinated um agility and agile response where we because we know climate change will involve or or tackling time climate change will involve major social economic and technical changes um many of which are very costly will require huge investments at the same time we also know that this this effort climate change and climate action needs to be country owned so we are supporting um we all should support countries in their nationally determined contributions and long-stand long-term strategies for us in most of our poor countries we're mostly focused on adaptation measures and i can tell you we're spending a huge amount of time uh to try trying to better understand what climate change will mean for each of our member countries we are undertaking um climate change diagnostic reports in each and every country around the world these um are meant to prioritize uh and identify actions that can meaningfully build adaptation and resilience in each country and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in countries that are big emitters so um i think for most of our poor countries adaptation is a huge issue we know that climate change and natural disasters disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable so that is that is sort of the core of what we're trying to do there in our upper middle income and high emission countries we are also focusing on mitigation we've been talking about carbon taxation and other mitigating mechanisms but but again um so it is first putting out a diagnostic really understanding what are the key issues and and then that will eventually lead to our strategies and our in the way that we land and interact with each of our member countries thank you now just quickly and i think gabrielle did a really good job of summarizing the ongoing donor coordination that does happen both in western capitals but certainly in capitals all around the world i will just say a flip side to that that i'm also noticing and seeing though is that that traditional donor coordination assumes that newer actors that are coming online want to coordinate with other donors and participate in those spaces and or are transparently sharing information so that that's known so when you have newer actors coming online they could be new countries new development banks new institutions it could be private philanthropy right there's lots of new ways that money is now coming into the system so um that i think will have to keep evolving what donor coordination actually does mean on the ground um you know what makes donor coordination better and easier is that information is transparent and there's a real range of transparency frankly and you can see that right if you pick any country that you may be interested in go and see can you actually access as a public citizen can you actually access and see what all the deals that government is signing up for that are coming from other countries where their money is going um how much transparency is there on their budgeting on the financial transparency side right when you have transparency you can make informed choices as as as the public itself um i want to i want to talk about the other book end really fast ian though because that's at the start of the work and certainly you know organizations like mcc the world bank other development banks we work very very closely uh throughout the ground in order to make sure that our projects not just work but reinforce each other so it's beyond complementarity i would say it's actually reinforcing each other in many ways so that one plus one equals three but what happens afterwards what happens afterwards and you know in organizations like mcc we're really proud because we've got a five year time clock and so what does that mean after our programs after the five year clock of implementation is over we're done we're out of the country we don't stay uh we only have two americans throughout that entire time period anyway in country the rest are from the from that country because it's that country's compact it's not ours right so we only have two americans at any given point to our resident in that country um and after those five years we're done we pack up we go home and we do that purposefully and we're all we're often asked to stay actually and we're really proud of leaving not because we don't want to work with the country anymore but because we do not believe this should be this open-ended door that never really shuts right and we put our money where our mouth is literally by saying the relationship is over um unless the country is eligible again down the line for another contact and so um i think that's also an example of where the mcc model is kind of unique sometimes in that donor landscape because we're we're not not just you know we don't talk about getting animals out of a job we are out of a job literally um in these in our partner countries and our entire model is also designed by that so i think one thing for all of you to think about too is time horizons of your intervention time horizons of the project time horizons of how partnership actually works because otherwise you can get into cycles where it can be driven from a country from another country for a really really long time right and that's um something that i know especially of localization around the world that we really want to see a major shift thank you both um so yeah so yeah given that uh the majority of the audience are young people undergraduate students like myself uh serve as a final question before we move into the q a session um i was wondering what both of you see sort of as the main roles uh and areas that my generation will need to play a part in in addressing global body and these different problems without passports that we've been talking about all weekend yeah can i go first get braille on this one because i have i'm very passionate about this question in my answers and this is i've been doing a lot of university talks this past year and here's what i want to put out to all of you because you are the generation that has you have to actually fix everything because otherwise the planet doesn't exist right so you really do have to fix these problems unfortunately um here's here's what i would say to all of you um as you think about your careers as you think about what all the things that you're learning that you're studying that maybe you're experiencing because this is personal to you in your own communities maybe it's your families maybe you're on the front lines some of these very problems that we're talking about sign up to serve this is a generation that is going to need to take back public institutions reinvigorate them bring new passion bring new energy break them down if you need to and build them back up but at the end of the day it's our collective organizations institutions governments right that is where we're going to have to actually help write the new rules of the road and influencing from the outside is important and we certainly need people to influence from the outside but just as importantly we need people on the inside we need people whether it's here in the united states or in any country around the world whether it's government it could be at the national level certainly global levels it could be at your local level right it could be in your mayor's office it could be at the village level sign up to serve a career in public service is not just a noble pursuit in terms of the traditional way it is fundamentally the way to change public policy if you want to change public policy if you want to write public policy go serve the public that's how you do it that's how you do it and as someone who's worked in congress for many years writing laws and bills and helping the oversight of billions of dollars of u.s taxpayer dollars as someone who's worked in senior roles in the executive branch both on policy program both on foreign policy and international development and as someone who's worked on the outside in civil society i'm really you know for all the challenges i've had as a bureaucrat because it's not you know it's hard it's hard to work within very complex big bureaucracies and change systems you can feel you can feel inundating at times there's no better pursuit of a career if you're interested in public policy sign up to serve um we need your talent we need your we need your ideas we need your energy we need you and i don't mean we the united states the world needs you whatever country you're from go work for your country and help your country be the best it can be so that the world can keep the best together that we can be and so that's that's my call to each of you is sign up to serve we need we need your generation to double down and come back to public service um because our institutions won't work with enough they won't work and then you'll be frustrated on the outside wondering why nothing works right so come if you think the system's broken come help us fix it if you want to have and understand power and access to power come be part of it right and think about a service and a calling to public service uh my entire most of my career's been devoted to public service it's been the honor of my lifetime to do it and i'll keep serving until i can't um and it's an honor to do it and um anyway lots of talk about there but that's my that's my call to each and every one of you and all of your colleagues as well thank you for that maybe we can talk a bit more about than that in the community session doctor and charleston would you like to add anything to that no i i really i love uh what what fatima said and i i really do think that it's not just here in the united states you can serve uh wherever you're from so if you're not a u.s citizen i'm not a u.s citizen um you can still serve your country you can still serve the world um there are plenty of opportunities to do that you know at some point in when i was younger i used to think oh let let the developing country people figure out their own problems and let them decide their own futures they shouldn't be sovereign they should be the ones deciding but um actually i've seen throughout my career that you can you can really make a difference by helping other countries so if you are a u.s citizen or you are in a developed country or from a developed country or even if you're from a developing country there is always some there is much much that needs to be done in the developing world and if you are skilled and if you are uh interested in developing in development you you can actually make a big difference there is no bigger thrill than to see that something that you have worked on something that you have really kind of tried to understand very deeply actually at some point influences policy there is no bigger thrill than that to be able to say you know i i gave my little grain of sand maybe it was little nobody really knows it was me it wasn't you know a bunch of other stuff that other people have done but that little thing that they've changed is going to make a huge difference to somebody to a lot of somebodies to a lot of people there is no bigger thrill not nothing compares to it and if you have that inside of you that you want that you want to help you want to serve you know go for it i would say go for it whether it's in your own community uh whether it's in the in you know in your national government or whether it's internationally there is room for you if you are worried about injustice if you're worried about inequality if you're worried about the poor then there's definitely room for you to make a difference and i would definitely encourage you to do that i think the some of the unfortunately some of the problems that we have today are going to continue um poverty is not going to resolve itself around the world in the next 10 years or 15 years uh in fact with climate change i think we are more vulnerable than ever um and and you will need to be at the front lines um because if we if we don't make a change soon things will only get worse so we definitely need you we need your generation we need your vitality i love to work with young younger people you know i think they we're lucky at the world bank that we we always get to work with younger people um and they bring they bring an amazing amount of energy and an amazing amount of and also the kind of the they're at the forefront of knowledge because they they're just right out of graduate school often and so you know the all the old fogey like myself we end up learning a ton from from the incoming young generation so please um you know if you if this is something that you're passionate about don't give up thank you thank you for your words of encouragement uh we'll move now into the audience q a session so there's mics in both aisles and i ask that if you have a question feel free to come on up [Music] could you could you please point the camera to the to the audience so i can see [Music] yeah uh i think it's like way down here but i'm not sure oh sweet thank you [Music] okay uh hi thank you very much for your presentation my name is anna i'm part of the brazilian delegation here and my question is how does the rise of published leaders affect the development of inequality reduction policies uh especially the long-term ones how does the rise of populist leaders affect the development of inequality reduction policies public policies thanks so much [Music] yeah if we want to ask a few together and then okay um hi thank you so much to both of the panelists for being here today i'm ali murphy i'm in the epic colloquium and i'm a senior studying international relations sorry i'll try to keep it quick um so i'm curious about like individualized forms of economic empowerment particularly through cash and voucher assistance programs um i'm wondering if at mcc or at the world bank you've encountered like implementing these types of programs what barriers you've faced to implementing these programs if so and then i guess the main question i'd love for you to get to is how do these individualized forms of economic empowerment fit into your larger goal of strength strengthening oh sorry strengthening countries and um economies as a whole like how how those two fit together um thank you hello i thank you for your input it was really insightful um i'm janis i'm from greece i studied international relations in athens and i was thinking about i was wondering why you had your speech about the case of albania that is a country that's characterized by a lack of infrastructure in which is a mostly a mountainous country and also rate a real earth relatively remote it has huge immigration rates and also a gender equality with even different panel regulations depending on the gender of the person that committed and crime and at the same time have a police and justice system that get kicked back from criminal organizations namely about the mafia and the drug industry so in such a country where the organized criminal activity namely the wealth a well-structured drug industry is arising and deploying even entire villages i was wondering in that context how uh like i mean even for some people especially in the rural populations is the only option to be to work in those in this industry how can corruption and structural obstacles can be overcome and give to those people and that they are engaged in these networks other sustainable opportunities i don't know if i made my point too perfectly well gabrielle are you are you okay if we just take all there's a few more questions can we just take them all and then we can just we don't answer all of that but we can just pick a few between the two of us and is that okay because we've only got about i only got about another yeah is that okay hi i'm bree i'm a senior and a member of the epic symposium um my question is one i'm actually asked during the climate change panel but i feel like it's pretty relevant and i'd like to hear your opinions on it and thinking about economic development and your opinion to what extent do remittances provide a benefit in addressing global inequality and or what drawbacks could remittances pose regarding the sustainable economic development of a particular country thank you so what was your name again [Music] um okay thank you so uh my name is stanley and i am a junior here majoring in political science and internal relations so my question is about uh like how does international donors maintain its neutrality in terms of donating the programs because there are rising geopolitical concerns for this uh donations internationally like the recent mcc project in nepal i know has been raised has raised some concerns from neighboring countries for example india and china uh hard this or international organization going to tackle with these challenges from geopolitical players and kids thank you hey hello good afternoon my name is antonio vienna i am a law student from the university of sao paulo integrating the brazilian delegation at epic and thank you so much for explaining like the details of the work that you're doing i found it fascinating to understand like there are people actively working to reduce inequality from inside the institutions but i would like to ask a perhaps more existential question who are your enemies i mean in a sense who who is working to increase inequality in the world nowadays and what strength is what strength are there in place and what are we doing to refrain them thank you very much um sorry can you tell me your tell me your name antonio antonia thank you hi how are you my name is nicole i'm from the argentina delegation participating at the epic program this year my question really um i kind of see it firsthand in argentina with social plans and subsidies and my real question was how does a government play a role in keep giving the social plans instead of [Music] just helping people develop maybe in the workforce or individual um business and so on how does government play a role in like keep giving social plans and not actually maybe um getting the people to participate in the workforce thank you all right thank you everyone so much for your questions um so either of you please feel free to start yeah dr charles said you want to start um and feel free to sort of answer i know that was kind of a lot to get done at you but uh yeah feel free to start kind of address which ones you want okay well um let me let me talk a little bit about implementation barriers and cash transfers that was that was one of the questions um so the kinds of barriers that we see are have there are very barriers into actually putting these things in place because in order to reach the poor you first have to identify the poor so that's uh that's already a big problem right how do you figure out who's poor and who isn't um we have mechanisms of course it requires um the hardest thing that's required is to build up what we call typically um social registries like um a registry of household it's almost like a census where you would go go around and and look at the you know the household the materials that are used in building of the household etc and ask a bunch of questions to see their level of well-being um we do a lot of modeling to make sure that we're actually trying to uh we're capturing the poor there's always ways to improve that but you know we're doing our best the the big the big risk is that you're going to exclude poor people and that you're going to include people that are not poor so that's a big risk then in terms of actually taking the money and giving it to the poor sometimes you know nowadays where we can we use atm cards or something like an atm card but actually putting that in place is not as easy as it sounds um in in some of the places where we work there are no banks there are there is no atm machine there is nothing like that so you actually have to even you know go and go in a car with a bunch of cash and and and distribute the money and it's it's not all of that it takes takes time and it is difficult you asked um how it strengthens the economy as a whole i think it's super important to really understand who who are the poor who are uh chronically poor and who are the poor who are uh just having a sort of a bad a bad season let's say and um there is a role for government i think in making sure that people are who are unable to have enough to eat and that sort of thing that they have um some support so that they that they can that they can actually um uh survive so in our lowest income country sometimes that means uh workfare programs in our middle income countries that means um social assistance um and cash conditional cash transfers and that and other mechanisms and that reduces inequality it's the most progressive way if it's well targeted it's the most progressive most equal way of of reducing poverty and and limiting inequality it moreover if that's funded by let's say taxes on the on the port there's real redistribution that's happening and that that's equalizing um and then if you think more generally how else does it strengthen the economy is that you can have really difficult sometimes um adjustments that are needed um and those social assistance programs help to mitigate the short-term pain of having um some of those reforms that need to happen so that's that's what i would say um somebody asked about re-asked about the problems and remittances and actually this is a very well studied problem uh issue the main problem with the remittances particularly for those countries that have you know a lot of remittances we have countries that have 30 percent of their gdp and remittances um countries where consumption inside the country is bigger than the whole of the national domestic product and that's just because there's money coming in there's so much money coming in that that people inside the country can can consume more than what's actually produced by the country so what kind of problems does that bring for those of you who studied a little bit of economics you know that when a lot of uh dollars come in or let's say any other strong currency comes in that actually appreciates the value of the current the local currency and that is a problem because then it makes exporting firms would like to actually you know produce something domestically and then go and sell abroad and they're facing an exchange rate that's not very conducive to doing that it makes your products much more expensive than they should be so we call that that actually dutch disease it's that comes from from uh from from well historically from uh the netherlands but um but it is it is an issue now of course that doesn't mean that at the individual level remittances are making a huge difference in the livelihoods and the well-being of uh households that receive it um so that's one issue i could point to um i think uh antonio asked a really good question in terms of for your enemies to reducing poverty and inequality and and i think you know people would think oh no nobody wants inequality to go up for poverty to be so high so who are the enemies i think um especially in very unequal countries there are stakeholders important stakeholders that like that want system to be to be maintained the way it is so what what can i say about that um so we know in in economics for instance that if you have a monopoly then prices are going to be much higher than they should be and everybody loses all the consumers lose if prices are too high in many of our middle-income countries with very high levels of inequality they're not only monopolies there are oligopolies actually i would even say some of our advanced countries are moving in that direction to the extent that um you know there's not uh you know that the institutions that are meant to break down monopolies aren't working the way they should so anything that's actually um not letting prices go down when they should because there's not enough competition is going to be um and anybody who's sort of standing in the face of that or against against breaking down monopolies is going to be an enemy an enemy of um of reducing inequality uh similarly anybody it went in in a lot of our middle income countries especially with very high levels of inequality um you see that people who have who are wealthy do not pay do not want to pay taxes nobody likes to pay the taxes not right nobody um and and um anytime you do anything to try and raise taxes even when it means okay let's put a tax on tobacco we know tobacco's horrible it's gonna it's gonna affect the poor and the long term more than anybody else um you have you have companies who are really fighting very hard to to allow that to happen um um junk food and alcohol all of these thin goods um are one of the kind or some of the kind that we sometimes really focus on the other the other thing you see for instance is um places where there are big subsidies um and you know you would say oh well subsidies are not such a bad thing well they are because actually something like a fuel subsidy benefits the the rich much more than the poor why simply because the rich they spend more on gasoline they have cars um and they consume everything right um so if you look at almost any fuel subsidy regime around the world the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the high income people and um and you know there are much better more efficient ways of reaching the poor but of course there's huge interests and making sure that the fuel subsidies don't don't um don't aren't eliminated um and we face huge huge battles in trying to to to make that happen um so so those are some ideas um nicole i really i liked your question on on social plans and subsidies this is something you know we we often hear people sometimes are upset you know why are you giving so much cash to to poor people you should just let them work well the issue is that um where there is an equality of opportunity where people haven't had the same opportunities as you to go to school to get educated and they will find it very hard to find a job now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't support people to to try and find better jobs and and help to train them and improve education of course we have to to do all that but you cannot just say we're gonna do only this and not that we do need in in places um some level of social assistance to allow people to um go through bad times people do go through bad times and there are some people who never had opportunities so you also have to support some of them some of those in countries where you can actually afford it unfortunately not everywhere not every country is able to afford these uh social assistance programs thank you thank you doctor great thanks and i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm squeezed on time but it's ramadan we started ramadan and i have to get my family's iftar together um before sunset so i have to juggle uh mom responsibilities too so um let me let me i really loved your question so first really great questions i wish i could hire all of you um so a couple of quick i'm gonna marry you um but i really appreciate them so here's what i'm gonna here's my thesis that i'm gonna leave you with i'm gonna try something blow your mind here as we wrap up this um this uh epic symposium is poverty inevitable yes no is poverty a choice you're saying no it's not a choice here's the thing poverty is man-made we actually choose to live in a world of poverty actually it is a choice you know and uh how many of you vote how many of you pay taxes um how many of you participate in local civic society all right i'm saying all that because actually every day whatever country around the world you want to be here in the us any country around the world poverty is a choice poverty is a choice in the people we elect in the laws that we pass in the rules of our institutions we can choose for everyone to live exactly the same way we choose in here we choose not that for that not to be the case or you can choose for there to be different structures different incentives different tiers different um ways of that different populations can access right so i want to leave you with a simple thought that's actually for me really profound poverty is man-made we actually choose poverty every day in the choices we make across societies so the beauty of this for all the problems you've just heard for the last few days and the weight of the world since we chose it we can choose to undo it and it's also as simple as that we can choose to end poverty actually we could choose to end poverty tomorrow if we wanted to we really can we can choose it in how we spend our money in our tax policies we can choose it in how we define power how we define policy how we define privilege right here in the united states and all around the world these are choices we make as a society so these are the choices you all have to make in your careers right whatever your career is going to focus on these are the choices you get to make so a couple of thoughts for you as you do this the world is changing you've heard all about a lot of it right but here here's ways it's also changing for me every day as a practitioner it's changing because geopolitics is changing we all work in institutions on the development side that are apolitical but we work in a political world so we have to understand how politics works we have to understand how politicians work we have to understand how money flows right we can be apolitical we can have apolitical jobs but we all work in a political environment so you have to understand both you have to understand both there artificial silos don't make false choices even what you study right the world is also changing because of the way we consume information is changing radically in ways that by the time i figure out all the latest apps of today they will all change tomorrow right information flows are changing right social media the rise of social media the various platforms of social media how people get information is changing the rise of disinformation and the rise more maliciously of misinformation which is deliberate right it used to be that truth had currency that if you stated a fact and you cited it remember the footnotes that you all spend so many hours looking for and putting in your papers it used to mean that that meant something now you can go out and put a tweet and say anything you want and it doesn't matter if it's true or not right every opinion can have equal weight right whether or not it's backed up by science data evidence or basic fact that is the world you're also inheriting so as you figure out public policy as you figure out how to tackle poverty you have to understand how to do it in an information war with information warfare in many ways of what's going on so study it i wish i was back in your shoes so that i could study that as well and then the last thing i'll say here is that you're seeing also a rise of authoritarianism around the world you're seeing a shrinking of civic space of civil society journalism is under assault and threats like never before right just to have an opinion in some cases can land you in jail if that's out there right we're seeing a drawback of fundamental rights that you know we we took from you know that many of us took for granted for so many years we're seeing everyday new headlines and stories like in afghanistan where girls now are being denied a basic education as if that's up for debate in 2022 right so the world order in many ways these rules are being rewritten as we speak these are things that you're each going to have to contend with as you think about the way forward as you think about solutions as you think about partnerships and as you think about how to work together all of you in this room wherever you live whatever country you're from because you're part of a network that is going to need to work to solve all these problems i'm going to leave you with a couple of three different tools to think about here in concrete ways so i'm a big believer in resources i know you're on your phones a lot and it's harder to take time to digest resources i'll start with i'll start with your phone that you can do something with your phone i'm gonna give you the website mcc.gov it's where i work i know i'm biased but i still think it's a great one and it's mcc for millennium millenniumchallengecorporation.gov for government mcc.gov and when you go there click the resources tab under the resources tab you will have information on many of the questions that were asked around some of our independent evaluations and our other really rich evaluation work in our learnings and on our website you'll see where we've succeeded and why but just as importantly where we failed and why because those learnings are also really important right as we think some of this through so check out our website number two i'm gonna leave you with two books because i'm a big believer in books especially during the pandemic when i had more chances to read so the first is invisible women um the author is caroline creato perez it's invisible women data bias in a world designed for men so some of you one of you asked a question and it made me think about this book invisible women about why inequality exists read invisible women and you'll and it starts with a fundamental question which i love i cite it all the time because it's so easy to remember can snowplows in sweden be sexist that's the question can snow plows in sweden be sexist that's how she starts the book the answer is yes but it'll shock you why and so when you think about that really good question that antonio asked i'm going to point you to a book like invisible women because it helps break down things don't have to be intentional for them to be problematic right the second book i'm going to leave you with because uh um uh who asked this um who asked about um gianni you asked about corruption it's a great question we would need to spend another three days though on it so instead i'm gonna point you to one of the best anti-corruption experts that i've had the privilege of working with in my career um sarah chase and she there's many books she's written many many books about this you should go and go read all of them but i'll leave you with one which is thieves estate why corruption threatens global security by sarah chase c-h-a-y-e-s um and it really tackles gianni in much more eloquent ways than i can do in 90 seconds some of the issues around corruption but that may just end as we're closing out just to say guys um look i i'm so um humbled that you guys are here that you're here that you're taking the time even at the end of a long day of a long conference that you're connecting with each other you're asking really hard questions and ultimately what you're all really trying to do is fundamentally change how we work together and i want to honor that and i want you to honor that for yourselves and each other and take that forward in your careers and the work you do wherever whenever you go home wherever home is in the world this is your fight right and you have to win you must win you must win this fight so thanks for the leadership that you guys are showing thanks for the courage you're showing and thanks for the inspiration you're showing to people like gabriella and myself and so many of our colleagues um because it's inspiring for us that you care that you care and you're gonna do something about it so thank you and uh i look forward to seeing where you all end up and the great work that you're all gonna do and are doing already so thanks thank you so much you