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Immiserizing Growth Fails the Poor refers to situations where economic growth does not lead to poverty reduction. How should this phenomenon be conceptualized? How often, when, and where does it occur? Why does it occur? Shaffer addresses these three sets of questions drawing on a wide range of theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches. This volume presents a conceptualization of immiserizing growth which combines the notions of failed and malevolent inclusion, being bypassed, and'avoidably'harmed by growth, respectively. It develops this concept of malevolent inclusion drawing on a debate in philosophy about'doing and allowing harm'. The analysis proceeds to examine the characteristics and causes of immiserizing growth on the basis of comparable household survey data from the 1990s using multiple poverty lines and time periods, and different measures of growth and poverty. The book also explores theories, processes, and mechanisms of immiserizing growth found in a wide variety of bodies of thought including the classical tradition of political economy (Mathus, Ricardo, and Marx), more recent radical traditions of scholarship, literatures on poverty dynamics, and inclusive growth and empirical case studies. It proceeds to empirically investigate some of the variables uncovered in this literature using cross-country econometric techniques, methods of qualitative comparative analysis and case-studies from sub-Saharan Africa, matched using cluster analysis and situated within a typological framework.

This book offers a holistic view of Julio Boltvinik's vast and important work on poverty conceptualisation and measurement. While well known to Spanish-speaking audiences, this volume brings these works together to offer access for English-speaking audiences for the first time. The book provides the foundations, application and empirical examples of Boltvinik's Integrated Poverty Measurement Method, which could potentially transform poverty narratives globally as it has done in Mexico. Deeply critical of available poverty approaches, it provides a challenging and radically new way of conceiving and measuring poverty, offering the only multidimensional poverty measurement method which includes time poverty and allows all Aggregate Poverty Measures to be fully calculated.

Currently, works on poverty constitute only a small part of contemporary economic research; however, the field of poverty and deprivation is undoubtedly one rising in popularity and relevance. Encompassing chapters that address both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty, this timely Research Handbook explores all aspects of poverty and deprivation measurement, not only detailing broad issues but also scrutinising specific domains and aspects of poverty, such as health, energy and housing.Succinct and highly focused, it brings together a diverse range of authors to employ a combination of theoretical and empirical methodologies to offer well-rounded explorations of complex topics. Expansive in scope, the Research Handbook includes case studies that examine poverty across the globe, with a particular focus on covering Africa, China, India and Latin America, producing a comprehensive, rigorous and interdisciplinary resource. The Research Handbook will be an invaluable resource for not only economics researchers and graduate students but also policy makers dealing with issues related to poverty and deprivation. Chapters are designed to provide the reader with foundational knowledge of a topic that they can subsequently deepen by exploring the cited literature.

This volume advances the state-of-the-art in the study of the interplay among financial crises, poverty dynamics and environmental sustainability. It offers timely and unique contributions to the immediate global challenge of sustainable development. Developing a new evidence-base, the volume offers concrete recommendations for policy action needed in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to environment and poverty during the current conditions of financial distress. The approach taken is inductive and evidence-driven. Most analysis is based on in-depth case studies that aim to offer a detailed and dynamic picture on how poverty and environmental sustainability interact in specific social contexts and financial crises. In this way the volume aims to generate a wealth of new and concrete evidence that offer a solid foundation to understand the multiple channels through which social and environmental factors interact, and the ways in which this interaction canand should be managed in order to achieve the needed global transition to sustainability. Broader dynamics that are covered and analysed include the historical legacies of structural adjustment and colonialism; the current debt wave experienced in developing countries; the role of inequality; the significant impact that climate change has on livelihoods and on meeting the SDGs; the new challenge presented by the Covid-19 pandemic for the SDGs; the challenge of sustainable funding for SDGs; and the need for a new eco-social contract. Case-studies examined include Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Zambia, and subregions such as the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Lower Mekong Countries. The volume is part of a joint initiative by the ‘Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP)'of the University of Sussex, the ‘UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Action for Sustainable Development Goals'and the ‘United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)'.The overall aim is to advance a new research programme and foster a better understanding of the multiple, complex and often opposing ways through which the punctuated economic slowdown of financial crises, poverty dynamics and environmental sustainability interact. It also makes novel recommendations into how poverty reduction and environment can work in synergy rather than being antagonistic, especially during financial distress, leading into recommendations directly geared towards achieving the SDGs and beyond.

This book investigates the relationships between economies of scale in food consumption and a number of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of households and household behavioural choices since food is the major share of household expenditure for poor households. The characteristics considered comprise household size, location, income, and gender of the head of household while the behavioural choices considered comprise the decision to consume home-grown food and the decision to adopt domestic technology to aid food preparation and consumption. The book proposes two theoretical models to rationalize the role of the consumption of home-grown food and the adoption of domestic technology in enhancing economies of scale in food consumption. Econometric models are also used to empirically test the validity of the two theoretical models while adjusted poverty estimations are derived numerically using the estimated equivalence scales. Although data used inapplying these techniques are based on four Household Income and Expenditure Surveys conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in Sri Lanka, the methodology can be used for similar analysis in relation to any other country.

This book examines Gunnar Myrdal's analysis of poverty in relation to Sweden, the United States, South Asia, and the international economy. The chapters investigate Mrydal's methodological development and his focus on the principle of circular and cummulative causation, dynamic economic analysis, institutional frameworks, value premises, and social engineering. The challenge of world poverty, the international dimension of poverty, and the legacy of The American Dilemma and Asian Drama are also discussed. This book aims to explore the development of Myrdal's analysis of poverty during his life. It will be relevant to students and academics interested in the history of economic thought, development economics, the political economy, and labor economics.

Poverty in Contemporary Economic Thought aims to describe and critically examine how economic thought deals with poverty, including its causes, consequences, reduction and abolition. This edited volume traces the ideas of key writers and schools of modern economic thought across a significant period, ranging from Friedrich Hayek and Keynes to latter-day economists like Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton. The chapters relate poverty to income distribution, asserting the point that poverty is not always conceived of in absolute terms but that relative and social deprivation matters also. Furthermore, the contributors deal with both individual poverty and the poverty of nations in the context of the international economy. In providing such a thorough exploration, this book shows that the approach to poverty differs from economist to economist depending on their particular interests and the main issues related to poverty in each epoch, as well as the influence of the intellectual climate that prevailed at the time when the contribution was made.This key text is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic development and the economics of poverty.

A history of US involvement in late twentieth-century campaigns against global poverty and how they came to focus on women A War on Global Poverty provides a fresh account of US involvement in campaigns to end global poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. From the decline of modernization programs to the rise of microcredit, Joanne Meyerowitz looks beyond familiar histories of development and explains why antipoverty programs increasingly focused on women as the deserving poor.When the United States joined the war on global poverty, economists, policymakers, and activists asked how to change a world in which millions lived in need. Moved to the left by socialists, social democrats, and religious humanists, they rejected the notion that economic growth would trickle down to the poor, and they proposed programs to redress inequities between and within nations. In an emerging “women in development” movement, they positioned women as economic actors who could help lift families and nations out of destitution. In the more conservative 1980s, the war on global poverty turned decisively toward market-based projects in the private sector. Development experts and antipoverty advocates recast women as entrepreneurs and imagined microcredit—with its tiny loans—as a grassroots solution. Meyerowitz shows that at the very moment when the overextension of credit left poorer nations bankrupt, loans to impoverished women came to replace more ambitious proposals that aimed at redistribution.Based on a wealth of sources, A War on Global Poverty looks at a critical transformation in antipoverty efforts in the late twentieth century and points to its legacies today.

This edition of the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report brings sobering news. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action, and the objective of advancing shared prosperity—raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country—will be much more difficult. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19's impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of'new poor.'Original analysis included in the report shows that the new poor are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19. It also gives new estimates of the impact of conflict and climate change, and how they overlap. These results are important for targeting policies to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It shows how some countries are acting to reverse the crisis, protect those most vulnerable, and promote a resilient recovery. These findings call for urgent action. If the global response fails the world's poorest and most vulnerable people now, the losses they have experienced to date will be minimal compared with what lies ahead. Success over the long term will require much more than stopping COVID-19. As efforts to curb the disease and its economic fallout intensify, the interrupted development agenda in low- and middle-income countries must be put back on track. Recovering from today's reversals of fortune requires tackling the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 with a commitment proportional to the crisis itself. In doing so, countries can also plant the seeds for dealing with the long-term development challenges of promoting inclusive growth, capital accumulation, and risk prevention—particularly the risks of conflict and climate change.

The ambitious 15-year agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015 by all members of the United Nations, contains a pledge that “no one will be left behind.” This book aims to translate that bold global commitment into an action-oriented mindset, focused on supporting specific people in specific places who are facing specific problems.In this volume, experts from Japan, the United States, Canada, and other countries address a range of challenges faced by people across the globe, including women and girls, smallholder farmers, migrants, and those living in extreme poverty. These are many of the people whose lives are at the heart of the aspirations embedded in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. They are the people most in need of such essentials as health care, quality education, decent work, affordable energy, and a clean environment.This book is the result of a collaboration between the Japan International Cooperation Research Institute and the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. It offers practical ideas for transforming “leave no one behind” from a slogan into effective actions which, if implemented, will make it possible to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. In addition to policymakers in the field of sustainable development, this book will be of interest to academics, activists, and leaders of international organizations and civil society groups who work every day to promote inclusive economic and social progress.

This book looks at human capital development and provides an explanation for why cognitive development varies among ethnic groups. The book uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine inter-generational ethnic poverty. It puts forth an argument that the ethnic poverty gap can be reduced, and to do so we need a broader view of human capital which considers the match between the nature of the economy and the specific capabilities needed. The book focuses on the interrelationship between developmental psychology and socio-economic status and argues that the most important relationship in a knowledge economy is actually the one between a parent and a child.The book begins by looking at cultures and assimilation and investigates the link between education, culture and socio-economic status. It also attempts to answer the question of what the link between culture, parents and children's ability is and why ethnic groups vary in their nurturing. It delves into how parenting and cognitive development are interrelated.This thought-provoking book concludes with an emphasis on nurture and how it may alleviate ethnic poverty and shape social policies. The book provides a strong thesis to counter explanations based on racial and genetic superiority.

New York Times–bestselling Author: “Powerful... a compelling case for the game-changing role of innovation in some of the world's most desperate economies.” —Eric Schmidt, former Executive Chairman, Google and AlphabetClayton M. Christensen, author of such business classics as The Innovator's Dilemma and How Will You Measure Your Life, and co-authors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity, and offer a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change.Global poverty is one of the world's most vexing problems. For decades, we've assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, building infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time. But hope is not an effective strategy. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars'worth of aid are poorer now.Applying the rigorous and theory-driven analysis he is known for, Christensen suggests a better way. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America's own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico.The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they've failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book—it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.

This book honors the memory of Tony Atkinson, who made significant contributions to the rigorous study of income inequality, poverty, and redistribution. These essays presented, covering a span of over 30 years of research and scholarship, have been at the forefront of distributional analysis, and many of them are of prime importance for contemporary developments in the real-valued measurement of poverty and inequality, with particular reference to the concepts of fuzzy poverty assessment, vulnerability, heterogeneity/multidimensionality, unit consistency, sub-group decomposability, and dominance criteria. While all of these articles have been previously published—singly or with co-authorship—in a number of professional journals or distinguished edited volumes, this book is greatly enriched by a substantial introductions by the authors, which place the contributions in context, highlights their inter-connectedness, and relates them to the work of Tony Atkinson and other scholars. This book is of intrinsic value to welfare analysts, as well as being a tribute to a very great scholar by a fellow economist.

This book provides an entry into the subjects of disparity and deprivation, by attending to issues that have a bearing on certain salient philosophical and conceptual aspects of these subjects. The student doing a graduate course in the measurement of inequality and poverty is all too often plunged directly into the complexities of Schur-convex functions, dominance conditions, partial orders and the axiomatics of characterization theorems. Inequality and poverty as phenomena with profound social and moral implications for the world we live in tend to get submerged in a treatment of the subject that is more suggestive of applied mathematics than of the material conditions of life. This is in no way to deny that measurement must deal uncompromisingly with measurement, and therefore with the protocols of formal logic and technical rigour. Having said this, it seems fair to suggest that one's appreciation of the formalities – as well as of the limitations and ambiguities -of measurement is only aided by a relatively gentle introduction to the subject. This would call for a prior, or accompanying, engagement with the underlying concepts, the philosophical bases, the political salience, the normative values, and the critical facts of the subjects under investigation. It is this necessary background that is emphasized in this book, which is a collection of articles published earlier in the popular press, and intended for consumption by any curious general reader or student with a taste for critical enquiry. The contents of the book will be useful as much for the aspiring scholar as for the interested lay reader looking for a gateway into the subject.

The final book from a towering pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality—a critically important examination of poverty around the worldIn this, his final book, economist Anthony Atkinson, one of the world's great social scientists and a pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality, offers an inspiring analysis of a central question: What is poverty and how much of it is there around the globe? The persistence of poverty—in rich and poor countries alike—is one of the most serious problems facing humanity. Better measurement of poverty is essential for raising awareness, motivating action, designing good policy, gauging progress, and holding political leaders accountable for meeting targets. To help make this possible, Atkinson provides a critically important examination of how poverty is—and should be—measured.Bringing together evidence about the nature and extent of poverty across the world and including case studies of sixty countries, Atkinson addresses both financial poverty and other indicators of deprivation. He starts from first principles about the meaning of poverty, translates these into concrete measures, and analyzes the data to which the measures can be applied. Crucially, he integrates international organizations'measurements of poverty with countries'own national analyses.Atkinson died before he was able to complete the book, but at his request it was edited for publication by two of his colleagues, John Micklewright and Andrea Brandolini. In addition, François Bourguignon and Nicholas Stern provide afterwords that address key issues from the unfinished chapters: how poverty relates to growth, inequality, and climate change.The result is an essential contribution to efforts to alleviate poverty around the world.

Healthcare for all at affordable prices is still a major but universally elusive goal. Everyone spends money on healthcare, and it is the most impoverishing consumption item. Thus, most governments (and the United Nations) promote Universal Health Coverage — each country's unique blend of tools for healthcare financing, including taxes, subsidies and market controls.Most people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have no health insurance of any kind. And most LMIC governments lack the political will, information, or resources to require their citizens to buy health insurance themselves or to subsidize insurance for all who cannot afford the price. This book deals with financing voluntary and contributory health insurance for resource-poor and rural groups in LMICs.This book addresses three issues. The first is how to catalyse demand for health insurance and develop insurance literacy among the largely illiterate and innumerate target population, using training programs to build an enabling consensus, allowing locals to create and administer such schemes. The second involves the process of developing simplified methods for risk assessment, which can help to underwrite risks, price the micro health insurance schemes, and ensure proper implementation. The third issue is formulating a compelling business case which would make this health insurance affordable, financially sustainable, and operationally scalable.This book develops insurance education and financial literacy for students of economics, business administration, insurance, development studies, and social work to prepare them for practical work as implementers, policymakers, or evaluators. A supplementary section for teachers and students includes comprehension questions.

The World Bank Group has two overarching goals: End extreme poverty by 2030 and promote shared prosperity by boosting the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each economy. As this year's Poverty and Shared Prosperity report documents, the world continues to make progress toward these goals. In 2015, approximately one-tenth of the world's population lived in extreme poverty, and the incomes of the bottom 40 percent rose in 77 percent of economies studied. But success cannot be taken for granted. Poverty remains high in Sub- Saharan Africa, as well as in fragile and conflict-affected states. At the same time, most of the world's poor now live in middle-income countries, which tend to have higher national poverty lines. This year's report tracks poverty comparisons at two higher poverty thresholds—$3.20 and $5.50 per day—which are typical of standards in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. In addition, the report introduces a societal poverty line based on each economy's median income or consumption. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle also recognizes that poverty is not only about income and consumption—and it introduces a multidimensional poverty measure that adds other factors, such as access to education, electricity, drinking water, and sanitation. It also explores how inequality within households could affect the global profile of the poor. All these additional pieces enrich our understanding of the poverty puzzle, bringing us closer to solving it. For more information, please visit worldbank.org/PSP

Joseph Stiglitz is one of the world's greatest economists. He has made fundamental contributions to economic theory in areas such as inequality, the implications of imperfect and asymmetric information, and competition, and he has been a major figure in policy making, a leading public intellectual, and a remarkably influential teacher and mentor. This collection of essays influenced by Stiglitz's work celebrates his career as a scholar and teacher and his aspiration to put economic knowledge in the service of creating a fairer world.Toward a Just Society brings together a range of essays whose breadth reflects how Stiglitz has shaped modern economics. The contributions to this volume, all penned by high-profile authors who have been guided by or collaborated with Stiglitz over the last five decades, span microeconomics, macroeconomics, inequality, development, law and economics, and public policy. Touching on many of the central debates and discoveries of the field and providing insights on the directions that academic economics could take in the future, Toward a Just Society is an extraordinary celebration of the many paths Stiglitz has opened for economics, politics, and public life.

In 2013, the World Bank Group announced two goals that would guide its operations worldwide. First is the eradication of chronic extreme poverty bringing the number of extremely poor people, defined as those living on less than 1.25 purchasing power parity (PPP)†“adjusted dollars a day, to less than 3 percent of the world's population by 2030.The second is the boosting of shared prosperity, defined as promoting the growth of per capita real income of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country. In 2015, United Nations member nations agreed in New York to a set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the first and foremost of which is the eradication of extreme poverty everywhere, in all its forms. Both the language and the spirit of the SDG objective reflect the growing acceptance of the idea that poverty is a multidimensional concept that reflects multiple deprivations in various aspects of well-being. That said, there is much less agreement on the best ways in which those deprivations should be measured, and on whether or how information on them should be aggregated. Monitoring Global Poverty: Report of the Commission on Global Poverty advises the World Bank on the measurement and monitoring of global poverty in two areas: What should be the interpretation of the definition of extreme poverty, set in 2015 in PPP-adjusted dollars a day per person? What choices should the Bank make regarding complementary monetary and nonmonetary poverty measures to be tracked and made available to policy makers? The World Bank plays an important role in shaping the global debate on combating poverty, and the indicators and data that the Bank collates and makes available shape opinion and actual policies in client countries, and, to a certain extent, in all countries. How we answer the above questions can therefore have a major influence on the global economy.

The book pays tribute to the celebrated economist Professor Suresh Tendulkar's contribution and scholarship to economics, economic-policy making, and economic reforms in India. Professor Tendulkar served on numerous panels and commissions set up to reform diverse aspects of India's economy. To name a few, he served as the Chairperson of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, Chairman of the National Commission of Statistics, National Sample Survey Organisation, Committee on National Accounts, and as a member in the Fifth Pay Commission, the Disinvestment Commission (1996). He is credited with devising the new method to estimate poverty in India which resulted in India's poverty estimates being scaled up. This book primarily focuses on Professor Tendulkar's contributions on economic planning in India, the political economy of economic reforms, and his important conceptual and policy-relevant work on poverty measurement. The three sub-themes of the book – Economic Reforms and Policy Formulation, Poverty and Inequality, and Development and Trade – are indicative of his specific research interests, namely poverty and well-being, and India and the world economy. It covers both micro and macro aspects relevant to the Indian economy. The econometric techniques utilized encompass state-of-the-art microeconometric as well as macroeconometric models. The book contains contributions from eminent economists associated with Professor Tendulkar, and is useful for readers from the undergraduate through the Ph.D. level as well as researchers and practitioners of economics.

In light of the opportunities and the challenges facing African economies in the 21st century, this edited volume traces the evolution of poverty in the course of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa over the recent decades. By engaging with, and seeking to develop on, the work of Professor Erik Thorbecke, it examines the evolving dynamics of poverty in multiple dimensions. It also discusses how to lay down foundations for improved governance and institutions that will realize inclusive development in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the volume contributes to our understanding of dynamics of pro-poor growth and pro-growth poverty reduction, and to the on-going policy and academic debates on how to overcome fragility and vulnerability and secure inclusive development through socio-economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. The volume is divided into four parts; two overview chapters in Part 1 set out a common theme running through the volume. Four chapters in Part II examine an evolution of the poverty profile in different dimensions in sub-Saharan Africa since the new millennium. Part III presents three country case studies of tracing poverty dynamics under a country-specific institutional and policy environment. Part IV consists of three chapters, each of which addresses the question of how to advance an inclusive development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa, but from three different perspectives: structural changes, a governance framework, and an institutional foundation.

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. This edition will also document trends in inequality and identify recent country experiences that have been successful in reducing inequalities, provide key lessons from those experiences, and synthesize the rigorous evidence on public policies that can shift inequality in a way that bolsters poverty reduction and shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the report will address the following questions: •What is the latest evidence on the levels and evolution of extreme poverty and shared prosperity? •Which countries and regions have been more successful in terms of progress toward the twin goals and which are lagging behind? •What does the global context of lower economic growth mean for achieving the twin goals? •How can inequality reduction contribute to achieving the twin goals? •What does the evidence show concerning global and between- and within-country inequality trends? •Which interventions and countries have used the most innovative approaches to achieving the twin goals through reductions in inequality? The report will make four main contributions. First, it will present the most recent numbers on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. Second, it will stress the importance of inequality reduction in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 in a context of weaker growth. Third, it will highlight the diversity of within-country inequality reduction experiences and will synthesize experiences of successful countries and policies, addressing the roots of inequality without compromising economic growth. In doing so, the report will shatter some myths and sharpen our knowledge of what works in reducing inequalities. Finally, it will also advocate for the need to expand and improve data collection—for example, data availability, comparability, and quality—and rigorous evidence on inequality impacts in order to deliver high-quality poverty and shared prosperity monitoring.

Why are some people poor? Why does absolute poverty persist despite substantial economic growth? What types of late economic development or'catch-up'capitalism are associated with different poverty outcomes? Global Poverty addresses these apparently simple questions and the extent to which the answers may be shifting. One might expect global poverty to be focused in the world's poorest countries, usually defined as low-income countries, or least developed countries, or'fragile states'. However, most of the world's absolute poor by monetary or multi-dimensional poverty - up to a billion people - live in growing and largely stable middle-income countries. At the same time, poverty has not fallen as much as the substantial economic growth would warrant. As a consequence, and as domestic resources have grown, much of global poverty has become less about a lack of domestic resources and more about questions of national inequality, social policy and welfare regimes, and patterns of economic development pursued.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. While the economic growth renaissance in sub-Saharan Africa is widely recognized, much less is known about progress in living conditions. This book comprehensively evaluates trends in living conditions in 16 major sub-Saharan African countries, corresponding to nearly 75% of the total population. A striking diversity of experience emerges. While monetary indicators improved in many countries, others are yet to succeed in channeling the benefits of economic growth into the pockets of the poor. Some countries experienced little economic growth, and saw little material progress for the poor. At the same time, the large majority of countries have made impressive progress in key non-monetary indicators of wellbeing. Overall, the African growth renaissance earns two cheers, but not three. While gains in macroeconomic and political stability are real, they are also fragile. Growth on a per capita basis is much better than in the 1980s and 1990s, yet not rapid compared with other developing regions. Importantly from a pan-African perspective, key economies-particularly Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa-are not among the better performers. Looking forward, realistic expectations are required. The development process is, almost always, a long hard slog. Nevertheless, real and durable factors appear to be at play on the sub-continent with positive implications for growth and poverty reduction in future.

There are fewer people living in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. While that is an achievement, continuing progress for poor people is far from assured. Inequalities in access to key resources threaten to stall growth and poverty reduction in many places. The world's poorest have made only a small absolute gain over those 30 years. Progress has been slow against relative poverty as judged by the standards of the country and time one lives in, and a great many people in the world's emerging middle class remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty. The Economics of Poverty reviews critically past and present debates on poverty, spanning both rich and poor countries. The book provides an accessible new synthesis of current economic thinking on key questions: How is poverty measured? How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist, and is it inevitable? What can be done to reduce poverty? Can it even be eliminated? The book does not assume that readers know economics already. Those new to the subject get a lot of help along the way in understanding its concepts and methods. Economics lives through its relevance to real world problems, and here the problem of poverty is both the central focus and a vehicle for learning.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

The Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015: Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity was written jointly by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund, with substantive inputs from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year's report details, for the first time, progress toward the WBG's twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity and assesses the state of policies and institutions that are important for achieving them. The report continues to monitor progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Also for the first time, the report includes information about high-income countries. It finds that while gaps in living standards have been closing in many countries, the well-being of households in the bottom 40 percent, as measured by the non-income MDGs such as access to education and health services, remains below that of households in the top 60 percent. The focus of this year's report is on three elements needed to make growth more inclusive and sustainable: investment in human capital that favors the poor, the best use of safety nets, and steps to ensure the environmental sustainability of economic growth. These three elements are imperative to all countries'development strategies, and are also fundamental to global efforts to achieve the twin goals, the MDGs, and the Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed the MDGs. Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015 was prepared in collaboration with regional development banks and other multilateral partners.

This book offers a critical analysis on employing a universal understanding of poverty and suggests ways forward for poverty reduction for developing countries in a post-2015 era. Taking specific country-contexts into account, the author argues that national poverty lines should be the benchmark for future anti-poverty policies.

The contributors respond to the absence of critical debate surrounding the ways in which spaces of the city do not merely contain, but also constitute, urban poverty. The volume explores how the spaces of the city actively produce and reproduce urban poverty.

According to the author, rather than alleviating poverty, microfinance financialises poverty. By indebting poor people in the Global South, it drives financial expansion and opens new lands of opportunity for the crisis-ridden global capital markets. This book raises fundamental concerns about this widely-celebrated tool for social development.

Celebrity advocacy is a curious phenomenon. It occupies a significant proportion of the public domain, but does so without engaging particularly well with much of the public. Yet this may not matter very much. Many people at the core of advocacy, and in political and business elites, simply do not notice any lack of engagement. In these circles celebrity advocacy can be remarkably effective.Celebrity Advocacy and International Development examines the work of celebrity advocacy and lobbying in international development. Its purpose is to understand the alliances resulting, their history, consequences, wider contexts and implications. It argues that celebrity advocacy signals a new aspect of elite rule. For populist celebrity advocacy can mark, ironically, a disengagement between the public and politics, and particularly the public and civil society. Recognising this poses new challenges, but also presents new opportunities, for the development movement.This book gives students and researchers in development studies and media studies a wealth of original empirical data, including interviews across the NGO sector, media and celebrity industries, newspaper analysis, large surveys of public opinion, and focus group research.

This book presents the latest evidence from Young Lives, a unique international study of children and poverty. It shows how the persistence of inequality amid general economic growth is leaving some extremely poor children behind, despite the promises of the Millennium Development Goals.

Is poverty inevitable? No, says author Paul Godfrey. More than Money shows how organizations can win the fight against poverty and create prosperity for people at the base of the pyramid in the developing and developed world. This book presents a novel framework that shows how five types of interrelated capital—institutional, human, social, organizational, and physical—enable development and sustainable growth. In addition to a widely-applicable model, Godfrey provides principles to guide application. Core chapters articulate each specific form of capital and provide examples of how it contributes to the triple bottom line. Not just a theoretical examination of poverty, More than Money delivers timely advice to organizations that produce goods and services, implement policies, and create meaningful change on the ground. This book will guide social innovators and entrepreneurs in business, government, and civil society settings as they create a vision, assemble a team of strong partners, and effectively measure social innovation.

The book is concerned with strategy and tactics for directing that small slice of world income into filling the gap. This must be done country by country, on the initiative of each country's government: with the maximum involvement of its own civil society, and with the rich world also making a contribution. To add momentum, the international community needs to adopt targets far more specific than the fifty percent extreme ‘poverty reduction'of the first Millennium Development Goal.

This book reviews the key conceptions and economic theories of poverty, explains poverty-environment nexus, and finally offers innovative socio-economic and scientific geospatial solutions for the 21st Century. The book makes it possible for our readers to understand poverty thorough a concise review of the major theoretical economic frameworks, measures of poverty, and points out the need to understand rural-urban dichotomy of poverty. We find the theories and measures to be less-than perfect and therefore point out the need to treat these measures and theories as convenient tools lacking perfect accuracy and utmost scientific reliability. It follows then that the supposedly knowledgeably crafted poverty reduction and environmental preservation solutions are inherently imperfect.The economic solutions proposed in this book transcend extant humdrum macroeconomic and policy measures targeting poverty and environmental issues. We point to a new paradigm in which private sector and other stakeholders can create new and inclusive markets where value is co-created and shared. Above all, this book offers timely state-of-the-art geospatial solutions targeting the most pressing global problems of water, e.g., the use of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) missions to estimate changes in stored water in the water-poverty-environment nexus, pollution, agriculture and disaster management, where geospatial techniques are appliedunder strong environmental impact assessment regulatory regimes. This book provides a good summary of economic theories of poverty as well as a vivid depiction of the state of environmental degradation in the world. People often work separately on different issues that are, in fact, closely intertwined. The principle of holism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I believe that this joint-venture of two experts on poverty and environment has produced something more than a sum of two separate monographs on the issues. Various points raised in this volume are worth heeding when we think of formulation and implementation of a truly effective post-MDGs development agenda.Yoichi Mine, Professor of Human Security and African Area Study, Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Japan

In his new book, Poverty and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty, renowned development economist Deepak Lal draws on 50 years of experience around the globe to describe developing-country realities and rectify misguided notions about economic progress. Unique among books that have emerged in recent years on world poverty, Poverty and Progress directly confronts intellectual fads of the West and dismantles a wide range of myths that have obscured an astounding achievement: the unprecedented spread of economic progress around the world that is eliminating the scourge of mass poverty.

Right now the number of people living on $2 a day or less is more than the entire population of the world in 1950. These 2.7 billion people are not just the world's greatest challenge—they represent an extraordinary market opportunity. By learning how to serve them ethically and effectively, businesses can earn handsome profits while helping to solve one of the world's most intractable problems. The key is what Paul Polak and Mal Warwick call Zero-Based Design: starting from scratch to create innovative products and services tailored for the very poor, armed with a thorough understanding of what they really want and need and driven by what they call “the ruthless pursuit of affordability.”Polak has been doing this work for years, and Warwick has extensive experience in both business and philanthropy. Together, they show how their design principles and vision can enable unapologetic capitalists to supply the very poor with clean drinking water, electricity, irrigation, housing, education, healthcare, and other necessities at a fraction of the usual cost and at profit margins attractive to investors. Promising governmental and philanthropic efforts to end poverty have not reached scale because they lack the incentives of the market to attract massive resources. This book opens an extraordinary opportunity for nimble entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives that will result not only in vibrant, growing businesses but also a better life for the world's poorest people.

This book analyzes the determinants of happiness for both the rich and the poor in the developing regions of Asia, Latin America and Africa. Explanatory variables include education, health and income as well as demographic and social variables. The book highlights the overwhelming importance of health in uplifting well-being in these regions.

This book examines the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. The empirical entry point for such inquiry is a series of research initiatives that have used mixed method, combined qualitative and quantitative, or Q-Squared ( Q²) approaches, to poverty analysis. The Q² literature highlights the vast range of analytical tools within the social sciences that may be used to understand and explain social phenomena, along with interesting research results. This literature serves as a lens to probe issues about knowledge claims made in poverty debates concerning who are the poor (identification analysis) and why they are poor (causal analysis). Implicitly or explicitly, questions are raised about the reasons for emphasising different dimensions of poverty and favouring different units of knowledge, the basis for distinguishing valid and invalid claims, the meaning of causation, and the nature of causal inference, and so forth. Q² provides an entry point to address foundational issues about assumptions underlying approaches to poverty, and applied issues about the strengths and limitations of different research methods and the ways they may be fruitfully combined. Together, the strands of this inquiry make a case for methodological pluralism on the grounds that knowledge is partial, empirical adjudication imperfect, social phenomena complex, and mixed methods add value for understanding and explanation. Ultimately, the goals of understanding and explanation are best served if research questions dictate the choice of methodological approach rather than the other way around.

The concept of security has often narrowly focused on issues surrounding the protection of national borders from outside threats. However, a richer idea of human security has become increasingly important in the past decade or so. The aim is to incorporate various dimensions of the downside risks affecting the generalized well-being or dignity of people. Despite this rising prominence, the discourses surrounding human security have neglected to address the topic of gender, particularly how issues of poverty and underdevelopment impact women's and men's experiences and strategies differently.Since its introduction in the 1994 UNDP Human Development report, the idea of human security has become increasingly influential among academics and international development practitioners. However, gendered dimensions of human security have not attracted enough attention, despite their vital importance. Women are disproportionately more vulnerable to disease and other forms of human insecurity due to differences in entitlement, empowerment and an array of other ecological and socio-economic factors. These gendered insecurities are inextricably linked to poverty, and as a result, the feminization of poverty is a growing phenomenon worldwide. The contributors to this volume rely on a gender-focused analysis to consider a number of issues central to human security and development in Africa, including food security, environmental health risks, discrimination within judicial and legal systems, gendered aspects of HIV/AIDS transmission and treatment technologies, neoliberalism and poverty alleviation strategies, and conflict and women's political activism.The gender focus of this volume points to the importance of power relationships and policy variability underlying human insecurities in the African context. The insights of this book offer the potential for an improved human security framework, one that embraces a more complex and context-specific analysis of the issues of risk and vulnerability, therefore expanding the capacities of the human security framework to safeguard the livelihoods of the most vulnerable populations.

Why law is critical to innovation and economic growthSustained growth depends on innovation, whether it's cutting-edge software from Silicon Valley, an improved assembly line in Sichuan, or a new export market for Swaziland's leather. Developing a new idea requires money, which poses a problem of trust. The innovator must trust the investor with his idea and the investor must trust the innovator with her money. Robert Cooter and Hans-Bernd Schäfer call this the'double trust dilemma of development.'Nowhere is this problem more acute than in poorer nations, where the failure to solve it results in stagnant economies.In Solomon's Knot, Cooter and Schäfer propose a legal theory of economic growth that details how effective property, contract, and business laws help to unite capital and ideas. They also demonstrate why ineffective private and business laws are the root cause of the poverty of nations in today's world. Without the legal institutions that allow innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive, other attempts to spur economic growth are destined to fail.

Description based on print version record.

Why does poverty persist? A critical, but so far ignored, part of the answer lies in the fact that poverty is regularly created. Large numbers of people are escaping poverty, but large numbers are concurrently falling into chronic poverty. This book presents the first large-scale examination of the reasons why people fall into poverty and how they escape it in diverse contexts. Drawing upon personal interviews with 35,000 households in different parts of India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and the United States, it takes you on an illustrative journey, filled with facts, analyses, and the life stories of people who fell into abject poverty and others who managed to escape their seemingly predetermined fates. Letting a farmhand's son or daughter remain a farmhand, even though she or he is potentially the next Einstein, is a tragedy that poor people witness time after time. Remedying this situation is crucial for making poverty history. This book addresses how equal opportunity can be promoted and how slum-born millionaires can arise in reality. Speaking to Barack Obama's message for more effective health care, One Illness Away feeds directly into current public debates. Learning from thousands of individual experiences, this book presents a clear agenda for action and provides more effective ways of keeping people out of micro poverty traps.

This fascinating book considers one of the most important problems in economics: the inception of modern economic development. There is at present no satisfactory explanation of the inception of modern economic development; an excessive focus on either pure theory or on unique histories limits the explanatory power. This book realises the need to integrate the two approaches, moving beyond the proximate causes of economic theory to review the role in an analytic narrative of significant ultimate causes - geography, risk environments, human capital, and institutions. Colin White distils the conclusions of a vast literature, drawing from economics, economic history and business and management, exploring economic theory, demonstrating limitations and highlighting alternative approaches. Particular attention is paid to the appropriate role of innovative entrepreneurs and of government, and three case studies illustrate how to build an analytic narrative. Showing how far we can generalise about the determinants of economic development and in particular how to understand the specific determinants in individual countries, this book will prove a stimulating and thought provoking read to academics, students and researchers with an interest in economics and economic development.

Conceptualization and measurement of poverty have traditionally relied on purely economic approaches, with income or consumption as the only indicator. Multidimensional approaches have increasingly been used to understand poverty, but have yet to be fully operationalized. This book uses factor analysis and structural equations modelling to develop a multidimensional framework that integrates capability and social inclusion as additional poverty indicators. The empirical relevance of this methodological contribution is demonstrated through its application in the United States and Nepal. The proposed approach not only helps to identify different categories of the poor, but also to more accurately target resources and policies of poverty alleviation. The book will therefore be an important reference for professionals in development agencies as well as for poverty and policy researchers.

This book examines the various channels and transmission mechanisms, such as greater openness to trade and foreign investment, economic growth, effects on income distribution, technology transfer and labour migration through which the process of globalization affects different dimensions of poverty in the developing world.

AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty combines the insights of economics and biology to explain the spread of HIV/AIDS and deliver a telling critique of AIDS policy. Drawing on a wealth of scientific evidence, Stillwaggon demonstrates that HIV/AIDS cannot be stopped without understanding the ecology of poverty. Her message is optimistic, with pragmatic solutions to the health problems that promote the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Understanding poverty and what to do about it, is perhaps the central concern of all of economics. Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about how poverty gets measured. The next section is about the causes of poverty and its persistence, and the ideas range from the impact of colonialism and globalization to the problems of'excessive'population growth, corruption and ethnic conflict. The next section is about policy: how should we fight poverty? The essays discuss how to get drug companies to produce more vaccines for the diseases of the poor, what we should and should not expect from micro-credit, what we should do about child labor, how to design welfare policies that work better and a host of other topics. The final section is about where the puzzles lie: what are the most important anomalies, the big gaps in the way economists think about poverty? The essays talk about the puzzling reluctance of Kenyan farmers to fertilizers, the enduring power of social relationships in economic transactions in developing countries and the need to understand where aspirations come from, and much else. Every essay is written with the aim of presenting the latest and the most sophisticated in economics without any recourse to jargon or technical language.

This collection of essays honors a remarkable man and his work. Erik Thorbecke has made significant contributions to the microeconomic and the macroeconomic analysis of poverty, inequality and development, ranging from theory to empirics and policy. The essays in this volume display the same range. As a collection they make the fundamental point that deep understanding of these phenomena requires both the micro and the macro perspectives together, utilizing the strengths of each but also the special insights that come when the two are linked together. After an overview section which contains the introductory chapter and a chapter examining the historical roots of Erik Thorbecke's motivations, the essays in this volume are grouped into four parts, each part identifying a major strand of Erik's work—Measurement of Poverty and Inequality, Micro Behavior and Market Failure, SAMs and CGEs, and Institutions and Development. The range of topics covered in the essays, written by leading authorities in their own areas, highlight the extraordinary depth and breadth of Erik Thorbecke's influence in research and policy on poverty, inequality and development. Acknowledgements These papers were presented at a conference in honor of Erik Thorbecke held at Cornell University on October 10-11, 2003. The conference was supported by the funds of the H. E. Babcock Chair in Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, and the T. H. Lee Chair in World Affairs at Cornell University.

Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.