This report, which has been prepared by
the World Bank in cooperation with the National Statistical
Committee, provides an assessment of poverty in the Kyrgyz
Republic using the most recent data available. The objective
of this report is to understand to what extent economic
growth has reduced poverty and led to improved living
conditions for the population during 2000-2005. The report
also attempts to answer three questions about the Kyrgyz

Ghana has done increasingly well in
recent years. This report has analyzed these issues in
considerable depth, making it a prime reference on
Ghana's growth and poverty experience and current
policy challenges. The Ghana Country Economic Memorandum
(CEM) report presented in these three volumes brings
together detailed, relevant analyses of Ghana's growth
and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), poverty

The main objective of the Country
Environmental Analysis (CEA) in Nepal is to identify
opportunities for enhancing the overall performance of
select environmental management systems through improvements
in the effectiveness of institutions, policies, and
processes. CEA has been built upon the following three
primary study components: (a) an examination of the
environmental issues associated with infrastructure

This report is about balanced economic development in the Northeast of Thailand. It is about growth and poverty reduction, cities and villages, enterprises and workers, skills and education, infrastructure and trade, and rice and silk. Northeast economic development is only part of Thailand's development challenge, but it is among the most important. We look back at how the Northeast has fared in terms of growth, poverty reduction and social capital over the last decades relative to other regions in Thailand.

This year the preliminary results of the
international comparison program are being released,
providing new comparisons of price levels for more than 140
countries. The program, the largest single data collection
effort ever undertaken, is a salutary example of what can be
accomplished through global partnership, technical
innovation, and systematic attention to building local
statistical capacity. Along with censuses, surveys are a

This report shows that after a decade of
moderate growth but little or no long term change in rural
poverty in Pakistan, agricultural output, rural incomes,
rural poverty and social welfare indicators all showed
marked improvements between 2001-02 and 2004-05. However,
longer term trends suggest there is little reason for
complacency. The agricultural GDP per capita growth rate
(1999- 2000 to 2004-05) was only 0.3 percent per year; rural

Through an analysis of selected topics,
this study aims to offer inputs for a successful recovery
strategy for the city and the metropolitan region of Sao
Paulo (MSRP) in Brazil. The study first presents an analysis
of the underlying factors of the economic transition in the
MRSP, highlighting the factors behind the recent performance
of the MRSP in terms of job creation and growth. Then, four
inputs that would lead to a 'recovery strategy'

This report presents an update on the
economic challenges facing Ethiopia with a focus on the
shared goal of accelerating equitable growth. The starting
point is the Government's own Plan for Accelerated and
Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), which is in
the process of finalization, and is designed to cover the
period 2005-2010. This report proposes that the growth
strategy should more explicitly adopt a

Half of the moderately poor, and one third of the extremely poor now live in urban areas in Mexico. While cities offer a number of opportunities and specific challenges for the poor, low quality and high costs restrict real access to basic public services. Yet, the urban-rural distinctions need to be seen as a continuum, where depth and characteristics of poverty vary with settlement size. The objective of this report is to inform the design of urban poverty interventions. It is organized as follows.

Rural poverty remains a crucial part of the poverty picture in Argentina. This paper used a rural dataset collected by the World Bank in 2003. Findings show that extreme income poverty in rural areas reached 39 percent of the people or 200,000-250,000 indigent families.

This paper addresses the deceptively simple question: What is the rural population of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? It argues that rurality is a gradient, not a dichotomy, and nominates two dimensions to that gradient: population density and remoteness from large metropolitan areas. It uses geographically referenced population data (from the Gridded Population of the World, version 3) to tabulate the distribution of populations in Latin America and in individual countries by population density and by remoteness.

By reviewing the Bank's experience
with shelter lending, this paper seeks to address the
question of whether the Bank has helped developing countries
deal with the inevitable problems that arise with
urbanization, particularly problems with the provision of
shelter. It reviews the Bank's performance, with a
focus on identifying lessons learned so that current demands
can be more effectively addressed. In contrast to earlier