The objective of this report is to
analyze the important roles of labor markets, employment,
productivity, and labor income in facilitating shared growth
and promoting poverty reduction in Bangladesh. First, the
report provides a background discussion of poverty, reform,
and growth in Bangladesh. Following that, it gives an
overview of the labor market, describing the country's
demographics, the institutional structure of the labor

Worldwide, most countries recognize
equal rights between men and women. Many have produced
regulations intended to fight discrimination and programs
granting women access to health, education, and economic
rights such as land ownership. However, the fact remains
that women have fewer opportunities than men to benefit from
economic development, with lower participation in the labor
force. Even in the most advanced countries, their wages

Irrigation has made a major contribution
to poverty reduction in the past decades, enabling higher
yields and better nutrition. Despite these achievements,
large-scale irrigation schemes have usually yielded low
returns and attracted negative publicity because of their
adverse environmental and social impacts. As a result, the
Bank has largely switched its support for irrigation away
from new construction toward rehabilitation and policy

This paper discusses the social impacts
of Costa Rica's Payments for Environmental Services
(PSA) program and their effect on rural poverty. Although
the analysis is hampered by significant information gaps, we
believe that the PSA Program has probably managed to have an
impact on the poor. This impact is almost certainly positive
on the poor who were able to participate, but is difficult
to quantify. However, except for very few cases, it seems

This study reviews how the integration of environmental concerns into agriculture and forestry is progressing in the countries of Southeastern Europe (SEE) and of Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (EECCA) since 2000 and assesses prospects for the future. The present report is a contribution to the environment for Europe process. At the Fifth Ministerial Conference in Kiev in 2003, participants decided to pay greater attention to the needs of the EECCA and adopted an environmental strategy for the sub-region.

This book argues that Peru faces an
unprecedented opportunity to become the next success story
in Latin America. In the coming five years, policy making
could put the country on a development path similar to the
one that, say, Chile, Costa Rica, or Spain have followed
over the last two decades. This book includes 32
sector-specific chapters and 2 historical perspectives that
precede them. The beginning chapter, a synthesis, builds a

Although much has been written about
climate change and poverty as distinct and complex problems,
the link between them has received little attention.
Understanding this link is vital for the formulation of
effective policy responses to climate change. This paper
focuses on agriculture as a primary means by which the
impacts of climate change are transmitted to the poor, and
as a sector at the forefront of climate change mitigation

This book reviews the role of addressing
within the array of urban management tools and explores the
links between addressing and civic identity, urban
information systems, support to municipal services, tax
systems, land management and tenure issues, slum upgrading,
support to concessionary services, and economic development.
It outlines current and future applications, highlights
practices in many African countries, and offers a

The contribution of return migrants to
economic development in source countries can be significant.
Overseas savings of returnees may lead to improvements in
household welfare and provide liquidity for investments in
the face of credit market failures. Labor market experience
and skills acquired abroad may also lead migrants to find
occupations higher in the skill and remuneration spectrum
upon return. This study uses the 2005 Albanian Living

This paper assesses the impact of
work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior
of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal
household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental
Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to
account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously
affect males' decision to migrate and females'
decision to participate in the labor market. The results

This paper investigates the impact of
international migration on technical efficiency, resource
allocation and income from agricultural production of family
farming in Albania. The results suggest that migration is
used by rural households as a pathway out of agriculture:
migration is negatively associated with the allocation of
both labor and non-labor inputs in agriculture, while no
significant differences can be detected in terms of farm

Bangladesh represents a success story
among developing countries. Poverty incidence, which was as
high as 57 percent at the beginning of the 1990s, had
declined to 49 percent in 2000. This trend accelerated
subsequently, reducing the poverty headcount rate to 40
percent in 2005. The primary contributing factor was robust
and stable economic growth along with no worsening of
inequality. Respectable GDP growth that started at the