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Most aspects of the argument of the UK government's 2000 White Paper on globalization and development stand up reasonably well to the findings of subsequent research. But there is significant new evidence in two areas: the size of the contribution of institutions to growth; and the complexity of the effects of increased openness on poor people. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the implications of the strong poverty focus in the new White Paper for advancing gender equality. Recognizing that there are efficiency arguments in its focus on poor women and some dangers in too rigid a link being made between gender and poverty, it is argued that an equity and empowerment focus nevertheless inform the gender and poverty nexus. This does not necessarily imply that women's subordination is adequately dealt with. Making gender a cross-cutting issue in human rights goes some way towards escaping an anti-poverty approach to women. However, this does not automatically address gender relations and there are some contradictions even within the human rights focus itself. Beyond the principles of the White Paper, the real potential for promoting women's empowerment and advancing gender equity lies in its practice. The commitment to building partnerships needs to be extended to gender equitable partnerships which imply developing skills and new forms of practice among all partners to accommodate the participation of poor women, and recognising that accountability is a two-way street. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the approaches to poverty elimination adopted by the UK government White Paper on international development and the Australian government's review of its overseas aid programme (Ausaid Review). Both documents adopt sustainable poverty reduction/elimination as the key policy leitmotiv of overseas aid policy. However, a difference of approach is in evidence. The UK White Paper ventriloquizes the DAC and World Summit social policy targets and ambitiously elevates its own departmental policy and values to that of government policy overall--though without specifying the instruments by which this consistency can be assured. The silence on the resource implications of the overriding objective of poverty elimination, in terms of budgetary provision, could create a credibility gap between intentions and programme implementation. The Ausaid Review, on the other hand, hones its cutting edge on the complex, often self-serving array of development programmes that are often lacking in focus and harboured from external scrutiny by an overprotective bureaucracy. The Review suggests the adoption of a single value statement of 'poverty reduction through sustainable development' by which all programmes should be judged. The predominantly Australian-based tertiary education scholarship programme is criticized for pandering to domestic educational constituencies and reflecting a weak linkage to poverty reduction. However, in the final analysis the narrow geographical focus of the programme, the privileged status of PNG and the level of tied aid remain substantially intact--despite serious question marks over their poverty content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that the civil war which erupted in Nepal in the mid 1990s had its seeds sown five decades ago when the country embarked on the economic development plan which placed a heavy emphasis on an urban-based import-substitution strategy. This strategy failed to benefit 86 per cent of the population who live in rural areas and rely on agriculture. This, together with poor governance, significantly increased unemployment, poverty and rural–urban inequality by the mid 1990s, leading to the eruption of civil war. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including poverty, economic development, and behavioral economics.

This article provides the theoretical and empirical context to the papers contained in this special issue. We provide background on the recent developed country financial crisis and perspective via a review of prior shocks and crises. The paper then considers the transmission mechanisms through which economic crises can affect economies and individuals in the developing world. The linkages centre on trade, capital flows and remittances. This section also critically surveys the literature concerning the macroeconomic and microeconomic impact of such crises on developing countries. Finally, we review the papers that comprise the special issue, before providing some policy conclusions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a distinguished career spanning more than four decades, Jagdish Bhagwati has made numerous contributions to both trade theory and trade policy analysis. The current paper focuses on Bhagwati's major contribution to the ongoing debate surrounding the influence of trade liberalisation upon economic development and its potential to alleviate poverty in the world's poorest economies. In order to highlight Bhagwati's contributions in these fields we focus on the arguments developed in two of his numerous landmark publications; first his seminal 1964 paper on the Pure Theory of International Trade and, second, his 2004 book entitled In Defense of Globalization. Although separated in time by some four decades we argue that these two publications, despite their very different characters, each demonstrate beyond doubt the significance of Bhagwati's work in improving our understanding of the true nature of international trade and its potential to address questions of global poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a survey paper on aid effectiveness in terms of the contribution of development assistance to economic growth and poverty reduction. The article focuses primarily on the most recent generation of cross-country studies. It concludes that there is a set of broad areas where the evidence reviewed shows signs of convergence that have direct relevance for policy decisions on aid and for aid-effectiveness discussions. These areas are: aid levels (meaning if the level of aid is too low or too high); domestic political institutions (including political stability and the extent of decentralisation); the composition of aid (including sectors, modalities, objectives and time horizons); and the volatility and fragmentation of aid. We also identify two areas where there is little sign of convergence in the evidence: the importance or otherwise of 'good', meaning orthodox macroeconomic policies and whether grants are more effective than loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The private sector, after shifting fortunes in development theory and practice over the years, is now widely recognised as the key to economic growth, which itself is indispensable for poverty reduction. The Development Studies Association (DSA) Annual Conference in 2006 brought together academics, private sector actors, NGOs and policy makers to share insights and experiences on how this vital contribution to growth, development and poverty reduction can be realised. This paper summarises the main themes and discussions of the conference and introduces the papers selected for inclusion in this conference issue. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large and growing literature on the relation between economic growth and poverty reduction. The evidence points to a negative correlation between growth and poverty. However, many studies also find that growth does not mechanically reduce poverty, arguing that in many cases rapid economic growth has not necessarily been pro-poor. This paper uses the concept of 'exit time from poverty' to assess the potential of economic growth to reduce poverty in Benin; thus accelerating the progress of the country toward the achievement of the sustainable development goal of eliminating poverty by 2030. It uses nationally representative household data covering the period 2009-2011 and analyses the impacts of various growth scenarios on poverty. The results show that, with a growth rate in income per capita of 4.2% per year, it will take between 7 and 10 years for the average poor household to escape from poverty. The paper also finds that stronger economic growth leads to shorter average time to exit from poverty. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the exit time from poverty, with various households' characteristics such as households' size and human capital being important determinants. Taken together, the results suggest that policies to accelerate poverty reduction should emphasize the development of human capital and ensure that growth is inclusive and pro-poor. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relation between economic growth and poverty, and develops the methodology to measure separately the impact of changes in average income and income inequality on poverty The paper also provides a link between the growth rates in various sectors of the economy and the total poverty. The methodology proposed is applied to the data taken from the Côte d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey conducted in 1985. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates cultural dimensions and processes of exclusion in rural Ireland and Russia that impact upon marginalised rural people by making them poor. It employs Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) concept of cultural capital, which provides understanding of both structural effects of cultural discrimination and individual strategies of cultural reproduction on well-being. First, it explores the function of cultural capital as a power resource that can be used to monopolise certain cultural preferences. Second, the paper studies the function of cultural capital to mark cultural distance and to put people with less-valued cultural resources in a disadvantaged position that can limit poor people’s access to social settings and resources. Third, the paper investigates the function of cultural capital to exclude individuals by means of regulating their aspirations and cultural dispositions, which degrade social bonds and limit people’s sources of economic growth. The results of this study reveal the complexity of classificatory effects of cultural practices on poverty and argue against treating culture as a residual category in poverty studies. It takes on board the findings from this study to critically re-evaluate certain stereotypes of hardship and to articulate the need for a broader understanding of rural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international donor community has grave concerns about the effectiveness of aid to countries it classifies as ‘fragile states’. The impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction and the ability to efficiently absorb additional inflows is thought to be significantly lower in these countries compared to other recipients. This paper examines this issue and suggests that a while a number of fragile states can efficiently absorb more aid than they have received, a number receive far more aid than they can efficiently absorb from a perspective based purely on per capita income growth. Policy recommendations are provided. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic performance of Sub Saharan Africa has been very disappointing. Its poverty has many dimensions and causes, both internal and external. This paper focuses on the role of institutions in promoting or hindering economic development in Africa and the implications for doing business on the continent. It questions our understanding of institutions and how they develop and warns against simplistic assumptions in this regard. The paper examines how it is that institutions come to affect economic growth and the characteristics of what makes for good institutions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new type of growth rate, called the “poverty equivalent growth rate” (PEGR), which takes into account both the growth rate in mean income and how the benefits of growth are distributed between the poor and the non-poor. The proposed measure satisfies a basic requirement that the proportional reduction in poverty is a monotonically increasing function of the PEGR. Thus, maximizing the PEGR implies a maximum reduction in poverty. The paper demonstrates that the magnitude of PEGR determines the pattern of growth: whether growth is pro-poor in relative or absolute sense or is “poverty reducing” pro-poor. The pattern of growth has been analyzed for Brazil using the National Household Survey (PNAD) covering the period 1995–2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The goal of this paper is to provide empirical evidence to determine whether microfinance, measured through a country's gross loan portfolio per capita, has a heterogeneous effect on poverty reduction among countries with different levels of poverty. We have used a panel‐data quantile regression with a data set for 57 countries for the years 2005, 2008, and 2011 to estimate the distributional impacts of microcredits on two poverty indices. Results reveal not only that microfinance significantly reduces the incidence and depth of poverty, but also that this effect differs across the different poverty levels (quantiles). The effect of microcredit on poverty reduction is slightly larger among countries where the incidence and depth of poverty are the highest, suggesting that microcredit reaches and benefits even the poorest individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors explaining the sustained fall in poverty experienced in Kazakhstan in the period 2001-2009. It examines the contribution of economic growth and redistribution policies to poverty reduction through an analysis of household survey data. It finds that growth has been strongly pro-poor. Growth was the main driver behind the fall in poverty in the first half of the decade, but redistribution gained in importance in the latter part of the decade. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1994, Malawi's elite have constructed their political settlement in a way that has generally benefited them as a whole and individually. They have established a social contract with the population that mostly maintains enough services to sustain social conciliation, have created a workable though less-than-democratic governance arrangement and have done all of this while not establishing a policy environment conducive to national economic development. The paper analyses four 'critical junctures' between 1994 and 2014, which are key to Malawi's current political settlement. At each of these, institutions were laid down that have affected political and economic governance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]