World Bank

Examples of World Bank in the following topics:

• Measuring Poverty

  • According to the World Bank, definitions of poverty include low income and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity.
  • The World Bank uses this definition of poverty to label extreme poverty as living on less than US $1.25 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 or $5 a day.

• Hunger, Malnutrition, and Family

  • While statistics vary based on measurements used, it is generally agreed that the number of malnourished or undernourished people in the world was around 1 billion people in 2010, about a sixth of the world's total population.
  • In fact, many believe that the earth is more than capable of sustaining the current world population.
  • These advocates argue that free trade policies transfer economic decision-making power into the hands of multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and transnational corporations, so that local people are unable to determine what is done with food that is locally produced.
  • At the other end of the spectrum, transnational organizations like the World Bank claim to be part of the solution to hunger, maintaining that the best way for countries to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger is to build export-led economies that will give them the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market.
  • Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause (at least partially) 60% of children's deaths in the developing world.

• Capitalism in a Global Economy

  • Information, goods, ideas, and cultural norms are able to spread more quickly around the world than ever before, largely due to innovations and price drops in the telecommunications industry.
  • For example, these innovations have allowed Coca Cola to spread its goods around the world.
  • The term "world economy" refers to the economic situation of all of the world's countries.
  • It is common to limit discussion of world economy exclusively to human economic activity.
  • The main players are global institutions, such as International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements; national agencies and government departments (e.g., central banks and finance ministries); private institutions acting on the global scale (e.g., banks, hedge funds), and regional institutions such as the Eurozone.

• Industrializing Countries

  • Brazil's economy must continue to grow if the nation's standards of living are to rise and if the nation is to become a more prominent figure in the world economy.
  • Industrializing countries have HDIs between the most and least industrialized countries in the world .
  • According to research from the World Bank, one challenge facing industrializing nations is how to successfully export products when they do not have pre-existing infrastructures to facilitiate international trade.

• New State Spaces

  • In general, global cities tend to actively influence and participate in international effents and world affairs.
  • They may be national capitals, or they may host the headquarters of international organizations such as the World Bank, NATO, or the UN.

• Applied and Clinical Sociology

  • Thus, applied sociologists took findings from pure research and applied them to solving real-world problems.
  • Outside the academic world, sociologists apply their skills in a variety of settings.
  • Some sociologists find that adapting their sociological training and insights to the business world is relatively easy.
  • Outside of the corporate world, sociology is often applied in governmental and international agencies such as the World Bank or United Nations.
  • Examples of NGOs include Oxfam , Catholic Relief Services , CARE International , and Lutheran World Relief .

• Global Inequality

  • Given enough time, modernization will occur everywhere in the world.
  • For example, between 1970 and 2002, the continent of Africa received $540 billion in loans from wealthy nations and from the World Bank and IMF.
  • Core countries own most of the world's capital and technology and have great control over world trade and economic agreements.
  • Based on the changing nature of the world economy, production is divided into small pieces, each of which can be moved by a Transnational Corporation (TNC) to any country in the world that can provide the best deal on capital and labor.
  • There are about 65,000 TNCs across the world today.

• Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender

  • The wealthy had cars to leave New Orleans, and credit cards and bank accounts for emergency hotels and supplies.
  • The poor in the U.S. and around the world are most likely to suffer from ‘natural' and human tragedies.

• Role Theory

  • For instance, the behavior of someone who adopts the role of bank robber can be predicted - she will rob banks.
  • But if a bank teller simply begins handing out cash to random people, role theory would be unable to explain why (though role conflict could be one possible answer; the secretary may also be a Marxist-Communist who believes the means of production should belong to the masses and not the bourgeoisie).
  • Plato spoke of the "great stage of human life" and Shakespeare noted that "All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players".

• Microfinancing

  • The Grameen Bank is an example of a microfinance institution.
  • Operating primarily in Bangladesh, Grameen Bank extends loans to groups of people looking to start a local service or manufacturing company.
  • Relationship-based banking deals with individual entrepreneurs and individual businesses.
  • At this time, organizations such as the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, led by Muhammad Yunus, were beginning to shape the modern microfinance industry.
  • This is a photograph of a community-based savings bank in Cambodia.