This book is a sequel to the World Bank's World Development Report 2013: Jobs. The central message of that report was that job creation is at the heart of development. Jobs raise living standards and lift people out of poverty, they contribute to gains in aggregate productivity, and they may even foster social cohesion. In doing so, jobs may have spillovers beyond the private returns they offer to those who hold them. Poverty reduction is arguably a public good, making everybody better off; higher productivity spreads across co-workers, clusters, and cities; and social cohesion improves the outcomes of collective decision-making.

But which jobs make the greatest contribution to development and what policies can facilitate the creation of more of these jobs? There is no universal answer - it depends on the country's level of development, demography, natural endowments, and institutions. This volume explores the diversity of jobs challenges and solutions through case studies of seven developing countries. These countries, drawn from four continents, represent seven different contexts - a small island nation (St. Lucia), a resource-rich country (Papua New Guinea), agrarian (Mozambique), urbanizing (Bangladesh), and formalizing (Mexico) economies, as well as young (Tunisia) and aging (Ukraine) populations. Using methods drawn from several branches of economics and the social sciences more broadly and analyzing a wide range of data, the authors show the different ways in which jobs have contributed to social and economic development in the countries they have studied and how they can contribute in the future. The policy priorities vary accordingly. They often extend well beyond traditional labor market instruments to include policy areas not typically considered in national growth strategies.

Gordon Betcherman's profile page

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Gordon Betcherman is a Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. His research interests are in labor economics, demography, social policy, and the economics of development. His most recent publications are on the impacts of labor market regulation in developing countries, youth employment in sub-Saharan Africa, and poverty trends in Vietnamese fishing villages. Professor Betcherman was a co-author of the World Bank's 2013 World Development Report on Jobs. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Studies (IZA). He joined the University of Ottawa in 2009 after 11 years at the World Bank. Professor Betcherman holds a PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles. Martin Rama is Chief Economist for the South Asia region of the World Bank and was Director of the 2013 World Development Report on Jobs. He was Lead Economist for Vietnam for eight years, and before moving to operations, he spent ten years with the research department of the World Bank, working mainly on labor issues. His professional career started in CINVE, Uruguay's largest think tank. He has also been visiting professor at the graduate program in development economics at the Université de Paris I. Dr Rama gained his degree in economics from the Universidad de la República and his Ph.D. in macroeconomics from the Université de Paris I.