B OTH CHINa and vietnam have made enormous progress in the fight against poverty, and the evidence suggests that rural economic growth has played a large role in this success. Using each country’s own definition of poverty, with a constant real poverty line over time, China’s poverty rate fell from more than 50 percent in 1981 to about 20 percent in 1991 and 5 percent in 2005. In vietnam, pover...

The problems of developing country dependence on a narrow range of commodity exports are well-established. Many poorer developing countries have continued to generate a substantial proportion of their total export revenues from one or a small number of basic food commodities. In addition to the problem of declining world market prices for basic food products typically exported from developing c...

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The purpose of this essay is to show how credit markets influence development and to argue that the impact of improvements in credit markets is quantitatively significant. The essay first establishes the fact that access to credit is limited, emphasizing the magnitudes. It then goes on to the potential importance of financial sector development, again quantifying the impact. Toward the end of t...

Poverty reduction is a function of economic growth, income distribution and distribution changes. Governance can impact both growth and income distribution. The dominant market-enhancing governance paradigm seeks to enhance the efficiency of markets through ‘good governance’ reforms, ostensibly to trigger or sustain growth. ‘Pro-poor’ good governance reforms purport to enhance the scale and eff...

This paper looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries – 19 developed and 7 developing – for the period between 1990 and 2006. Using an instrumental variables method, it finds that whereas for the whole sample decentralization is completely dissociated for the evolution of regional disparities, the...

This briefing note provides an overview of the role of cash transfers in the reduction of children's poverty in low and middle income countries. Drawing on existing literature and programme experiences, the note outlines the following key points: • There has been an increasing emphasis on (targeted) cash transfers as a key instrument to reduce poverty, deprivation and vulnerability of children ...

Over the past two decades many countries have undertaken to decentralize government functions and transfer authority and responsibilities from central to intermediate and local governments, and often to communities and the private sector. Decentralization is potentially important to agricultural knowledge and information systems, but decentralization is not an end in itself, and successful dece...