Poverty in Kosovo is widespread and has
remained persistent in the first half of this decade. The
evidence suggests that poverty is higher among those who
live in families that are large, have many unemployed
members, and have low education levels. The poor are also
geographically concentrated in rural areas and a few
regions. The main message of this report is that the slow
and volatile growth was doubly disadvantageous. The first

This paper analyzes poverty in Haiti
based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186
households covering the whole country and representative at
the regional level. Using a USD1 a day extreme poverty line,
the analysis reveals that 49 percent of Haitian households
live in absolute poverty. Twenty, 56, and 58 percent of
households in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas,
respectively, are poor. At the regional level, poverty is

Indonesia stands at the threshold of a new era and at an important juncture of its history. After the historic economic, political and social upheavals at the end of the 1990s, Indonesia has started to regain its footing. The country has largely recovered from the economic and financial crisis that threw millions of its citizens back into poverty in 1998 and saw it regress to a low-income status. Recently, it has once again crossed the threshold, making it one of the world's emergent middle-income countries.

China has been the most rapidly growing
economy in the world over the past 25 years. This growth has
fueled a remarkable increase in per capita income and a
decline in the poverty rate from 64 percent at the beginning
of reform to 10 percent in 2004. At the same time, however,
different kinds of disparities have increased. Income
inequality has risen, propelled by the rural-urban income
gap and by the growing disparity between highly educated

Ghana has done increasingly well in
recent years. This report has analyzed these issues in
considerable depth, making it a prime reference on
Ghana's growth and poverty experience and current
policy challenges. The Ghana Country Economic Memorandum
(CEM) report presented in these three volumes brings
together detailed, relevant analyses of Ghana's growth
and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), poverty

The main objective of the Country
Environmental Analysis (CEA) in Nepal is to identify
opportunities for enhancing the overall performance of
select environmental management systems through improvements
in the effectiveness of institutions, policies, and
processes. CEA has been built upon the following three
primary study components: (a) an examination of the
environmental issues associated with infrastructure

Beyond the City evaluates the
contribution of rural development and policies to growth,
poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation in the
rest of the economy, as well as in the rural space. This
title brings together new theoretical and empirical
treatments of the links between rural and national
development. New findings and are combined with existing
literature to enhance our understanding of the how rural

Nonfarm activity plays an increasingly important role in rural household income. Based on data from the Living Standards Measurement Study in the provinces of Hebei and Liaoning, the authors study the distribution of nonfarm income in rural China. First, they assume nonfarm income as an exogenous transfer to total income to decompose the Gini index. Second, they assume nonfarm income as a potential substitute for farm income to take household choices into account and simulate household income.

Environmental concern in developing
countries has risen rapidly over the past decade. At the
same time, decentralization and civic participation in
environmental policy-making have also burgeoned. This paper
uses data from the Brazilian Municipal Environmental Survey
2001 to examine the causal effect of municipio (county)
level environmental institutions on perceptions about
environmental problems in Brazil. Consistent with models of

The current assessment builds on
previously published reviews of poverty reduction strategy
programs (PRSPs), and is the sixth report in a series. This
paper aims at presenting a clearer picture of how PRSPs
influence the developmental agenda in 11 African countries
by assessing the level of environmental mainstreaming in the
Poverty Reduction Strategy Process. The paper includes the
following headings: introduction; framework for assessment;

Using individual level employment data
from Bangladesh, this paper presents empirical evidence on
the relative importance of farm and urban linkages for rural
nonfarm employment. The econometric results indicate that
high return wage work and self-employment in nonfarm
activities cluster around major urban centers. The negative
effects of isolation on high return wage work and on
self-employment are magnified in locations with higher

This report, which has been prepared by
the World Bank in cooperation with the National Statistical
Committee, provides an assessment of poverty in the Kyrgyz
Republic using the most recent data available. The objective
of this report is to understand to what extent economic
growth has reduced poverty and led to improved living
conditions for the population during 2000-2005. The report
also attempts to answer three questions about the Kyrgyz