Ownership and control over assets such
as land and housing provide direct and indirect benefits to
individuals and households, including a secure place to
live, the means of a livelihood, protection during
emergencies, and collateral for credit that can be used for
investment or consumption. Unfortunately, few studies -
either at the micro or macro levels- examine the gender
dimensions of asset ownership. This paper sets out a

This book, Financing cities, emphasized
case studies on different topics to look at the interactions
of a range of variables and factors and to see how they fit
together. Rather than require each case to follow the same
format, the authors have structured their papers around the
issues that matter most from their perspective in addressing
the topic in hand. The first part of this book presents case
studies describing the framework established at the national

Inequalities and development:
dysfunctions, traps, and transitions by Anthony J.
Bebbington, Anis A. Dani, Arjan de Haan, and Michael Walton.
Asset inequality and agricultural growth: how are patterns
of asset inequality established and reproduced? By Rachel
Sabates. Beneath the categories: power relations and
inequalities in Uganda by Joy M. Moncrieffe. Inequalities
within India's poorest regions: why do the same

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

Income inequality in China has risen
rapidly in the past decades across regions, between rural
and urban sectors, and within provinces. The dynamics of
divergence across these sub-national areas have taken the
form of a "race to the top" - meaning that all
segments of the population, including the poor with low
education in lagging inland rural areas, have experienced
gains in average income. The largest gains have been

The economy of the Philippines is open
to trade and capital inflows, and has grown rapidly since
2002. Over the last 10 years, however, domestic investment,
while stagnant in real terms, has shrunk as a share of GDP.
In an open and growing economy, why the decline? Three
reasons explain the puzzle. First, the public sector cannot
afford expanding its investment at GDP growth rates.
Second, the capital-intensive private sector does not find

This paper examines the determinants of
remittance behavior for Vietnam using data from the 2004
Vietnam Migration Survey on internal migrants. It considers
how, among other things, the vulnerability of a
migrant's life at the destination, their link to
relatives back home, and the time spent at the destination
affect remittances. The paper finds that migrants act as
risk-averse economic agents and send remittances back to the

The Government of China has placed
strong emphasis on addressing problems related to
agriculture, farmers, and rural society, with the
development of a "new socialist countryside"
designated as a top priority for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
(2006-2010). The financing of public services in rural
areas will be a key determinant of the Plan's success.
This report analyzes the performance of the

This Sourcebook deals with social
analysis in policy reform, encompassing the transition from
gaining a better understanding of the distributional impacts
of proposed or continuing reform to influencing a more
informed and locally embedded process of policy review and
design. In a generic sense, the term "social
analysis" encompasses institutional, political, and
social analyses. These three overlapping areas, derived from

This paper addresses labor markets in
Haiti, including farm and nonfarm employment and income
generation. The analyses are based on the first Living
Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole
country and representative at the regional level. The
findings suggest that four key determinants of employment
and productivity in nonfarm activities are education,
gender, location, and migration status. This is emphasized

The policy reforms called for in the
transition from a socialist command economy to a developing
market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a
country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial
focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which
is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all
the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving
many rural households out of farming into more remunerative

Albania's radical farmland
distribution is credited with averting an economic crisis
and social unrest during the transition. But many believe it
led to a holding structure too fragmented to be efficient,
and that public efforts to consolidate plots are needed to
lay the foundation for greater rural productivity. This
paper uses farm-level data from the 2005 Albania Living
Standards Measurement Survey to explore this quantitatively.