In the past dozen years, a literature
has developed arguing that urbanization has unfolded
differently in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa than in
the rest of the developing world, with implications for
African economic growth overall. While African countries are
more urbanized than other countries at comparable levels of
income, it is well-recognized that total and sector gross
domestic product data are of very low quality, especially in

The population of Sub-Saharan Africa
stood at 854 million in 2010. Annual population growth
averaged 2.5 percent, with a relatively high sustained
fertility rate, fostered by the fact that two-thirds of the
population is under 25. The region has the highest
proportion of poor people in the world, with 47.5 percent of
its population living on less than $1.25 a day, as measured
in terms of purchasing power parity in 2008. It is also the

Public knowledge about India's
ambitious Employment Guarantee Scheme is low in one of
India's poorest states, Bihar, where participation is
also unusually low. Is the solution simply to tell people
their rights? Or does their lack of knowledge reflect deeper
problems of poor people's agency and an unresponsive
supply side? This paper reports on an information campaign
that was designed and implemented in the form of an

In India, land continues to be of
enormous economic, social, and symbolic relevance. The way
in which land can be accessed and its ownership documented
is at the core of the livelihood of the large majority of
the poor, especially in rural and tribal areas and
determines the extent to which increasingly scarce natural
resources are managed. Land policies and administration are
critical determinants of the transaction cost associated

The authors use data from Nicaragua to
examine the impact of the award of registered and
nonregistered title on land values and on investments
attached to land. They find that receipt of registered title
increases land values by 30 percent and greatly increases
the propensity to invest, bringing investment closer to the
optimum. Consistent with descriptive statistics indicating
great demand for regularization of land rights, especially

Based on a large survey to compare the
effectiveness of land markets and land reform in Colombia,
the authors find that rental and sales markets were more
effective in transferring land to poor but productive
producers than was administrative land reform. The fact that
land transactions were all of a short-term nature and that
little land was transferred from very large to small land
owners or the landless suggests that there may be scope for

The authors review the role of land
policies in the evolving farm structure of transition
countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They show how
different policies for land property rights, degrees of
control of land rental and sale markets, and procedures for
restructuring former collective or state farms resulted in
significantly different farm structures in CEE countries

This paper sheds light on how to harvest
the "youth dividend" in Sub-Saharan Africa by
creating jobs in agriculture. The agriculture that attracts
the youth will have to be profitable, competitive, and
dynamic. These are the same characteristics needed for
agriculture to deliver growth, to improve food security, and
to preserve a fragile natural environment. With higher
priority accorded to implementation of well-designed public

This paper provides an overview of
research on income inequality in China over the period of
economic reform. It presents the results of two main sources
of evidence on income inequality and, assisted by various
decompositions, explains the reasons income inequality has
increased rapidly and the Gini coefficient is now almost
0.5. This paper evaluates the degree of income inequality
from the perspectives of people's subjective well-being

This report addresses key structural,
institutional, and sectoral policy impediments to achieving
a higher, and sustained economic growth in the sector, and
poverty reduction in rural areas of Iran. It focuses mainly
on an assessment of agricultural development outcomes, a
discussion of the agricultural policy agenda, and provides
recommendations for future policy dialogue between the Bank,
and the Government of Iran. On examining development

With the exception of Sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the
regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This
report explores why the region suffers from such persistent
inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and
suggests ways to achieve greater equity in the distribution
of wealth, incomes and opportunities. The study draws on
data from 20 countries based on household surveys covering

This report discusses the study of slums
in the city of Surat and it is divided into eight sections.
Section one introduces the study and discusses general
background, overall methodology, methods and techniques of
data collection, and methods of analysis; section two
profiles the city of Surat and slums therein; section three
discusses definition and recognition of slums and situation
of tenure of land along with the physical and social