Welcome to this month’s World Bank Research E-Newsletter, a monthly summary of research conducted by our department.
This month’s newsletter focuses on an issue that has suffered much neglect: the fate of widows and divorcees in Africa. The impact of marital death and divorce falls heavily on women, who are often excluded socially and lose their property after a marriage ends. Recent papers on this understudied topic examine the welfare status of divorced and widowed women in 20 countries across Africa; marital trajectories in Senegal; the living standards of widows and their children in Mali; and a number of others.
In a recent Policy Research Talk, Lead Economist Dominique van de Walle argued that providing widows and divorcees a secure foothold in societies is central to the broader struggle for gender equality. One in ten African women above the age of 14 is widowed, and six percent are divorced, and many more have been widows or divorcees at some point in their lives. Dominique synthesized the limited evidence on the issue, traced out potential policy options to help disadvantaged women cope with a marital dissolution, and mapped out directions for future research. If you missed the talk, you can watch a video, download the presentation, or read a feature story on it.
There is of course much more in the newsletter, including blog posts on machine learning and entrepreneurship, the fate of the world's migrants and refugees, and anthropological insights into bureaucracies, as well as a new series of policy briefs on land. We also have a great line-up of events taking shape in 2018, including our on-going Policy Research Talks and a new series of DEC Lectures featuring seven distinguished women academics.
Enjoy!
—Asli