Analysis of Sri Lanka’s recent progress
in reducing poverty and inequality is directly relevant to
the new government’s development agenda. The newly sworn-in
president ran for election on a platform that featured,
among other goals, inclusive growth and support to the
agricultural sector. The pursuit of these and other goals of
the new administration can be informed by a fuller
understanding of recent developments in household living

People living in poverty are
particularly vulnerable to shocks, including those caused by
natural disasters such as floods and droughts. Previous
studies in local contexts have shown that poor people are
also often overrepresented in hazard-prone areas. However,
systematic evidence across countries demonstrating this
finding is lacking. This paper analyzes at the country level
whether poor people are disproportionally exposed to floods

Policies that enable rural communities
to participate in expanding economic opportunities can be
central to inclusive growth in Myanmar. Rural communities
are home to the majority of Myanmar’s population, the
majority of its many ethnic groups, and 70 percent of its
poor. Development in rural areas is constrained by low
returns to agriculture, and significantly lower levels of
public service delivery and human development outcomes

This paper examines poor households in
the city of Mumbai and their exposure, vulnerability, and
ability to respond to recurrent floods. The paper discusses
policy implications for future adaptive capacity,
resilience, and poverty alleviation. The study focuses
particularly on the poor households, which tend to have
greater exposure and vulnerability to floods and limited
ability to respond given the constraints on physical and

Even after several decades of green
revolution, malnutrition continues to be a major development
challenge in much of South Asia, and India has a major share
of the malnourished people in the region. For nutrition
goals to be integrated into extension the curricula provided
to current and future agricultural extension agents must be
revisited. As part of the South Asia Food and Nutrition
Security Initiative (SAFANSI), this paper focuses on

The hub-periphery development pattern of
the Guangdong economy, to some extent, is a miniature of
that of the Chinese economy. The Pearl River Delta, drawing
from its first-nature comparative advantages in factor
endowments and proximity to Hong Kong SAR, China, and Macau
SAR, China, and the second-nature advantages as first-movers
in the reforms in attracting and retaining domestic and
foreign resources, has developed into a regional economic

The term “inclusive cities” is
increasingly being used as a “catch-all” phrase to signify
intent but with little precision in its use. In this note we
use “inclusive cities” to mean cities in which we see a
commitment to an inclusive politics with the establishment
of institutionalized interactions between organized groups
of disadvantaged citizens and the state with local
government taking a primary role. They are also cities in

The authors investigate determinants of
individual migration decisions in Vietnam, a country with
increasingly high levels of geographical labor mobility.
Using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards
Survey (VHLSS) of 2012, the authors find that probability of
migration is strongly associated with individual, household
and community-level characteristics. The probability of
migration is higher for young people and those with

Over the last 20 years, poor rural
farmers in Nigeria have seen the benefits of community
organization as a tool for local economic development under
the National Fadama Development Project series. They have
witnessed improvements in rural areas that have embraced a
more inclusive and participatory model of local economic
decision making. Many communities have come together under
the umbrella of new institutional arrangements for

According to the latest census of 2011,
the urbanization level in India has increased from 27.8
percent in 2001 to 31.2 percent in 2011, and for the first
time, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded the
increase in rural population. India has different
administrative arrangements for rural and urban areas, which
are based on the 73rd and 74th amendments to the
Constitution of India respectively. Since the census towns

With 2015 marking the transition from
the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, the
international community can celebrate many development
successes since 2000. Three key challenges stand out: the
depth of remaining poverty, the unevenness in shared
prosperity, and the persistent disparities in non-income
dimensions of development. First, the policy discourse needs
to focus more directly on the poorest among the poor. While

Refugee return is one of the three
so-called durable solutions to refugee displacement
envisaged by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) and the international community. The objective of
this study is to identify the conditions that influence the
decisions by refugees in protracted displacement regarding
return to their home country - when, why, and by whom are
decisions on return or other coping strategies made, and how