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Indians, of late, have risen to the challenge of healthcare and increased their efforts to provide healthcare facilities to their underprivileged compatriots. This is primarily being done through NGOs and other organizations many of which are funded by the Government. One of the most popular ways to do so have been establishment of health centres which provide the poor with free of cost health services. As we know, instances of malpractice and negligence, unfortunately, have penetrated into every known field and medical field is no exception to this. The usual legal cases of medical negligence are usually covered under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 but not the cases of negligence and malpractice in the above mentioned health camps because the poor beneficiaries don’t qualify as “consumers” since they haven’t paid any sort of consideration for the services they availed. This research paper seeks to bring to light the role of NGOs and social activists as primary and secondary health care providers in India, unearth their underlying issues but at the same time, lends a special eye to the instances of medical negligence in their camps. The paper in its quest to do so, tries to answer few questions like whether those poor people have any remedy and if yes, then how can they avail it? And whether there is need for procedural guidelines and policy considerations to safeguard the rights of poor and save them from the vicious legal cycle of this country?

The study was started since January, 2020 while it completed in March 2020. The major objective was that to make book from the five approved studies of SSRN. Book was arranged and all five approved papers of the SSRN were converted into book. Corona Virus was first appeared in City Wuhan on 30 December 2020, while on 20th January it was announced by China Government. The China government sealed the Wuhan City and also made in two three days hospital while controlled the situation in two months and the number of killed person was 5000. WHO secretary also came to China and meet with Jping and discussed the issue with him for corona solution. UNO help the China and WHO worked day and night for solution of this problem. China is the super power and they have business in the whole world. So locked down was imposed by china government in city Wuhan. The other countries people who were in Wuhan when heard this news fled away from China. So the corona virus spread into the whole world. Majority people were died in different countries of the world. The number was more than the total death of the china. Total 2 lac people were affected by this virus in the world and 10 thousand people were died in the beginning but in the start China was followed by Korea similarly Korea was followed by Iran, America and Spain. Later on Pakistan was also affected by this virus and 182 countries were affected one by one except Antarctica. In world all countries schools, college, Universities were closed and lock down were abruptly started where the casualty of the virus attack number was more. The main reason was the quarantine application. No country tightly applied the principle of quarantine in their countries in the start. Still this panic has not been ended and world economy is on the decline. Majority goods supply and stock exchange percentage were decreased and the prices of the goods were increased.The oil prices were decline due to nill import by China. So the great hustle was started in the world. Business activities of the all world were closed. Panic was spread in the world. Majority old people by corona was affected and died. No one has solution how to solve the problems. Scientists of the world were tried for Vaccines discovery while still no vaccine was identified for the solution of corona virus. Corona has locked down the whole world. No aircraft was allowed from one country to another country. The world was in the terror. Social distances by people were applied for the purpose of control while sanitizers were used for the purpose of corona killing. Soap was used for the removal of corona virus. Chloqueen, Panadal, Vitamin-C and lemon juices were applied for the treatment purpose of corona virus. Multiple centered were arranged for the sick people in the world. Poor people were supported by UNO in the world. Different theories were presented for the control of corona virus. Some scientists told that warm temperature and warm season play great role in corona virus control and they claimed that till July and June, this epidemic will be ended. On the basis of problems the study recommends the following suggestion for the control of Corona Virus in the world: Awareness play great role in virus controlling; Social distance is required for control of corona virus in the world; Sanitizer and wash hands with soap play vital role in virus reduction; Stay at home was the appreciated methodology for reduction of virus in the world; Pregnant women precaution were necessary for the safety of new baby born; Mask wearing was necessary for stopping transmission of corona virus in the world; Other medicine Kit was required in the home during stay; Room should be kept warm for affected people in the world; Use mostly panadal and lemon juice for immunity development in the world; Unity in the world is necessary for controlling of Corona virus because if one country control but in the other is not then it is impossible to control in the whole world. So unity in world is required for control of corona virus.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial inclusion and the business cycle. Design/methodology/approach Regression methodology is used to analyze the association between financial inclusion and the business cycle. Findings Using regression estimation, the findings reveal that the level of savings and the number of active formal account ownership are pro-cyclical with fluctuations in the business cycle. Also, savings by adults particularly for women and poor people declines during recessionary periods while the number of active formal account ownership declines for the adult population especially for women during recessionary periods. The findings also reveal that not all indicators of financial inclusion are pro-cyclical with fluctuating business cycles. Practical implications The implication of this observed pro-cyclical effect is that individuals and households will exit the formal financial sector during a recession, as banks become unwilling to lend money to individuals and households during bad times and this will lead to financial exclusion and vice versa. Policymakers seeking to increase the level of financial inclusion in their countries should focus on the timing of financial inclusion policies along the business cycle as the findings suggest that it might be more difficult to achieve financial inclusion objectives during recessions or periods of economic downturns. Originality/value The current debate on financial inclusion pays little attention to whether financial inclusion is pro-cyclical with the fluctuating business cycle. This study explores the association between financial inclusion and the business cycle.

This paper examined the concept of access to Justice and what it entails for marginalized groups. It discussed some of the cardinal principles involved in ensuring access to Justice within a society. Crucially, it highlights the challenges that international human rights organization face in supporting countries to improve access to justice for marginalized groups within their jurisdictions. More importantly, the paper identifies some of the less obvious ways through which access to Justice can be improved for poor people in many societies.

As the staggering costs of the criminal justice system continue to rise, many states have begun to look for non traditional ways to pay for criminal prosecutions and to shift these costs onto criminal defendants. Many states now impose a surcharge on defendants who exercise their constitutional rights to counsel, confrontation, and trial by jury. As these “user fees” proliferate, they have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of criminal prosecutions and the way we think of constitutional rights. The shift from government funding of criminal litigation to user funding constitutes a privatization of criminal procedure. This intrusion of market ideology into the world of fundamental constitutional rights has at least two broad problems: it exacerbates structural unfairness in a system that already disadvantages poor people, and it degrades how we conceive of those rights. This Article proposes solutions to ameliorate the harshest effects of these rights-based user fees but also argues for the importance of resisting the trend of the privatization of constitutional trial rights.

The topic of redistribution between rich and poor countries opens a can of worms. This paper first inquires into what we mean by some of these words and second, considers the role of taxation in redistribution. It briefly considers the various modes of redistribution to address poverty and inequality, including the role of taxation, within a country before turning to consider modes of redistribution between rich and poor countries. The paper then turns to consider whether we are asking the right question. Should the question, really, be about redistribution between rich and poor people? In an increasingly global and digital era, how might we reconsider the role of taxation in achieving this? The paper briefly touches on state-based and cosmopolitan theories of international distributive justice, before considering whether we need to unpack the very concept of the country, nation-state, or government to achieve the transnational provision of public goods and redistribution between rich and poor.

الملخص: تحاول هذه الدراسة تبيان دور الزكاة كآلية لتوفير حد الكفاية، ودورها في التقليل من حجم الفقر والفقراء، وتحليل أثر الزكاة على عملية إعادة توزيع الثروة وذلك من خلال حساب معامل جيني قبل وبعد الزكاة ورسم منحنى لورنز أيضا قبل وبعد الزكاة في المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية كدراسة حالة. إنطلق البحث من فرضيتين رئيسيتين هما: إمكانية أن تكون الزكاة آلية ناجحة في توفير حد الكفاية. وأن للزكاة أثر في إعادة توزيع الدخل بين فئات المجتمع. وقد توصلت الدراسة الى مجموعة من النتائج أهمها أن هناك إختلاف واضح بين حدي الكفاف والكفاية، كما أن للزكاة دور كبير في عملية إعادة توزيع الثروة وتقليل الفجوة بين الأغنياء والفقراء وتعمل على تحجيم الفقر الى أدنى مستوياته، كما بينت الدراسة أنه في حال تطبيق الزكاة فإن معامل جيني سينخفض من (0.3945) الى (0.3681 ) بعد تطبيقها، مما أثر في الإقتراب من عدالة التوزيع بنسبة 2.64% وهذا ما يؤكد إثبات فرضيات البحث. الكلمات المفتاحية: الزكاة، حد الكفاية، إعادة توزيع الدخل English Abstract: This study attempts to show the role of Zakat as a mechanism to provide sufficiency limit, its role in reducing the size of poverty and the poor people. To analyze the effect of Zakat on the redistribution of wealth authors used Gini coefficient before and after Zakat as a proof to that. The research starts from two main hypotheses: the possibility of Zakat as a successful mechanism in providing sufficient limit. Secondly, Zakat can affect the redistribution of income among the society. The study has reached a number of results, the most important of which is that there is a clear difference between the limits of subsistence and sufficiency. Zakat also plays a major role in redistributing wealth and reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. It also helps to reduce poverty to its lowest levels. Application of Zakat will decrease Gini coefficient from (0.3945) before applying Zakat to (0.3681) after its application, which affected the approach of distribution justice by (0.0264) or 2.64%, which confirms the proof of the hypothesis of research.

In this paper, we use two samples of Latin American MFIs (41 MFIs from 2005-2014 and 102 MFIs from 2010-2014) to show that there is no relation between the percentage of female borrowers in an MFI portfolio and MFI economic outcomes. We verified the return on equity for companies focused on women tend to be smaller. Whilst the cost per borrower is smaller, this is not related to the loan portfolio size. When focusing on the portfolio-at-risk and gender the relation is not found when using a dynamic panel to account for serial autocorrelation, not accepting the hypothesis that women repay better than men. Thus, this paper suggests that MFIs lend more towards women for reasons that are beyond just “economical,” such as empowering women and help poor people, otherwise unable to access credit lines, get loans.

Currently aitys, the art of Kazakh nation, is recognized at the international level. Kazakh poets could convey their opinions through aitys. This article presents an overview of aitys peculiarities in the Kazakh literature. The author emphasizes the role of Zhambyl as an unique personality and his great impact on the development of aitys as a folk genre. The author gives some analyses of Zhambul’s compositions which criticise feudalism, and attitudes of rich to poor people. The review of literary historians on the individuality of Zhambyl and his role in Kazakh literature were considered in the article.

Social roles help define acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They tell persons occupying the role what is expected, and they tell those who encounter such persons what to expect. Roles are sometimes used to deflect moral criticism. When that happens, role proponents assert strong conceptions of a role, in which persons acting within the bounds of the role are supposed to be immune to moral criticism. Their morality inheres in fidelity to the role. Such thick constructions have no valence, however. If criminal defense lawyers may work to free factually guilty clients without moral condemnation there is no logical reason why lawyers helping landlords evict poor people could be subject to moral condemnation. The cases might be distinguished on political grounds, but the strong conception of the lawyer's role is supposed to trump such grounds. This strong conception of roles may lead to moral criticism being reframed as professional criticism. Lawyers advising government officials on interrogation techniques may be criticized as bad lawyers, for example, and thus as not entitled to the moral cover of the role. Such moves try to reconcile thick conceptions of various lawyer roles with the social harms acts within such roles can cause. In separate work I will argue that this attempt at reconciliation cannot succeed.This paper uses Bleak House to illustrate a different conception of lawyers' roles. In this "thin" conception, the various roles lawyers play are permeable. Persons working within the role are meant to feel the social effects of their acts, and are rightly praised or condemned for those effects. On this view, "thick" conceptions of roles leads to a blinkered social view, and a form of professional indifference if not blindness. The thick conception of lawyers' roles impedes the sentiment of common decency which Dickens hope would serve as a defense against abuses of power.

This essay finds shortcomings in some New York court rules. 1. A court rule which permits temporary retirement by New York lawyers who are New York judges and justices, and who are United States justices and judges, but prohibits temporary retirement by rank-and-file New York lawyers. 2. A court rule which limits artificially the legal work permitted to permanently-retired New York lawyers. 3. A court rule which requires excessive disclosures by New York lawyers on biennial-registration forms. 4. A court rule which sets a restrictive pro-bono-work requirement for admission to the New York Bar. 5. A court rule which exhorts New York lawyers to donate time and money for the benefit of poor people. 6. A court rule which impermissibly collects social-security numbers from New York lawyers.See also "New York Judicial Compensation: 2015," available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2591311

The purpose of this paper is to identify those broad behaviors and mental ideas that commonly underpin poor people's money management practices. A metaphorical image is associated with each of these behaviors and mental ideas in order to make them come to life more strongly. The aspiration is to depict them in a way that poor people themselves could understand and relate to.

We observe the usage of the flexible savings-and-loan accounts offered by SafeSave, a microfinance institution serving poor slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We find that 59% of the clients borrow at high interest rates and simultaneously hold low-yield liquid savings. Our main finding is that this apparent behavioural anomaly cannot be attributed to liquidity needs. In contrast, we show that co-holders are more likely to be workers subject to low-income risk. An alternative explanation is that co-holders take up costly loans they do not need to escape forced solidarity vis-a-vis family members and friends.

Dickens’ Great Expectations and Bronte's Wuthering Heights share similar concerns at the thematic level. Both novels are critiques of the Victorian society since they show the differences between the upper and lower classes of the 19th century in England. Poor people are depicted as good characters while the rich are demonstrated as evil characters who find pleasure in manipulating and tormenting others. Poor Characters strive to be rich to achieve high social status, happiness and love. Once they become rich, they got plagued by the evil of materialism and thus become a replica of the upper- class characters who happened to inflict pain on them. In their turn, they become fake, snobbish, corrupt and revengeful. Through this recurrent vicious circle, in Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights, Dickens and Bronte emphasize the idea that no amount of money is enough to buy true happiness and true love. On the contrary, money is continuously trapping its owners throughout the novels.

We advance a model of consumption, retirement, and asset allocation in an incomplete market in which an individual is subject to risk of involuntary permanent unemployment that reduces her income severely, and has borrowing constraints. We show that the interactions among consumption and portfolio choice can induce early retirement even when forced unemployment risks and borrowing constraints are considered jointly. We demonstrate that providing private unemployment insurance in an incomplete market is bene cial to poor people and for people with a low post-retirement leisure preference, and that the insurance can be privately priced and be sold by private insurance providers.

From the MDGs to the post-2015 development agenda, poverty eradication is arguably the single most important development goal. This paper asks how information and communication technologies can contribute to that goal. ICTs ? mobile phones especially ? have diffused rapidly in developing countries in recent years, and now reach increasingly into the lives of the world's poor.Research assessing the poverty impacts of that diffusion has been relatively limited; in part because this change has been so recent. Research has also sometimes been constrained by its lack of conceptual foundation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to assess research evidence within a framework that conceptualises both poverty eradication and ICT application.It does this by identifying three categories of ICT application ? other ICT uses, enterprise ICT use, and ICT sector use. And by identifying three perspectives on poverty eradication ? economic, livelihoods, and capabilities. It suggests that moving across the categories of application may lead to deeper poverty impacts; but impacts which affect a smaller number of people. And that moving across the perspectives may provide a fuller understanding of poverty; particularly in developing the capabilities approach to understand the ladder of ?roles? through which poor people can engage with ICTs.The paper ends by suggesting some implications for policy and practice.

Over the past 15 years, Cambodia has made significant strides in expanding effective access to free healthcare for poor people, thanks largely to ‘Health Equity Funds’ (HEFs), a multi-stakeholder health-financing mechanism. HEF operators have helped expand access, incentivise health staff, and lobby on behalf of poor patients. However, despite their successes, they have been unable convincingly to address some of the deeper-seated problems of the Cambodian health system, such as under-resourced facilities, underpaid, poorly qualified staff, and a burgeoning private sector. This paper explains this state of affairs as a product of Cambodia’s ‘political settlement’, in which relatively successful multi-stakeholder initiatives exist as ‘islands of effectiveness’ in a sea of rent-seeking and patronage. While such islands may currently be the best solution available for poor people, the deeper problems are unlikely to be solved without a shift in the political settlement itself.

This working paper presents the normative, empirical, and policy motivations for focusing on multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis in general, and one measurement approach in particular. The fundamental normative motivation is to create effective measures that better reflect poor people’s experience, so that policies using such measures reduce poverty. Such measures are needed because, empirically, income-poor households are (surprisingly) not well-matched to households carrying other basic deprivations like malnutrition; also the trends of income and non-income deprivations are not matched, and nor does growth ensure the reduction of social deprivations. And, a dashboard overlooks the interconnection between deprivations, which people experience and policies seek to address. Turning to policy, we close by discussing how the Alkire-Foster methodology we present in Working Paper 86 (“Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis: Chapter 5 – The Alkire-Foster Counting Methology”) may be used.

Russian Abstract: Разработаны теоретико-методологические основы комплексного исследования мировых и национальных процессов обеспечения продовольственной безопасности (ПБ). Разработан методический инструментарий и создана информационная база исследований ПБ. Проведен ситуационный анализа тенденций, достижений, а также рисков и угроз в области продовольственного обеспечения России и других стран ЕврАзЭС. Представлены и проанализированы материалы по регулированию и поддержке продовольственной безопасности в США и Бразилии, что представляет интерес для России. Проведены расчеты с использованием модели AGLINK-COSIMO, отражающие возможные последствия для сельского хозяйства России от вступления в ВТО. Кроме того, даны прогнозы по возможному росту сельского хозяйства России к 2030 г.; представлен анализ развития отдельных продуктовых рынков.English Abstract: The theoretical and methodological background of integrated research for supporting food security is worked out. The systematical toolset and the informational dataset of other research works regarding the topic of food security are developed. The situation analysis of tendencies, achievements, risks and threats in food security of Russia and other EurAsEC countries is carried out. The research contains analysis of USA and Brazil experience of helping food insecure and poor people, which can be helpful for Russian policy. The authors present their results regarding the consequences of Russia’s joining the WTO using AGLINK-COSIMO model. The projections for the possible growth of several food markets of Russia until 2030 are given.

Russian Abstract: Предметом исследования в данной работе являлись особенности социальной поддержки малообеспеченных граждан в Российской Федерации. Цель исследования — оценка эффективности социальной поддержки малоимущих в России и выработка предложений по ее совершенствованию.Представленные в работе выводы и рекомендации, могут быть использованы федеральными и региональными органами исполнительной власти в области социальной защиты населения в процессе совершенствования системы социальной поддержки малоимущих граждан и малоимущих семей в Российской Федерации в целях усиления эффективности и результативности предоставления социальной помощи наиболее нуждающимся.English Abstract: This paper focuses on social support to low-income citizens in the Russian Federation. The purpose of research - assessment of the effectiveness of social safety net in Russia and the development of proposals for its improvement. Presented in the conclusions and recommendations can be used by federal and regional executive authorities in the field of social protection in the process of improving the system of social support for poor people and poor families in the Russian Federation in order to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of social assistance to the most needy.

Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, further rises in income are not associated with further increases in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly log-linear and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

After a decade of rapid growth in average incomes many countries have attained middle-income country (MIC) status. At the same time the total number of poor people hasn’t fallen as much as one might expect and as a result most of the world’s poor now live in MICs. In fact there are up to a billion poor people or a ‘new bottom billion’ living not in the world’s poorest countries but in MICs. Not only has the global distribution of poverty shifted to MICs so has the global disease burden. This paper examines the implications of this ‘new bottom billion’ for global health efforts and recommends a tailored middle-income strategy for the Global Fund and GAVI. The paper describes trends in the global distribution of poverty preventable infectious diseases and health aid response to date; revisits the rationale for health aid through agencies like GAVI and the Global Fund; and proposes a new MIC strategy and components concluding with recommendations.

Entrepreneurship is the process of initiating a business venture, organizing the necessary resources, and assuming the associated risks and rewards and the entrepreneur someone who recognizes a viable idea for a business product or service and carries it out... Small and medium sized enterprises (SME) independently owned and are usually not dominant in their field. In some countries, (SME) are considered to have less than 200 workers.They have many advantages: innovative,flexibility, effective in customer services, effective in owner-worker relations, covering the isolated market niches, facing low cost and easy to form. But the disadvantages of SME are inadequate management skills or capacities, limited financing, limited growth and weakness in competition with large enterprises. To improve the welfare of poor people in local communities, create more self-employed jobs and achieve economic development in the society, a entrepreneurship and micro projects investments or small businesses should be encouraged, supported, and adapted by the official institutions or non-official institutions. To support this idea a training manual of how to prepare investment project and the elements of investment valuation has been developed.

There are historical and institutional reasons behind Indian poverty but it is not acceptable if poverty persist in India in years to come when high GDP growth rate continues. 'Model India' is a poverty alleviation strategy designed for Indian economy to gradually bring its one billon poor people under a common framework. In this way, Indian economy may overcome its biggest obstacle to achieve double-digit homogenous growth. This proposal describes making business opportunities involving poor people as well as help Indian government set up pro-poor economic policies and infrastructures. Once the change starts for a target group and replicated across India, it will bring change for all others in the country. This framework is to be implemented across Indian economy and may be extended across the world to solve poverty problems.

Some services directly produce outputs that are important for human development, such as basic human services. Many other services are important inputs into the production and distribution of goods that are necessary for human development purposes. A more efficient services sector should mean that such goods and services can be made available to poor people more cost effectively and more broadly. In line with this reasoning, we find in the data that less restrictive services trade policies are associated with better human development outcomes across a range of sectors. Appropriate services trade liberalization can therefore promote human development directly through improved outcomes, in addition to indirectly effects through the income channel.

In 2010, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in collaboration with the United National Development Programme (UNDP) introduced a new multidimensional measure of acute poverty for developing countries, referred to as the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Alkire and Santos, 2010). A number of updates and innovative analyses have been introduced in 2011 as explained in Alkire et al. (2011). This paper focuses on the new analyses of sub-national decompositions and changes over time. It analyses the incidence, intensity and composition of multidimensional poverty at sub-national levels for 66 developing countries, and presents poverty estimates for 683 sub-national regions which cover 1.4 billion of the 1.65 billion MPI poor people identified by the MPI in 2011. The results show wide within-country disparities in poverty levels across geographical regions and across low-income and lower-middle-income countries. It confirms previous research which shows that even though the incidence of poverty in low-income countries is much higher, a larger number of poor people live in middle-income countries. In addition, it shows that the poorest sub-national regions of middle-income countries are no less poor than the low-income countries as a whole. In fact, there are also a larger number of severely poor people in middle-income countries than in low-income countries. The paper then further investigates the composition of poverty by analysing which indicators are major contributors to the MPI in each sub-national region. It identifies eleven “poverty profiles” across regions and finds striking examples of regions that have similar compositions but different MPI levels as well as regions with different compositions and similar MPI levels. Finally, the paper analyses changes over time for ten countries and their 158 sub-national regions for which we have comparable data across two different periods of time, providing information regarding the reduction of each indicator within each region. While poverty went down in all countries, the ten countries differ in terms of the rate, spatial patterns, relative reduction of incidence or intensity, and the indicators in which poverty was reduced.

Microfinance as the best way of tackling poverty is under attack. It has been accused of failing to help the poor, of treating its clients badly, of charging high interest rates and of encouraging poor people to take on excessive debt burdens. The authors examine these issues, and find that microfinance institutions (MFIs) can have significant positive impacts, including democratization of banking services, provision of secure savings facilities for poor people, and social benefits, particularly for women. The paper looks at the way forward for microfinance, suggesting some changes that need to be implemented by MFIs, banking authorities and governments.

In this era of global recession and collapsing banking institutions, no one has given any thought for the poorest of the society. Micro-finance has emerged as a very important sector which gives economic freedom to the poor people. Micro-credit fulfills the credit requirements of under-privileged, who until recent times were not a part of formal banking system; however, micro-credit is not the ultimate solution to improve the well-being of poor people. Nowadays, micro-finance institution focus only on credit facilities which eventually results as debt for poor people and the rate of interest is also quite high. Indian Micro-finance Institutions (MFIs) must answer the questions of why do they focus more on micro-credit rather than giving little more emphasis towards micro-savings and what are the barriers that are preventing micro-savings to emerge as a leading concept in micro-finance? Here in this paper the probable causes for the difficulties are being analyzed and probable counter methods are being formulated. There has been an attempt to predict on the impressive prospect of micro-capital development through micro-savings, leading to an enhanced liquidity in the micro-credit market, which results in mutual benefit for the poor as well as MFIs.

The preferential market access given by the United States to most developing countries through the Generalized System of Preferences yields real benefits for the covered countries and for U.S. consumers and firms importing the goods. Americans save hundreds of millions of dollars a year from duty-free imports, and many poor people abroad have benefited from preferential access to a rich market.Against these benefits, Congress must consider the significant costs of unilateral preference programs — to the preference recipients themselves, to excluded developing countries, and to the world trading system in general — when the program expires at the end of this year.Product exclusions, import limits that are triggered just when an exporter becomes successful, outdated eligibility criteria, and complex administrative and customs requirements all serve to limit the usefulness of the program to the ostensible beneficiaries and to U.S. consumers. Trade preferences distort markets and discourage unilateral and multilateral trade liberalization: when beneficiary countries concentrate their efforts in preserving their preferential access rather than becoming competitive, it undermines efforts for multilateral trade liberalization and keeps them beholden to artificial arrangements and the whims of rich-country politicians.The United States should not abandon its efforts to bring down global trade barriers through multilateral trade talks. In the meantime, however, unilateral reform is within reach. The expiration of the GSP at the end of 2010 provides a timely opportunity for the United States to correct the most egregious of the GSP's limitations and to move toward opening the U.S. market on a permanent and nondiscriminatory basis. That is surely the best way to encourage a more open, free, and prosperous global economy.

We study the role of fairness concerns in the demand for redistribution through workfare. In the first part of the paper, we present new evidence from a survey experiment. We show that individuals are more generous towards poor people whom they perceive to be diligent workers relative to poor people whom they perceive to be non-diligent, a social preference that we label sympathy for the diligent. This preference is much stronger than preferences regarding other characteristics of the poor, such as race, nationality, and disability. More important, we show that subjects with higher sympathy for the diligent have a stronger preference for workfare programs. In the second part of the paper, we incorporate our empirical findings into a model of income redistribution. We consider the case of a benevolent government with fairness concerns that prioritizes the well-being of individuals who exert the most effort. We characterize the optimal conditions under which the government introduces work requirements. Even if wasteful, work requirements can be optimal, because they allow for a better distinction between individuals who exert great effort and individuals who do not. However, if the government lacks commitment power, the availability of screening through work requirements leads to a lower equilibrium effort and, possibly, a Pareto-dominated allocation.

Micro-finance has emerged as a very important sector which gives economic freedom to the poor people. Micro-credit fulfils the credit requirements of under-privileged, who until recent times were not a part of formal banking system however; micro credit is not the ultimate solution to improve the well-being of poor people. Research proves that most of the Indian micro finance institutions (MFIs) only focus on micro-credit rather than giving a significant to other products. Now one organisation that really focus for the overall development for poor people known as - Kudumbashree. Kudumbashree, which means prosperity of the family, is well known government of Kerala project which focus for the overall the development of the poorest of the poor. This paper deals with empirical study of Kerala Kudumbashree project.

Government intervention providing infrastructure or controlling urban development irregularly across different areas of the city can distort land prices reinforcing or inducing mechanisms of spatial exclusion. This paper presents estimates of the effects on land prices of state-provided infrastructure, property titles, and controls on urban development. The results show that infrastructure and planning controls impose the highest effects on residential land prices, overwhelming the effects of other variables such as titles or plot size. Nonetheless, improvements on the access of poor people to the formal city through regularization policies can play an important role in balancing land prices overall city.

This study measures the relative role of poverty and scholastic ability on education attainment in developing countries, where a substantial portion of the population still live in poverty and poor people are markedly credit constrained. Different from most studies in developing countries, this paper uses a multiple wave and long-spanning panel dataset that follows a cohort of children beginning from primary school until they are well over schooling age. We find that poverty has a statistically significant and negative effect on junior secondary attainment, while it has a negligible effect on senior secondary completion. In contrast, scholastic ability plays no role in ensuring junior secondary completion but is crucial in increasing a child’s chance to graduate from senior secondary school. In addition, we find that high and low ability poor children have a similarly low chance of finishing junior secondary school. Based on our findings, we formulate several policy recommendations to increase education attainment.

Why do so many poor people maintain identical small businesses? A model of choice among microenterprise types as a bandit problem with present bias argues that naive present bias can prevent experimentation with profitable novel business possibilities. Time consistency and sophistication are each sufficient to eliminate this trap. Survey data on residents of slums around Hyderabad, India confirms that distinct indicators of present bias and of sophistication are associated with microenterprise type. Literate respondents who treat their water before drinking it, who report wanting to cut any category of spending, or who report wanting to cut spending on intoxicants are more likely to have an uncommon, rather than a common, business. These relationships are robust to a range of respecifications and controls, including for alternative explanations. This 'behavioral' aspect of microbusiness decision making may suggest caution about the universality of micro-entrepreneurial ability.

As the global financial crisis begins to strike developing countries, the evidence in this report is that the food and fuel crises are by no means over. Research conducted in February 2009 in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya and Zambia finds that food prices have not come down everywhere, nor by enough. It finds that global crises are compounded locally by adverse climate conditions and difficult political transitions in a number of locations, contributing to uncertainty around agricultural production and local economic decline. Compound, complex crises are interacting with each other, making it difficult to disentangle their impacts on people’s lives.

The study of this research work is based on primary and secondary data. Microcredit plays a positive role in India on the development of poor people. The development of microenterprises is found to be the best option in creating several opportunities for those poor people who are fighting for sustaining their livelihoods. In this regard the bank linkage microcredit though played a good role but its impact from the sustainability point of view does not look sound as this study says. In India, a region like North Eastern and a state like Meghalaya, though the programme has been started very late but the programme has made a good stride over the last decade. People are realising the efficacy of the programme. But how much it is sustainable is the question of impact of bank linkage microcredit on the growth and development of microenterprises in the state. The finding says that the development of economic activities is perhaps at a minimum level and this is a noticeable handicap which needs to be attended seriously. The development encounters with some shortcomings to the enterprises with regard to their sustainability.

This paper looks at the establishment and evolution of the iconic Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It traces the development of the Bank from its origins, providing microcredit to poor, rural women in Bangladesh, through a period of national expansion and institutionalisation, to the replication around the world of the Grameen model. In the late 1990s the Bank faced repayment problems and a developing financial crisis, and strategies were put in place to stabilise and reshape the Bank. This led in 2001 to the launch of Grameen II, which is analysed in terms of its main components and its results. Finally, the paper looks at Grameen Bank's future role as a major player in the microfinance market, and as an inspiration for those helping poor people improve their own lives.

Several studies report large and persistent differences in standards of living and poverty within a country. In this paper, we study whether the observed differences in poverty incidence in urban areas are due to differences in the attributes of the population that lives in these zones or comes from differences in the value of these attributes in the different areas. To this purpose, we apply decomposition analysis. We illustrate the methodology comparing urban areas in 13 Chilean regions in the year 2003. We found that even after controlling for an ample set of household characteristics, differences in the parameters are an important determinant of household income and poverty within a country.

We try to explain why economic conflicts and illegal business often take place in poor countries. We use the concept of subsistence level of consumption (d) and assume a regular concave utility function for consumption levels higher than d. For consumption levels lower than d utility is constant and equal to zero. Under this framework poor agents are risk-lovers. This result helps to explain why economic conflicts are more likely to appear in poor economies and why poor agents are more willing to undertake illegal business.

This background paper for the Chronic Poverty Report 2007-08 addresses three key questions: 1) Where there is sustained economic growth, how can governments ensure that markets operate in ways that include the chronically poor on beneficial terms? 2) Where there is low or no growth, how can the economy and market institutions be successfully stimulated and how can this be done in ways that enable rather than inhibit the participation of chronically poor people at good rates of return? 3) What can governments do to prevent economic stagnation and state fragility from occurring in the first place?

Poor people - at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) - represent a very attractive market opportunity. The "BOP proposition" argues that selling to the poor can simultaneously be profitable and help eradicate poverty. This is at best a harmless illusion and potentially a dangerous delusion. This paper shows that the BOP argument is riddled with fallacies, and proposes an alternative perspective on how the private sector can help alleviate poverty. Rather than focusing on the poor as consumers, we need to view the poor as producers. The only way to alleviate poverty is to raise the real income of the poor.

Each government agency uses a uniform figure to measure the value of a statistical life. This is a serious mistake. The very theory that underlies current practice calls for far more individuation of the relevant values. According to that theory, the value of statistical lives should vary across risks. More controversially, the value of a statistical life should vary across individuals - even or especially if the result would be to produce a lower number for some people than for others. One practical implication is that a higher value should be given to programs that reduce cancer risks. Should government use a higher VSL for programs that disproportionately benefit the wealthy - and lower VSL for programs that disproportionately benefit the poor? A serious complication here is that sometimes the beneficiaries of regulation pay only a fraction or even none of its cost; when this is so, the appropriate VSL for poor people might be higher, on distributional grounds, than market evidence suggests. An understanding of this point has implications for foundational issues about government regulation, including valuation of persons in poor and wealthy nations.

Micro finance" or its major part "micro credit", both used interchangeably, is an important institutional device for alleviating poverty of the poor people. Micro finance concept was first developed and initiated in Bangladesh in the late seventies with a view to help the people living below the poverty line. Since its inception to till date, there has been tremendous growth of organizations, known as MFIs (Micro Finance Institutions), in this field to deal with the micro finance/credit activities. Despite this, the poverty situation of the poor people who have already used the micro finance programs was not improved substantially. The few MFIs have their own programs to conduct survey on impact assessment of their individual micro credit activities. The present study will focus on the impact assessment of micro finance activities on some variables of poverty alleviation, the extent to which these programs helped loanees to become micro finance graduates and the relevant suggestions as to the success of the micro finance activities.

This background paper provides some preliminary estimates of the global incidence of chronic poverty for the Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05. We define chronic poverty as remaining below the poverty line for at least five years, with welfare measured in expenditure or income terms. Using the latest estimates on the magnitude of static dollar a day poverty available from the World Bank and panel data estimates of the unconditional probabilities of the currently poor staying poor, we estimate the number of people who are chronically poor by region. This is an inherently imprecise exercise that suffers from both measurement error and the need to make a number of very strong assumptions. Nonetheless, our best "guesstimate" is that there were between 300 and 420m people worldwide living in chronic poverty in the late 1990s.

What does cost-benefit mean, or do, in actual practice? When agencies are engaging in cost-benefit balancing, what are the interactions among law, science, and economics? This Article attempts to answer that question by exploring, in some detail, the controversy over EPA's proposed regulation of arsenic in drinking water. The largest finding is that science often can produce only "benefit ranges," and wide ones at that. With reasonable assumptions based on the existing science data, the proposed arsenic regulation can be projected to save as few as 0 lives and as many as 112. With reasonable assumptions, the monetized benefits of the regulation can range from $0 to $560 million. In these circumstances, there is no obviously right decision for government agencies to make. These points have numerous implications for lawyers and courts, suggesting the ease of bringing legal challenges, on grounds specified here, and the importance of judicial deference in the face of scientific uncertainty. There are also policy implications. Agencies should be given the authority to issue more targeted, cost-effective regulations. They should also be required to accompany the cost-benefit analysis with an effort to identify the winners and losers, so as to see if poor people are mostly hurt or mostly helped.