In many poor countries, the recent
increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes
of those selling food, many of whom are relatively poor,
while hurting net food consumers, many of whom are also
relatively poor. The impacts on poverty will certainly be
very diverse, but the average impact on poverty depends upon
the balance between these two effects, and can only be
determined by looking at real-world data. Results using

Large numbers of agricultural labor
moved from the countryside to cities after the economic
reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an
important role in transforming the structure of rural
household income. This paper examines the impact of
rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in
the case of Hubei province using the data of a 2002
household survey. Since remittances are a potential

The main purpose of this study is to
assess the changing landscape of agricultural protection and
taxation patterns in the region. The study is based on the
EU-10 sample, plus Turkey, as well as seven countries in the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): Kazakhstan, the
Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan (the CIS-7). In
2000-04, these countries accounted for 89 percent of the

All countries fund safety net programs
for the protection of their people. Though an increasing
number of safety net programs are extremely well thought
out, adroitly implemented, and demonstrably effective, many
others are not. This book aims to assist those concerned
with social policy to understand why countries need social
assistance, what kind of safety programs will serve those
best and how to develop such programs for maximum

At the outset of China's reform
period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for
Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer
true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a
situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed
and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa
faces constraints that China did not, and that context
matters, two lessons stand out. The first is the importance

This paper develops a Structural
Ricardian model to measure climate change impacts that
explicitly models the choice of farm type in African
agriculture. This two stage model first estimates the type
of farm chosen and then the conditional incomes of each farm
type after removing selection biases. The results indicate
that increases in temperature encourage farmers to adopt
mixed farming and avoid specialized farms such as crop-only

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

This publication focuses on public
finance, development economics, and the Chinese economy. The
government will focus on the public good aspects of
education and training-compulsory education and some aspects
of higher education and training. The publication encourages
seven reforms including raising government expenditure on
education to four percent of gross domestic product (GDP),
and ensuring that all children actually receive nine years

This assessment, reflecting
poverty's many dimensions in Mozambique, combines
multiple disciplines and diagnostic tools to explore
poverty. It draws on a combination of approaches and tools
from three separate analytical diagnostics developed by the
World Bank: poverty assessment, country gender assessment,
and country social analysis. It uses monetary, human, and
social indicators and combines quantitative and qualitative

The workshop brings diverse perspectives
from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to
exchange ideas and debate in the course of developing the
World Development Report (WDR). Participants at the 2006
Berlin Workshop gathered to discuss challenges and successes
pertaining to agriculture and development. Agriculture is
the major sector contributing to economic development in
many poor countries. Three out of every four poor people in

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 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.