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The federal solution has been widely discussed in relation to political systems where the articulation of major cleavages, differences, and pluralities threatens political integration and stability. The relationship between conflict, development, and federalism, however, has been poorly accounted for in the literature on federalism. Existing theories about the utilitarian value of federalism thus face serious challenges, especially with respect to post‐colonial Africa. The relationship between conflict, economic development, and federalism in the African context needs to be carefully examined from the perspective of governance, as well as the impact they have on society‐state relations. This article discusses the impact of ethno‐linguistic, ethno‐regional, and ethno‐religious conflicts on economic development in Nigeria – informed by the inequalities, insecurity, and poverty prevalent in the country – and examines the relevance of the federal solution for mitigating such centrifugal pressures as well as other divisive and violent tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last year, 2020, was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 'Chilean road to socialism' by Salvador Allende. Although the Allende government is the political reference for the 'socialism of the 21st century' in Latin America, international supporters tend to disregard the primary cause of its downfall, focusing instead on the circumstances of Allende's death. This article explains the link between the Allende government's development policies and its macroeconomic outcomes between 1970 and 1973. It finds that Chile's economic collapse had an endogenous cause related to government policies. This supports the views of Mises and Hayek on the feasibility of socialist economic policies. Policymakers and commentators should recognise essential lessons from the Chilean experience to learn from past errors and effectively promote Latin America's economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Policy 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.)

Copyright of International Social Security 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.)

According to most classifications, Sub‐Saharan Africa is the region of the world with the highest presence of fragile states. In this paper we examine the relationship between fragility and poverty, suggesting that countries may become trapped in a vicious circle of fragility and low levels of wellbeing. We consider fragility as a continuum and begin by reviewing available measures. These show the high presence of fragility in Sub‐Saharan Africa and allow the more fragile countries to be identified. There is seen to be a strong association between fragility, poor growth performance, and lower wellbeing in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Building on the strong evidence for the two‐way relationship between economic growth and poverty, we present an analysis of how the vicious circle linking poorer welfare outcomes and fragility may be able to be broken. We argue that building successful institutions is key here, and this can be enabled by specific policy interventions that are both poverty reducing and productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to explanations of rural poverty and deprivation by focusing on the rural–urban poverty and deprivation gap in European countries. Using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data, it confirms, convincingly, the limited validity of the argument for universally increased poverty and deprivation levels in rural areas in Europe, and demonstrates that the disparities are related to four theoretically elaborated factors: increased rural poverty can be observed in countries with lower rural population densities, in countries with a higher proportion of farmers, in post‐socialist transition countries, and in countries with generally lower economic development levels and decreased living standards. In particular, national economic development appears to be the essential factor behind rural disadvantage. Three interrelated negative processes have been revealed in the countryside of poor European countries: an increased concentration of low‐resource households, a higher poverty risk to these households, and additional poverty‐enhancing effects that operate independently of household resources. These direct rural effects are strongly conditioned by the national economic advancement and related urbanisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern economies, the advancement of well‐being of the citizens should be in an inclusive and sustainable way. In this respect, the sustainable welfare targets should exclusively include three main pillars: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. These pillars consist of qualitative and nonmonetary, as well as monetary and quantitative indicators to monitor. Although sustainable development today is well‐appreciated in most governments' agenda, yet it is generally not a trivial task to measure its progress especially due to multidimensional nature of some targets. In this article, sustainable development is measured by using a wide range of indicators within multidimensional perspective of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2015. Indicators cover wide spectrum of areas such as poverty reduction, health, education, gender equality, and environment. An index creation method is developed for measuring the level and the performance of countries' progress through achieving MDGs. The index score levels and the rankings of countries are compared with similar indexes developed by United Nations. Finally, countries are classified according to their achievements relative to other countries (which is measured by the index) versus their self‐achievement performances (in terms of improvement of the index over years) in a big matrix. Results demonstrate the importance of measuring country performances in both dimensions. Understanding the progress in MDGs can help settle on binding targets for achieving the country specific goals in economic and noneconomic areas and on the mechanisms to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030, which set amid on the success of MDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Desertification affects about 36 × 106 km2 of land around the world, two‐thirds of the world's countries and one‐fifth of its population, but poverty prevents these people from developing effective solutions. To balance the need for sustainable development with environmental protection, China's scientists have tested a new and more environmentally friendly approach based on ecological restoration projects that simultaneously provide a sustainable livelihood for the citizens affected by the projects. This strategy for controlling desertification requires cooperation among governments, scientists, and researchers from many disciplines and the communities affected by the program. To document the effectiveness of this strategy, we monitored the implementation of a programme to combat desertification in the Alxa League of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Our study showed that the new strategy can significantly increase vegetation cover, species richness, aboveground biomass, soil organic matter content, and soil nutrients. The successful ecological restoration provides potentially important lessons for other parts of the world that face the joint burden of poverty and environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial deepening is universally considered to be one of the vital means to trigger inclusive growth, in economies the world over, Tanzania being no exception. However, the lack of traditional collateral among the poor has made it virtually impossible for them to have access to financial services particularly in the formal financial institutions. It is in this context that the informal financial groups (IFGs) are so crucial in filling the financial inclusiveness gap among the poor in Tanzania. It is thus crucial that the efficacy of IFGs in improving the well‐being of the poor is assessed. It is in this context that the present study employs a quasi‐experiment mixed methodology to answer research questions. Findings have categorically shown that membership to IFGs has a positive and significant impact on various socio‐economic variables. Efforts to intensify education and training activities in IFGs, and their access to loans are some of the key recommendations that this paper suggests. It is hoped that the newly promulgated 2017 National Microfinance Policy shall be implemented to that effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges Horner and Hulme's call to move from 'international development' to 'global development' with a reaffirmation of the classical traditions of development studies. With some adaptation to fit the changing contemporary context, these traditions not only remain relevant but also recover vital insights that have been obscured in the various fashionable re‐imaginings of development. In particular, development thinking and agendas in the past were much more radical and ambitious in addressing the imperatives of redistribution and progressive forms of transformation in the context of stark asymmetries of wealth and power. Such ambition is still needed to address the nature and scale of challenges that continue to face the bulk of countries in the world, particularly given the persistence if not deepening of asymmetries. This reaffirmation is elaborated by addressing three major weaknesses in Horner and Hulme's arguments. First, they do not actually define development, but instead treat it as simply poverty and inequality dynamics, which are better understood as outcomes rather than causes. Second, despite their assertion that the study of (international) development was primarily concerned with between‐country inequalities, this is not true. Domestic inequality was in fact central to both development theory and policy since the origins of the field. Third, the authors ignore the rise of neoliberalism from the late 1970s onwards and the profound crisis that this caused to development outside of East Asia and perhaps India, which the jargon of 'global' implicitly obfuscates and even condones. Rather, the experiences of East Asia and in particular China arguably vindicate classical approaches in development studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of fast growth and increasing average income levels, China's development has been uneven across various sectors and regions. This uneven development has reduced the life satisfaction of many people and has caused social tensions. Using four rounds of the Chinese Household Income Project data, this paper investigates social tensions caused by inequality, poverty and polarization across rural and urban areas, and across the Eastern, Central and Western regions, and between the emerging super provinces/megacities and the rest. It shows that although tensions have been significantly alleviated by fast economic growth, the impact of growth imbalances is still very severe. China should focus on more balanced growth in addition to a high rate of growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo has gained momentum between 2003 and 2015, with a high annual growth rate of over 6%. However, poverty and employment outcomes were relatively poor, while inequality increased. This study uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) microsimulation model to study the pro‐poor effect of alternative growth strategy that is likely to strengthen the competitiveness of agro‐food products from the Congo. We experimented with three different scenarios: labor productivity growth, marketing efficiency, and transportation efficiency. The simulations demonstrated that improving the productivity of workers in agro‐food industries has not only produced strong relative pro‐poor effects, but also has the potential to lead to income convergence between rich and poor households. The analysis also revealed the underestimated contribution of agro‐food marketing and transportation efficiency. The major finding is that marketing efficiency favors the middle class. Efficiency gains in the transportation of agro‐food products generate strong pro‐poor effects in absolute and relative terms and are likely to be particularly effective in leading to income convergence. This policy has the potential not only to increase income and employment, but also to provide positive price impacts for both producers and consumers and benefits to all households, particularly low‐income households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asia is a development success story. By 2025, it is forecast that extreme poverty in the region will have been ‘eradicated’. Does this mean that the challenges so evident in the 1960s when the countries of the region began to pursue development have been met, and the objectives achieved? The paper makes a case for thinking afresh about development and the poverty project, recognising that development is never neatly achieved but, rather, re‐worked, re‐engineered and re‐imagined over time. This is done through identifying different categories of ‘poor’, each produced through different poverty‐making processes, measured and viewed in different ways, and their poverty addressed using different approaches and policies. With specific reference to the cases of Laos and Thailand, and drawing on longitudinal research in the latter country, it is argued that while economic growth does trickle down, it trickles down in quite discrete and often contingent ways. Furthermore, there is always development work to be done, because development creates its own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Review of Sociology 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.)

ABSTRACT: Perceptions regarding the importance of mental health are shifting at a global level. Once described as an ‘invisible problem’ in international development, mental health is now being framed as one of the most pressing development issues of our time. Concern over the historical absence of mental health from the development agenda — despite its being regarded as a major obstacle to development — has led to its recent inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article critically examines three intersecting axes key to its inclusion in the SDGs: 1) the conceptualization and calculation of the contribution of mental disorder to the global burden of disease; 2) the quantification of mental disorder as an economic burden; and 3) the relationship between mental distress and poverty. The article highlights the urgent need to foster a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between mental health and development, and shows how, at times, interventions in the two fields work together in producing reductionist, economistic, individualized and psychologized responses to poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using novel state‐level data of Peru from 1997 to 2010, we investigate how growth in different sectors affects poverty rates and the middle class. Our results indicate that only the manufacturing sector seems to robustly decrease poverty. Growth in the service sector emerges as a meaningful predictor of a rising middle class. Allowing for regional differences, we find substantial variation across the 25 Peruvian states with large shifts in magnitudes, signs, and statistical importance. Beyond the immediate implications for Peru, these findings highlight the importance of analyzing the link between economic performance and poverty rates on a subnational level. Policy implications are likely to differ substantially, depending on the source of economic growth and regional particularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The early years of the twenty-first century were historic for socioeconomic relations in Brazil. While long known for stark socioeconomic inequality, the nation became internationally celebrated for its economic growth and successful poverty-reduction initiatives, which together propelled some 35 million 'previously poor' Brazilians into what became called a 'new middle class.' The apparent rise of this 'new' class has generated contentious debate and a range of social science studies in Brazil; yet this literature is little known in the Anglophone academic world. While some have interpreted this demographic transformation as an expansion of the existing middle class, others have questioned the utility of income- or consumption-based criteria for the category 'middle class.' Drawing from ongoing research in working-class neighborhoods in three Brazilian cities (Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo), this article reviews and engages these important debates, examines the extent to which Brazil's class structure has changed, and presents a conceptual framework for understanding experiences of socioeconomic mobility and class subjectivities among Brazil's 'previously poor.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A household is considered asset poor if its assets (financial assets or net worth, taken separately) are insufficient to maintain well-being at a low-income threshold for 3 months. We provide the first national-level estimates of asset poverty for Canada, using the 1999, 2005, and 2012 cycles of the Survey of Financial Security, and juxtapose these estimates with income poverty. The analysis provides new insight into economic insecurity by showing that asset poverty rates are consistently two to three times higher than income poverty rates. In addition to the prevalence of asset poverty across socio-demographic groups, we analyzed how the composition of the poor change over time. Age and geography shape the risk for asset poverty in distinct ways. We found that while education appears to play a comparable role in shaping both income poverty and asset poverty, immigration places Canadians at a relatively higher risk of income poverty but not asset poverty. Key Practitioner Message: • Practitioners ought to consider assets as well as income in assessing economic vulnerability; • Asset poverty levels are 2-3 times higher than income poverty levels; • Certain groups (e.g., immigrants) may be income poor but maintain sufficient assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute poverty reduction and lower inequality. But policy action needs to be better served by analysis and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of tourism on total and extreme monetary poverty, in order to illuminate the debate surrounding the links between tourism and poverty. We apply fixed effects models to panel data on the Peruvian departments for the period 2001-2013. We also identify the key factors in the tourism model affecting the empirical results. Our findings show that tourism is important for the poor, but its benefits do not reach the extreme poor to the same extent, and its potential is not fully exploited. The weak macroenvironment and low community participation impede poverty reduction through tourism. [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]

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]

Studies relating ageing and countries' economic performance address mostly developed economies. However, extant studies demonstrate that less developed countries ( LDC) and emerging economies ( EE) are reaching the transition process faster than those from developed regions, which renders the speed of ageing, besides ageing, a critical variable to explore in this context. Comparing system dynamic panel data estimations for 40 LDC, 19 EE and 28 developed countries ( DC), between 1990 and 2013, we uncovered that ageing is detrimental to countries' economic growth, with noticeable nuances depending on countries' development level. The current level of ageing significantly and negatively impacts on DC's growth but not on that of LDC or EE. For these latter groups, the most relevant issue is the speed of ageing. The current annual growth of old age dependency ratio significantly diminishes EE's growth prospects whereas the lagged annual growth of the ageing index and the old age dependency ratio significantly curtails LDC's growth. Such results emphasize the need for urgent public policies that might mitigate the imbalance in LDCs' age structure before the speed of ageing leads LDCs to become even much poorer. [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]

Economic growth accelerated during the first decade of the 2000s in many poor countries, especially in Africa. This welcome news is widely discussed, even in the popular press. Yet as economies grow, some analysts express concerns that such growth is not having as significant an impact on poverty as one would hope. Analysts and policymakers ask whether this growth is adequately pro-poor, shared, or inclusive. Less noticed is that improvements in children's health are accelerating, too. This paper examines the extent to which these health improvements are equitably shared or 'inclusive.' We use a descriptive method, which is analogous to growth incidence curves, and apply it to eight countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America. We draw two principal conclusions. First, within countries, health improvements often have a different distribution than income/expenditure growth, and that distribution is usually more hopeful in the sense that it is more likely to be strongly pro-poor than the distribution of income growth. Second, we have yet to see clear patterns in terms of the within-country relationship between growth incidence curves and health improvement incidence curves. Thus, one cannot rely on the information in the growth incidence curve to infer the inclusiveness of health improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU-wide survey ' Statistics on Income and Living Conditions' ( EU- SILC) is extremely important for international social science research and policy advice. It is therefore crucial to ensure that the data are of the highest quality and international comparability. This paper is aimed at identifying unexpected developments in income levels, income mobility, and inequality in the EU- SILC data between 2005 and 2009. We examine the consistency of EU- SILC by comparing cross-sectional results with findings based on two-year longitudinal samples. Although the data represent similar populations, for several countries the results of this comparison differ widely. One important outcome is the high degree of variability over time in countries that obtain their income information from register data. This suggests methodological challenges in the clear designation of new subsample members, in the reweighting of the data, in imputation of missing values, and in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African continent has grown by more than 4 percent yearly on average during the past decade. However, the link between this remarkable growth rate and poverty reduction is neither obvious nor simple. This paper focuses on the elasticity of poverty with respect to GDP growth at the sectoral level and takes into account the fact that economic growth may affect poverty directly as well as indirectly through sectoral labor share intensity. It develops a methodology that sheds light on the contribution of sectoral growth to poverty reduction country-by-country in Africa, guiding policy recommendations. As the composition of growth matters at least as much as its overall intensity, it is key to identify the sectors that have the strongest impact on poverty reduction and unleash their potential; if growth happens to concentrate in sectors with scarce pro-poor potential, like commodity-driven growth, redistributive strategies are necessary to compensate the weak effect on poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Policy 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 paper decomposes changes in poverty into growth and redistribution components and employs several pro-poor growth concepts to explore the growth, poverty and inequality nexus in Sri Lanka over the period 1990-2010. We find a 'trickle-down' situation, in which the poor have received proportionately less benefits from growth than the non-poor. All pro-poor measures suggest that economic growth in Sri Lanka was particularly beneficial for those located at the top of the distribution. Regression-based decompositions suggest that variation in expenditure by education characteristics that persist after controlling for other factors to account for around two-fifths of total household expenditure inequality. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With one third of the population living in poverty and millions experiencing chronic food insecurity, the government of Ethiopia faces difficult and complex challenges. One of the most robust and effective social protection efforts is the Productive Safety Net Program, which has served more than seven million people since 2005. This article explores the role of power and politics and posits that the maintenance of political control explains why components of the program are not implemented as planned. We focus upon everyday mundane aspects of life in rural communities wherein governmental programs entrench political control while making progress towards stated objectives. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little sociological attention over the last two decades has focused on the deprivation experienced by indigenous people. Fusing insights from American Indian history and the race and labor market inequality literatures, we address this gap in this article through a historically informed labor market analysis of poverty-an analysis that considers the pervasiveness of contemporary Native poverty, its potential basis in labor market opportunities, and the extent to which it has been patterned by two major demographic and economic shifts: (1) the rapid urbanization of the American Indian population and (2) the proliferation of tribally owned casinos. Findings reveal, most notably, the incredibly rigid and durable character of poverty for this population, historically and currently and across geographic space, and with little overall impact of local labor market opportunity. The presence of tribal casinos reduces such poverty, but only to a small degree and not nearly enough to compensate for sizable American Indian and white poverty differentials. Group history is key, we conclude, to shaping how space, labor markets, and economic development reduce or buttress relations of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses patterns in regional inequality within and between Malaysia's 14 states, drawing upon estimates of Kuznets/Williamson curves, σ- and β-convergence and spatial spillovers. The path of regional inequality contradicts Kuznets predictions. Regional inequality initially fell but has subsequently risen with further economic development. While Malaysian governments have been successful at reducing poverty, they have been unable to curtail regional inequality in the long run. [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 MDG employment indicators suffer from major shortcomings, including measurement problems, inappropriate use of aggregate statistics, ambiguous interpretability, and assumptions that do not apply to developing countries. Based on this critique, the authors propose a new set of four indicators for productive employment and decent work, namely: the growth of labour value added per worker, the working poverty rate, the share of workers receiving less than an absolute minimum labour income, and the share of workers receiving less than 60 per cent of the median labour income. They demonstrate the empirical application of these indicators using the country cases of Uganda and Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-2015 moment is a moment in time in which multiple efforts are being made to envision a better long-term future for humanity and to forge, post-2015, a new and different global development trajectory. The replacement of the Millennium Development Goals by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is occurring in the shadow of the global financial crisis and the reaching of planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity. There is thus a need not only for new global goals but also a new global development paradigm. The papers in this special issue examine the SDGs in the making and indicate the extent to which they may be associated with a new global development paradigm. They identify key weaknesses in the emerging SDGs in terms of the articulation of global and local priorities, the failure to address the synergies and trade-offs between different goals and the lack of an underlying policy framework. They also suggest that to be effective, new global goals require new global rules. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unanticipated events can cause considerable economic hardship for poor rural households. Some types of negative shocks, for example weather-related agricultural losses and vector-borne diseases, are expected to occur more frequently as a result of climate change. In this paper we measure the role of household- and location-specific characteristics in conditioning behavioural responses to a wide range of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks. We use data from 8,000 rural households in 25 developing countries, compiled in the global database of the Poverty Environment Network. We employ a hierarchical multinomial logit model to identify the importance of characteristics observed at different levels of aggregation on a set of strategies aimed at coping with economic shocks. Results indicate that in response to idiosyncratic shocks, households tend to deplete financial and durable assets, whereas covariate and thus often climate-related shocks predominantly result in reduced consumption. Households in sites characterised by high asset wealth tend to cope with shocks in a more proactive way than those in sites with average or below average asset wealth, but the role of asset types in conditioning shock responses varies across regions. Our findings have implications for rural development and climate change adaptation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

In academic economics, inequality has received little attention in recent decades, although popular concerns about the super-rich have grown. The World Top Incomes Database provides evidence of the rise of the super-rich in many countries since 1980. Thomas Piketty has publicised the new data, predicting increases in inequality due to the return to capital exceeding the rate of economic growth and advocating policies to counter such increases by high taxes on the income and wealth of the super-rich. This article asks why inequality has been a neglected topic, assesses empirical contributions and Piketty' s model and discusses implications for evidence-based policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid population ageing and economic transformation in Asia underline the policy challenges associated with ensuring income security in old age. This article examines the potential role of social pensions in securing old-age income security in Asia. It assesses the main policy trade-offs associated with adopting alternative social pension designs, especially around two critical policy points: the comparative advantages of social assistance and social pensions; and the integration of non-contributory transfers within advanced contributory pension schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of remittances on cross-country poverty using a panel data set from 65 developing counties over a long period 1970-2008. This study differs from the existing literature on poverty impact of remittances by explicitly noting the importance of financial development in shaping the link. This analysis shows that the effect of remittances on poverty depends on the level of financial development of a remittances receiving economy. Those economies that have a low level of financial development seem to acquire an unfavourable effect of remittances while economies with comparatively developed financial systems do not suffer from the adverse effects of remittances. In sum, remittances accentuate not ameliorate poverty in countries with the low level of financial development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel analysis about the capabilities of academic researchers and academic poverty. Adopting the capability approach, which Amartya Sen developed to address concerns such as poverty, inequality and development, we shift the focus of analysis and discussion around evaluating academic research and academics in the social sciences from measures of so-called 'quality', 'impact' or 'excellence' to the capabilities of academics. For us, the conceptualization and evaluation of academic research is a question about what academics have reasons to value, and about their ability to achieve valuable beings and doings. It is also about determining what might constitute academic poverty, and what academics are required to do in order to avoid that poverty. Relating our analysis to debates around universities, in particular about quasi-market pressures, we identify the possibility of basic capabilities in academic research, namely: the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill basic academic needs. Our proposition is that there is academic poverty when an academic researcher is not capable of fulfilling basic academic needs, such as: adhering to standards of coherence, robustness and rigour; searching for and disseminating the spirit of the truth. Moreover, if the academic has the capabilities to fulfill those basic academic needs and yet chooses not to do so, she renders herself in a state akin to academic poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the distribution of well-being and, specifically, the degree of poverty and deprivation in Albania, in the years 2002 and 2005, using Living Standard Measurement Surveys ( LSMS). The distribution analysis is performed by applying both one-dimensional and multidimensional approaches, in particular to better examine the link between economic growth, inequality and poverty in Albania. Furthermore, by estimating a non-monetary indicator, as proposed by Bossert et al. (), and a nonlinear principal component model together with a probit model, the paper focuses on the multidimensional measures of poverty to address the relationship between poverty and socio-economic factors. Our evidence shows that absolute poverty decreased from 2002 to 2005 while national relative poverty increased; economic growth reduced poverty in Albania over the observed period; and living in rural and mountain areas, being female, poorly educated and with a large family increased the probability of suffering from deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is widely considered a 'good thing' that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability, but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this paper takes a critical look at what this policy's 'success' consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a 'success' in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households - and Dalits and women in particular - especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low-caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high-caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have presented the patterns of inequality, growth and income inequality in the MENA region. Using a cross-sectional time series data of MENA countries for the period 1985-2009, we have also investigated the effect of income inequality on key societal development, namely economic growth and poverty, in the region. Our empirical results show that income inequality reduces economic growth and increases poverty in the region. Other factors having significant negative effect on economic growth in the MENA region include previous growth rate, exchange rate, government consumption expenditure or government burden, initial per capita GDP, inflation and primary education. On the other hand, variables positively and significantly associated with MENA's economic growth are domestic investment rate, urbanization, infrastructure development, and mineral rent as a percentage of GDP. In addition, apart from income inequality, other factors increasing poverty in the region are foreign direct investment, population growth, inflation rate, and the attainment of only primary education. Poverty-reducing variables in the region include domestic investment, trade openness, exchange rate, income per capita, and oil rents as a percentage of GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses poverty and inequality in Latin America as of 2014. Latin America is the world's second most unequal region on the plant according to the Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales and World Bank. Inequality is considered as one of the main challenges to combat poverty, affirm democracy and sustain sovereign economic growth in the region. Also examined is the evolution of poverty and inequality in the region since the 1980s.

Resilience has become prominent in academia where it is used as a central framework in disciplines such as ecology, climate change adaptation or urban planning. Policy makers and international development agencies also increasingly refer to it. The objective of this paper is to assess the advantages and limits of resilience in the context of development. Although the review highlights some positive elements-for example, the ability to foster an integrated approach-it also shows that resilience has important limitations. In particular, it is not a pro-poor concept, in the sense that it does not exclusively apply to, or benefit, the poor. As such, resilience building cannot replace poverty reduction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growing national economy and a raft of initiatives designed to improve livelihoods, 39% of fishers in West Sumatra are poor. In this paper, we present the results of interview-based research with stakeholders in 25 fishing communities in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Thirty-one enabling and constraining livelihood development factors are identified and classified according to the Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis. We recommend that these factors form a basis from which decision makers ensure that future livelihood improvement programs adequately recognize the integrated nature of poverty amongst poor fishers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-development theorists have reminded us that 'development' is a cultural construct-a set of organising assumptions through which we order the world and understand our place in it. As such, notions of development are not singular but vary between different groups of people. This paper seeks to bring further nuance to these understandings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on Siquijor Island in the Philippines, it explores contending ideals of the good life-one based on material accumulation, the other on austerity-at once valued by most residents. It shows that notions of development vary not only between groups but that individuals can simultaneously hold multiple ideals of development. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]