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This IEG evaluation, requested by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, represents the first independent evaluation of the PSIA experience. The evaluation finds that:. • The PSIA approach has appropriately emphasized the importance of assessing the distributional impact of policy actions, understanding institutional and political constraints to development, and building domestic ownership for reforms. • PSIAs have not always explicitly stated their operational objectives (i.e., informing country policies, informing Bank operations, and/or contributing to country capacity). • PSIAs have had limited ownership by Bank staff and managers and have often not been effectively integrated into country assistance programs. • Quality assurance and Monitoring and Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of PSIAs have been weak. The evaluation recommends that the World Bank:. • Ensure that Bank staff understand what the PSIA approach is and when to use it. • Clarify the operational objectives of each PSIA and tailor the approach and timeline to those objectives. • Improve integration of the PSIA into the Bank’s country assistance program by requiring that all earmarked funding for PSIAs be matched by a substantial contribution from the country unit budgets. • Strengthen PSIA effectiveness through enhanced quality assurance.

Purpose: This study analyzes households' vulnerability to multidimensional poverty in Vietnam and provides implications for poverty reduction policies. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses the vulnerability as expected poverty approach, with the welfare threshold being the deprivation threshold of essential social services, to analyze households' vulnerability to multidimensional poverty. The method used is three-step feasible generalized least squares (FGLS). Findings: The results show that demographic characteristics, economic potential, and how households face shocks affect the level of deprivation of essential social services and fluctuations in household welfare. These factors also allow for the estimation of household vulnerability through the probability of falling into multidimensional poverty. Research limitations/implications: The study results imply that identifying the vulnerability of households to poverty is necessary to design early and appropriate support policies. Originality/value: This study is a rare one that analyzes the risk of falling into multidimensional poverty in Vietnam in the post-COVID-19 context. The results show that poverty issues must be analyzed not only at the present time but also pay attention to households' vulnerability in order to have appropriate and timely support measures. KCI Citation Count: 0

Based on China Family Panel Studies(CFPS) data and global MPI standard,this paper measures and analyzes multi-dimensional poverty in China. The study finds that the level of multi-dimensional poverty in China is not high and tends to decrease over time.Uneven regional development significantly affects multi-dimensional poverty. The poor are deprived in health, education and other aspects, but indicator contributions vary among specific groups of people. Overlap between economic poverty and multi-dimensional poverty has a trend of inter-temporal reduction. China's development-centered poverty reduction policy has achieved great results and significantly improved the development capabilities of the poor. Development-oriented approach is China's important experience in poverty reduction, and forebodes China's bright prospect of achieving its goal to complete building a moderately prosperous society by 2020.

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.

Poverty reduction policies persist in playing an essential role in the context of a developing country like India. The role of social assistance programs in poverty reduction is recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals (1.3). In this thesis, I study about Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension program, a social assistance program targeted at low-income elderly in India. Given that there are very few institutionalised social security arrangement focussed on the poor, this thesis examines about a program that pioneered the cause of providing a social security arrangement for the poor elderly. In this thesis, I explore different aspects of the program, and I also examine the impact of this program on improving welfare. There are three essays in this thesis. The first essay unpacks the role of political and social connections in providing access to the scheme and also targeting errors in the program. This essay underscores the importance of connections in the distribution of the welfare programs in India. I have used an individual level panel data from the Indian Human Development Survey, and have used a panel probit and recursive bivariate probit method for this essay. There are two significant findings from this paper. The first findings from this essay suggest that the political connection of the household increases their chances of receiving the program. The second finding is that political association perpetuates type-1 targeting error in the program. In the second essay, I evaluate the impact of the program on short-term and long-term household welfare. I have used a household level panel data from the Indian Human Development Survey for this purpose. I have employed propensity score matching to build a valid counterfactual group, and have applied a fixed effects regression in the propensity score match setting. In the last stage, I have also used an instrumental variable to validate the robustness of the findings further. The results from this paper provide evidence that the program improves several dimensions of household welfare that includes monthly per capita spending, food, and non-food expenditures (short-term). The program also has a positive effect on improving the long-term household welfare (household assets); the results also indicate that the scheme has a small negative impact on household labour supply. The last essay analyses the impact of the program when women constitute as program recipients. I have used the same household panel data, and have adopted the same empirical framework used in the second essay for this paper. The results from this essay confirm that the program has a positive impact on the consumption expenditure incurred on nutrient-rich food and increases education and medical spending of the household when women receive the welfare program. The overall finding from this thesis provides conclusive evidence on the role of social assistance programs in improving various welfare dimensions, and thereby reducing household poverty. The success of a welfare program is conditioned on several factors that include the implementation strategy, impact of the program, and how the payment from the program is spent. In the first essay, I explore the implementation strategy by probing into the issue of targeting errors in the program. The second and the third essay investigates the impact of the program by assessing the use of pension payments.

Poverty is a large and growing problem in Africa resulting in an immense amount of avoidable suffering, foreshortened lives, frustrated potentials, and joyless existences. The poverty trap is more than just an economic phenomenon but a social phenomenon as well. African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes, Complexities, and Challenges is confined to the sub-Saharan region of Africa. The analysis found in Part I of this book, emphasizes the many-sided nature of poverty and the importance of going beyond generalizations about the poor. Part II looks at the various causes of poverty in Africa, stressing the powerful ill-effects of a combination of sluggish past economic growth and large, possibly widening, inequalities. It also draws attention to the strength of the social and political factors contributing to poverty. Part III outlines an anti-poverty strategy, highlighting the necessity for an inclusive and far-reaching approach, on the basis of joint action by concerned governments and donors. The poor in Africa are triply disadvantaged. Firstly, there is a widening international gap as African social indicators lag behind the rest of the world, partly as a result of poor growth. Secondly, by Africa's poor performance in turning income to social welfare. Thirdly, by national disparities in health and education between the poor and non-poor.

This article explores the concept of the solidary village in contemporary Laos. It argues that the \"village\" today is not a fixed, primordial entity, but a continually emergent formation resulting from numerous processes, including but not limited to modern state processes. The notion of \"village\" circulates in the ambiguous \"common sense\" pertaining to rural Laos, in the attitudes, expectations, representations, and regulated requirements of the rural, in what I term village formation projects. Case studies of \"village formation projects\" in one village in southern Laos illustrate not only the importance of the village concept, but also its indeterminacy and fluidity, and the ensuing difficulty of achieving the \"solidarity\" and cooperative donation required by poverty reduction policies.

This article explores the concept of the solidary village in contemporary Laos. It argues that the \"Village\" today is not a fixed, primordial entity, but a continually emergent formation resulting from numerous processes, including but not limited to modern state processes. The notion of \"village\" circulates in the ambiguous \"common sense\" pertaining to rural Laos, in the attitudes, expectations, representations, and regulated requirements of the rural, in what I term village formation projects. Case studies of \"village formation projects\" in one village in southern Laos illustrate not only the importance of the village concept, but also its indeterminacy and fluidity, and the ensuing difficulty of achieving the \"solidarity\" and cooperative donation required by poverty reduction policies.

China is undergoing a campaign which is called “The Targeted Poverty Alleviation Policy” to eradicate extreme poverty from rural China until 2020. Though poverty in rural China has been studied intensively in different objective dimensions, little attention has been paid to poverty line settings and subjective poverty, which are hinged to the policy effects. In order to fill in the research gap, this study employs a nationally representative survey of rural households in 2016, to measure subjective poverty in rural China, and analyze the determinants as well. Our results indicate that the mean subjective poverty line of the rural households is 8297 yuan per capita, which is far higher than the national poverty line (2800 yuan). Statistically, 29% of the surveyed rural households who are not objectively poor feel subjectively poor. The objective poverty line cannot fully reflect the subjective poverty perception. Thus, how to reduce the subjective poverty perception could be a major policy agenda in rural China after 2020, when extreme poverty is no longer a problem.

Counting the world's poor: problems and possible solutions; by Angus Deaton. Comments on \"counting the world's poor\"; by Martin Ravallion, and T. N. Srinivasan. Ecology, history, and development : a perspective from rural Southeast Asia; by Yujiro Hayami. Productivity growth and sustainability in post-green revolution agriculture: the case of the Indian and Pakistan Punjab; by Rinku Murgai, Mubarik Ali, and Derek Byerlee. The politics of Russian enterprise reform: insiders, local governments, and the obstacles to restructuring; by Raj M. Desai and Itzhak Goldberg.