Louise Fox: @Brookings & UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Enhancing employment opportunities has taken an even stronger position on center stage in development policy discussions. The reasons are obvious – billions of people in the developing world are trying to exit poverty through better jobs, providing higher incomes for themselves and their families. Owing to the high share of youth in the working age population compared with other regions, much of the employment discussion in SSA has centered on youth’s opportunities and challenges, and how to address these. Interventions have mostly focused on how to “make youth better” – more skills. But this ignores a fundamental fact – what youth really lack are economic opportunities.
My work has focused on analyzing household survey data to demonstrate this fact, and to show where the future opportunities will be. I will discuss how my data analysis has changed the framing of the problem, and brought new development areas – such as agricultural policy – into the youth employment discussion. More info on this blogpost.
Bio:
Louise Fox is an experienced development economist who specializes in strategies for employment creation, opportunity expansion, economic empowerment, and poverty reduction. She has advised governments in the developed and developing world, international organizations, and philanthropic and non-profit organizations on problem diagnosis, strategies for results, and outcome measurement. She held full-time positions at USAID (as Chief Economist) and at the World Bank. She is currently affiliated with the African Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley. She was previously affiliated with the Overseas Development Institute, where she led a major research project. Louise has published in the areas of inclusive growth, structural transformation, youth employment, the political economy of poverty reduction, gender and women’s economic empowerment, employment, labor markets, and labor regulation, pension reform, reform of child welfare systems, social protection, effective public expenditures in the social sectors, and female-headed households and child welfare. Her most recent book was Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by the World Bank in 2014.