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The article discusses on the measure used to gauge poverty in the U.S., Europe and other developing countries. It discusses that the present official measure of poverty in the U.S. is flawed and both, the poverty threshold and measurement of available resources should be improved. It reports that European countries provided with sufficient social aid but they face a technical problem of relative poverty threshold. Also mentioned are the levels of economic development in developing and underdeveloped countries.

This article has two goals: (i) to reduce the 7-fold productivity differential required to explain the observed 33-fold income difference between the richest and poorest countries of the world; and (ii) to explain cross-country differences in the capital-output ratio. To achieve the first goal we modify the production function of the standard neoclassical growth model to include public capital whose provision is subject to intermediation costs. For the second goal we distort private investment by introducing credit frictions. The model, quantified using cross-country data, generates an income gap of 33 with productivity differences of only 3 under the measured variations in public and private capital. The required productivity gap declines even further, to 2.1, when we introduce a home-production sector. On the second goal, however, credit frictions do a poor job of explaining cross-country variations in the capital-output ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the availability of effective, affordable interventions for the most common causes of death, more than ten million children in developing countries die each year. This article describes the circumstances of four countries whose reductions in child mortality exceeded what might be expected from their poor economic circumstances, and it asks whether they followed common routes to improved health for children. The findings suggest that contextual factors, such as the degree of economic development, good governance, and strong health care systems, matter less than do targeted health intervention, foreign aid, and technical assistance. In general, these findings contradict prevailing U.S. foreign policy regarding the circumstances in which progress toward health goals can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]