As the 21st century unfolds, the vast
nation of India faces an array of challenges, including how
to feed its burgeoning population in a situation where rural
poverty is widespread and land resources are under mounting
pressure. In such a situation it is vital that the resources
supporting agriculture (especially rain-fed arable farming)
- soil and water, physical infrastructure, and those
employed on the land operate efficiently and in harmony. Two

This paper employs decomposition methods
to analyze differences in agricultural productivity between
male and female land managers in Ethiopia. It employs data
from the 2011-2012 Ethiopian Rural Socioeconomic Survey. An
overall 23.4 percent gender differential in agricultural
productivity is estimated at the mean in favor of male land
managers, of which 10.1 percentage points are explained by
differences in land manager characteristics, land

The aim of the scoping study was to gain
an understanding of the productive activities slum dwellers
engage in that rely on energy services and the potentials
and challenges of slums in Ghana regarding access to modern
energy services and income generation from productive
activities. The objective of the ESMED-EAfUP (Energy Sector
Management Assistance Program - ESMAP/SME Development -
Energy Access for the Urban Poor) programme is 'to

In 2006-07, the Water and Sanitation
Program (WSP) initiated research to identify barriers to
service delivery for the urban poor. The findings of the
research have been presented in the Guidance Notes on
Improving Water Supply and Sanitation Services to the Urban
Poor in India. The Urban Global Practice Team of WSP decided
to expand the ambit of this research to a global context as
the learnings were relevant to experiences across Africa,

In 1999 Ghana engaged in an ambitious land reform process with the adoption of a National Land Policy implemented through a Land Administration Project. The reform aims at strengthening land administration institutions and increasing the security of land tenure for landholders on both customary and state land, but the process is facing multiple challenges, e.g.

This article is motivated by the
remarkable observation that children of land-rich households
are often more likely to be in work than the children of
land-poor households. The vast majority of working children
in developing economies are in agricultural work,
predominantly on farms operated by their families. Land is
the most important store of wealth in agrarian societies,
and it is typically distributed very unequally. These facts

The report starts with background on the
history, scope, and character of displacement in Georgia.
Although there is a lack of comprehensive data on Georgian
internally displaced persons, or IDPs' living
conditions and livelihood status, this section collates what
information exists. Part two defines livelihood support,
maps out the sector as currently implemented in Georgia, and
describes the types of activities in place to boost IDP

This paper analyzes real estate market dynamics over the past decade in the city of Ahmedabad, India, with a view to improving the living conditions of the large population living in slums. The paper combines census data, the National Sample Survey, and slum household surveys to review the demand side of the market. Satellite photography was used to estimate the production of both formal and informal housing over the past ten years. Analysis of the execution of the development plan for the Ahmedabad region and town planning schemes shows how the system of housing supply has evolved.

Urban areas tend to have much more productive labor and higher salaries than rural areas, and there are vast differences across urban areas. Areas with high salaries and high productivity tend to have employers that invest in much more research and development than areas with low salaries and low productivity. This paper addresses two questions. First, it discusses the causes of these vast geographical differences in wages, human capital, and innovation. The second part of the paper discusses regional economic development policies.

Globally, over 40 million people have
been forced to leave or flee their homes due to conflict,
violence, and human rights violations either as refugees
outside their country of origin or Internally Displaced
Persons (IDPs). A substantial number live in protracted
displacement where return has not been possible.Forced
displacement is a humanitarian crisis: but it also produces
developmental impacts - short and longer term, negative and

Household enterprises -- usually
one-person-operated tiny informal enterprises -- are a
rapidly growing source of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa,
especially in lower-income countries. Household enterprises
tend to operate with limited interest or support from
governments. This is the case in Mozambique, where neither
the poverty reduction strategy nor small and medium
enterprise development policies include household

This paper assembles data at the
all-India level and for the village of Palanpur, Uttar
Pradesh, to document the growing importance, and influence,
of the non-farm sector in the rural economy between the
early 1980s and late 2000s. The suggestion from the combined
National Sample Survey and Palanpur data is of a slow
process of non-farm diversification, whose distributional
incidence, on the margin, is increasingly pro-poor. The