This report examines poverty trends and
distribution of the poor in this larger context, paying
particular attention to the most recent past. The report
contributes to our understanding of the progress made in
combating poverty in three ways. First, it updates our
knowledge of poverty outcomes by examining the trends in
poverty and vulnerability, as well as the profile and
distribution of the poor and vulnerable across the country.

This book suggests how that exploration
should be undertaken, and how a monitoring system that has a
solid conceptual basis and is both easy to operate and
reasonable in cost can then be put into practice. Long the
ideal of many scholars and observers of urban problems, such
a system may now be close to realization. In this book,
examples of Latin American cities are used as case studies.
As argued in the first chapter, there are good reasons to

This report presents the key message,
lessons, and insights from agrifin's first knowledge
exchange event, held in Hyderabad, India, March 7-12, 2011.
Agrifin is a special initiative aimed at building capacity
in agriculture finance for commercially-oriented
smallholders and small and medium enterprise (SME)
agribusiness market segments. The initiative, managed by the
World Bank, through generous support from the bill and

Parts of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), the
northeastern most administrative region of Pakistan, have
been undergoing a dramatic transformation over the last
three decades. Given the challenging environment, GB's
development outcomes are impressive, built on the
time-tempered resilience of the people of GB and facilitated
by high levels of social capital. GB has also benefitted
from the attentions of the national Government of Pakistan

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a land-locked
nation located in the Drakensberg mountain range in Southern
Africa. The country has a total area of 30355 km² and in
2009 had an estimated population of nearly 2.1 million, with
nominal per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 1080
(in 2010). About 75 percent live in rural areas, often in
scattered mountain villages, while most of the urban
population lives in and around the capital Maseru and the

Agriculture and agroprocessing are
important in Zambia's economy, representing more than
40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and contributing
about 12 percent of national export earnings. Agriculture
employs some 67 percent of the labor force and supplies raw
materials to agricultural industries, which account for some
84 percent of manufacturing value-added in the country.
Smallholder agriculture dominates the rural economy. It

The report is divided into two volumes.
The first volume includes the fundamental content of the
report. It is organized as follows. Chapter one provides a
conceptual framework to analyze risk and vulnerability and
provides a definition of social protection. Chapter two
assesses the main risks faced by the Malagasy population as
well as its vulnerability profile. Chapter three reviews
Madagascar's social protection policies, the

This issue includes the following
headings: mass rapid transit: a tool for urban expansion;
financing: beyond sovereign guarantees; and low-income
housing: lessons from Latin America.

The purpose of this report is to provide
an overview of the current situation of brownfield
management in China for World Bank staff and relevant
government officials in order to help raise awareness of
land contamination and help develop remediation activities.
After the introductory section, section two explores the
environmental and development pressures of land. Section
three reviews government plans, targets and actions. Section

Household enterprises -- usually
one-person-operated tiny informal enterprises -- are a
rapidly growing source of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa,
especially in lower-income countries. Household enterprises
tend to operate with limited interest or support from
governments. This is the case in Mozambique, where neither
the poverty reduction strategy nor small and medium
enterprise development policies include household

The report has three main chapters
discussing modernization, diversification and
competitiveness. The chapters examine problems and barriers
facing households, private firms and public agencies to
achieving these objectives, and then identify the
instruments that can help Russia achieve the necessary
spatial transformation of its economy. Russia's long
history as one of Europe's leading nations, and its

Institutional features of the African
setting -- large extended families and imperfect credit and
land markets -- matter to the equity and efficiency roles
played by intergenerational linkages. Using original survey
data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of
consumption, this paper studies the role played by land
inheritance, other bequests and parental background as
influences on an adult's economic welfare and economic