Journal Special Issue
Spatial Inequality and Development in Asia
Many developing and transition countries have considerable regional variation in average household income, poverty, and in health and educational status. National human development indicators can therefore mislead policy-makers when large regional...
Journal Special Issue
Spatial Inequality and Development
Many developing and transition countries have considerable regional variation in average household income, poverty, and in health and educational status. National human development indicators can therefore mislead policy-makers when large regional...
Research Brief
Burkina Faso – growth without poverty reduction
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, poor in natural resources, and with low levels of human development. Its economy remains agricultural and focused on food crops and cotton production. Over the last twenty years it has experienced...
Research Brief
Children’s nutrition status in Mozambique
Evidence obtained from detailed household surveys in Mozambique during the 2008-09 food price shock reveals just how pronounced the impact of food price inflation can be on children’s overall nutrition status. Moderate and severe underweight...
Journal Special Issue
WIDER Symposium on Analyzing the Socioeconomic Consequences of Rising Inequality in China
Getting an accurate picture of poverty and inequality trends and patterns in the world's most populous country is central to understanding changes in global inequality and poverty – these alter significantly when China is included or excluded...
Journal Special Issue
Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
This issue analyses the impact of globalization on Africa and present an overview of the six Africa case studies.
Working Paper
Did Rapid Smallholder-Led Agricultural Growth Fail to Reduce Rural Poverty?
Disappointment was widespread when rapid economic growth since 2005, coupled with a smallholder-targeted fertilizer subsidy program, failed to significantly reduce poverty in Malawi. Official estimates for 2011 showed a 1.7 percentage point decline...
Report
Characteristics of the Vietnamese rural economy :
Research report prepared under Component 5 of the Business Sector Development Programme (BSPS), Hanoi, Vietnam and the Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS), 2013. With DERG, CIEM and IPSARD research teams.The origin of this report dates back...
Report
Characteristics of the Vietnamese rural economy (In Vietnamese) :
Research report prepared under Component 5 of the Business Sector Development Programme (BSPS), Hanoi, Vietnam and the Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS), 2013. With DERG, CIEM and IPSARD research teams.The origin of this report dates back...
Journal Article
Can Cities or Towns Drive African Development?
Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African...
Blog
Urbanization and Development: The Big Questions
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen In October the London School of Economics and Political Science hosted the launch of Urbanization and Development...
Report
Characteristics of the Vietnamese rural economy
Following the successful implementation of the Doi Moi reform programme, Viet Nam has experienced outstanding economic progress, for example in aggregate output and poverty reduction. For many years, Viet Nam developed much faster than the typical...
Report
Characteristics of the Vietnamese rural economy (in Vietnamese)
Tiếp nối sự thành công của chương trình cải cách Đổi mới, Việt Nam đã gặt hái được rất nhiều thành tựu kinh tế về tăng trưởng và giảm nghèo, Việt nam đã phát triển nhanh hơn các nước đang phát triển khác; và từ năm 2014, sự khác biệt về tăng trưởng...
Working Paper
Sharing in Community-based Social Services in Rural Tanzania
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
Working Paper
Community and Village-Based Provision of Key Social Services
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
Working Paper
Rebuilding Rural Livelihoods and Social Capital
Mozambique has now enjoyed eight years of peace after a 16-year war that massively damaged the economy, caused over a million deaths, and displaced more than 3 million people. This paper aims to improve our understanding of how rural societies...
Working Paper
Reforms, Remoteness and Risk in Africa
This study traces the interactions between economic growth, income inequality and consumption poverty in a sample of African countries during the 1990s. It draws on the much-improved household data sets now available in the region. It finds that...
Working Paper
Price Scissors, Rationing, and Coercion
This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by...
Working Paper
Crime, Isolation, and Law Enforcement
This paper investigates the relationship between criminal activity and geographical isolation. Using data from Madagascar, we show that, after we control for population composition and risk factors, crime increases with distance from urban centers...
Working Paper
Urban-Rural Inequality in Living Standards in Africa
In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban-rural differences for several African countries for which we...
Working Paper
Globalization and Rural Poverty
In this paper we provide an analytical account of the mechanisms through which globalization, in the sense of increased foreign trade and long-term capital flows, affects the lives of the rural poor in developing countries (in their capacity as...
Working Paper
Agricultural and rural transformations in Asian development
Over the past sixty years, most Asian countries have undergone relatively rapid agricultural transformations that helped jumpstart broader economic development. However, the changes have differed markedly in nature and speed across countries of the...
Working Paper
Empowering Women Through Livelihoods Orientated Agricultural Service Provision
The paper considers the impact of livelihoods oriented agricultural service provision for smallholder farmers on gender relationships and food security. The paper contents that the democratization and liberalization of agricultural services towards...
Working Paper
Household Access to Microcredit and Children’s Food Security in Rural Malawi
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit...
Working Paper
Regional Income Inequality in Rural China, 1985-2002
This paper depicts the trend of regional inequality in rural China for the period 1985-2002. The total inequality is decomposed into the so-called within- and between-components when China is divided into three regional belts (east, central and west)...
Blog
Malawi's Farm Subsidy Benefits the Poor but Doesn't Come Cheap
by
Channing Arndt, Karl Pauw, James Thurlow
September 2015
Malawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
Blog
How to Achieve Structural Transformation in Developing Economies? — An Interview with C. Peter Timmer
by
Roger Williamson
January 2015
In this interview C. Peter Timmer, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, reflects on the conditions of possibility of structural transformation in...
Working Paper
Options for suitable biofuel farming
Southern African countries’ interest in biofuel is due of its rural development potential. Finding models to optimize this benefit is therefore paramount. High-energy-density crops with low perishability allow farmers to grow small quantities on...
Working Paper
Transfers for Extreme Poverty Reduction
This paper investigates how a development intervention which targets extremely poor households with investment capital influences relationships between those households and the landowning elite. It places this investigation in the context of the...
Working Paper
Impact Assessment of the Facilitadores Judiciales Programme in Nicaragua
Facilitadores Judiciales is a programme run by the Organization of the American States and the Nicaraguan judiciary. The main objective of the programme is to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged people in Nicaragua. From 1998 to 2010 the...
Working Paper
Urban change and rural continuity in gender ideologies and practices
Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this paper engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural–urban ethnographic research from...
Book
Growth, Structural Transformation, and Rural Change in Viet Nam (in Vietnamese)
Giới thiệu Việt Nam là một nước đông dân ở khu vực Đông Nam Á với lịch sử lâu đời và đặc trưng về kinh tế, chính trị và xã hội.2 Sau khi kết thúc chiến tranh với Hoa Kỳ năm 1975, Việt Nam đã có những tham vọng lớn về tương lai; song mặc dù có nhiều...
Working Paper
Aid for Agriculture and Rural Development
This paper analyses the way aid for agriculture and rural development in the global south has changed over time. It finds three key shifts. First, a change in funding priority that has seen aid commitments move to the social sectors. Second is a...
Working Paper
Aid, Employment and Inclusive Growth in Conflict-Affected Countries
The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict. This paper briefly analyses...
Working Paper
Urban Development Transitions and their Implications for Poverty Reduction and Policy Planning in Uganda
Urbanization is one of the critical global trends shaping the future of humanity. At the same time, it has been argued that full development requires an urbanized environment. This paper attempts to examine and characterize the major phases of...
Working Paper
Household Income Dynamics in Rural China
It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient...
Working Paper
Globalization and Marginalization in Africa
Increased openness is seen by some as a panacea for development while for others it is a recipe for disaster for the poor. Using the example of Ethiopia, this paper discusses some of the key challenges faced by some of the poorest African countries...
Working Paper
Market Participation and Rural Poverty in Ghana in the Era of Globalization
This paper investigates the factors that influence market participation in rural economies. This is based on the premise that participation in the market is an important channel through which the global economy impacts on the rural areas and can have...
Working Paper
Vulnerability, Trust and Microcredit
This paper investigates the economic conditions of rural households in China. Historical survey data indicate that over 80 per cent of rural households earn less than 4,500 yuan in net disposable income each year, that for the vast majority of rural...
Journal Article
Is there a spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market?
This paper investigates evidence of a possible spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market that could contribute towards explaining why black unemployment rates are significantly higher than white unemployment rates. The spatial...
Journal Article
Accounting for income inequality in rural China: a regression-based approach
This paper proposes a framework for inequality decomposition in which inequality of the target variable, e.g., income, can be decomposed into components associated with any number of determinants or proxy variables in a regression equation. The...