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The dominant view in academic and policy arenas is increasingly one in which the major contribution of capture fisheries to development should be derived from the capacity of society to maximise the economic rent of fishery resources. Drawing upon empirical experience from the South, this article highlights the potentially disastrous consequences that a universal implementation of the rent-maximisation model would have in developing countries, and argues that a more gradual approach would be preferable. The welfare function of small-scale fisheries, namely, their capacities to provide labour and cash income to resource-poor households, should be preserved until the appropriate macroeconomic conditions for rent-maximisation and redistribution are fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thinking on economic policy for development has undergone many shifts in response to the perceived weak results of earlier adjustment reforms. A new donor consensus has emerged based around the central themes of economic growth, good governance and social development. This article examines the logic behind this new aid paradigm, revealing a nuanced story with country circumstances playing a critical role and particular interventions varying in impact. For example, growth does not always lead to gains for the poor that match the national average; public expenditure needs to be targeted to achieve social development, but effective targeting is difficult; governance reform may be critical but there is no simple governance blueprint, and the corruption-growth association need not always be negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamics of the income-distribution pattern in India during the post-1991 economic reforms. It considers district-level per-capita income data across agriculture, manufacturing, services, and various constituent sub-sectors, and finds evidence in favour of a uniform process of growth across sectors and regions, which has helped to reduce poverty. In particular, the article finds that growth in agricultural income and access to finance are important for this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a series of events in the global discourse on development and governance: the emergence of 'the poor' as a class of identifiable individuals rather than an abstract category; the preference for targeted development interventions; the organisation of beneficiaries into groups which are then used as sites for application of 'governmentality'; and the Millennium Development Goals, which have necessitated national and local poverty lines corresponding to the global poverty line. One implication is that those below the poverty line may constitute a particular type of citizens: more subject to attempts to reform their rationality and conduct, and less the autonomous individuals that are presupposed by liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyse in depth the interactions of growth and poverty in Syria, which undertook reforms to reduce the government's involvement in the economy. During the 1996-2004 period, growth was pro-poor in 'weak absolute' terms but not in either relative or 'strong absolute' terms, owing to the increase in inequality. This can be explained partly by tax policies, but also by an unequal distribution of investment at the regional level. There was also a widening of the gap between urban and rural areas, mainly owing to a pattern of growth in which oil played an increasing role and agriculture a decreasing one. Agricultural and land-policy reforms could have had a negative impact on poverty, despite their positive effect on productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the sake of less developed countries, it is time to adjust the discussion of international development assistance on poverty reduction. This article attempts to do so by reviewing new and old literature explaining why some countries are rich and others are poor. History has repeatedly shown that building up capabilities in manufacturing and improving the productivity of agriculture are the keys to wealth creation and long-term sustained poverty reduction. Furthermore, industrialisation and increased agricultural productivity are interdependent processes. Discussion about ending world poverty needs to be shifted back to consideration of economic transformation and the role foreign aid can reasonably play in achieving these objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaculture is equated with the reduction of poverty by intergovernmental agencies such as the FAO, which advocate the promotion of small-scale aquaculture through project-based interventions. There is a lack of convincing empirical evidence to support the efficacy of this type of intervention, however. Meanwhile, commercial cultured freshwater fish production has increased hugely throughout Asia, despite limited direct donor or government support. Its impact with respect to poverty also remains ambiguous, however. This article critically evaluates the developmental impacts of both immanent and interventionist forms of aquaculture and advances finely nuanced interpretations of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yemen is an oil-exporting and food-importing country with the highest levels of poverty in the Middle East and North Africa. The impacts of the triple crisis are likely to further complicate pre-existing conditions of conflict, oil depletion and governance failure. Using a dynamic CGE model, this article finds that oil-driven growth in 2008 dominated the negative growth impacts of the food crisis, but that growth was not pro-poor. The financial crisis of 2009 slowed growth sharply and raised the poverty rate to 42.8%, up from 34.8% in 2005/6. Poverty continues to be higher in rural areas, where almost half the population live in poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accountability movement in public policy hails a new programme for US foreign assistance - the Millennium Challenge Account established in 2004 with the aim of 'picking winners' for grants among developing countries based on their demonstrated quality of governance. This article uses the MCA's own rating system to dispute its claim to know in advance which countries are best positioned to meet major development goals. High governance scores alone bear little or no relationship to growth in national income or decline in poverty. Attempting to measure public-policy performance limits the range of choice available to policy-makers, and may inadvertently limit true performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a dialogue around a conceptualisation of development as involving three complementary processes: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping out’. These describe different types and scales of structural change in national and sub-national societies and economies, in different sectors within these economies, and in people's evolving livelihoods. The simplicity and strong theoretical, empirical and experiential content of this make it a powerful framework both for interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, multi-scale analysis of dynamic development processes, and for structuring dialogue about contested aspirations, assumptions, modalities and constraints among development analysts and stakeholders with different interests and paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within current poverty reduction programmes, focus on the social-welfare millennium development goals is widening to embrace a concern with infrastructural investment, particularly for remote areas. The previously popular assumption that rural disadvantage can be remedied by road-building is resurfacing. Using survey data from Ethiopia, Zambia and Vietnam, this article explores how effective such investment is in addressing mobility and social-service accessibility in rural areas. The findings indicate that, in extremely remote areas, road improvements may catalyse the expansion of social-service provision, as evidenced in Ethiopia. However, given the poor's relative lack of motor vehicles and ability to pay for public transport, they are, by no means, a sufficient condition for enhancing the mobility of the rural poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the possible links between economic growth, poverty and health, using panel data for the Indian states. The findings indicate that, though growth tends to reduce poverty, significant improvements in health status are also necessary for poverty to decrease. Also, economic growth and health status are positively correlated and have a two-way relationship, suggesting that better health enhances growth by improving productivity, and higher growth allows better human capital formation. Health expenditure is an important determinant of both higher growth and better health status, and is therefore a key tool available to policy-makers. Among other exogenous variables, literacy and industrialisation seem to improve both health outcomes and growth, and to reduce poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore factors underlying growth and poverty reduction in Africa while overcoming some of the limitations of cross-country analysis, this article uses micro-level survey and panel-data evidence from Uganda spanning 1992–2000. The high elasticity of both income growth and poverty reduction with respect to agricultural output (coffee) prices confirms the benefits from Uganda's decisive liberalisation of output markets. It also suggests the importance of product diversification to protect the poor against price shocks and the potential of cotton-market improvements in tackling persistent poverty in the North. The importance of improving access to basic education and health care emerges more clearly than in cross-country analysis, but benefits depend on complementary investments in electricity and other infrastructure, and reductions in civil strife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being a relatively modest document that commits the government to little that is new, the PRSP is quite a significant innovation in the context of Tanzania. The PRSP approach has brought poverty reduction policy into line with the fiscal framework, promoted a more participatory approach to public policy–making and helped the government to adopt a policy of eliminating primary school fees. However, this article argues, the difference that this makes can be overstated. Much depends on the completion of complementary reforms in the management of the public services and local government. Expectations about the PRSP process therefore need to be carefully managed, keeping firmly in mind that commitment to poverty reduction is a political and not a technocratic issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a number of policy challenges and dilemmas arising from the pattern of growth and poverty reduction in Asia, central to which is the fact that growth and poverty reduction have been more rapid in Asia than in any other region in the last decade, and yet Asia still contains the majority of the world's poor. The article examines the record of achievement, possible future trends including emerging patterns of inequality, and likely future priorities for poverty-reduction policies. It assesses the role of official development assistance and suggests how it may evolve in future, in part linked with responses to a number of challenges shared between Asian and OECD countries, including energy supply, environmental issues including climate change, and financial stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent of poverty reduction in Asia by 2015 will depend upon two linked issues: sustaining the current rates of economic growth and avoiding increases in income inequality. Rapid growth over the past 15 years has itself created three challenges for its continuation: inadequate infrastructure; energy shortages and insecurity; and depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation. The ways in which these problems are addressed will have impacts not only on growth but also on inequality, requiring policy interventions at multiple levels, having implications for governance at multiple levels, and involving the development of new partnerships within the region and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This overview introduces the articles in this theme issue of DPR. Their focus is on how growth can be sustained in the face of a number of challenges, and how it can be made more poverty-reducing. The context against which these issues are examined is dynamic, with rapid change in rural-urban balance, shifts in patterns of regional and global trade and questions about whether existing modes of energy use and environmental management are sustainable. Whether and how new partnerships can be forged - including partnerships between Asian countries and donors - and how they might accelerate poverty reduction in this changing context is a central concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth alone does not guarantee sustained poverty reduction, and it may also create threats to social cohesion that in turn can undermine growth. While development thinking remains dominated by a ‘growth-first’ paradigm, Asian experience helps to moderate this view, illustrating the important role of government policy in creating pro-poor growth, providing public goods and social protection mechanisms, and creating the institutional conditions for more inclusive and equitable development. This article examines the structural transformations which accompany growth, and their implications for appropriate policies to progress towards the MDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fashion for pro-poor growth, there remains no consensus as to its meaning. This article proposes three possible definitions, and examines the pattern of growth over time and in different world regions. The growth of the poor's income can be broken down into a growth effect and a distribution effect. In 143 growth episodes, it is found that the growth effect dominates. However, in over a quarter of cases changes in distribution played a stronger role than overall growth in increasing income for the poor. Econometric analysis of growth regressions for each population quintile supports the idea that openness benefits everyone, but indicates a robust perverse relationship with governance. There is also evidence of a trade-off between growth and distribution, suggesting that attention to distribution will be better for the poor than going for growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]