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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).

Poverty is still a predominantly rural phenomenon. However, the context of rural poverty has been changing across the world, with high growth in some economies and stagnation in others. Furthermore, increased openness in many economies has affected the specific role of agricultural growth for rural poverty reduction. This paper revisits an ‘old’ question: how does growth and poverty reduction come about if most of the poor live in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture? What is the role of agricultural and rural development in this respect? Focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, and using economic theory and the available evidence, the author comes to the conclusion that changing contexts has meant that agricultural growth is only crucial as an engine for growth in particular settings, more specifically in landlocked, resource-poor countries, which are often also characterized by relatively low potential for agriculture. However, extensive market failures in key factor markets and likely spatial effects give a remaining crucial role for rural development policies, including focusing on agriculture, to assist the inclusion of the rural poor in growth and development. How to overcome these market failures remains a key issue for further research.

Over the past century, the world has seen a sustained decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but climate change could challenge poverty reduction efforts. On the Poverty and Welfare Impacts of Climate Change: Quantifying the Effects, Identifying the Adaptation Strategies surveys the relevant research on how climate change may affect global poverty rates and presents country-specific studies with implications for low-income rural populations as well as governments' risk management programs.An evidence review examines three main strands of the literature. Unsurprisingly, the impacts of climate change are shown to be generally regressive-falling more heavily on the poor than on the rich. However, most estimates have tended to ignore the effect of aggregate economic growth on poverty and household welfare. With continued growth, the evidence suggests that the poverty impact will be relatively modest and will not reverse the major decline in poverty expected over the next 40 years. Sector-specific studies-focusing on how climate change may affect agricultural yields-are generally poor predictors of national-level poverty impacts because of heterogeneity in the ability of households to adapt. That heterogeneity features prominently in studies of how weather shocks affect rural households in Indonesia and Mexico. Erratic deviations from long-term weather patterns affect growing cycles and thereby rural households' consumption (per capita expenditure) and health indicators. In Indonesia, the affected households appeared able to protect food expenditures at the expense of nonfood expenditures, and their access to credit and community public-works projects had the strongest moderating effects. In Mexico, weather shocks affected both food and nonfood consumption in ways that varied by both region and timing. The affected households' ability to smooth consumption depended on factors including proximity to bus stations. In some regions, weather shocks also had measurable stunting effects on the stature of children between 12 and 47 months of age, perhaps from changes in household income, increases in communicable diseases, or both. Overall, more region-specific analyses within more finely tuned climate categories will help researchers to better estimate the effects of climate change on poverty and the effectiveness of government-level strategies to address those effects.This book will be of interest to academics, and decision makers in government and nongovernmental organizations, seeking to design climate-smart poverty alleviation and safety net programs based on evidence.

Most community financing schemes have evolved in the context of severe economic constraints, political instability, and lack of good governance. Usually government taxation capacity is weak, formal mechanisms of social protection for vulnerable populations absent, and government oversight of the informal health sector lacking. In this context of extreme public sector failure, community involvement in the financing of health care provides a critical albeit insufficient first step in the long march towards improved access to health care by the poor and social protection against the cost of illness. Health Financing for Poor People stresses that community financing schemes are no panacea for the problems that low-income countries face in resource mobilization. They should be regarded as a complement to – not as a substitute for – strong government involvement in health care financing and risk management related to the cost of illness. Based on an extensive survey of the literature, the main strengths of community financing schemes are the extent of outreach penetration achieved through community participation, their contribution to financial protection against illness, and increase in access to health care by low-income rural and informal sector workers. Their main weaknesses are the low volume of revenues that can be mobilized from poor communities, the frequent exclusion of the very poorest from participation in such schemes without some form of subsidy, the small size of the risk pool, the limited management capacity that exists in rural and low-income contexts, and their isolation from the more comprehensive benefits that are often available through more formal health financing mechanisms and provider networks. The authors conclude by proposing concrete public policy measures that governments can introduce to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of community involvement in health care financing.

Regional economic development is an interest of policymakers throughout the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. One of its principal aims is to reduce poverty in lagging regions by stimulating local economic growth. However, problems exist with this approach. First, it may miss the target. Although geographical concentrations of poverty exist, poor people also live in regions that are—on average—rich. Second, the sources of the problem may be misdiagnosed. Poverty is not only related to where people are, but to who people are. In ECA, poverty is associated with low levels of education and people who are too young or too old to participate in the labor force. Under these circumstances, efforts to bring higher wage employment opportunities to poor regions may have little immediate benefit for the people who live there. Third, relying on regional economic development to address poverty in lagging regions ignores the potential role of migration. The emigration of labor, rather than the immigration of capital, may be a more effective means of reducing the poverty of individuals in lagging regions, though this is unlikely to eliminate pockets of poverty quickly.Development opportunities may exist in poor regions that markets have overlooked. Interventions must be assessed carefully. Some of the traditional instruments used to stimulate regional economic growth have mixed track records. Comprehensive, custom-tailored approaches appear to be a promising alternative. However, governments should be modest in using regional development as a tool of poverty reduction. Policies aimed at stimulating growth in poor regions should be complemented by more direct anti-poverty measures, including targeted transfers and investments in education, and efforts to remove barriers to emigration.

This report constitutes a step towards the objective of designing an integrated strategy for rural poverty reduction in Brazil, with a particular focus on rural poor in the Northeast and Southeast of Brazil. The report identifies key determinants of rural poverty in these regions and proposes a strategic framework in which to couch a set of integrated policies that could effectively help to reduce rural poverty in Brazil. The need for an integrated strategy arises because of the heterogeneous nature of the rural poor in Brazil. As no single simple remedy for rural poverty reduction in Brazil can be identified, the report proposes as a more effective alternative, an integrated policy approach that provides multiple paths out of rural poverty tailored to key characteristics distinguishing various household groups.

This publication offers crucial lessons for policy makers and development experts who may be considering using small area poverty maps as tools of economic development and helps add to our array of tools for dealing with the political economy issues of poverty. It represents a major contribution to a little understood aspect of the well-known adage \"location, location, location,\" demonstrating that the conceptualization of poverty at the local level represents an important step in our fight against poverty. Insights from the diverse experiences of 12 countries are drawn together in the first two chapters, on key elements in the successful implementation and utilization of poverty maps and on the political economy of poverty maps. The case studies in the volume highlight the wide range of policies and interventions that have been influenced by poverty maps, including, but not limited to, the location of investments and services, the creation of district and municipal development plans, and the allocation of grants and fiscal transfers. They show that successfully implemented and appropriately utilized poverty maps may lead to radical shifts in the perception of poverty and in strategies designed to address poverty.

In autumn 2000, the World Bank's board approved the first ever strategy for the new social protection and labor sector, and in January 2001, the sector published the strategy. The subtitle, from safety net to springboard, indicated the World Bank's move toward a broader understanding of poverty reduction and the relationship of risk to poverty. Because risks and access to appropriate risk management instruments matter for poverty reduction and development, the strategy proposed a new conceptual framework - social risk management that will review and reform existing interventions and propose new ones to better assist the vulnerable in addressing the many risks to which they are exposed. After seven years of implementation, it was time to review the strategy and work of the areas of selected core competence: labor market, social insurance (in particular pensions), social safety nets, social funds, disability and development, and risk and vulnerability analysis. The strategic position, its development, and the results by the sector since the launch of its strategy were reviewed and presented to the World Bank's committee on development effectiveness at the end of 2007. The review included a stocktaking of the analytical work and lending operations in each of the six core competence areas. The result of this review and the six stocktaking papers are presented in this publication. They reveal the progress that the World Bank has made in understanding the importance of social risk management for poverty reduction and the critical contribution it makes to equitable and sustainable growth.

The second quarter of the twentieth century witnessed an astonishing revolution in military technology. World War I saw the beginnings of motorized warfare; aircraft were used in combat and the first tanks appeared. By the end of World War II they were the primary armament of continental warfare. The interwar period also saw the scientific breakthroughs that would eventually lead to radar, guided missiles, and atomic weapons. The Soviet economy was large but poor, and it was particularly poor in the scientific and information infrastructure that made the other powers rich. Despite this, the Soviet defense industry was invariably close

This study examines the effect of financial inclusion on poverty and vulnerability to poverty of Ghanaian households. Using data extracted from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey in 2016/17, a multiple correspondence analysis is employed to generate a financial inclusion index, and three-stage feasible least squares is used to estimate households’ vulnerability to poverty. Endogeneity associated with financial inclusion is resolved using distance to the nearest bank as an instrument in an instrumental variables probit technique. Results showed that while 23.4% of Ghanaians are considered poor, about 51% are vulnerable to poverty. We found that an increase in financial inclusion has two effects on household poverty. First, it is associated with a decline in a household’s likelihood of being poor by 27%. Second, it prevents a household’s exposure to future poverty by 28%. Female-headed households have a greater chance of experiencing a larger reduction in poverty and vulnerability to poverty through enhanced financial inclusion than do male-headed households. Furthermore, financial inclusion reduces poverty and vulnerability to poverty more in rural than in urban areas. Governments are encouraged to design or enhance policies that provide an enabling environment for the private sector to innovate and expand financial services to more distant places. Government investment in, and regulation of, the mobile money industry will be a necessary step to enhancing financial inclusion in developing countries.