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How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
By Yuen Yuen Ang. 2016
Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades…
it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis. Rather than insist that either strong institutions of good governance foster markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang lays out a new, dynamic framework for understanding development broadly. Successful development, she contends, is a coevolutionary process in which markets and governments mutually adapt.By mapping this coevolution, Ang reveals a startling conclusion: poor and weak countries can escape the poverty trap by first harnessing weak institutions—features that defy norms of good governance—to build markets. Further, she stresses that adaptive processes, though essential for development, do not automatically occur. Highlighting three universal roadblocks to adaptation, Ang identifies how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap offers the most complete synthesis to date of the numerous interacting forces that have shaped China’s dramatic makeover and the problems it faces today. Looking beyond China, Ang also traces the coevolutionary sequence of development in late medieval Europe, antebellum United States, and contemporary Nigeria, and finds surprising parallels among these otherwise disparate cases. Indispensable to all who care about development, this groundbreaking book challenges the convention of linear thinking and points to an alternative path out of poverty traps.Confronting Poverty in Iraq: Main Findings
By World Bank. 2011
This report provides the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of Iraqi income and expenditure in several decades. The report makes…
extensive use of the Iraq Household Socio-Economic Survey, the first nationwide income and expenditure survey since 1988. IHSES data is complemented income and expenditure data from a wide range of other measures of living standards, allowing us to analyze living standards in a holistic way. The analysis presented here was performed with two main goals-first, to inform the Government's Poverty Reduction Strategy; and second, to serve as a baseline for future assessments of changes in living standards and the identification of critical issues for deeper examination. Iraqi living standards have two unusual characteristics. First, they have fallen over the past generation. Second, they feature surprisingly little inequality. These characteristics are both rooted in Iraq's recent history of authoritarian government, war, military occupation, insurgency, and civil strife leading to infrastructure destruction and population displacement. There have been few opportunities for individuals to prosper from professional or entrepreneurial activities. Decades of neglected investment have resulted in deterioration of social services and economic infrastructure. Consequently, individuals have lacked capabilities to prosper and an investment climate conducive to prosperity. School enrollment and life expectancy have declined. Extremely low returns to education reflect the combination of poor educational quality and lack of employment opportunities. In terms of economic infrastructure, access to reliable electricity and water, and even access to paved roads are low, are further reflections of decades of neglect. While the upper end of the distribution has been pulled down by a lack of opportunities, the lower end has been supported by direct government provision of food. The Public Distribution System (PDS) provides 85 percent of food needs. While PDS has been useful as a safety net for the poor and the vulnerable, the system is expensive, inefficient, and fiscally risky. Indeed, PDS food rations account for a far greater share of public spending than does education or health. Going forward, Iraq faces two main challenges. First, although Iraq does not have to develop from scratch, it faces a formidable challenge in re-development. Second, a shift by the Government is required-from direct provision of basic subsistence toward investment in human capacities. The Government can provide an enabling environment through investments in economic infrastructure and services to business and citizens, thus allowing the population to make productive use of education and their own labor. Both challenges are now being taken up by the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which articulates a detailed set of required actions and outlines priorities for government spending.Violence and Vengeance
By Christopher R. Duncan. 1998
Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds…
of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. Christopher R. Duncan spent several years conducting fieldwork in North Maluku, and in Violence and Vengeance, he examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict. Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, Duncan explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. He examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. Duncan's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.Reducing Inequality for Shared Growth in China
By The World Bank. 2011
Guangdong, a province of over 93 million residents, is located on the southern coast of China, boarding with Hong Kong,…
China. As China's powerhouse for economic growth and a pioneer of reform and opening up, Guangdong has maintained an annual average GDP growth rate of 13.7 percent over the past three decades. Its historical achievements notwithstanding, Guangdong witnessed increased inequality and regional disparity. To assist the authority in developing a strategy for the new phase of reforms that promotes more inclusive and sustainable growth, Reducing Inequality for Shared Growth in Guangdong Province recommends a three-pillar approach: eliminating absolute poverty, reducing inequality in opportunities, and containing inequality in outcomes. The book also proposes a range of policy actions in these three broad areas. First, to further develop the social assistance program (i.e. the minimum living allowance program ) to address the issue of absolute poverty; Second, to improve income opportunities of the rural poor by better facilitating rural labor migration to non-farming jobs and urban labor markets, deepening rural finance reform, and providing better protection of their rights over land. Third, to invest in people through more equitable access to and financing of social services such as basic education, skills development, and health care. Further reform of the intergovernmental fiscal system is essential to the success of these efforts. This report will be of interest to central and sub-national policy makers, policy implementing agencies, researchers, development partners, and others working on economic and social development in China and in other countries. Guangdong's experience will offer great value to the rest of China and to other countries that are grappling with similar development challenges.Migration and Poverty: Towards Better Migration Opportunities for the Poor
By Marcin Sasin, Edmundo Murrugarra, Jennica Larrison. 2011
This volume uses recent research from the World Bank to document and analyze the bidirectional relationship between poverty and migration…
in developing countries. The case studies chapters compiled in this book (from Tanzania, Nepal, Albania and Nicaragua), as well as the last, policy-oriented chapter - illustrate the diversity of migration experience and tackle the complicated nexus between migration and poverty reduction. Two main messages emerge: Although evidence indicates that migration reduces poverty, it also shows that migration opportunities of the poor differ from that of the rest. In general, the evidence suggests that the poor either migrate less or migrate to low return destinations. As a consequence, many developing countries are not maximizing the poverty-reducing potential of migration. The main reason behind this outcome is difficulties in access to remunerative migration opportunities and the high costs associated with migrating. It is shown, for example, that reducing migration costs makes migration more pro-poor. The volume shows that developing countries' governments are not without means to improve this situation. Several of the country examples offer a few policy recommendations towards this end.The Pimping of Prostitution
By Julie Bindel. 2017
This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe -…
the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether pro-prostitution activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved. Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted 250 interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, traveling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and East and South Africa. Visiting legal brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade, and the women being sold by men classed as 'business entrepreneurs'. Whilst meeting feminist abolitionists, pro-prostitution campaigners, police and government officials, and the men who drive the demand, Bindel uncovered the lies, mythology and criminal activity that shroud this global trade, and suggests here a way forward for the women seeking to abolish the oldest oppression. Informed by the lived human experience of those interviewed, this book will be of great interest to feminists, students, criminal justice advocates, criminologists and human rights activists.The Invisible Poor: A Portrait of Rural Poverty in Argentina
By Dorte Verner, Gabriel Demombynes. 2010
'The Invisible Poor' seeks to raise the profile of the rural poor in Argentina, promote dialogue on rural poverty issues,…
provide the best currently available information about rural poverty, and offer a basis for discussions on how to expand household survey data collection to rural areas. Most previous work has been based on case studies or one-time surveys in a few provinces and consequently has been of limited use for drawing conclusions about rural conditions overall in Argentina. Largely because of data limitations, profound gaps exist in the understanding of rural poverty in Argentina. As a result, the rural poor have sometimes been neglected in policy discussions. This study does not directly address policy responses. Rather it seeks to provide an analytical basis for understanding the conditions of rural life, with the ultimate goal of helping policy makers improve the welfare of Argentina's rural poor through evidence-based policy.The main objective of this report is to help policymakers in the Caribbean design an agenda of policy actions to…
accelerate trade integration and growth and reduce poverty. The report is a joint response from the World Bank and the Organization of American States (OAS) to a demand statement from the member states of CARICOM, formulated by the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery and the CARICOM Secretariat, to strengthen the analytical underpinnings of the linkages between trade, economic growth, and poverty. It aims at centering the Caribbean's next round of trade reforms and its overall agenda around trade on these key thematic areas. The report provides an overview of the economic and trade system context of the Caribbean, under which the new trade environment is operating. It then discusses the opportunities and challenges for the Caribbean associated with the new trade environment. It finally quantifies the gains from global trade integration using a dynamic macroeconomic analysis. The report provides policy priorities to accelerating Caribbean integration into the world economy and to reap the benefits of global competition. Each part of the report focuses on a key question and adds value by providing an in-depth analysis of the issues raised and laying the foundations for policy recommendations described in the last chapter of the report: * Part I (Overview of economic and trade system context): is Caribbean's economic and trade system sound enough to sustain the new era of its global trade relations which is being shaped? * Part II (Focuses on the analysis of the new opportunities and challenges of the new trade environment): what are the opportunities and challenges that the new trade environment offers to the Caribbean? * Part III (Presents an assessment of the impact of the EPA on growth and poverty using two types of macroeconomic models): what are the gains in terms of growth and poverty reduction of the recently negotiated EPA?Public Finance in China
By Jiwei Lou, Shuilin Wang. 2008
Since 1980, China's economy has been the envy of the world. Is annual growth rate of more than 9 percent…
during this period makes China today the world's fourth-largest economy. And this sustained growth has reduced the poverty rate from 60 percent of the population to less than 10 percent. However, such rapid growth has also increased inequalities in income and access to basic services and stressed natural resources. The government seeks to resolve these and other issues by creating a 'harmonious society' -- shifting priorities from the overriding pursuit of growth to more balanced economic and social development. This volume compiles analyses and insights from high-level Chinese policy makers and prominent international scholars that address the changes needed in public finance for success in the government's new endeavor. It examines such key policy issues as public finance and the changing role of the state; fiscal reform and revenue and expenditure assignments; intergovernmental relations and fiscal transfers; and financing and delivery of basic public goods such as compulsory education, innovation, public health, and social protection. And it offers concrete recommendations for immediate policy changes and for China's future reform agenda. 'Public Finance in China' is a must-read for specialists in public finance and for those seeking an understanding of the complex and daunting challenges China is facing.Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy
By Kenneth E. Foote. 1997
Shadowed Ground explores how and why Americans have memorialized - or not - the sites of tragic and violent events…
spanning three centuries of history and every region of the country. For this revised edition, Kenneth Foote has written a new concluding chapter that looks at the evolving responses to recent acts of violence and terror, including the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.Poverty and Social Exclusion in India
By World Bank Staff. 2011
Despite India's record of rapid economic growth and poverty reduction over recent decades, rising inequality in the country has been…
a subject of concern among policy makers, academics, and activists alike. Poverty and Social Exclusion in India focuses on social exclusion, which has its roots in India's historical divisions along lines of caste, tribe, and the excluded sex, that is, women. These inequalities are more structural in nature and have kept entire groups trapped, unable to take advantage of opportunities that economic growth offers. Culturally rooted systems perpetuate inequality, and, rather than a culture of poverty that afflicts disadvantaged groups, it is, in fact, these inequality traps that prevent these groups from breaking out. Combining rigorous quantitative research with a discussion of these underlying processes, this book finds that exclusion can be explained by inequality in opportunities, inequality in access to markets, and inequality in voice and agency. This report will be of interest to policy makers, development practitioners, social scientists, and academics working to foster equality in India.Genocide and Mass Violence
By Devon E. Hinton, Alexander L. Hinton. 2015
What are the legacies of genocide and mass violence for individuals and the social worlds in which they live, and…
what are the local processes of recovery? Genocide and Mass Violence aims to examine, from a cross-cultural perspective, the effects of mass trauma on multiple levels of a group or society and the recovery processes and sources of resilience. How do particular individuals recall the trauma? How do ongoing reconciliation processes and collective representations of the trauma impact the group? How does the trauma persist in 'symptoms'? How are the effects of trauma transmitted across generations in memories, rituals, symptoms, and interpersonal processes? What are local healing resources that aid recovery? To address these issues, this book brings into conversation psychological and medical anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and historians. The theoretical implications of the chapters are examined in detail using several analytic frameworks.Macro Federalism and Local Finance
By Anwar M. Shah. 2008
The design of a federal system to deal with growth, stabilization, and regional and local development issues is the primary…
concern of this volume, edited by Anwar Shah. The book provides analytical tools to address issues arising from globalization, localization, and regional integration. It discusses tax harmonization issues associated with subnational value added tax administration. It provides a framework for fiscal discipline in a federal system. Lessons from international experiences from policies to deal with lagging regions are drawn. The book empirically examines the effect of fiscal decentralization on the overall size of the public sector. Finally, it draws lessons from industrial countries' experiences on local governance. This important new series represents a response to several independent evaluations in recent years that have argued that development practitioners and policy makers dealing with public sector reforms in developing countries and, indeed, anyone with a concern for effective public governance could benefit from a synthesis of newer perspectives on public sector reforms. This series distills current wisdom and presents tools of analysis for improving the efficiency, equity, and efficacy of the public sector. Leading public policy experts and practitioners have contributed to the series.The Origins and Evolution of Family Planning Programs in Developing Countries
By Judith R. Seltzer. 2002
Guns, Drugs, and Development in Colombia
By Holmes, Jennifer S., Sheila Amin Gutiérrez De Piñeres, Kevin M. Curtin. 2008
For decades, Colombia has contended with a variety of highly publicized conflicts, including the rise of paramilitary groups in response…
to rebel insurgencies of the 1960s, the expansion of an illegal drug industry that has permeated politics and society since the 1970s, and a faltering economy in the 1990s. An unprecedented analysis of these struggles, Guns, Drugs, and Development in Colombia brings together leading scholars from a variety of fields, blending previously unseen quantitative data with historical analysis for an impressively comprehensive assessment. Culminating in an inspiring plan for peace, based on Four Cornerstones of Pacification, this landmark work is sure to spur new calls for change in this corner of Latin America and beyond.Civic Unrest
By Marcia Amidon Lusted. 2015
From the American Revolution to the French Revolution, from the civil rights era in the United States to Arab Spring…
in the Middle East, the ongoing battle for freedom and democracy is a profound and fascinating study of the power of human will to change the world. Civic Unrest: Investigate the Struggle for Social Change examines the history behind civic unrest and the methods people use to fight for basic human rights such as freedom of speech and the right to vote. Civic Unrest discusses the different reasons for and methods of revolution, while offering young readers the opportunity to learn about the structure of the U. S. government and how the elements within the U. S. Constitution were decided upon by the Founding Fathers. Activities use elements of history, civics, and mathematics to interpret data, create maps, and debate issues. These enrich learning and encourage students to ask questions, make inferences, and draw conclusions while allowing for a hands-on immersion in the complex elements of civic unrest and democracies. Civic Unrest: Investigate the Struggle for Social Change meets Common Core State Standards for literacy in history and social studies; Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.Africa at a Turning Point? Growth, Aid, and External Shocks
By John Page, Delfin Sia Go. 2008
Since the mid-1990s, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced an acceleration of economic growth that has produced rising incomes and faster human…
development. However, this growth contrasts with the continent's experience between 1975 and 1995, when it largely missed out on two decades of economic progress. This disparity between Africa's current experience and its history raises questions about the continent's development. Is there a turnaround in Africa's economy? Will growth persist? 'Africa at a Turning Point?' is a collection of essays that analyzes three interrelated aspects of Africa's recent revival. The first set of essays examines Africa's recent growth in the context of its history of growth accelerations and collapses. It seeks to answer such questions as, is Africa at a turning point? Are the economic fundamentals finally pointing toward more sustainable growth? The second set of essays looks at donor flows, which play a large role in Africa's growth. These essays focus on such issues as the management and delivery of increased aid, and the history and volatility of donor flows to Africa. The third set of essays considers the recent impact of one persistent threat to sustained growth in Africa: commodity price shocks, particularly those resulting from fluctuations in oil prices.Land in Transition
By Dominique van de Walle, Martin Ravallion. 2004
This book is a case study of Vietnam's efforts to fight poverty using market-oriented land reforms. In the 1980s and…
1990s, the country undertook major institutional reforms, and an impressive reduction in poverty followed. But what role did the reforms play? Did the efficiency gains from reform come at a cost to equity? Were there both winners and losers? Was rising rural landlessness in the wake of reforms a sign of success or failure? 'Land in Transition' investigates the impacts on living standards of the two stages of land law reform: in 1988, when land was allocated to households administratively and output markets were liberalized; and in 1993, when official land titles were introduced and land transactions were permitted for the first time since communist rule began. To fully assess the poverty impacts of these changes, the authors' analysis of household surveys is guided by both economic theory and knowledge of the historical and social contexts. The book delineates lessons from Vietnam's experience and their implications for current policy debates in China and elsewhere.Understanding Growth and Poverty
By Raj Nallari, Breda Griffith. 2011
The literature on growth and poverty is voluminous and still evolving. This title distills the most important lessons from developing…
countries' experience with growth and poverty. It provides a broad understanding of the impact of economic policies on growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. After describing basic economic relationships that summarize the workings and the measurement of the macroeconomy--and after confirming that growth is the most critical factor in alleviating poverty--the book turns to individual policy areas. These include the various roles of government, among them setting fiscal policy and maintaining an environment conducive to the effective operation of a market economy. Policies governing money supply, exchange rates, and the financial sector are also covered. After assessing several decades of experience with development assistance, the aim of which has been to place poor countries on a path of sustainable long-run growth, the study turns to a discussion of external debt. In the 1980s and 1990s, debt contracted by low-income countries from commercial and official sources became unsustainable, crippling their growth, keeping millions in poverty, and forcing an international reappraisal of lending policies, the centerpiece of which was a set of debt-forgiveness policies that was put forward with the launch of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign. The remainder of the volume examines problems that can keep the poor from moving out of poverty. Trade, institutional development, regulation, education, health, labor markets, land and agriculture, natural resources, urbanization, technology, and politics-all are core components of public policy and need to be handled right if poverty is to be addressed effectively. Because many developing countries lack the capacity to mobilize resources-administrative and financial-to move the poor out of poverty, the international community must be actively involved. Looking ahead, rates of growth and poverty will be determined by how nations use knowledge, technology, and energy in firms and households, and by the effects of the warming climate on economic activities. Above all, the distribution of political and economic power within and among countries will determine the direction and dynamics of growth and development.How Governments Can Engage the Private Sector to Improve Health in Africa
By World Bank Staff. 2011
Since the private health sector is an important, and often dominant, provider of health services in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is…
the job of governments as the stewards of the health system to engage with it. Increasing the contributions that the existing private health sector is making to public health is an important, but often neglected, element of meeting the daunting health-related challenges facing African nations. This Report presents newly collected data on how and how effectively each country in the Africa region is engaging the respective private health sectors; and how the engagement compares across the region. While the approach taken by governments varies greatly between countries, there is much room for improvement in the Africa region overall to engage more effectively and room for exchange of ideas and good practices on how to do so. Improved solutions on the policy/regulatory side should be supported by effective organization of the private sector itself and by adjustments in donor programs that take the dynamics of the private health sector better into account.