While land reforms have long been motivated as a potential policy lever of rural growth and development, there is remarkably little evidence of the direct impacts of such reforms. In an effort to fill this lacunae, this paper examines South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program. We show that the implementation of this program operates as a natural experiment in which self-selected and administratively-filltered LRAD applicants receive land transfers at random points in time.

Progress on reducing extreme poverty and
boosting shared prosperity need to be further enhanced in
the near-term by sustaining Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and
remittances growth, creating jobs, containing inflation, and
making progress on improving the quality of public service
delivery. Private investments need to increase significantly
to achieve the government’s 7 percent growth target for
FY16. Moving forward in the immediate future, stronger

The Philippines is among the strongest performers in the region, bucking the trend. In the first half (H1) of 2015, among the major economies in the region, the only countries to accelerate their quarterly growth rates were the Philippines, from 5 to 5.6 percent, and Vietnam. In spite of this acceleration, for the two quarters combined, Philippine growth rate came out at 5.3 percent—its lowest half year growth rate since 2011. On the demand side, the strong performance of private domestic demand at 8.1 percent, supported by record low inflation and robust remittances, drove GDP growth.

As part of the 2006-2011 National
Development Plan, the Plurinational State of Bolivia
launched two cash transfer programs and one youth labor
training program aimed at promoting the accumulation of
households’ human capital: the Juancito Pinto Educational
Grant, the Juana Azurduy Mother-Child Grant, and my first
decent job. The objective of this paper is to analyze the
effectiveness of the targeting mechanisms utilized in these

Afghanistan’s per capita Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 6.9 percent
during that period. In contrast, in 2007-08, 36 percent of
Afghans were poor, and four years later, still, more than
one in three Afghans did not have the buying power to
satisfy their basic food and non-food needs. Economic growth
in Afghanistan, therefore, is not in and of itself enough to
reduce poverty. To achieve poverty reduction, economic

The Myanmar Economic Monitor (MEM) aims
to periodically take stock of economic development and
highlight economic prospects and policy priorities in
Myanmar. Myanmar grew at an estimated 8.5 percent in real
terms in 2014/15. The MEM touches on continued recovery in
growth, public consumption, private investment, services,
investment in manufacturing and industry, rebound in
agriculture and the impact of floods. The monitor examines

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic,
fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The
analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an
important role by contributing to export earnings and
overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining
sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product,
contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic
product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export

This paper presents trends in monetary
and nonmonetary dimensions of wellbeing in Ethiopia using
data from the Household Consumption and Expenditure and
Welfare Monitoring surveys implemented in 2000, 2005, and
2011. The paper provides evidence on changes in overlapping
deprivations using a non-index approach to multidimensional
poverty. It assesses the performance of various dimensions
in education, health, and living standards, taking one

This country level analysis addresses land governance in Laos in two ways. First, it summarises what the existing body of knowledge tells us about power and configurations that shape access to and exclusion from land, particularly among smallholders, the rural poor, ethnic minorities and women. Second, it draws upon existing literature and expert assessment to provide a preliminary analysis of the openings for and obstacles to land governance reform afforded by the political economic structures and dynamics in the country.

Transport plays a crucial role in connecting people to goods and services and fostering sustainable development. The literature links improved transport infrastructure to economic growth and poverty reduction through five key mechanisms: (1) reducing transport and production costs, (2) creating jobs, (3) expanding productive capacity, (4) improving access to markets and basic services like health and education, and (5) reducing prices of final goods and services.

The Commission for Gender Equality presented on its proposed campaign called One Woman, One Hectare of Land’. The campaign aims to mainstream gender equality, for it was proposed that the State should allocate one hectare of land, for the growing of food, to the poorest rural female-run households. It was believed that this would help alleviate poverty and empower rural women. It was pointed out that where women had land, their families generally were better nourished, better educated and able to move on.

The report begins with a summary of
programs reviewed, a description of the PMT targeting
system, and the profile of individuals in the database. It
then presents key findings from the review of budgets and
the analysis of SW Admin/PMT data on program coverage and
distributional equity of program benefits. The report
concludes with a discussion of policy implications and
recommendations that emerged from the key findings and the