China's (uneven) progress against poverty

China ’ s ( uneven ) progress against poverty i

While the incidence of extreme poverty fell dramatically in China over 1980–2001, progress was uneven over time and across provinces. Rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor, though migration to urban areas helped. Rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth; agriculture played a far more important role than the secon...

Understanding poverty: Progress and problems

ible in the period between the Korean and Vietnam wars. Academic and popular writings drew attention to those who were not benefitting from that prosperity and evoked a strong public and political response. Within a few years, new legislative and administrative initiatives, linked under the rubric of the “War on Poverty,” dramatically transformed the federal budget and the scope of the nation’s...

Infant mortality in the 20th century, dramatic but uneven progress.

It is quite fitting for a symposium reviewing progress in infant nutrition in the 20th century to start with a review of infant mortality rates during that time period. Indeed, it has been a truism in public health that, within limits, the infant mortality rate of any community, large or small, reflected its general state of health better than any other single indicator. Although no longer vali...

Counting the poor versus monitoring the floor: Understanding alternative perceptions of progress against poverty

One hears very different views within the development community on the question as to whether the world’s poorest are participating in the benefits of economic growth.1 One view is reflected in John F Kennedy’s famous aphorisms that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’ or claims that ‘growth is good for the poor’ (Dollar and Kraay 2002) and that the poor are ‘breaking through from the bottom’ (Rade...

Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe