This paper addresses the deceptively simple question: What is the rural population of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? It argues that rurality is a gradient, not a dichotomy, and nominates two dimensions to that gradient: population density and remoteness from large metropolitan areas. It uses geographically referenced population data (from the Gridded Population of the World, version 3) to tabulate the distribution of populations in Latin America and in individual countries by population density and by remoteness.

Rural poverty remains a crucial part of the poverty picture in Argentina. This paper used a rural dataset collected by the World Bank in 2003. Findings show that extreme income poverty in rural areas reached 39 percent of the people or 200,000-250,000 indigent families.

The present report was prepared on the
basis of the findings of an international workshop held from
September 12-14, 2005, in Salvador da Bahia, and was
attended by delegations of three to five practitioners from
12 cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It had two main
objectives: (a) to share experiences on innovative solutions
to provide electricity services in poor peri-urban and urban
areas; and (b) to develop a body of knowledge to be

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

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

Real GDP per capita and capital stock in
Cote d'Ivoire grew strongly from 1960 to 1979, but have
declined ever since, for twenty-five years. As a result, the
country has traveled a full circle from economic success to
failure in little more than a generation. What are the
long-term factors behind this dismal growth story? Are the
Ivorian development problems mostly of recent origin? Or
there are more fundamental, economic factors that explain

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

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

This sector report claims that in the
three years between 2002 and 2005 alone, almost 235,000
people have moved out of poverty in Albania. Strong economic
growth and large inflow of remittances are at the center of
this impressive achievement. However, low productivity of
predominantly small family farms has put a drag on rural
growth prospects. Moreover, Ndihma Ekonomike (NE) program,
the means-tested income support program is small in scale,

The authors compare the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading programs with programs that provide slum dwellers with better housing in a new location. Evaluating the welfare effects of slum upgrading and resettlement programs requires estimating models of residential location choice, in which households trade off commuting costs against the cost and attributes of the housing they consume, including neighborhood attributes. The authors accomplish this using data for 5,000 households in Mumbai, a city in which 40 percent of the population live in slums.

This review concludes that for
Togo's urban and peri-urban areas to sustainably grow,
issues of urban governance and development need to be
approached in a comprehensive manner, driven by well -guided
policies developed in partnership with the people to support
Sub-National Government Authorities and Entities(SGAs) in
carrying out their functions efficiently. To meet evolving
challenges of urbanization and decentralization, the