Explore the vast range of titles available.

The global textile and apparel sector is critically important as an early phase in industrialization for many developing countries and as a provider of employment opportunities to thousands of low-income workers, many of them women. The goal of this book is to explore how the lifting of the Multi-fibre Arrangement/ Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (MFA/ATC) quotas has affected nine countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam with the broader aim of better understanding the links between globalization and poverty in the developing world. Analyzing how employment, wage premiums, and the structure of the apparel industry have changed after the MFA/ATC can generate important lessons for policy makers for economic development and poverty reduction. This book uses in-depth country case studies as the broad methodological approach. In-depth country studies are important because countries are idiosyncratic: differences in regulatory context, history, location, trade relationships, and policies shape both the apparel sector and how the apparel sector changed after the end of the MFA. In-depth country studies place broader empirical work in context and strengthen the conclusions. The countries in this book were chosen because they represent the diversity of global apparel production, including differences across regions, income levels, trade relationships, and policies. The countries occupy different places in the global value chain that now characterizes apparel production. Not surprisingly, the countries studied in this book represent the diversity of post-MFA experiences. This book highlights four key findings: The first is that employment and export patterns after the MFA/ATC did not necessarily match predictions. This book shows that only about a third of the variation in cross-country changes in exports is explained by wage differences. While wage differences explain some of the production shifts, domestic policies targeting the apparel sector, ownership type, and functional upgrading of the industry also played an important role. Second, changes in exports are usually, but not always, good indicators of what happens to wages and employment. While rising apparel exports correlated with rising wages and employment in the large Asian countries, rising exports coincided with falling employment in Sri Lanka. Third, this book identifies the specific ways that changes in the global apparel market affected worker earnings, thus helping to explain impacts on poverty. Fourth, in terms of policies, the countries that had larger increases in apparel exports were those that promoted apparel sector upgrading; those that did not promote upgrading had smaller increases or even falling exports.

Poverty alleviation is a global challenge that concerns particularly developing countries, and its reduction has been identified as the first Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Poverty is a multidimensional and place-oriented phenomenon that cannot be determined with monetary and strict indicators. It also is interrelated with many factors, including household livelihood strategies. Therefore, the main goals of this paper were (a) to introduce a local index to measure the multidimensional poverty situation of rural areas of Iran, (b) to introduce a proper index to evaluate the livelihood strategy of rural households (LSI), and (c) to investigate the relationship between poverty and livelihood strategy. This study uses the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and a fuzzy approach to evaluate household poverty and livelihood strategy. A sample includes about 20 thousand rural households and was used in this regard. The results indicated that the value of MPI is 0.349, and about 45% of rural households are deprived in at least two-thirds of poverty indicators, and 62.5% of them live in deprived households. Education dimension had the highest contribution in MPI, the LSI value was 0.531, which means rural households often have integrated livelihood strategy, and rural households whose livelihood strategies were more dependent on agriculture also faced with higher poverty and deprivation scores. Finally, the elimination of rural poverty requires a smart approach that is both holistic and systematic.

The objective of the Nepal Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in Nepal in all its dimensions and promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of many dimensions that shape the opportunities for investments, employment creation, and growth of private firms. Such dimensions include factor markets, product markets, infrastructure services, and the macroeconomic, legal, regulatory, and institutional framework. The report's key finding is that while there are some niche sectors growing and expanding employment in Nepal (including tourism and certain educational and other services), there are many constraints to the investment climate in Nepal that are hindering the development and growth of the private sector. In particular, political instability, poor infrastructure, poor labor relations, poor access to finance, and declining exports plague Nepal's private sector. To overcome many of these issues and move forward, many reforms are needed. Given the extent of the challenge, effective public-private dialogue is required so that the government and the private sector can work in partnership to address these constraints. The pervasiveness and impact of political instability in Nepal makes the investment climate in the country comparable more to Afghanistan than other countries in the region or the comparator countries used in the analysis. While this comparison is unflattering, it is true. Political instability has stifled growth and limited Nepal's ability to exploit its hydropower and tourism potential. Interestingly, many firms do not perceive access to land and finance as major obstacles. This could be a reflection of lack of dynamism: Nepalese firms are simply not planning to invest, expand, and grow in their unstable and unpredictable environment. The peace dividend is not difficult to measure. As the surveys show, ending civil unrest alone would give back to enterprises 44 working days a year. The effects on economic activity, investment, growth, and job creation could be potentially huge.

Following the 1998 financial crisis, four out of every ten people slipped into poverty, not able to meet basic needs. Luckily, post-crisis economic rebound was impressive and broad-based ? albeit uneven ? across sectors and regions. This title explores the nature of poverty, both nationally and regionally, to identify the groups with a high poverty risk. It then examines growth-poverty linkages through the labor market, as well as the contribution of growth and inequality to the recent poverty reduction. It also considers the expected impact of WTO accession on overall growth and poverty. Finally, it focuses on the scope for improving social policy in ways that will have a direct impact on the poor.

One out of every five Latin Americans—about 130 million people—have never known anything but poverty, subsisting on less than US$4 a day throughout their lives. These are the region's chronically poor, who have remained so despite unprecedented inroads against poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean since the turn of the century. This book takes a closer look at the region's entrenched poor, who and where they are, and how existing policies need to change to effectively assist the poor. The book shows significant variations of rates of chronic poverty across and within countries. The book posits that refinements to the existing policy toolkit —as opposed to more programs—may come a long way in helping the remaining poor. These refinements include intensifying efforts to improve coordination between different social and economic programs, which can boost the income-generation process and deal with the intergenerational transmission of chronic poverty by investing in early childhood development. In addition, there is an urgent need to adapt programs to directly address the psychological toll of chronic poverty on people's mindsets and aspirations, which currently undermines the effectiveness of existing policy efforts.

Broad-based growth is critical for accelerating poverty reduction. But income inequality also affects the pace at which growth translates into gains for the poor. Despite the attention researchers have given to the relative roles of growth and inqequality in reducing poverty, little is known about how the microunderpinnings of growth strategies affect poor households' ability to participate in and profit from growth. Delivering on the Promise of Pro-Poor Growth contributes to the debate on how to accelerate poverty reduction by providing insights from eight countries that have been relatively successful in delivering pro-poor growth: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Tunisia, Uganda, and Vietnam. It integrates growth analytics with the microanalysis of household data to determine how country policies and conditions interact to reduce poverty and to spread the benefits of growth across different income groups. This title is a useful resource for policy makers, donor agencies, academics, think tanks, and government officials seeking a practical framework to improve country level diagnostics of growth-poverty linkages.

This report draws lessons for improving the policy design of poverty alleviation schemes in Jordan. The conclusions herein are based on analyses of trends in consumption poverty in Jordan and assessment of the impact of government programs (including food subsidies and cash transfers) on poverty alleviation in the 1990s. Poverty declined between 1992 and 1997 because inequality declined. Government programs, especially those targeted to the poor like the National Aid Fund, contributed to poverty alleviation. However, poverty continues to be a major policy challenge for Jordan: the poor and near-poor remain vulnerable as a result of the shallowness of poverty in Jordan (Many people are concentrated close to the poverty line) and the adverse effects of potential shocks. The report concludes the following: 1) Sustainable poverty reduction requires resumption and sustainability of growth. 2) There is a need for a policy response to the vulnerability of the poor and near-poor to economic shocks. 3) The capacity of the National Aid Fund (NAF) needs to be significantly enhanced. 4) Continued priority needs to be placed on human development policies, particularly those affecting the poor.

Conflict and political instability have weakened Guinea-Bissau's productive infrastructure considerably during the past three decades. This situation contributes to an increase in the degree of vulnerability of the population, especially in rural areas where most economic activities continue to take place. As growth has been weak, poverty levels remain high. This book provides a collection of papers on conflict, livelihoods, and poverty in Guinea-Bissau based on both the nationally representative 2002 household survey and a small scale survey with both quantitative and qualitative components implemented in 2004. The chapters deal with growth and poverty, institutions and social networks, the determinants of poverty, the means of livelihoods of the population, and finally cashew production and taxation.

The urbanization of Latin America has also lead to the urbanization of its poor. Today about half of the region’s poor live in cities. Yet the phenomenon of urban poverty is not one that is well studied or well understood and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programs and policies to tackle poverty. Urban Poor in Latin America argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are to a large extent site-specific. As such, the book looks at strategies to assist the urban poor in making the most of the opportunities offered by cities (deeper labor markets, better amenities and services, greater freedom, and possibly less discrimination) while helping them cope with the negative externalities (high cost of housing and difficulty of obtaining shelter; risks to physical safety associated with pollution and environmental contamination, but also crime and violence; other congestion costs, more isolation and possibly less social capital).

A Development Emergency: the title of this year's Global Monitoring Report, the sixth in an annual series, could not be more apt. The global economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression, is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis. No region is immune. The poor countries are especially vulnerable, as they have the least cushion to withstand events. The crisis, coming on the heels of the food and fuel crises, poses serious threats to their hard-won gains in boosting economic growth and reducing poverty. It is pushing millions back into poverty and putting at risk the very survival of many. The prospect of reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, already a cause for serious concern, now looks even more distant. A global crisis must be met with a global response. The crisis began in the financial markets of developed countries, so the first order of business must be to stabilize these markets and counter the recession that the financial turmoil has triggered. At the same time, strong and urgent actions are needed to counter the impact of the crisis on developing countries and help them restore strong growth while protecting the poor. Global Monitoring Report 2009, prepared jointly by the staff of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, provides a development perspective on the global economic crisis. It assesses the impact on developing countries, their growth, poverty reduction, and other MDGs. And it sets out priorities for policy response, both by developing countries themselves and by the international community. This report also focuses on the ways in which the private sector can be better mobilized in support of development goals, especially in the aftermath of the crisis.