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The Nordic welfare states offer some lessons in a development context. A main achievement has been sustainable poverty reduction. Another important lesson is that, while democratization often leads to greater pressures for social policy expansion, social policy can also contribute to democratization. The Nordic countries further demonstrate that is possible to unify social protection with a competitive and growth-oriented economy. In a number of policy areas, particularly in relation to social services and labor market policy, the Nordic countries have also become leading modernizers. The women-friendly dual-earner model not only combats poverty among families with children, but also enables women to participate in the labor market. The future sustainability of the Nordic model of social policy hinges on the number of taxpayers that can be mobilized. In order to be successful in this, governments need to take a combined, or holistic, approach, and consider both micro motives and macro considerations. [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]

Using district-level data for 1992, 1995, and 1999, the study estimated effects of different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty in Uganda. The results reveal that government spending on agricultural research and extension improved agricultural production substantially. This type of expenditure had the largest measured returns to growth in agricultural production. Agricultural research and extension spending also had the largest assessed impact on poverty reduction. Government spending on rural roads also had a substantial marginal impact on rural poverty reduction. The impact of low-grade roads such as feeder roads is larger than that of high-grade roads such as murram and tarmac roads. Education's effects rank after agricultural research and extension, and roads. Government spending in health did not show a large impact on growth in agricultural productivity or a reduction in rural poverty. Additional investments in the northern region (a poor region) contribute the most to reducing poverty. However, it is the western region (a relatively well-developed region) where most types of investment have highest returns in terms of increased agricultural productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donors and aid agencies are now looking to strategies of pro-poor economic growth to raise living standards in developing countries. I critically examine how particular conceptualisations of economy and economic development shape the broader context within which pro-poor growth approaches are implemented by governments and development agencies. While pro-poor growth may expand a national economy, surplus will be distributed in a community and among individuals according to culturally specific logics. To exemplify this point I discuss the community economy of Bomolo on the remote, rural island of Flores, Indonesia. The Ngadha people of Bomolo are identified by the Indonesian state, religious organisations and development agencies as lacking and in need of economic development. Yet in Bomolo, gambling, although illegal and antithetical to development, is fantastically popular, and large amounts of cash surplus are spent on this popular pastime. I argue for more attention to the issue of surplus – the outcome of pro-poor growth. In particular, I propose that surplus distribution is a crucial yet underdeveloped component of the growth equation. [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]

Canadian poverty rates have persisted at disappointingly high levels despite almost 15 years of continuous economic growth. The problem is exacerbated by some communities and neighborhoods having exceedingly high poverty, including very high rates for vulnerable demographic groups, such as aboriginals and recent immigrants. We investigate low-income rates (poverty rates) for 2,400 Canadian “communities” over the 1981–2001 period. By focusing on communities, we fill a void in the related Canadian literature, which tends to focus on individuals, case studies, or more aggregate measures, such as provinces. Our approach allows us to assess the role of place-based policies. Particular attention is given to communities with differing shares of aboriginal Canadians and recent immigrants. One novel feature is our analysis of both “short-term” and “long-term” causes of differential community poverty rates. The results suggest that community low-income rates are more affected by initial economic conditions in the short term, with certain demographic factors becoming relatively more important in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of high economic growth is considered desirable as it generates an increase in a nation's wealth, income, employment and output. The rising income should enable consumers to purchase more goods and services, which in turn should result in enhanced utility and subjective happiness. Empirical studies suggest that higher income resulting from high rates of economic growth contribute to poverty alleviation and life satisfaction in low income countries. Higher income raises the happiness of the poor. In developed countries, higher income does not seem to “buy” higher happiness, once a threshold level of income is reached. This exploratory study seeks to examine the quantitative and qualitative sources of happiness. A higher absolute level of income is found to be significantly related to subjective happiness. Among the non-income factors, family togetherness, a good working environment and a higher level of education can contribute to making people happier. Happiness thus involves more than just economic growth and income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite strong national economic growth and significant poverty reduction during the late 1990s, high poverty persisted in remote rural areas. This study uses a geographical information system county database to examine the nexus between rural U.S. poverty and remoteness. We find that poverty rates increase with greater rural distances from successively larger metropolitan areas (MAs). We explain this outcome as arising from the attenuation of urban agglomeration effects at greater distances and incomplete commuting and migration responses to lower labor demand in rural areas. One implication is that remote areas may particularly experience greater reductions in poverty from place-based economic development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asks whether, in a rapidly changing world, the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is still a good measure of trends in poverty. It argues that strong economic growth in nations such as China implies that the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median national equivalent income is increasingly relevant and that poverty intensity (the normalized deficit or Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) index of order one) is a better summary index. This index has a convenient graphical representation—the “poverty box”. Using the proposed poverty line and the example of ranking the level of rural poverty in Chinese provinces, the study demonstrates how poverty intensity replicates the poverty rankings of the Sen family of poverty indices and captures most of the information content of higher-order FGT indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an exploratory descriptive study that examined ten social workers’ perceptions of their war on poverty and the challenges in constructing a conceptual framework for the development of a Social Community Education for Economic Literacy Development (SCEELD) programme. It was found that the social workers were knowledgeable about the uneconomic activities of their clients and that their ideas about what needed to be done about this related very much to their attitudes towards poverty. Significantly, the social workers did not think that job creation was their primary responsibility nor had, in their experience, job creation programmes been successful. Rather, the economic literacy they taught related to housekeeping imperatives, such as economical food preparation and managing income and concrete resources no matter how meagre. Overall, the social workers did not perceive the agency culture or the context of developmental welfare practice as conducive to the implementation of programmes aimed at economic development, and none talked about the relationship between economic and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the association between weather risk and poverty as well as the significance of weather index insurance for agricultural and rural areas in lower-income countries in the U.S. Uninsured weather risks tend to contribute to the existence of chronic poverty, though health problems are often considered as the greatest risk encountered by many rural households. The risk of extreme weather events contributes to the existence of chronic poverty. It was concluded that the effective mechanisms transferring risk can catalyze investment and economic growth, lessening poverty in rural areas of lower income countries.

The reform of agriculture in China is cited by scholars advocating economic growth through market reform. Such scholars argue that this aspect of reform has been characterized by the liberalization of markets for agricultural commodities, which spurred production, increased rural incomes, and reduced poverty. This view exaggerates the roles played by open markets and economic growth in that reform. This article argues that the role of the state in redistributing public assets, establishing institutions that supported markets, and designing and implementing poverty reduction policies also reduced poverty in China. I conclude that scholars, not just in China's case but also more generally, should examine the economic and political effects of various possible relationships between state and market. I offer this as one way forward in deepening our understanding of the role of politics and policy in promoting development and reducing poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Water institutions in India play a crucial role in managing scarce water resources and are central to economic development and poverty alleviation. Designing appropriate institutional mechanisms to allocate scarce water and river flows has been an enormous challenge due to the complex legal, constitutional, and social issues involved. The Indian water sector has been grappling with poor performance and deterioration of public (canal and tank) irrigation systems, high extraction levels of groundwater, and related economic and environmental problems. The objective of this article is to carry out a preliminary assessment of institutional mechanisms available to manage water resources in India. The article surveys various formal and informal institutional arrangements that are used at present and their design features in order to identify those institutions related to superior performance. The analysis indicates that crafting “winning institutions” and the policy frameworks to strengthen them should take into account not only the proven criteria of institutional design but also the changing socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors. [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]

China's record in reducing poverty over the last three decades has been impressive, yet few studies have examined the incidence of poverty among older people despite the rapid ageing of the population. This article uses a unique national data set to examine patterns of poverty, deprivation and exclusion among the urban aged population (60 years and over) in 2000. The results point to the importance of poverty as an issue for older people, particularly for women and those who live alone. A number of indicators of hardship are developed in four areas – economic insecurity, housing, health, and social isolation – and the incidence of these is examined, separately and in combination, by living arrangement and gender. Women are shown to experience greater levels of hardship and isolation than men, and to be more likely to experience multiple deprivation across two or more areas. Finally, the overlap between poverty and hardship is examined as a way of validating the poverty estimates and giving them greater credibility. The results indicate that there are strong overlaps, although these differ across the different dimensions of hardship. Access to pension income and concern over the cost of necessary visits to see a doctor emerge as strong predictors of poverty and point to areas where policy change is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade is the engine of development. The biggest thing the developed world can do to alleviate poverty is remove trade barriers. The benefits of that are infinitely better than direct aid. It is trade, not aid, that holds the key to creating jobs and raising incomes. ...we are very clear that it is through trade, much more than through aid, that we can enable the poorest people in the poorest countries of our world to start that journey of modernization, of economic reform—a pathway out of poverty and into prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the Global Commission on International Migration's report on international migration. The Commission also examined the links of migration with economic development, labor supply and demand, demography, poverty alleviation, public health, and other related issues. It acknowledges the distinctions among individual migrants even if they belong to several categories at the same time.

A common factor that explains why agriculture causes too much environmental degradation, grows too slowly, and has been ineffective in reducing rural poverty is the generalized tendency by governments to under invest in public goods despite the high rates of return to such investments. A large share of rural public expenditures is deviated to private goods (mostly subsidies to the wealthy), which generally have low or even negative rates of return. Behind such an obviously aberrant choice are political economy forces; a highly unequal political lobby market leads to government policies that are biased in favor of economic elites and detrimental for both the environment and rural development. Globalization may affect this important distortion on the allocation of government expenditures in various ways. One such way is by restricting the ability of governments to repress the political mobilization of the poor to counter the almost unchallenged power of the elites in the lobby market. This may contribute toward creating conditions that are more consistent with sustainable and socially equitable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from an analysis of the reasons for failure of previous“integrated” approaches to rural development, we propose here a conceptual framework for an“integral” approach better in tune with current opportunities for and constraints on rural poverty reduction. The approach is centered on the process whereby well-being is determined, linking household asset positions, the context where the assets are used, pathways from poverty through specific livelihood strategies, and well-being outcomes. This in turn identifies entry points for policies and programs to improve the well-being outcomes that consist in interventions to: increase access to assets, improve context, provide social protection, and achieve social incorporation 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]

The article focuses on the implications of globalization for income inequality. Income inequality refers to the degree of dissimilarity of the incomes within a certain chosen unit, such as region, country or the globe. It describes how highly households' or groups' incomes deviate from average income in an income distribution. Most economists see economic growth as a prime move in decreasing poverty and equally distributing the benefits from growth as the cure for inequality. If countries are taken as the unit of analysis, the inequality literature can be split into within-country inequality, between-country equality and global inequality. Motivated by the Solow-Swan growth model and its implications for absolute convergence, researchers, for some time, looked at per capita income differences between countries to approximate world inequality. There are two methodological approaches to measuring global inequality. In the first approach, the whole world is considered like a country and income of each household is counted towards measuring world inequality. The second approach approximates world inequality by taking into account per capita gross domestic products of the countries, between-country income distributions, countries' populations and their within-country income distributions.

This note adds to the research which questions the recent influential view that recipient country's ‘policies’ play an important role in the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in developing countries. In the first step, the almost universal practice of imposing the constraint of equality on parameters of bilateral and multilateral aid is relaxed and it is shown that ‘policy’ has no role in the effect of aid even in those cases where the usual constrained models do show such an effect. In addition, many cases are noted where there is no indication of recipient country's policies having any role in the effect of aid on growth even in the usual constrained specifications. These cases employ not merely the Burnside–Dollar ‘policy’ index, which almost all scholars have used, but also two other broader measures. It is thus concluded that there is little empirical evidence to support the widely-disseminated view that redirecting aid toward countries with ‘good’ policies leads to more growth and greater poverty reduction in developing countries. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the socialist regime that prevailed until the start of the 1990s, Mongolia made great progress in improving human development indicators, and poverty was virtually unknown. Political and economic transition in the 1990s ushered in a rapid rise in asset and income inequality, and at least a third of the population has been living in poverty since 1995. Many workers made redundant from uneconomic state-owned enterprises were absorbed into the extensive livestock sector in rural areas and by the growing informal economy in urban areas. The livestock sector grew dramatically, with herders accounting for over a third of the total population and half of the active labour force by the late 1990s. Three consecutive years of drought and harsh winters in 1999–2002 then drastically reduced the national herd. These trends are viewed against a backdrop of relative neglect of the livestock sector in development priorities and a concomitant decline in agricultural productivity. Pressures on common pasture have mounted, and conflict over grazing is becoming endemic. In such a context, sustainable management of Mongolia's pastoral commons should be central to the country's economic development agenda in general, and to its poverty reduction strategy in particular. This article draws on the findings of a country-wide participatory poverty assessment conducted in 2000. Blending quantitative and qualitative data, these findings help to bring into sharper relief the broad outlines of an integrated approach to building secure and sustainable livelihoods both on and off the pastoral commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of comprehensive consumer protection legislation is not high on the policy agenda in most developing economies, given what are seen to be more urgent economic and social goals such as encouraging economic growth and the eradication of poverty and illiteracy. Yet large welfare losses can occur as a result of market failure due to the significant information asymmetries that usually exist in developing economies, with buyers being at the mercy of much better informed sellers. It is time to overcome this problem through education, legislation and the creation of appropriate bureaucratic institutions. However, through globalisation the market itself may be able to achieve a greater degree of consumer protection, certainly in the short term, than would otherwise be achieved in the absence of such forces. While globalisation may create problems, it provides an opportunity to solve some consumer protection problems—a benefit from globalisation not previously highlighted. This article suggests that the nations of East Asia seek a regional consensus on developing a culture for consumer protection and on the implementation of consumer protection laws and enforcement procedures. [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]

Evaluates the model used to obtain poverty projections for the poverty reduction strategy in Mozambique. Assessment of national poverty statistics; Importance of economic growth for poverty reduction; Alternative of modelling poverty dynamics.

The article focuses on local initiatives and poverty reduction in urban areas, with the example of Yeumbeul in Senegal. In sub-Saharan Africa, urbanization has had a considerable impact on attitudes, social transformations, economic growth, and development. In this region, which is still very rural, it is in the major cities and smaller towns that the social practices, cultural creativity, and economic dynamics that will do much to shape twenty-first century Africa are being generated. Despite some real progress in terms of town planning, administrators and politicians can no longer ignore a truly critical general situation: urban organization and management are becoming ever more chaotic and most town dwellers still live in dirty, under equipped districts with poor access to basic urban services such as schools, dispensaries, safe water, and transport. The main difficulty facing town dwellers, however, remains the matter of unemployment and underemployment. For over a decade, most African countries have been living with the constraints of successive structural adjustment plans and their harsh effects on the population.

In the late 1990s the bilateral and multilateral development agencies placed increasing emphasis on poverty reduction in developing countries. This led to the establishment by the United Nations of the 'International Development Targets' for poverty reduction. The target of poverty reduction might be achieved through faster economic growth alone, through redistribution, or through a combination of the two. This article presents an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of growth and redistribution for poverty reduction. It concludes that redistribution, either of current income or the growth increment of income, is more effective in reducing poverty for a majority of countries than growth alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effects of economic growth on the distribution of income. Henry George and Alfred Marshall were among the most influential authors of the late 19th century. George's best-selling "Progress and Poverty" fueled many policy debates of the time; and Marshall's "Principles of Economics," the standard textbook for decades, laid the foundation for modern economics. Each recognized the other's influence. Not only were George and Marshall important figures in intellectual his tow, but they had an important common ground in their deep concern with poverty. Both considered poverty mentally and morally debasing in large part because of its general association with relentlessly hard manual labor. George and Marshall both believe that aided by a proper set of policies, progress can eliminate poverty. With a tax that appropriates rent from the unimproved value of land, George sweeps away all other taxes, all unearned and undeserved private income, poverty, greed, and only one aspect of private land ownership-its entitlement to residual income. With more public education and a higher sense of duty, Marshall's tamed competition gradually eliminates poverty and its attendant evils.

The World Development Report 2000/01 builds a complex picture of poverty, and a comprehensive approach to its reduction, which challenges the still dominant neo-liberal paradigm. The significance of inequality in determining the outcomes of economic growth, of vulnerability and the need for an agenda of social security or social protection represent advances in the discourse of international agencies. The uniform and simplistic solutions of the past are dismissed with recognition of the fragility of markets and the problems of privatization. The diversity of poverty is met by emphasis on country strategies, which need to address the issues faced by the losers from the process of economic growth. Diversity has been identified — it now needs analysis. The comprehensive approach advocated should help to stabilize development thinking, to move away from the pendulum swings of policy fashion. The constraints to poverty reduction are under-emphasised — resources to provide safety nets; the problems of preventing or resolving conflict, and the potential political resistance from elites unconvinced that poverty is their problem. Nevertheless, the report provides a basis for building a new international coalition against poverty, with the Bank as one among several agencies, a situation in which it will need to clarify its role. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Population & Development Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents information on Hong Kong and Singapore. There are many similarities between Hong Kong and Singapore. They have both enjoyed high rates of economic growth over the past three decades, averaging six percent a year in real terms. The two have become known as "East Asian Tigers," having made the transition from poverty to newly industrialized economies in a relatively short time. Both started off as British colonies, with British legal and administrative systems, and made their living as trading ports serving their respective regions. Singapore has been an independent republic since 1965, Hong Kong was returned to China on July 1, 1997. Hong Kong and Singapore are both densely populated cities. Hong Kong and Singapore capture economic rent primarily by nationalizing land and leasing it out. In 1998, Hong Kong's land area of 1,095 square kilometers and her population of 6.6 million were both approximately twice those of Singapore. Owing to historical reasons, Hong Kong's land- tenure arrangements produce an effect comparable to that of straightforward land-value taxation.

‘Prima mangiare’ (first, you need to be alive) takes a ‘from the inside out’ look at the abstracted formalism of ‘capabilities’ theorizing as well as at the prevailing development and welfare-planning, provision, delivery and ‘part’-icipation approaches to poverty alleviation. While outside intervention is indeed a moral imperative on the ‘do-your-share’ principle, there are vast geographical and demographic swathes where State or NGO-led public action do not reach. Even though autonomous human agency is subsumed in the ‘public action’ concept, ‘capabilities’ theorizing, while enunciating timely and valid principles about the ‘what’ (e.g. in UNDP's work), has little of immediately practical import to offer when it comes to the ‘how?’: the excluded cannot ‘eat’ theory. Unlike ‘capabilities and functionings’, the latino (Moraisean) concept and practice of ‘capacitation’ offers the poor, starting with the excluded, both a theory and a practice by which they autonomously learn to become entrepreneurially and organizationally ‘literate’ in an increasingly competitive and globalizing world. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we enter the 21st century, a dominant trend in development thinking makes it refer specifically to the practice of development agencies. However, to accept this as the main meaning of development would carry the dangers of losing the complexity and ambiguity of development, of underplaying the importance of vision and of historical process, and of limiting development to actions and policies aimed at reducing poverty in poor countries. It is important to challenge this restricted view of what development is. At the same time, the current prime importance of practice within the development field should be recognized and development practice should be taken more seriously from the point of view of theory building. Focused work on notions such as accountability, trusteeship and public action would help here, as would work on building up a tradition of critical practice analogous that in Organization Development. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on sustainable livelihoods (SL). The concept of SL has emerged with growing legitimization through several major international fora including the World Summit for Social Development. Sustainable human development, offering both a policy and a programming framework for poverty reduction in a sustainable manner in possible through SL approach. The SL concept is currently applied by governments, non-governmental organizations, donors and communities. Various tools and methodologies have been developed for the design, implementation and evaluation of SL programs at the country level. The United Nations Development Programme, bilateral partners, development banks, foundations, research institutions, policy think-tanks and civil society organizations are planning to make a global shift to a SL approach for poverty reduction.

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article compares income distribution and economic progress to neo-classical and neo-Keynesian schools. It aims to determine empirically whether there is a strong relationship between income distribution and economic progress. Its first section briefly examines the economic theories on the relationship between income inequality and economic progress within the framework of institutional economics. The second section contains the empirical analysis of the hypothesized relationship which involves construction of a model, description of the variables and data, and interpretation of the estimated results. A cross- national study with a sample of 65 countries is carried out. In the final section, conclusions and suggestions for further study are made. The analysis of income distribution and economic progress (or growth) in the past was largely dominated by the conventional approaches such as neo-classical and neo-Keynesian schools. However, institutionalism offers an alternative explanation, particularly on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth.

Henry George delivered his famous "Moses" lecture in 1878, just one year prior to the publication of his masterwork, Progress and Poverty. The many parallels in the thinking of both George and Moses suggest that George may have been greatly inspired by Moses. George appreciated Moses' concern with improving this world rather than the hereafter Moses, like George, advocated a minimum role for government. Moses proposed a thoroughly equitable distribution of the land which would generate fair taxes and avoid the exploitation so denounced by George. Land accumulation by the few would be prevented by requiring the return of ownership to the original owners every fifty years. George, the humanitarian, is also sympathetic with Mosaic reforms restoring human dignity such as the cancellation of oppressive debt every seventh year, and relief from drudgery every sabbath day and sabbatical year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry George's Progress and Poverty, published a century ago, laid the foundation for a theory that attracted a worldwide following. He emphasized that political economy investigates the way a community produces wealth and the proportions in which that wealth will be distributed between individuals. In our day that has been called `plutology,' a subdiscipline of political economy. Many of George's critics, then and now, act as apologists of the status quo, in society and in the academy. But the science's purview must be broader than plutology. Economics, to be relevant, must be useful in the solution of economic and social problems. In redirecting economists to their basic responsibility, George made a lasting contribution to economic science. He also was a perennial influence on economic scholars, even on some of his most antagonistic critics. But George is neglected because his doctrines were and are a threat to various establishments. However, by force of logic and through clarity of expression, he is a goad to the consciences of all folk of good will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation of American Indian .underdevelopment is based on historical data on the Cherokee people which demonstrate how a self-sufficient people have been reduced to their present state of poverty and welfare dependence. Colonialism and the imposition of White control over Native institutions undermined the Cherokees' ability to innovate effectively. This hypothesis is substantiated by similar experiences of other tribes, as well as those of different indigenous groups, such as Alaska Natives, who have been more successful in preserving their traditional cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth had less impact on poverty rates in the 1980s than in the 1960s. Could this explained by Lake Anderson's observation that the higher median income, the greater the amount of growth need to achieve a percentage point fall in the poverty rate? No, higher poverty rates are due instead to the rise in income inequality. With higher inequality, however, trickle down could be as effective in the 1990s as it was in the late 1960s. More generally, assessments of anti-poverty policy must recognize that inequality is as vital to chants in the poverty rate as growth in mean income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies directed toward alleviating poverty and caring for the needy have become the scapegoat of those who decry the way in which our policies are theorized, developed, and implemented. This is not necessarily because they are the most faulty policies in the policy universe, but because they are, due to a constellation of circumstances, less culturally and politically defensible than are most policies. Most of them lack a strong constituent base, and most seem alien to the premises of democratic capitalism. A fundamental resource allocation problem confronts the many poor people, especially those who face major financial shortfalls due to injury, death of a family breadwinner, or unemployment. These individuals have a rightful claim on the U.S. government's resources to help them overcome their economic disadvantage.

For Fiji, the decade after political independence in 1970 provided economic and political room for manoeuvre based upon levelling the uneven playing field of the colonial inheritance. But by the end of the 1970s, issues of post-colonial macroeconomic imbalances and structural poverty were emerging. The economic debates of the 1980s opened up a range of policy choices. Only after the coups of 1987 did the IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment approach gain dominance. The coups were in the interest of a chiefly group who are able to benefit from partial exposure to market forces--providing this exposure excludes land--a position accepted in IMF/World Bank recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most indicators of human development in Latin America improved considerably until the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the debt crisis which hit most countries in the region during the 1980s badly dented the social record. Not only did it increase the number of people living in poverty but it led to a profound change in the nature of the development model. Neo-liberal economic thought and the lessons of the debt crisis convinced one Latin American state after another that it should follow a different development path. Economic stabilization and structural adjustment had a profound effect on poverty in the region. Most families became poorer, particularly those living in the cities. Structural adjustment and the new economic model also modified the role of the state. Increasingly, Latin American governments stopped giving general subsidies and introduced a strategy of targeting subsidies at the poor. In places, the new strategy will no doubt provide an adequate safety net, but in others it will fail to provide sufficient help for the poor. All we can predict is that poverty will long remain regrettably common in most parts of Latin America. In places, economic growth will undoutedly reduce poverty but it is not at all easy to predict where it will be reduced. In this respect Latin America is very much like the rest of the world. Globalization has opened up local economies to international competition and offered them the prospect of selling local goods to foreign markets. How many Latin American economies will benefit from the new situation will determine how the poor will fare. Unfortunately, the state’s ability to deal with any subsequent poverty has been greatly reduced. That, too, is part and parcel of the process of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated rural development is often presented as an effective strategy against rural poverty in Indonesia. In this article the author discusses the case of the Pompengan Integrated Area Development Project (PIADP) in Luwu, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, where a programme for land reform was part of the 'integrated' approach. In explaining the outcome of PIADP, the author analyses two properties of intervention itself in relation to the context in which it took place: first, land reform as a donor development priority which was planned and implemented as a purely technical and administrative operation; and, second, the production-oriented character of planning, which further isolated land reform from its local context. It is concluded that PIADP was characterized by fragmentation, competition and conflict rather than 'integratedness'. Therefore, rather than taking such policy language for granted and accepting the policy instruments it represents as 'models for development', we should critically analyse the sphere of policy implementation. In the case of rural development in Indonesia, the depoliticized character of land policy and its reduction to a technical-administrative routine is a major issue to be addressed before land reform and integrated rural development can make a significant contribution to the eradication of rural poverty in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1970s, the World Bank has recognized that economic growth alone will not reduce poverty. Yet it has not fully accepted the fact that effective poverty reduction requires a 'learning process approach', rather than the 'blueprint approach' commonly used by development agencies. To facilitate the learning process approach, the Bank should consider using qualified intermediary, grass-roots, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs); stimulating pluralism and competition; and encouraging cooperation between central and local institutions. However, helping the poor is going to require more administrative resources than heretofore provided, making funds available for careful and flexible project design, staff exposure to poverty conditions and programmes, training in and recruitment of appropriate inter-disciplinary fields, monitoring and evaluation, and continual project revision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The achievement of economic growth and social equity in developing nations, whatever path they pursue, has been hampered by uncertainty, instability, and uncontrollability in budgeting. It appears likely that left to themselves, these budget systems will continue largely unchanged, with little or no progress toward eliminating poverty and advancing development. However, several options are available for restructuring budget systems through implementation of carefully devised systematic action plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on the main parameters that potential migration and development should tackle such as the existing and possible demographic and economic trends in the North and South regions. The author suggests proper policies for the reduction of emigration pressures building due to economic and demographic differentials. He says that the perceived maldistribution of population is seen as the cause of migration. He adds that people who suffer poverty are more likely to stay put in their locations, posing no threats of migration to their countries.