According to Ravallion1 84 % of China’s population lived below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day in 1981, when only four countries, Cambodia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Uganda had a higher headcount index than China. However, The Economist (Jun 1st 2013) shows that China pulled 680 million people out of misery and reduced its extreme-poverty rate to 10% through economic growth in the ...

The World Banks (WB) mission and overarching goal is to reduce poverty. Moving ahead, what can the WB do to enhance its contribution to the poverty reduction agenda? This question can be answered from at least two perspectives: the WB as a lending institution and the WB as a knowledge bank. This article will concentrate on the latter and suggest two areas in which more and better information an...

This paper considers the impact of cash transfer programmes for the old in Brazil and South Africa on poverty among households with older people. Using datasets collected specifically for the purpose, the paper constructs conditional and unconditional estimates of the poverty reduction capacity of these programmes. The paper finds that non-contributory pensions have a measurable and significant...