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The rural economy in Bangladesh has been a powerful source of economic growth and has substantially reduced poverty, especially since 2000, but the remarkable transformation and unprecedented dynamism in rural Bangladesh are an underexplored, underappreciated, and largely untold story. The analysis identifies the key changes occurring in the rural economy, the principal drivers of rural incomes, the implications for policy, and related actions to foster future growth, further reduce poverty, and improve food security and nutrition. A substantial strength of this study is its empirical foundation, consisting of three sets of detailed data on rural households. Two of the datasets are unique in tracking the same set of households for more than two decades. These data make it possible to examine how change is occurring within and among rural households; they shed considerable light on trends that tend to be obscured at more aggregate levels of analysis. Nationally representative surveys and aggregate secondary data provide complementary and contextually rich insights into the household data.

This systematic country diagnosis (SCD) for Chad aims to identify how to achieve the twin goals of ending poverty and improving shared prosperity. It acknowledges both: (i) the need for selectivity in pro-poor interventions, and (ii) the inherent difficulty to do so given the many competing binding reasons for poverty. Selectivity means the identification of principal opportunities for sustainable poverty reduction in the next 15 years, as well as the identification of binding constraints to reaping such opportunities. Selectivity also implies making trade-offs between immediate and longer term objectives, with priority given to the identification of poverty reduction opportunities which will: (i) deliver the highest possible results before 2030, and (ii) not undermine prospects for poverty reduction and shared prosperity beyond 2030. The analysis presented in the SCD draws on a variety of information sources. These include domestic statistics and reports, evaluations by the country’s development partners, original research conducted by the World Bank team, and consultations held in N’Djamena with nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. Reaping poverty reduction opportunities will require addressing a selected number of binding constraints.

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food expenditure. Food price increases of 5, 10, and 15 percent are estimated to increase poverty rates between 2 and 5 percentage points in the baseline scenario.

This report focuses on the economic mobility of individuals (and corresponding households) belonging to the bottom 40 percent of the Kyrgyz population. This is indeed the target population chosen by the World Bank Group for the achievement of its second and twin goal of shared prosperity (the first one remaining poverty reduction). Moreover, in the specific case of the Kyrgyz Republic total poverty rates in the period under analysis ranged between 34 and 37 percent, thus making the poverty and bottom 40 percent pools almost identical. For each selected transition group, the report depicts a detailed profile of corresponding main socio-economic characteristics. Four transition groups were in particular identified: (i) those who were found to be stuck in the bottom 40 percent in both 2010 and 2011; (ii) those who managed to move up from the bottom 40 percent in 2011; (iii) those who entered the bottom 40 percent in 2011, and (iv) those who managed to stay in the top 60 percent in both years under analysis. The evidence shows a few significant differences among these four groups in terms of both households’ invariant and individual characteristics.

The last poverty assessment for Rwanda was conducted in 1997. Three years after the genocide, the country was characterized by deep and widespread poverty, rock-bottom health indicators, and pervasive hunger and food insecurity. In real terms, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was lower than it had been in 1960. In real terms, the economy quadrupled between 1995 and 2013. Enrolment in primary school is near universal and infant and child mortality are among the lowest in Africa. A large part of the population, including the extreme poor, is covered by public health insurance. This poverty assessment focuses on the evolution of poverty and other social indicators over the past decade (2000-1 and 2010-11). Using data from a variety of sources, mainly the three household living standards surveys (EICV) and the three demographic and health surveys (DHS) conducted during the past decade, the poverty assessment documents trends in monetary and non-monetary dimensions of living standards and examines the drivers of observed trends. The aim of the poverty assessment is to provide policy makers and development partners with information and analysis that can be used to improve the effectiveness of their poverty reduction and social programs.

During the past decade, the use of conditional cash transfer programs to increase investment in human capital has generated considerable excitement in both research and policy forums. This article surveys the existing literature, which suggests that most conditional cash transfer programs are used for essentially one of two purposes: restoring efficiency when externalities exist or improving equity by targeting resources to poor households. The programs often meet their stated objectives, but in some instances there is tension between the efficiency and equity objectives. The overall impact of a program depends on the gains and losses associated with each objective.

Strong poverty reduction in Latin America resumed with the growth rebound in 2010, as both moderate and extreme poor households benefitted from the recovery, accelerating poverty reduction to rates similar to those witnessed between 2003-2006 despite a 2.8 percent decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, poverty levels in Latin America (LAC) remained basically static during the great recession, as the poor were shielded from the economic crisis in some countries and continued to benefit from growth in others. In 2010, poverty reduction resumed sharply in Latin America, as household incomes were once again closely linked to economic growth at rates similar to pre-crisis years. Moderate poverty declined by almost 2.5 percentage points to reach 28 percent in 2010, while extreme poverty fell by more than 2 percentage points to reach 14 percent. As 2011 comes to a close, once again the global economy and Latin America are facing risks of yet another economic slowdown. Using household survey data from 2010 and selected labor market indicators through the third quarter of 2011, this note identifies some basic facts on the impact of the crisis and the recovery on the poor and explores their implications for poverty reduction in the region going forward.

In 2008, when food prices rose precipitously to record highs, international attention and local policy in many countries focused on safety nets as part of the response. Now that food prices are high again, the issue of appropriate responses is again on the policy agenda. This note sets out a framework for making quick, qualitative assessments of how well countries' safety nets prepare them for a rapid policy response to rising food prices should the situation warrant. The framework is applied using data from spring 2011, presenting a snap?shot analysis of what is a dynamically changing situation. Based on this data safety net readiness is assessed in 13 vulnerable countries based on the following criteria: the presence of safety net programs, program coverage, administrative capacity, and to a lesser degree, targeting effectiveness. It is argued that these criteria will remain the same throughout time, even if the sample countries affected will be expected to vary. Based on this analysis the note highlights that though a number of countries are more prepared than they were in 2008, there is still a significant medium term agenda on safety net preparedness in the face of crisis. In this context, strategic lessons from the 2008 food crisis response are presented to better understand the response options and challenges facing governments and policy makers. The note concludes by calling for continued investment and scale up of safety nets to mitigate poverty impacts and help prevent long term setbacks in nutrition and poverty.

This paper assesses the potential impacts of the removal of agricultural and other trade distortions using a newly developed dataset and methodological approach for evaluating the global poverty and inequality effects of policy reforms. It finds that liberalization of agriculture will increase global extreme poverty (US$1 a day) slightly and by almost 1 percent if other goods trade is also liberalized; but the number of people living on less than $2 a day will fall by almost 1 percent. Beneath these small aggregate changes, most countries witness a substantial reduction in poverty while South Asia where half of the world's poor reside will experience an increase in extreme (but not moderate) poverty incidence due to high rates of protection afforded to its unskilled labor-intensive agricultural sectors. The distributional changes also are projected to be mild, but again exhibit a strong regional pattern: inequality falls in Latin America, which is characterized by high initial inequality, and rises in South Asia, has relatively low income inequality.

A wide range of public policies aims at improving the social welfare of the population or specific groups among the population. The use of the term social protection usually refers to the group of social policies that provide cash transfer to protect households from poverty. The goal of this study is to measure the possible impact of these new policies. Because the new regulations have been recently passed and few administrative data on the programs are available, the study cannot report on the effective impact of the new policy. The approach instead uses the 2006 VHLSS (Vietnamese Household Living Standard Survey) to estimate how efficient the new policy could be if it had enough resource to be fully implemented without any restriction. The first section measures how many of the poor could be eligible to social allowances if the decision 67 could be fully implemented. The second section describes the characteristics of the poor that would probably not benefit from this new policy.